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Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

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Section 3.5 - Train rides
3.5 Train rides

3.5.1 Mending fences

The remainder of August passed quickly, and with its passing came the day for students to board to Hogwarts Express once more. The bright noon-time sunlight cheerily shone down on the street just south of King's Cross Station where a light blue Ford Anglia with a white roof had just pulled into an un-metered parking space and disgorged a family of seven redheads dragging five large trunks among them.

Oddly, not a single pedestrian on the busy street looked twice at the sight of five trunks — which when taken together would have occupied slightly more volume than the entire passenger compartment of the thirty-odd-year-old two-tone saloon — being casually removed one after another from the decidedly too-small boot of the vehicle. That inattention was a mute testament to the effectiveness of the enchantments on the family car. Now properly equipped, the odd procession trooped off in the direction of King's Cross Station a couple blocks to the north.

"Do you think I'll be able to meet Harry Potter on the train?" the baby of the Weasley family — a girl recently turned eleven — asked plaintively as they walked. "I really want to meet him!"

"He will most likely be on the train, Ginevra," her older brother, Percy answered her automatically before frowning thoughtfully. "Though he does live close to the castle, so he might not be, come to think of it."

"Really?" his sister gasped. "But I wanted to meet him!"

"You'll be able to meet him when you get to the castle," Ron assured her, as gently as Ron was ever able to manage. "Blimey, it's just another couple hours; be patient, Ginny!"

Which was to say, 'not very'.

"That's easy for you to say!" Ginny snapped as they passed through the doors into the station. "You've been around him for a whole year already!" The girl pouted, "You must have had lots of adventures and stuff with him by now, and you won't even tell me stories."

At this her brother winced slightly, "Ah, umm… not quite…"

The youngest Weasley brother was saved from what promised to be an uncomfortable retelling of how much he had stuffed up his interactions with his little sister's hero by his older brother, Percy.

"Hey, there he is now!" Percy said, motioning to a small boy some distance away wearing Hogwarts robes in Hufflepuff colors standing next to a brown-haired girl who looked to be about Ron's age. "And he's got Miss Granger with him, too."

As his sister squeaked, Percy turned to his parents, "Mother, Father, might we go speak with them for a moment? I'm afraid I have some air to clear with Mr. Potter's companion from last year." At his mother's gimlet stare, the sixth-year student hastened to explain, "It was an honest misunderstanding, Mother! I handled something without properly thinking through how she would interpret it, and it would also give Ginevra a chance to meet Mr. Potter."

As Molly nodded to her son's request and the family made their way across the crowded platform towards the two second-years, Fred spoke up for the first time, "George and I'll go on ahead." Without waiting for permission, both twins set off and disappeared into the crowd.

"Boys!" Their mother called after them to no avail. "Straight to the train! No side trips!" she tried anyway. "Those boys! What ever will we do with them?" she muttered to her husband.

"We'll just have to keep loving them, keep trying, and hope for the best," Arthur reassured her. "They'll come around eventually."

"And my hair will have gone white by the time they do," Molly complained wryly before turning her attention to the pair of children they were here to meet standing close together on the grungy but brightly lit platform.

"Mr. Potter, Miss Granger," Percy greeted the two, "it is a pleasure to see you both again. Particularly to see you back in good health, Mr. Potter." At Harry's slightly suspicious nod, Percy turned his attention fully to the girl at Harry's side. "Miss Granger, I am afraid I did not have a chance to properly apologize last term for my poor handling of the situation between you and my youngest brother, and I wished to do so now."

"It's alright," the bushy-haired girl said slowly, "Abigail explained what you were doing afterwards, and when Ron apologized, I figured it out."

The older boy nodded, "I have Miss Abercrombie to thank for explaining your interpretation to me as well. Nonetheless, I must apologize. As a prefect, I should have realized how my approach could have been interpreted, and I did not, therefore I offer my sincerest apologies for any distress I inadvertently caused you."

"Apology accepted," Hermione said, at which point Harry's suspicious expression died away to be replaced with his usual affable one.

With that, the tone of the encounter shifted as Percy breathed a sigh of relief. "In that case, might I introduce you to the rest of my family? You already know Ronald," he gestured to his youngest brother who raised a sheepish hand, "and this is Ginevra, our little sister," again he gestured to the appropriate sibling. The girl squeaked at the introduction and quickly hid behind her mother's skirts, peering out shyly with a rosy blush on her face as she looked for the first time at her hero.

"Hi!" came the friendly greeting from Harry, followed quickly by a "Pleased to meet you!" from his female companion.

"And, of course, these are our parents," the officious sixth-year continued.

"Good morning, dears!" Molly greeted as her husband's greeting echoed her own. The young Potter looked terribly small to Molly's experienced eye. She'd have to have a word with Minerva next time she had the chance — it wouldn't do for one of the poor dears to go hungry. Harry and Hermione echoed their earlier greetings as Molly considered how to handle the situation.

For now, it was probably best to get them all to the train and the snack cart there. The motherly woman nodded firmly. "Well, it was a pleasure to meet you both, but the train won't wait for us, we're not the ones setting the schedule. We'd best get you all loaded up. Move along, children!"

As the gaggle of schoolchildren moved along towards the third column between platforms nine and ten, Molly could have sworn she saw the young Potter smile as if he had heard an inside joke. After growing up with her prankster brothers, Gideon and Fabian, and then raising her prankster twins, Molly was sensitive to such things.

Of course, the question remained — what had she said that the small boy found so amusing?

3.5.2 Grand theft auto

When the twins had pulled away from their parents and siblings on the platform area and lost themselves in the crowd, they most assuredly had not gone straight to the train with no side trips. Instead, they made a beeline for a news stand they had noted on their clandestine trip to the station nearly a week earlier. There had been some noteworthy publications to catch the adolescent eye — a certain stack of magazines had been slightly off kilter, and tantalizing portions of a cover that normally would have been blocked by a black plastic divider were visible to all and sundry.

At the time, Fred and George had been equipped with neither appropriate currency nor an appropriately aged identification card to secure their prize, but they had made sure to remedy that lack in the intervening week. Fred now carried approximately twenty quid and a blank piece of cardboard charmed similarly to the notice-me-not paper they had used so effectively on their previous trip. Where the previous paper had compelled onlookers to find something else to pay attention to, however, this one projected a feeling of 'all's well here, nothing out of order at all' which the pair hoped would get them through any problems.

As it happened, their hopes were fulfilled by a lackadaisical clerk rather than their charms work. The preoccupied salesman didn't even look at their faces when he rang them up, much less ask for identification. The man was much more interested in his own copy of the same magazine he kept under the counter.

Illicit booty stowed in their school trunks — furtively buried under piles of clothes — the twins walked towards the portal to the hidden platform, ducking aside just in time to avoid the gaze of their parents as the couple walked towards the station exit.

"That was a close one, brother," George said to his twin in relief as their parents cleared the front doors.

"Indubitably, dear brother," Fred agreed. "Mum probably would have smelled those magazines on us, hidden or not."

With that, the pair made their way over to the portal, wheeling their trunks behind them, only for Fred to smack face first into an indisputably solid wall, falling back into his brother with a clatter. That finally managed to draw attention, with a good fraction of passersby looking over at the fallen boys, curious to see what all the commotion was.

That was a problem.

Pranks were one thing but drawing attention to the portal and potentially endangering the secrecy of the wizarding world in the process was an entirely different kettle of fish. Thinking fast, George said in a stage-whisper pitched to be heard by everyone nearby, "Fred, watch where you're going! I know she was gorgeous, but that is no excuse to walk into a wall!"

Suspicions averted, the onlookers chuckled and turned away — or in the case of several youngish women smiled smugly as they very deliberately straightened their posture and adjusted their clothing — otherwise leaving the flustered boys to their own devices.

"What happened, Fred," George said to his brother — in a real whisper this time. "We didn't count off to the wrong wall, did we?"

"No, it's definitely the right wall," his brother began. Fred was leaning against the wall in question and covertly pushing at where the portal should have been. "Solid as a rock."

From his slightly removed perspective, George noticed something his brother had missed. The outline of his brother's hand against the brick was limned in a familiar electric purple light which brightened the harder it was pressed. "Oh, hell."

"What is it, George?"

"I think it's from the prank," George theorized.

Fred looked closer and saw the purple light. "Oh."

With that realization, the two boys walked away from the portal out of well-ingrained reflex to avoid getting caught at the scene of a prank gone wrong.

"What do we do now?" Fred asked sotto-voiced. "We can't get to the bloody Express!"

"Maybe we can just wait, and someone will fix it?" George ventured uncertainly. "I mean, if it's blocking everyone, then…"

"Mum and Dad already left! Alone!" Fred hissed. "They'd never have done that if Percy and the rest hadn't gotten through to the platform."

His point was emphasized as another student passed through the portal with no trouble.

"So it's just us," George said unnecessarily. "You think it's because the potion was keyed to us?"

"Has to be," Fred said. "What do we do? If we tell anybody, the prank will be over before it even starts!"

"We could floo to Hogsmeade," George proposed. "I mean, go to the Leaky and floo from there."

Fred frowned thoughtfully, "That's a long way to go with the trunks when we can't use magic to shrink them…"

"Well, we can't do anything about it here!" came the exasperated reminder.

"Right."

The two brothers set out in the same direction their parents had left in a few minutes earlier, wheeling their trunks behind them as they went. As they stumped their way along the same southerly route they had taken a week before — it had been a decidedly more pleasant walk without the heavy school trunks weighing them down — they came upon a curious sight.

The family car was still parked.

"Where do you think Mum and Dad went?" George asked. "They left a long time before we did."

"I dunno," Fred said absently, his mind on other possibilities. Then his eyes lit with mischief, "Brother — are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Fred looked from the car to his brother with a slowly growing smile.

George looked puzzled for a moment before his own smile began to grow. "I think I am, Fred — I think I am."

3.5.3 Parental trials

Arthur had taken advantage of the opportunity to treat his wife to a lovely lunch at a café close to the station. With their youngest off to her first year at Hogwarts, the nest was empty for the first time in more than two decades. It was the first opportunity he had had to spend time alone with his wife without worrying about the children since the birth of their eldest son. Arthur was sure they would both start to miss the little ones soon, but for now — well he and Molly had plans for the next few days — very private plans.

"How long has it been, love?" he asked his wife taking a sip from his wine glass.

"Since what, Arthur?"

"Since we last had a night out without worrying about who was looking after the children," he clarified.

Molly sighed, "The last time had to have been back before Bill was born — I think it would have been that Warbeck concert we attended the day before I went into labor — has it really been twenty years already?"

"Twenty-two, actually, my love," Arthur clarified.

"Oh, my! That long?" At her husband's nod, she said, "Well, I suppose time flies and all that. I surely don't regret it one bit!"

"Neither do I, Molly," Arthur assured his wife, "but I am certainly going to make the most of having my lovely wife all to myself again!"

Molly giggled, "Oh, really, Arthur?" Her voice turned coy, "And what are you planning, hmm?" She looked up only to find her husband looking distractedly down the street. "Arthur? What's wrong?"

Her husband collapsed back into the café chair, "I could have sworn I just saw Fred and George driving the car down the street and turning in to the alley down the way," he paused for a moment, noting the cloud of pigeons taking flight from the rooftops near the alley in question, almost as if they had been startled by the passage of something large.

Arthur sighed. "I did."

"The boys stole the car?" Molly said with a dry chuckle and a rueful shake of her head. "So much for not having to worry about who is looking after the children."

Both Weasley parents caught each other's eye for a long moment before taking a final swig of wine; nothing more needed to be said. As Arthur arranged to pay for the meal, Molly was already planning their course. They'd head home as soon as he finished; the family clock — a neat bit of sympathetic magic which sported a hand attuned to the wellbeing of each of their family members — would be their best bet for looking after their prodigal sons from a distance without attempting to track an invisible flying car across the kingdom.

It would also place them close to the Burrow fireplace where they would be available by floo when the twin's troublemaking finally came home to roost.

So much for a romantic night on the town.

3.5.4 A poor reception

Percy and the two youngest Weasleys had broken off to find their own compartment shortly after passing through the portal to the magical platform, and after the circus that was the previous year's train ride, Suze had declined to ride the Express this year — opting instead to wait back at the Lair and relying on Hermione to keep their dragon out of trouble in her place. As a result, Harry and his human damsel managed to board the train without incident. Neither he nor Hermione had brought trunks this year, though Harry was carrying his current research notebook — at present full of scribbled runic schema and circuit diagrams — and Hermione was carrying no fewer than five shrunken books in her various pockets.

Some things never changed.

After a quick detour to the front of the train to say hello to Abigail, the pair settled into the fourth passenger coach without incident, choosing an otherwise empty compartment in hopes that their older friend might have time to join them later; though given her duties, that was unfortunately unlikely. The seventh-year had not been chosen as Head Girl, but Abigail had been chosen as the seventh-year girls' prefect for her House.

After a few minutes spent in relative quiet, interrupted only by the regular clack of the bogeys on the rail joints and the shuffling of paper as Harry wrote and Hermione read, there came a knock on the door of their compartment.

A puzzled glance passed between the young dragon and his damsel before Hermione answered, "Come in."

The door slid open to reveal a blonde girl wearing the unmarked robes of an incoming student. She was of a slight build, and her slightly protuberant silvery eyes gave her a perpetually-surprised look. After opening the door, the newcomer spent several long, silent moments staring unblinkingly at Harry with those bulging silvery eyes while Harry intently stared back at her in return.

The scene was quite strange from Hermione's point of view.

"Who are you?" Hermione eventually felt uncomfortable enough to ask.

The girl turned from her impromptu staring contest to answer, "I am Luna Lovegood, and he is Harry Potter. Unfortunately, I am afraid I do not know your name."

"Hermione Granger," Hermione responded reflexively. "It's a pleasure."

"Likewise," the strange girl responded before turning back to Harry, whose expression had hardened with suspicion at the name 'Lovegood'. "Daddy suggested I be very polite when I met you, Harry Potter, and he said that I should make a request."

"What request?" Harry asked gruffly.

"He said I should politely ask you not to devour me," the odd blonde girl stated calmly as Hermione choked on air in the background. "So, please don't devour me, Harry Potter."

"Well, I don't eat anything that asks me politely not to eat them, so I won't eat you," Harry replied automatically before his mind caught up with him and his eyes narrowed. "Are you related to Xenophilius Lovegood?"

"Yes, that's Daddy's name," Luna confirmed. "He's the chief editor for the Quibbler!" she said proudly.

"The Quibbler?" Hermione's eyes lit up. "Isn't that a magical newspaper? Do you think you could tell me more about magical publishing?"

The blonde girl nodded enthusiastically at meeting a kindred spirit and began, "I'd love…" before catching sight of the forbidding expression on Harry's face. She paled a little and continued in a much quieter voice, "Um, on second thought, maybe I should go. It was nice meeting you both." With one last doleful look towards a confused Hermione, the small blonde girl slid the door shut and left, dragging her trunk along with her.

For her part, Hermione looked at the now-closed door with a puzzled frown. What had scared the girl off? Then she turned and caught sight of Harry's still-dark expression.

That would explain it.

"Harry James Potter!" the bushy-haired girl exclaimed. "What was that all about?"

"What do you mean?" the young dragon asked, puzzled.

"Why did you scare that poor girl off like that, you great lummox?" the girl demanded. "She was a little odd, but she seemed nice enough; there was certainly no reason to be so hostile to the poor thing!"

"I don't trust her," Harry said emphatically with a scowl.

"Why ever not?"

"'Cause her Dad's a lying jerk!" Harry groused. At his damsel's questioning look, he elaborated, "Back a couple years ago, me and Suze were hanging around on top of the cliff across from the Lair, and we saw someone up on one of the other cliffs, so I went to talk to him and it was Luna's dad. He said he was a zoologist, and we talked, and he promised not to tell anyone my name, but it turned out he was actually a journalist and he wrote my name out into the article even though he promised not to! So, he's a lying jerk!" the young dragon finished with an emphatic nod.

Hermione sat for a moment as she puzzled her way through her friend's rant. "So, Mr. Lovegood lied to you about being a zoologist rather than a journalist, and then he published your name after he promised not to?" Harry nodded. "Well, I can see why you wouldn't trust Mr. Lovegood, but how does distrusting Luna follow from that?"

"Well… she's his daughter!" her friend said matter-of-factly.

"Harry! You can't blame her for her father's actions, that's wrong!" Hermione protested, scandalized. "You don't blame people for things other people did just because they're related to them!"

"But I wasn't blaming her for her Dad's actions," Harry countered reasonably, unmoved. "I was thinking she'd do the same sort of stuff. Wouldn't her Dad have taught her stuff, so she'd behave the same way?"

"It's a possibility, I suppose," Hermione allowed, "but you can't just assume that! You need to judge people on their own actions, not the actions of people around them. How would you like it if your Dad did something bad and then people blamed you for it?"

"But I never even knew my Dad! He died before I can even remember," the boy-shaped dragon protested. "How would that make sense?"

"And I'd bet that Luna never knew about her father breaking his promise to you!" the bushy-haired girl countered. "So how does your behavior make sense?"

Harry's face fell as he gave that a bit of thought. "Oh."

His damsel's argument made a fair bit of sense, and she was pretty smart too, so that meant he'd probably been wrong at least a little bit, which in turn meant he'd have to address his handling of the situation differently — after all, he didn't want to come off as a willfully-ignorant blundering pillock as Mr. Snape had put it many months previous.

He fell silent for a moment before coming to a conclusion, "I stuffed that up, didn't I? I'd better go apologize to her. Thanks, Hermione."

With that the Harry abruptly stood up and walked out into the hallway, sniffing the air as he closed the door behind him. Hermione looked after him for a moment before she sighed and turned back to her book.

Harry was a pain to manage sometimes.

3.5.5 A Railman's musings

Locomotive number 5972 Olton Hall, a GWR 4900-Class 4-6-0, was barely idling as she pounded down the hill from Glenfinnan towards Loch Eilt, less than half an hour from the hidden Hogsmeade junction.

Although painted a most unprototypical maroon, she was unmistakable for any fan of the GWR; there was a certain cast to any locomotive of the Great Western Railway, a cast matched by none, and if you know what to look for you can tell a Great Western Railway locomotive at a glance, no matter how horribly improper a paint job has been applied to her.

That is not to say the 5972 looked bad in maroon, she was a handsome locomotive and she'd have looked good in any color, but a Great Western locomotive should, by all rights, be Brunswick green — and if you thought the detractors had complained about a Black Five being painted red, they had nothing on the horrified howls from those fans of the Great Western Railway who had seen the 5972's Hogs Haulage livery.

After all, to those few she wasn't just a big old lump of metal; she was a carefully-preserved half-century-and-change-year-old piece of history — and to the people who knew to appreciate her for what she was, one might as well respray the Mona Lisa.

Slinging a load of mixed traffic on the back of her was exactly what she was meant for. From the day back in 1937 she'd first rolled out of the Swindon Works, she'd hauled a mix of freight and passengers, and today was no exception. Behind her tender, 5972 was pulling a string of seven passenger coaches filled with eager young students trailed by a further four freight wagons: the first the usual refrigerated van for the school, the second a tank wagon full of fuel oil, the third a cargo van full of heavy parcel freight, and the fourth a flatbed carrying a single massive crate covered with a tarp. The last three were done up in the now-familiar Gringotts green and gold livery and were marked for Harry Potter on the manifest.

Up in her cab, Jim Coates was once again at the regulator keeping a sharp eye on the track ahead and an ear on 5972, ensuring she was treated the way she deserved — as he always was for the school runs. The company wouldn't put anyone but their best in charge of carrying the students, and Jim had been the senior locomotive engineer at Hog's Haulage since old Olaf had retired back in seventy-one. His fireman, Mac, who didn't have much to do for the next few minutes as they coasted down the long slope, was absently keeping Smaugey calm with a bit of attention paid to his scaly head.

It was a state of affairs which gave them both time for a little idle speculation.

"'ey, Jim," Mac began, "wotcher think o' wot's been goin' on at the office?"

"Been busy," Jim acknowledged, all the while keeping a sharp eye on his work. "Yer think somthin's comin'?"

"Yeah," Mac said, "summit big. Tha wife's been tellin' me it's goin' through tha whole bloomin' company. Big changes ahead, she says — all o' tha wives agree. Nah wahn's sure wot, though. I figger 's got summit ter do wif them goblins, though — 's bin green and gold aw over the past few months."

Jim grunted noncommittally, not sure what exactly to make of it all, despite his senior position. "Not sure m'self, but I figger it ain't goin' ta be sorry. Feels ter me like we're getting' ready for summit more — nuffin' ter worry ya, Mac." The cab fell silent for a few moments before Jim spoke up again, "The slope's goin' ter bottom out soon, get back on yer shovelin' — we'll need a good 'ead o' steam ready fer the next 'ill."

Mac nodded as he straightened up and grabbed his shovel, "Back ter work ya get, Smaugey!" The drake-dog let out an enthusiastic gronk as he practically vibrated with excitement at the prospect.

That was right, Mac thought as he opened the firebox and gave it a practiced look before he shoveled in more coal, so long as there was freight to move, it didn't really matter what the higher-ups did. There's always be work for the likes of him whether they were hauling for Hogs Haulage or whatever grew to take its place. He paused long enough for Smaugey to let loose with a blue-white blast to get things properly equalized.

And if ol' Jimmy's idea was right, and they really were looking at expanding for the first time in decades…

Well, his dear old Mum, bless her soul, had always told him, "A good thing ain't complete 'til it's shared," and it'd been far too long since they'd been able to introduce anyone new to the trade. It'd be grand to see some new faces as they learned about the joy of tending a beauty like 5972 as she pounded down the iron road, doing God's own work keeping good people fed, supplied, and taking them where they needed to go.

And maybe, just maybe, in a few years when his youngest said he wanted to grow up to be just like his Daddy, Mac wouldn't have to find a way to let him down gently like he'd had to with the lad's older brothers because there just wouldn't be a job for him if he tried. Maybe he'd be able to tell the boy, "Son, ya just pay attention ter yer old man, an' 'e'll teach ya everythin' ya need ter know." The fireman's eye's misted over in a way that had nothing at all to do with the heat of the blazing firebox he was tending.

That'd be a glorious day.

3.5.6 Apology

Harry sniffed the air periodically as he walked down the corridor, shifting his weight slightly to maintain his balance as the car went over a change in grade on the track and following the blonde girl's scent. It had only been minutes since she had passed through the mostly empty hallway, so the dragon could follow the trail with little effort.

The uneventful walk had given him some time to think.

Looking back on his handling of the girl, Hermione's argument had made a lot of sense. He had been wrong to just lump Luna in with her father. The blonde girl had done nothing but introduce herself and politely ask him not to eat her, neither of which was in any way objectively offensive. She, personally, had given him no evidence that she was just as untrustworthy as her father, and consequently, there was no justification for being hostile right from the get-go. He had been wrong, and that warranted an apology.

So, now that he had established that an apology was warranted, the question became — what exactly was he apologizing for?

He'd been mean to a young girl for no valid reason, so he ought to apologize for that, sure — but he had also assumed she was as untrustworthy as her father without evidence. Was that something to apologize for as well? The currently human-shaped dragon frowned as he passed through into another carriage.

That… didn't seem quite so clear-cut.

Yeah assuming someone was guilty without evidence was bad, but was that really what he did? As Harry thought about it more, a realization dawned on him — in the same way that there was no reason for him to assume Luna would prove untrustworthy, there was also no reason for him to assume she would prove trustworthy either. Distrusting the girl was a perfectly reasonable thing to do — he didn't know her yet, and, for that matter, he had some decent circumstantial evidence that she might not be worthy of his trust!

Kids usually learned how to act from their parents, after all.

As the young dragon passed to the next car, the scent trail was growing steadily stronger, so he figured he must be catching up. Closing the door behind him, he thought further. Really, the caution was warranted. What wasn't warranted was the hostility. He'd treated her as if she was her father, rather than treating her as if she was her father's daughter.

So that's what he'd apologize for. Harry nodded with resolution.

As he walked down the corridor, Harry heard Luna's voice in the third compartment. She seemed to be in the middle of a rather animated conversation with another girl. Harry wasn't sure who the other occupant was — it was a voice he didn't recognize — but the tone seemed friendly with perhaps a bit of commiseration. Harry winced at that, his recent ponderings having left him more attentive than usual to the effect his actions could have on other people.

Was his treatment of the small girl the reason she had sought such sympathy from a friend?

After a bare moment's hesitation as he considered the question, Harry knocked anyway. There was really no help for it, he supposed, the apology needed to be made regardless.

"Come in," called the voice he didn't recognize, before that same voice dissolved into a much more familiar squeak as he complied.

"Oh, hi… Ginny, I think it was?" Harry amiably greeted the squeaky redhead he had met for the first time back on the platform. "Um, sorry to interrupt, but I needed to talk with Luna for a minute. I was rude earlier, and I wanted to apologize for it."

"…" Ginny squeaked unintelligibly with a vaguely positive nod in his direction as she folded in on herself in embarrassed self-consciousness at Harry's presence. Harry wasn't sure if it was intended to be permission, but he took it as such anyway.

"Um, so Luna," he turned to the blond girl who was looking at him intently — or perhaps staring at something behind his head, it was difficult to say. The girl's protuberant eyes and odd manner made such determinations difficult. "Hermione pointed out that I'd been mean without having a good reason for it, and when I thought about it, she was right. That sort of thing is pretty rude, and I try not to be rude, so I'm sorry for that." The human-shaped dragon finished his apology with an emphatic nod.

"Thank you," the odd blonde accepted graciously before going on, "If it is not too much to ask, why were you angry?"

Harry thought that a reasonable request, so he explained, "You know I met your dad before, right?"

The blonde girl nodded, so Harry continued, "Well, we talked for a bit, and he asked some questions and I agreed to answer them as long as he didn't say where I was or what my name was, right?"

"So you gave an interview on the condition of anonymity?" Luna asked intently.

"Yeah," the dragon-in-human-form nodded affirmatively. "Anyway, after he did that, he wrote up the article, and Mr. Snape and Mr. Dumbledore found it, and he'd said what my name was even after I asked him not to!" at this, Harry scowled. "So, I was pretty angry at him for lying, and that kinda spilled over onto you when I found out who you were. I still don't know if I should trust you or not, 'cause, you know, your dad would have taught you how to behave and stuff, and if he's willing to do that… well, anyway, I shouldn't have been so rude to you just because I don't like your dad, so sorry for being rude."

"Well, if that's true, I can understand why you were angry," Luna allowed before continuing decisively, "but that doesn't sound like Daddy! Daddy always told me how important it was to protect your sources as a reporter, and I don't think he'd do that."

"Well, he did," Harry insisted.

The blonde shook her head emphatically, "No he didn't! Not my Daddy."

"But I'm telling you, he did," Harry insisted, growing somewhat irritated at having his honesty impugned.

"Maybe you misunderstood?" Luna offered. "What did Daddy actually say?"

Harry calmed as he thought back to the conversation. "Well, he asked me to answer some questions, and I said I would so long as he promised not to tell anyone where I was or what my name was', and he said he'd keep where I was secret and that he didn't know my name so he couldn't tell anyone anyway, and then I said my name was Harry Potter, and then we talked for a long time," Harry explained.

"And that's all?" Harry nodded, and the blonde girl thought about that for a few moments before she giggled, "Well, Daddy never said he wouldn't print your name then!"

"What do you mean by that?" Harry demanded, his tone edging its way back towards cross.

"From what you said, Daddy promised not to tell anyone where you were, and then he said he couldn't tell anyone your name because he didn't know it, then you told him your name. He never said he wouldn't tell anyone your name!" the girl finished triumphantly, faith in her father reaffirmed.

Harry parsed that argument for a moment before his face fell as he was forced to come to the same conclusion.

He'd been had!

"But he knew what I meant!" Harry protested weakly. Mr. Slackhammer's lessons about contracts and loopholes that had been so amusing during his encounter with Dobby now echoed accusingly through his head. "That wasn't very honest."

"But Daddy didn't break a promise," Luna doggedly insisted. "You just assumed he made a promise when he didn't."

"Yeah, yeah," Harry groused, grudgingly acknowledging the point. "Still doesn't mean it wasn't rude and sneaky."

"Daddy is the best investigative reporter in wizarding Britain!" Luna said smugly, clearly enormously proud of her father. "Rude and sneaky comes with the territory."

"Well, it doesn't make me like him very much," Harry concluded sourly, biting back some choice remarks about not liking her very much either as he turned back to the door to go on his way. "Anyway, that's all I had to say — 'bye, Ginny, Luna."

There was a squeak and a "Goodbye" respectively from the two occupants of the compartment as he slid the door shut.

Leaving the compartment behind as he retraced his steps on the way to rejoin his damsel, Harry was not pleased with the results of his trip. He'd apologized for being rude — and he didn't regret that — but he also didn't think he'd ever get along well with the girl or her rude, sneaky father.

In the aftermath of his earlier run-in with Odd Lovegood, Mr. Snape had made an offhand comment during one of their planning sessions which had stuck in Harry's mind.

"The press is a necessary evil," the potions master had said, "sometimes causing significant inconvenience for decent people, yet critical to maintaining a properly informed populace and keeping the power of the government in check."

They had gone on to have discussion Harry had found rather fascinating at the time on the role of a free press in maintaining a properly functioning society. Harry had learned a lot, but after his recent encounter with Luna, what really stuck in his mind was Snape's next comment.

"However, there exist few groups more uniformly vexing than reporters and their ilk."

3.5.7 Pulling into the station

The rest of the train ride passed uneventfully for Harry and his damsel until they eventually coasted to a stop at the station and disembarked. After a brief 'hello' to Hagrid where he was collecting first years — they had just seen him that morning, after all, so there was no need to interrupt — the pair made their way over to the carriages that were used to carry the older students to the castle, only for Harry to stop, stock-still, at the sight.

"What's wrong, Harry?" Hermione asked, concerned. It wasn't like her friend to be startled by… well, anything in her experience.

"The carriages are drawn by thestrals?" Harry moaned in exasperation. "I thought Cedric said last year when you asked about them that they were enchanted to not need anything to pull them!"

Hermione frowned and looked at the carriages again, "I don't see anything, Harry. What are thestrals?"

"They're these flying winged horse-things, except they don't have fur, and they eat meat." Harry explained, to Hermione's mounting unease. Noticing his damsel's distress, Harry assured her, "They're supposed to be pretty friendly, and they're scavengers, so you don't have anything to worry about, Hermione."

"Okay," the bushy-haired girl said slowly, "but why can't I see them?"

"Oh! I've always been able to see them, so I kinda forgot some people couldn't," Harry explained, "but they're supposed to be invisible unless you've seen and understood death, according to Hagrid. Come to think of it, I could see them a lot better after that thing with the deer a few years back," Harry continued thoughtfully, "so maybe there's something to that? Huh."

"If there's nothing to worry about, then why did you stop?" Hermione asked reasonably.

"Huh?" Harry shook his head as he came back to the conversation, "Right, it's not that the thestrals will do anything on their own, it's just that they panic whenever I get close to them," Harry said glumly. "Just about every animal does, even when I'm not planning on eating them. I don't want anyone to get hurt because of me, so when I saw them, I made sure to stay away."

"Oh," Hermione said softly. "Um, so how do we get to the castle?"

"I guess I'm gonna go into the woods and circle around like I usually do when I come from the Lair," Harry said. "That won't take too long after I get out of sight." The currently boy-shaped dragon looked at his human damsel's disappointed expression, sighed, and reluctantly offered, "Um, I know you like doing things the traditional way, Hermione, so if you want, you can take the carriage over there and I'll meet you at the feast."

Hermione was seriously considering her options when they were interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Hey there you two! Why are you waiting so far back from the carriages?" Abigail jogged up after finishing her final check of the train for any stragglers. "I appreciate you two waiting for me to catch up, but you could have sat down."

"We were just trying to figure out what to do, actually?" Hermione began. "You see, Harry…" she trailed off, uncertain how to explain.

"You remember how it was with the owls?" Harry asked as his damsel broke off. "Thestrals do the same thing, and I didn't want to cause a panic and hurt somebody."

"Oh," Abigail said in understanding. So, that was what pulled the carriages. While she still couldn't see the things, they had been covered in her fifth-year Care of Magical Creatures class. "So, what's the plan?"

"Well, I'm gonna circle around and come in my usual way from the woods," Harry said, "and Hermione was just trying to decide whether she wanted to go on the carriage or come with me."

"Do you mind if I join you, Harry?" Abigail asked without any hesitation whatsoever. "I missed you on the train, and I don't technically need to take the carriage."

"Sure, Abigail!" Harry said happily, beaming at the older girl. "I missed you, too."

On seeing her friend getting along so well with the attractive older girl, Hermione felt a slight frisson of an unfamiliar sort of feeling, prompting her to impulsively declare, "I'm coming too!"

Whatever it was, it was a new sort of feeling for the bookish girl who was now nearing her thirteenth birthday, a feeling she would have to examine in more detail later, but for now, she just knew she didn't want to leave Harry alone with Abigail.

With that, the trio of friends walked deliberately off into the Black Woods, leaving the last cart and its hitched thestrals standing at attention with no one to carry. They would eventually amble off on their own back to the stable where they would await Hagrid's attention to be released and put back to pasture.
 
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Character Extras: Snape's Backstory
Probably because the setting, being a Shadowrun prequel, is far different from canon anyway. For all we know Snape spent his entire time as a Death Eater in a depressed, nihilistic haze of "I'll help Voldemort burn down the current order and then backstab him before he can build a new one" and didn't even twig that the prophecy might pertain to Lily's child until after he'd given Voldemort the information. The fact that he's choosing to avoid any sort of relationship specifically to ensure the Snape bloodline dies with him to spite his father shows he's definitely a different character to canon.

Close, actually. I've included my current working backstory for Snape (no spoilers for story events included, just spoilered for length).

Snape was born to a non-magical father and a pureblood magical mother of the Prince family. His father was physically abusive, and his early life was miserable. He lived in a non-magical area, and one of his neighbors was the Evans family. Their daughter, Lily, was his closest friend before Hogwarts, and for a boy as generally disagreeable as Snape, that was a major feat. Snape was more than a little obsessive about Lily and had set all of his hopes for the future on that friendship even from an early age.

Events of Snape's childhood came to a head when his father killed Snape's mother in front of him when the boy was still several years away from starting Hogwarts. The young Snape then killed his father through accidentally-on-purpose magic while defending himself from a similar fate. In addition to severe psychological scarring and trauma, this left the young Severus the only living member, and therefore technically the Head, of House Prince.

Later, when Lily found out she was a witch, Snape was the first to explain to her what that meant, and when they went to Hogwarts they went together. Various things happened at Hogwarts, Snape and Lily were sorted into different Houses, and the rampant bigotry against those with non-magical heritage made things difficult for both Snape and Lily.

Lily caught a lot of trouble because she was a bright, talented witch with non-magical parents, but she was in Gryffindor, the House with a good proportion of the more welcoming sort. Snape was shielded somewhat by his status as the heir of House Prince, but as a halfblood in Slytherin he had to watch his back all the time and work to fit in well enough to avoid persecution no matter what his personal opinions.

When Lily caught the eye of James Potter in their later school years, stress mounted. Despite his later maturity, even personal nobility, at the time, James was a spoiled brat whose sense of humor tended toward the crudely physical and pranks. Seeing his crush hanging about with a Slytherin, particularly one with whom he had had an ongoing and increasingly vicious prank war, did not endear Snape to him and the prank war escalated.

One thing led to another, and between the stress of trying to maintain a front against his enemies in Slytherin and the mounting, very real threat of the rising political unrest at the time (which threatened to push those schoolyard conflicts into deadly violent ones), eventually Snape snapped at Lily and said things which could not be unsaid.

Lily was a volatile sort — nice, kind, but vindictive when she deemed it appropriate. Crossing her could be a nightmare, and to Lily his words seemed to confirm that James had been right about Severus all along, which implied that Snape had been deceiving her for years. This meant that Lily interpreted Snape's mistake not as a minor blowup, but rather as a deeply insidious betrayal. Of course, she wasn't absolutely certain of that conclusion --- had Snape come forward with a sincere and convincing apology, they might well have worked things out --- but neither Severus nor Lily really knew how to navigate the situation, and their years-long friendship evaporated in a few words.

At this, Snape despaired. He had pinned all his hopes in life on Lily, and he didn't really see a way to go on. He went through a mildly suicidal period during which he picked up some lessons in alchemy (at least partly in hopes that it would kill him without the cowardly stigma associated with suicide) until he eventually hit on an idea. Lily would never be his — not his friend and certainly not anything more — but he might still be able to make the world a better place for her. The current social order condoned the enslavement of people like Lily for no reason other than their birth to non-magical parents, and this struck Severus as monumentally unjust. Snape sought revolution.

There was a revolutionary group active at the time, still operating in the shadows. Snape sought them out. The leader of the group — a charismatic man and a very skilled con-artist who operated under the nom de guerre, Voldemort — courted Severus for his cause and told him what he wanted to hear in order to gain Snape's valuable services as a potions master. Severus ate this up eagerly, much to his later regret, and joined Voldemort's cause.

On joining, however, he soon found that the rest of the membership were all the same sorts of people that he despised. Voldemort's movement was not one of liberation, directed at draining the cesspool of wizarding society; rather it was a group of malcontents who wanted to float to the top of the filth.

For a second time, Snape despaired. The current establishment was rotten to the core, and now he was personally marked by another psychopath that promised to be even worse. At this point, Snape decided that the best he could do was tear everything down and hope someone could rebuild something more worthwhile over the ashes.

Snape's new strategy was directed toward promoting a third side — casualties.

Snape began a subtle campaign of misinformation and sabotage. He passed selected information to Voldemort's enemies trying to make every conflict bloodier on both sides. He subtly sabotaged potions to interfere with healing, passed misinformation, and even resorted to outright murder when he could get away with it.

This came to a head, when he passed on what he thought was an obviously invented prophecy, trying to set up further misinformation later. This backfired when Voldemort interpreted the prophecy seriously and in a way Severus had not anticipated, bringing his old friend Lily under fire from the man, along with her new family. Snape was horrified anew, and tried desperately to save Lily, approaching both sides of the conflict, but she was killed along with her husband in 1981, leaving her son Harry behind. The only silver lining was that she managed to take Voldemort with her.

After the war, Snape's final frantic efforts to save Lily kept him out of prison when Dumbledore claimed Snape was his agent spying on Voldemort. Snape, however, did not abandon his cause. Open conflict was no longer available to hide his actions, but Snape was more determined than ever to tear down the Wizarding World in the hopes of making Lily's death mean something and not just serve to prop up a corrupt and disgusting society.

In the following peace, Snape took a posting as a potions teacher at Britain's foremost magical school, Hogwarts. There he has done his utmost to carefully sabotage the learning of the students. As Head of his old House, Slytherin, Snape coddles his students, particularly the children of his old colleagues from his time with Voldemort. In doing so, he ensures that they never learn to deal with adversity and remain only minimally dangerous. More importantly, it also ensured that their potions skills were abysmal.

The number of students graduating with the required potions knowledge to become aurors — the government's combined military and special police arm — fell by more than seventy-five percent during his tenure, denying the current regime much of their ability to enforce their will on the public. The few that did pass, were those which Snape felt had the right mindset and morals to be trusted to rebuild a new society on from the ashes of the current one. The current Head of the DMLE has noticed that her youngest aurors tend to be more reliable than the older ones, though she has not yet worked out why.

This was Snape's life before his meeting with Harry.


Snape is bitter, cynical, abrasive, and unlikable. He also had a rather significant body count on both sides of the aisle in the last war, though most of the killings remain unattributed. He is not a nice person even in this setting; he's just 'not nice' in a somewhat more sympathetic manner than in canon --- mostly because the setting makes such behavior more understandable.

In canon, Snape was an ass that refused to grow up and made some utterly reprehensible decisions in pursuit of those childish grudges. In this setting, he's an abrasive jerk lashing out at a system that greatly deserves lashing out at while making some major mistakes along the way.
 
Administrative Note: Note from the original author
I never understood why Snape so was white washed in this story. The man is a former terrorist and bigot, every time he talks in this story all my brain screams is "says the terrorist".

Actually, he started life in an attempt to construct a Snape that the Caer Azkaban Yahoo group (on which the popular opinion of the character roughly matches yours) would cheer on without making the character totally unrecognisable.

Anyway, I came here to say that yes, Dunkelzahn did indeed ask and receive my permission to continue the fic, so let's not have any more people coming onto Caer Azkaban asking if he's plagarising me, ta very much. He asked before he borrowed it.
 
Section 3.6 - Creative misbehavior
3.6 Creative misbehavior

3.6.1 Popinjay

Moonlit clouds swept dramatically across the enchanted ceiling, echoing the darkened sky above as the returning students eagerly awaited the opening feast and the beginning of a new school year. Candles blazed, hovering overhead as Abigail picked her way through the increasingly crowded Great Hall on the way to her usual seat at the Slytherin table.

Back to the wall and two seats door-ward from the third hanging brazier, the seat was in front of a blank wall and close enough to the staff table to stay informed while remaining distant enough to avoid casual notice. All in all, it was a prime seat by Slytherin reckoning. As she settled in to await the Sorting, Abigail exchanged pleasant greetings with her various acquaintances with a giddy smile on her face, prompting more than a few curious looks from her House-mates.

A giddy smile was hardly normal for the House of the Serpents, at least not in public.

For her part, Abigail wasn't even aware of the broad smile plastered onto her face; rather, she was still exhilarated from her trip through the forest, which had been an amazing, if brief, experience. It was the first time Harry had carried her while in his dragon form... well, it was the first time she had been awake for it. Madame Pomfrey had teased her about something similar that had happened in the immediate aftermath of the troll incident. In any event, she had been awake for it this time, and it had been everything she could have hoped it would be.

Once they had escaped far enough into the trees to be out of view, Harry had smoothly resumed his native form and gathered both her and Hermione up in a single, utterly massive clawed hand, before seamlessly shifting to walk on the knuckles of his wings as he cradled both girls gently.

Just like that hug back in Diagon Alley, Harry's grip had been simultaneously brutally strong and infinitely tender. Add to that the feeling of being utterly enveloped in his presence as the forest whipped by — a breathtaking sight in the gathering twilight — and that impromptu trip cemented itself in Abigail's mind as a treasured memory for years to come.

Perhaps the dragon thing wouldn't be a major issue after all.

Unfortunately — at least by Abigail's reckoning — Harry had made excellent time, reaching the clearing behind Hagrid's hut, carefully depositing the two girls on their feet, and flowing back into human form just as the first of the thestral-drawn carriages carrying the other students had arrived at the main gate of the castle. All three friends had been seated at their respective House tables with time to spare before the Sorting.

And, speaking of the Sorting, the Deputy Headmistress had just announced the beginning of that event, prompting Donald, the disreputable looking Sorting Hat, to awaken.

The Hat seemed rather unusually startled, glaring out over the assembled students as if it had expected a different scene, though Abigail had no idea why that would be the case. Regardless, that lasted but a bare moment before the magical headwear visibly set aside its surprise in favor of resuming its usual routine, only a lingering air of minor annoyance to mark the event.

While the sight of a miffed hat was quite unusual, the Sorting itself was not. Only two incoming students stood out from the gaggle, and neither had been sorted into Slytherin. Ravenclaw had received Luna Lovegood, noteworthy as the sole daughter and heiress of the only completely independent publishing house remaining in wizarding Britain. Over the last two centuries, the Ministry-controlled Daily Prophet had either forcibly acquired or otherwise driven all others out of business.

The second noteworthy, Ginevra Weasley, caught Abigail's interest solely because of the sheer number of Weasley siblings currently attending Hogwarts. Hogwarts had already hosted two of the redheaded siblings when Abigail herself was Sorted, and she had now seen five more Sorted during her tenure as a student.

Magical families rarely produced so many children so close together. By Abigail's reckoning, at the time this youngest girl was born, there would have been five magical children under the age of five packed into one house — and a tiny one at that, if the Weasley reputation as an impoverished House was accurate. Conventional wisdom in the magical community called that sort of scenario a deathtrap due to the potential hazards of accidental magic. The scenario of one child's accidental magic startling another into their own episode and touching off a cascade of panicked magical children was a very real and very frightening one. Formal magical schooling started so much later than its non-magical counterpart for precisely that reason.

Abigail frowned in thought. Had the Weasleys taken an unconscionable risk and simply gotten lucky, or had they discovered some way around the problem?

And, if they had, what implications would that discovery hold?

It was enough to make the seventh-year wonder if Harry might be facing some competition in his quest to take over the wizarding world. Her friend was planning to lead with economic conquest and introduce other methods as they became necessary, but it looked like the Weasleys might be trying to overwhelm the opposition by out-breeding them. Abigail chuckled at the notion for a moment before she trailed off with a frown.

On second thought, that might actually work. It'd be slow, to be sure, but eventually...

Maybe they were on to something?

That would probably be a good failsafe plan, she'd have to bring it up at her next meeting with… following that train of thought to its ultimate conclusion brought her giddy smile back full force as she sipped at her water in an attempt to calm herself back down. Perhaps not the next meeting, then, but when he got a little older they could…

She clamped down on that line of thought, and it seemed it was time to change the subject again. Casting about for something else to occupy her attention, she noticed the Headmaster standing to make an announcement.

"Good evening to you all!" the elderly wizard proclaimed, his voice carrying to every corner of the room with no evidence of strain. "It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you for another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I sincerely hope summer vacation proved relaxing, and that you are all ready to commit fully to your academic pursuits. On that note, you may have noticed a new face at the staff table. Please welcome your new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Gilderoy Lockhart."

As the room dissolved into applause, Abigail noted that the cheering had an unusually high pitch, as if a disproportionate number of girls were involved. Perhaps the man was famous for something? Though, she frowned thoughtfully, considering the audience… he was probably on one of those asinine Witch Weekly Most Charming Smile Awards or some such. Abigail scoffed, useless rag. The few girls in her House who read the thing usually stuck to the Most Eligible Bachelor lists; you had to choose your target carefully, wouldn't want to sell yourself off to someone poor, heaven forfend!

Well, that and the makeup tips.

In any event, the name meant little to her, though it sounded vaguely familiar — something about her book list, if she remembered correctly. The new addition was a wizard in his late twenties with a medium build, flowing blond hair, and dressed in flamboyant silk robes. He was handsome if you were into that sort of thing, she supposed — Abigail preferred a more rugged and practical sort, strong rather than pretty — though, even she was into that sort, the blond hair would have ruined the effect for her... and probably for most of the current crop of Slytherin girls, too, come to think of it.

The distaste stemmed from a common cause, after all.

As the man stood up, a broad smile plastered itself on his face with a practiced air, as if he had spent hours rehearsing the expression in front of a mirror. The mannerisms were unique, but the overall effect reminded her of someone, a resemblance that she couldn't quite place...

"Thank you, thank you," the blond man said with the air of a man who firmly believed that he needed no introduction. "Now, now, calm down, I shall be here all year, there will be plenty of time for us to get to know one another."

As she listened, the picture started to come together for Abigail. The carefully coiffed hair, the smug self-assurance, the absolute certainty that he was both the smartest and prettiest person in the room… that was it! He reminded her of a more attractive and genteel version of Draco Malfoy.

That realization left Abigail hoping her appetite would recover by the time the food was distributed. Many of the other girls in the audience, however, seemed to be lapping up the performance, even a few of the firsties wearing green and silver... only the firsties though, thankfully for Abigail's continued faith in humanity. By contrast, perhaps two thirds of the males looked thoroughly unimpressed, among them Albus Dumbledore, who was still standing where he had been before the new professor had hijacked his introduction.

None of which seemed to do anything to discourage Gilderoy Lockhart.

"I have graciously accepted the position of Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts," the puffed-up man continued in his overly polished voice, his satin robes gracefully trailing his extravagant hand movements. "It presented an excellent opportunity for me to pass at least some few of my many skills on to the younger generation, a long-standing goal of mine — which many of you may have read in my autobiography, Magical Me."

Wait... that title was on the reading list for this year! That was where she had seen his name; he'd written half the book list!

...and one of those books was apparently the man's autobiography.

New information in mind, Abigail's eyes narrowed at the pompous and self-serving monologue. She had already tagged the man as a self-important fop, but he might still have had something to teach; talent came to all sorts after all. If he was merely treating this as an excuse to sell more of his books to a captive audience, however… well, she would have to wait and see what he was like in class, but this augured poorly for her NEWT in Defense.

While Abigail had been thinking, Lockhart had continued with his performance, managing to mention seven of his own books in the short interlude. Minutes passed as the dandy droned on with his book promotion masquerading as an introduction only to have his spotlight quietly and unintentionally stolen by a small figure entering through the main door and catching increasing amounts of attention from the student body as it purposefully made its way across the Hall.

The visitor, only slightly taller than the recently-Sorted first-years, was a sharply dressed goblin carrying a leather portfolio in one hand and a wizarding camera hanging about his neck. As he made his way towards the Hufflepuff table, more and more of the students turned their attention to him until Lockhart was nattering away almost unnoticed in the background as the goblin came to a stop next to Harry Potter.

Abigail's currently human-shaped friend turned to the goblin and offered what appeared to be a warm greeting — the details of which were unfortunately inaudible from across the room, drowned out by Lockhart's ongoing speech — before accepting the leather portfolio. She saw her friend's wonderful green eyes widen as he examined the contents and a broad smile stretch across his face only for the goblin's camera to flash as he took a picture of the boy's reaction.

It figured it would be the flash of a camera that finally caught Lockhart's attention.

"Mr. Potter!" the man protested, sounding horribly put out but somehow still managing to smile at the same time, "This is hardly the time for a photography session. It is very rude to interrupt."

The Headmaster chuckled quietly at the irony implicit in that statement where he stood at the staff table.

"What photography session? Corporal Steelhammer was just delivering something for me," Harry asked as he looked up in bewilderment, not having noticed the flash due to his intent focus on the contents of that portfolio. In short order, he caught sight of the camera Steelhammer still held, and his gaze narrowed slightly in suspicion, only to close entirely when he was hit with another flash. "Hey! What are you taking pictures for?"

"Orders, sir," the goblin said simply. "The Vice-Chairman requested pictures of your reaction to the completion of your first major acquisition."

"Really?" the young dragon asked.

"It is something of a milestone, sir," the goblin explained. "I understand humans do similar things in certain circumstances: graduations, weddings, and the like."

"Oh, okay," Harry said, nodding agreeably before dismissing the issue. "So, everything is finalized?"

The sharply dressed goblin nodded, quiet voice carrying clearly in the suddenly silent Hall, "Yes, sir. As of ten o'clock this morning, the publicly held Hogs Haulage, PLC has been dissolved and reincorporated as Hogs Haulage, Ltd. under your sole ownership, sir."

That revelation had every eye in the Great Hall focused on the tableau of boy and goblin.

"Good," the boy-shaped dragon nodded firmly, "and the new personnel?"

"Are you certain you wish to allow such information into the public sphere, sir?" Steelhammer glanced significantly around the crowded room.

"It shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't mention names," Harry waved off his concern. "It's not like there's a competing magical rail company at the moment to try to hire them out from under me."

"Very well," the goblin acknowledged. "In that case, I am happy to report the new personnel mostly confirmed, sir. Four are currently out of contact, but we anticipate confirmation within the next two days, possibly a week for the one currently employed in the PRC. After that, it will be a question of waiting out their current contract requirements — management should be ready within two weeks; the engineering personnel may take a month or two. When they arrive, we will alert you."

"Great!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "Thanks! And please pass my thanks to Mr. Slackhammer, too."

"Of course, sir," the sharply dressed goblin acknowledged before turning smartly and making for the door without further ado.

The goblin managed to make it out of sight before the students exploded into conversation, Lockhart's speech forgotten. After all, the children had just learned that one of their own was now the sole owner of the Hogwarts Express, a perennial icon of the Hogwarts experience; for the moment, that far outweighed what some new teacher had to say — no matter how pretty he was.

On the other side of the room from her friend, Abigail could do little more than watch from afar as her friend fielded questions from his friends in Hufflepuff, so instead she turned her attention to the rest of the room, reasoning the dispositions of some of the children might give her some clues to what challenges might come for her future employer — though, judging by Malfoy's vacant scowl as he stared hungrily at his still-empty plate, she might have been giving her fellow students too much credit. Most seemed oblivious to the potential ramifications of their classmate's purchase.

With no benefit to be had from observing the student body, Abigail turned her attention back to the staff table only to be forced to choke back her own laughter once more. The new professor, that Lockhart fellow, still stood exactly as he had been minutes previous, only now he looked forlornly out over the sea of children who had forgotten he existed.

A quiet giggle managed to squeeze itself out of her despite her attempts to choke it down. Harry couldn't have arranged a better prank on the smugly self-important dandy if he had tried! It was much funnier than anything the Weasley twins had managed over the years, to Abigail's way of thinking. In fact, their reactions to being upstaged would be sure to be memorable. Her gaze flitted over to the Gryffindor table searching out the redheaded menaces to get a look only to find… nothing.

The twin menaces were nowhere to be found!

Abigail frowned. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen the Weasley twins at all during the train ride, nor during the Sorting. She did see their elder brother who seemed at ease, turned around from the Gryffindor table and talking quietly with Clearwater at the Ravenclaw table. He was one of the Gryffindor prefects, and it was part of his job to keep track of the pair. If their brother wasn't worried about them, then at least they were probably safe, though it begged the question…

What horrors were those two brewing while out of sight?

Just as that realization began to set in, a shout from one of the younger students abruptly pulled Abigail away from her downward-spiraling train of thought.

"Look, up in the sky!"

Her eyes snapped to the ceiling of the Great Hall. The vaulted stone was enchanted to be transparent from the inside, showing a beautiful view of the night sky and the sparse moonlit clouds... and shooting across that beautiful scene, below those moonlit clouds, was a flying automobile.

Abigail sighed. At least that answered the question of what the Weasley twins had gotten up to. It was simply inconceivable that anyone else could be driving that car in this situation.

It was quite the spectacle, but as the seconds ticked by, Abigail had to wonder... what was the punchline?

Then her eyes snapped shut reflexively as the night sky lit up like high noon.

3.6.2 Ungraceful arrival

Clouds raced across the moonlit sky as the twin brothers drew close to the end of their harrowing voyage.

When the twins had decided to 'borrow' the family car, they hadn't realized just how much of an ordeal they were signing up for. It had been a long, exhausting ride, packed full of uncertainty and a certain degree of low-key terror.

Despite the brothers' experience with brooms, the enchanted saloon was an entirely different animal. Broom flight was intuitive, essentially involving hauling the end of the broom around where you wanted to go and letting the enchantments do the rest. Advanced broom handling involved 'willing it' to go where you wanted and as fast as you wanted it to go there. A good broom responded so quickly and so intuitively that it might as well be an extension of the rider's body.

By contrast, the Ford Anglia handled like a pregnant whale swimming through a sea of treacle. Lateral steering used the steering wheel just like it did on the ground; speed was controlled by the accelerator, just like it was on the ground; but altitude was controlled by means of shifting gears into either 'up' or 'down' and using the accelerator. Of course, that meant that you couldn't control your forward speed while changing altitude — a nuance which Fred learned by trial and rather distressing error while attempting to fly for the first time in that narrow alley. To make matters worse, pitch and yaw — not that the brothers knew enough about aviation to know the proper terms — were 'controlled' by not turning too fast and hoping for the best from the cobbled-together stabilization charms.

All told, the control schema led to more than a few hair-raising mishaps early in the flight.

Once they managed to get into the air, the main issue had become one of navigation. The Express was long gone by the time Fred and George had managed to bring their wild first flight under control and return to the station, so their original plan to stealthily tail the train had to be scrapped, leaving the twins scrambling for an alternative. They had eventually remembered that fold-out map they had acquired previously for the prank, and after managing to set down on a rooftop to retrieve it from Fred's trunk — leaving skid marks which would greatly confuse maintenance personnel in the process — George tried his hand at navigation.

Armed with the knowledge that Hogwarts was somewhere in Scotland on the south shore of the Black Lake, the fourth-year applied his limited knowledge of geography — and a rudimentary translation charm the pair had learned expressly for a prank candy that hadn't panned out — to settle upon Loch Morar as their likely destination. From there, using George's wand and a point-me spell as a compass, the intrepid duo set out on a north-northwest heading at best speed — only to quickly realize that 'best speed' meant they were going to be driving for at least eight hours.

Of course, eight hours turned out to be an optimistic estimate. George's navigational inexperience led them to slowing and descending often to read the road signs along the way and correct their course. About nine hours into the flight, the car's magical reservoir ran dry, leaving the aggregator runes to power the vehicle directly. Even with two adolescent wizards in the cabin, the demands of flight left the engine sputtering and missing strokes and the boys firmly convinced they were seconds away from falling out of the sky.

Those runes — designed to collect ambient magic from the surrounding environment and slowly charge a magical reservoir from which other spells drew their energy — generally worked well for light duty in magical areas, often serving to power magical appliances and even light-duty wards. Vehicles, however, tended to draw too much power too quickly to be widely practical. Too many of them could easily drain the ambient magic in an area to the point where the slow trickle of collected magic effectively ground to a halt.

For grounded vehicles, this was only a minor inconvenience, but for flying vehicles… well, in the course of his job with the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, Arthur had confiscated the vehicle from its original owner for purposes of public safety, and he had driven the car to King's Cross rather than flying it for much the same reason.

Needless to say, those enchantments were not sufficient for cross-country marathons through the low-magic majority of the United Kingdom.

That said, between what little could be siphoned up from the environment and the magical output of the two mildly terrified adolescent wizards in the cabin, the enchanted automobile managed to scrape by. All told, it took the boys nearly ten hours to reach the shores of Loch Morar and then another hour slowly puttering along the south shore to locate the castle.

"Oh, thank Merlin!" Fred exclaimed from his position behind the wheel on seeing the towers of Hogwarts gleaming in the moonlight. Eleven hours of driving an unfamiliar vehicle on an unfamiliar route to a place you weren't sure was where you thought it was while terrified that you could drop out of the air like a stone at any moment made for a harrowing ordeal, indeed. "George, next time I come to you with an idea like this, punch me."

"You got it," the other twin replied, perfectly serious for once. "Same to you, brother. Where should we land this thing?"

Fred looked critically at the castle grounds, "How about by the lake shore? There's enough open space there."

"Sounds good," George said weakly, looking out the passenger window at the castle arrayed on the left of the car. Seeing one roof in particular, spoke up speculatively. "Hey, Fred, I've got an idea, and it just might make the whole flying car thing worth it."

"What is it?" his brother asked, tiredly.

"You remember the charms on the ceiling of the Great Hall?"

"The ones for transparency?" Fred confirmed, too exhausted to follow through on his brother's reasoning from the hint alone. "What about 'em?"

"Well, how about we buzz the roof first before we land?" George asked, mischief in his voice. "They've probably just started the feast by now, so everyone'll be in there…"

That prompted a tired grin from the driver, "You're right, that would make all this almost worth it. I'm in." And with that, Fred swung the car around for one last maneuver, flipping the headlights on for effect.

As the brothers approached the castle, they grinned with renewed enthusiasm. It was going to be spectacular.

They were right.

3.6.3 Automatic misunderstanding

As the flying car approached the castle, long-dormant wards roused from their centuries-long slumber. Hogwarts might have been on peacetime footing for most of living memory, but some of its wartime defenses were sufficiently specialized that there was simply no need to turn them off — they cost little to operate on standby and were unlikely to interfere with normal school activities. This one — designed to protect against magical artillery — was one such always-on ward. It scanned the sky above the castle battlements for sufficiently dense masses of magical energy, compared them to the ward's list of allowable magical signatures, and attempted to disrupt any such object not permitted access to the castle.

The enchantments on the Ford Anglia fit the bill admirably.

Admittedly, there were also two authorized signatures attached to the interloper, but — unfortunately for the twins — that also fit a previous threat profile. Back in 1143, the then-contemporary Dark Lord had attempted to fool the school's defenses by tying a kidnapped student to his ward-breaker. The brutal gambit had worked, temporarily taking down the Hogwarts wards for the first and only time in the history of the institution. After the Dark Lord had been put down in a suitably bloody fashion, updates were made to counter the tactic. After all, the kidnapped student back in the twelfth century hadn't survived the impact anyway, so what difference did it make whether the poor sap died from the counter battery fire rather than the final impact?

So it was that a magical device, roughly analogous to a modern anti-missile battery, prepared to fire on the unsuspecting family saloon.

However, that analogy was quite rough. Unlike their non-magical counterparts which tended to be comparatively simple in design due to various practical considerations, the complexity of magical artillery was limited only by the twisted imagination of the mind that created it. Predictably, among the first improvements made were countermeasures for various interception methods, making the choice of an appropriate counter-spell critically important.

During the times when such spells were in common use, the development of artillery countermeasures and counter-countermeasures was a constantly evolving dance, greatly limiting the utility of general countermeasures — the only kind which could reasonably be built into wards.

Of course, limited utility was quite distinct from no utility.

The seemingly decorative finials adorning the peak of every tower on the campus lit up with an eldritch glow.

In the absence of clever solutions, the Hogwarts warders had returned to the reliable simplicity of brute force. With access to an effectively unlimited well of power tapped from the local ley lines and stored in the collection of house-sized ward stones hosted in the deepest, long-since sealed, sub-levels of the castle, the ward designers had chosen the most general, most widely-applicable method of disruption possible.

Just throw magic at it.

Lots and lots of magic.

And the anti-artillery ward — abruptly awakened after long centuries of dormancy — threw magic.

Lots and lots of magic.

3.6.4 Look at the pretty lights

Scattered across the campus, forty-two towers lit up with brilliant magical discharges — looking for all the world like unnaturally long-lived lightning bolts — simultaneously arcing from the towers to strike a comparatively tiny flying car as it puttered over the roof of the Great Hall.

The enchanted vehicle shuddered under the onslaught before suddenly twisting away from its previous course and diving with uncharacteristic grace. The eldritch lightning cut off abruptly as the car passed below the altitude of the battlements, and the lightly charred saloon came to a stop a few feet above the ground. One door to flew open of its own accord as the vehicle spun on its longitudinal axis leaving the open door to hang down. A pair of frazzled and lightly smoking young wizards tumbled out to land in an awkward, undignified heap on the grass of the castle lawn.

As they struggled to regain their bearings, the door slammed shut on its own, and the car spun once again — this time emptying the boys' trunks out of the boot in a similarly rough manner — before setting down gently on the lawn a few feet away from the them. The vehicle had hardly touched down before its horn blared defiantly as the engine revved and the rear wheels spun out, throwing sod and dirt on the two sputtering boys who has so misused the enchanted car before it accelerated off through the open castle gate and into the forest beyond with the loud crack of a backfiring engine.

The echoes were still fading when a strident, and ever so slightly Scottish, female voice rang through the yard.

"Whate'er is the meaning of this?" McGonagall demanded as she burst out into the courtyard at a dead run followed quickly by several of her colleagues. As she caught sight of the still smoking teenagers slowly coming back to their senses, she arrived at a rough idea of the answer to her own question. "Misters Weasley! Ne'er in all my years has one of my students gone so far as to trigger the siege wards! This was several dozen steps too far for a prank, what do you have to say for yourselves?"

She trailed off as she drew closer to the still smoking pile. "Misters Weasley?"

She was answered by a groggy and disoriented groan.

"I see," the stern Scotswoman said, voice falling back into a more normal stern tone. "Well, I suppose your punishment will have to wait until we get you both into Madame Pomfrey's care."

She motioned to Flitwick to take one of the boys while she levitated the other. For his part, Snape called for a house elf to handle the trunks.

And with that, the odd procession made its way through the castle toward to the Healer's domain. The twin siblings slowly recovered, the process somewhat retarded by their gentle, yet still disorienting, swaying under the invisible influence of the professors' levitation spells. Still, the brothers managed to come to their senses by the time they reached the doors of the Great Hall.

They were just in time to hear a godawful clamor arise from within.

"What now?" McGonagall asked the world at large as she hurried to the doorway before freezing in place, giving the pair of troublemakers a fine, if sideways, view of their handiwork.

The Great Hall was a sea of ginger.

Every student — barring a single black-haired, green-eyed Hufflepuff who had finally looked up from the contents of a certain leather portfolio and was now sporting a puzzled frown as he looked around the room — had been transformed into a perfect copy of either Fred or George Weasley, though none but the originals themselves would have been able to say which.

One Fred — who was standing near the head of the Gryffindor table and looked to have been giving a speech — reached up to grab a lock of his now-red hair and pull it down before his eyes. Staring for a moment in astonishment, he then let out a piercingly girlish shriek.

"My hair!"

"Filius?" the transfiguration mistress managed to find her voice.

"Yes, Minerva?" the half-goblin prompted; his beady black eyes focused unerringly on the increasingly shrill Fred panicking about the state of his hair.

"Is that…?" she began before trailing off, unable to find the words.

"Gilderoy?" the diminutive Professor finished for her, sounding thoroughly amused. "Yes, I do believe it is."

"I see," the stern Scotswoman managed, her voice oddly clipped, as if sternly suppressing some sort of response.

"Off to the infirmary, then?" her much more obviously mirthful companion asked.

"Aye, that we should."

Oblivious to their professors, the two still-levitated twins surveyed the results of their handiwork.

"Fred," George whispered, awestruck.

"Yes, George?" Fred replied in kind.

"That was glorious," the first twin breathed.

"It was, George," Fred acknowledged. "Truly, it was."

3.6.5 Trials of a magical education

"Well, I suppose that answers my question," Abigail sighed, her voice sounding quite disconcertingly different than she was used to.

She pulled down a lock of her now-red hair to examine it in detail as a few of the remaining staff, led by Sprout and Pomfrey, worked to restore some semblance of order to the Great Hall. As far as pranks went, this one seemed relatively benign. It was irritating, certainly, but not terribly damaging. Temporary transfigurations were a known, and sadly all too common hazard when dealing with the Weasley twins... and magic in general, for that matter.

Looking out over the confused sea of ginger, though, the seventh-year girl had to admit, the scope of the prank was thoroughly impressive. The twin hellions had managed to get almost everyone, even some of the staff. Of course, they'd dropped the ball with Harry, but she was happy to give the twins a pass on that one. Anything that could unwillingly transfigure a dragon of her friend's stature was terrifying to imagine, even as a hypothetical concept.

Imagining such a thing in the possession of the twin terrors was something she refused even to consider.

Shaking her head, Abigail returned her attention to her plate, now thankfully filled with the usual Hogwarts fare, and tucked in. No sense worrying too much about it, the prank would either wear off or the professors would figure out how to fix it. They always did, eventually. Abigail just had to hope they figured it out before it was time to hit the showers for the evening.

If they didn't, personal hygiene would necessitate certain firsts she had been hoping to save for her wedding night.

3.6.6 Staff reflections

Nearly two and a half hours later, the four Heads and the Headmaster gathered in the latter's office to briefly touch base before heading off to the usual start-of-term scheduling meeting with the remainder of the staff.

"What have you learned?" the Headmaster began without preamble; they were in a bit of a hurry after all.

The excitement of the evening had thrown a rather significant wrench in the works for the start of the term, and all but Pomona Sprout — who had stayed to watch over the students — had been forced to skip out on the feast to deal with the chaos. As a result, they were all more than a little hungry — and consequently more than a little cranky.

"The feast was rather subdued," Pomona volunteered. "Many of the students were understandably quite concerned about their transformations. Thankfully, they reverted shortly after ten o'clock. Had the effects lasted much longer, I'm quite certain there would have been a great deal of panic. Do we have any idea of what happened?"

"I know the Weasley twins did something at King's Cross," Minerva explained. "Though, I must confess, I was unable to follow their explanation of how they managed to accomplish the results they did using a potion of all things." The Scotswoman shook her head. "If only they applied themselves so well in class…"

"Oh, they will," the sallow Head of Slytherin proclaimed darkly. He had been privately fuming since he had listened in on the explanation in the infirmary. "I will make certain of it."

"Oh?" the transfiguration mistress asked her colleague in surprise. "It is unlike you to take such a personal interest, Severus. What has changed?"

"Those two irresponsible, cack-handed buffoons recklessly endangered the entire student body — even many of their parents!" the man bit off the words with his even-whiter-than-usual lips, clearly incensed. "They modified the portal using a customized polyjuice variant of their own concoction."

"However did they manage the application?" Albus spoke up curiously as the potions master paused for breath. "As I recall, the maintenance access is heavily warded, and the security sweeps would have…"

"They used contagion," Snape spat.

The headmaster's normally calm eyes widened in shock for a moment before his expression darkened. "On the portal enchantment?" At Snape's nod, he sighed. "Will a quarantine be necessary?"

"For the portal? Most certainly — I have already taken the liberty of alerting law enforcement. As for the victims, thankfully not," the dark man said, "but only by the grace of whatever deity is puerile enough to waste its time watching over this pathetic society. Between their choice of a lunar trigger and several odd substitutions I can only assume were made due to budgetary constraints, the effects will fade before the next lunar cycle can reinforce them."

The aged headmaster collapsed back into his chair with an explosive sigh of relief.

"What exactly do you mean by 'contagion', Severus?" Flitwick asked curiously. "The term is familiar, but I am afraid the context is not."

"It is an obscure method used only very occasionally in potioneering," the dark man explained. "The potion is deliberately left in an incomplete and volatile state and is then brought into contact with an active magical construct. The interaction between the two produces the final effect, essentially imbuing the targeted construct — and anything with which it comes in contact — with the magic of the potion."

The half-goblin winced. "That sounds… unpleasant to deal with. Wouldn't that burn right through most containment spells?"

"Almost all of them," Snape agreed flatly. "And the effects themselves can be enormously intractable for similar reasons. For example, if we make the very strong assumption that every other part of the procedure would remain unchanged, we can conclude that had the twin menaces not used the lunar trigger — thus building an off-switch explicitly into the magic rather than relying on the body's natural resistance to expel the effect over time as normal polyjuice does — the transformations would have been practically irreversible, with the contagion rewriting the body's magic to retain its new form of its own accord."

Heedless of his colleagues' collective wince, the potions master went on, "Worse yet, had the potion been even slightly more potent — a circumstance which was likely avoided only due to the perpetrators' dismal lack of funding — the effects would have lasted long enough to trigger again on the next lunar cycle, reinforcing the effect."

"Self-reinforcing on a lunar trigger… so, we might have had…" Sprout trailed off, unwilling to voice the obvious conclusion.

"Yes," Severus said flatly, "we narrowly avoided the creation of were-Weasleys — in all likelihood complete with an infectious bite, given the volatile nature of contagion. It is still an open debate in the potions community whether lycanthropy is a naturally-occurring disease or the result of an ancient incident very similar to this one."

"It should come as little surprise that most potions masters go far out of their way to avoid ever even peripherally touching on the subject," the sallow man continued. "The practice is spectacularly unlikely to work as intended simply because of the complexity of the interactions involved, and even when it does, the slightest oversight in planning can have devastating results. As it is, the Misters Weasley appear to have had several distinct aspects of their folly interfere constructively to our benefit."

"Where on earth did they come across such a dangerous technique, anyway?" McGonagall asked. "Given your reaction, I hardly think they would have learned it in one of your fourth-year lectures."

"Contagion is most often used in cursebreaking as a means of corrupting existing wards away from their original purposes, opening them up to manipulation by other, more reliable means," Snape explained. "In that case, the targets are usually so optimized that nearly any shift away from their intended purpose will result in a simpler situation for the cursebreaker, and when the desired result is simply 'anything different from what it is now' even something as unreliable as contagion can be a useful tactic. However, 'reliable enough for cursebreaking' is a far cry from what most anyone else would consider sane. After all, most everything involved in cursebreaking…"

Flitwick, already nodding along, completed the statement, "…is exceedingly dangerous — particularly when performed by a pair of amateurs in a crowded train station involving a portal through which hundreds of children will pass during the course of the day."

The room fell silent for a moment as the three Heads who had not known the stakes from the word 'contagion' came to fully appreciate just how lucky they had been.

"What are we going to do with those two?" McGonagall asked, her lips thinned and nearly white with disapproval. Her initial exasperation had only worsened during her colleague's explanation of the risks inherent in the situation. "Detention seems wholly inadequate in this case, yet I am reluctant to expel the boys…" The Scotswoman turned to her sallow-faced colleague who was normally quick to jump on any mention of expulsion, particularly regarding pranksters and troublemakers.

The man in question's visage twisted with a pained grimace. "As odd as the reversal of our usual roles is in this case, Minerva, I am afraid I cannot recommend expulsion. This last action, foolish and ill-advised as it was, has proven that the little monsters are sufficiently talented that cutting them off from further instruction would simply make them more dangerous, not less. They are accomplished enough to cause major damage, and with this they have proven they are thoughtless enough to barge into such course of action with nary a thought to the potential consequences. I refuse to allow any student of mine to pass from my hands in such a state."

The bearded headmaster spoke up from his contemplative silence at hearing his subordinate's tone. "What then do you suggest, Severus?"

"I shall supervise their detentions," the dark man said, with the quietly dignified air of a soldier volunteering to face the oncoming barbarian hordes alone. "Indefinitely. They will have served their punishment when I am satisfied that they are sufficiently well-trained to know better than to attempt such a thing again. Until then, I will ensure that they have no idle time to involve themselves in such pursuits."

The Hufflepuff Head let out a long whistle. "You'll have your work cut out for you there, Severus. Teaching the Weasley twins restraint seems a tad…" she trailed off searching for the appropriate word.

"Sisyphean?" Flitwick volunteered from his chair.

"Exactly," the other two Heads chorused in unison.

3.6.7 Advanced flight lessons

Though the clouds still raced across the sky driven by the tireless winds blowing in from the north Atlantic, they were no longer visible from the ground as the moon had long since set, and the vast majority of the student body had settled in to their various accommodations. After a little less than an hour and still well before the feast had ended, the transformations had ended without incident, and being students enrolled in a magical school, few bore anything more than lingering annoyance at their unexpected temporary ginger-ification.

All but one of the students went off in good spirits, bedding down quickly to sleep off the excitement — as well as the usual range of gastrointestinal consequences of their overindulgence at the feast — and prepare for the beginning of the school year.

That one student, however, remained hard at work under the cloudy and moonless sky, awkwardly puzzling over an assortment of crates strewn about a clearing in the depths of the Black Woods.

During the feast, the newly established Hogsmeade branch of Gringotts had discreetly delivered the sizeable contents of the last two cargo wagons on the Express to the clearing below Harry's Lair. Of course, without ground access to the Lair, they could take the heavy cargo no further, and the young dragon found himself awkwardly trying to work out how to get the things up into his Lair.

"Huh," Harry muttered into the darkness of the clearing. The currently moonless night ensuring that the Black Woods lived up to their name. "I hadn't thought this stuff would be so big."

Early in the summer, Harry had gone a bit wild with his newfound financial liquidity and a few industrial equipment catalogs, making several purchases that seemed useful for his continued experiments. The combination welder and diesel generator he'd been able to carry up easily enough — it had only been about the size of a compact car — but the combination CNC lathe and mill was proving to be more of a challenge.

In a fit of childish enthusiasm, the young dragon had picked the biggest and best model he could find — a selection criterion which made for a very large device indeed in the world of computer-controlled machining equipment. He hadn't realized it would be slightly larger than he was when fully assembled, and even when shipped partially assembled… well, the largest of those crates was nearly the size of Harry's torso.

Harry grabbed onto the top of that largest crate, one great clawed hand at either end of the massive wood and steel box and shifted the whole thing experimentally. He could certainly handle the weight easily enough — the box contained the main chassis, so it was mostly empty-space; it couldn't possibly weigh more than seven or eight tons — but how on earth was he supposed to take off while carrying it? It was wide enough to risk interfering with his wings if he tried.

"Huh," the dragon huffed again in consternation, sitting back on his haunches and scratching at his head for a moment before looking up at the Lair entrance over a hundred feet off the ground. "Maybe some kind of pulley so I could drag it up there? I'd bet Mr. Ronan would let me borrow some of their rope." A glance at the broken rocks at the foot of the cliff and the soft, muddy streambed before it disabused him of that notion. Dragging precision equipment through that was just begging for problems.

"Huh," Harry said for the third time.

Hermione might have had an idea, but she was already asleep in anticipation of the start of classes the next day. The only reason Harry hadn't sought his own bed was because he'd insisted on getting his new toys — tools, he meant tools — delivered that night, and he couldn't very well leave the things out in the open. What if it rained or something?

"Levitation, maybe?" he muttered.

Pulling out his wand — those auto-resizing wrist holsters really lived up to the advertising — Harry ran through the motions and levitated a small boulder from the scree at the base of the cliff. Despite the human-designed implement looking utterly absurd in his draconic hand, he managed to hold it steady for a few seconds before his control slipped, and the boulder shot off down the glen on a ballistic trajectory. Past experience told him it would probably be landing in the sound — one time he'd managed to skip one halfway to Skye.

"Not yet."

It wouldn't do to lose control when moving these things around. They were precision parts, and even the slightest bend on one of them might necessitate months' worth of recalibration and repair, tens of thousands of galleons worth of replacement parts, or — in the more likely case — both.

Harry was rich, but he wouldn't stay that way for long if he started throwing money away.

The young dragon flopped down on the ground and let out a whistling sigh of exasperation, his irritation lending a flicker of flame to the exhalation. What on earth was he going to do?

As if in response to the thought, another flame flared up in the clearing and chirped at him questioningly.

"Oh, hey, Fawkes! How are you?" Harry asked, already somewhat cheered by the arrival of the phoenix.

The living flame chirped back happily.

"Glad to hear it," Harry said warmly. "What brings you to visit?"

The avian flame pecked insistently at the still-smoldering grass which had been caught in Harry's earlier exasperated sigh before looking at the dragon leadingly.

"Oh! Sure, we can do that," the dragon said in sudden realization before he let loose with a stream of flame in earnest, the glaring blue-white inferno washing over the fire-bird, flashing off the damp grass below and behind the bird in a puff of steam and hammering the newly-bare dirt. Fawkes trilled in pleasure.

Some five seconds later, the flame cut out, leaving the merrily burning phoenix as the only source of light in the suddenly much darker-seeming clearing. Fawkes shook himself for a moment before sounding an appreciative chirp.

"You're welcome!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "I'm always happy to help out a friend, especially when it's so simple."

Fawkes replied with an inquiring whistle.

"What am I doing?" Harry confirmed the question. "Well, I'm trying to get these crates up into the Lair," he gestured with one of his forepaws to the large pile of goods. "Thing is, some of them are too bulky for me to hold safely and take off with, and I'm not sure how to go about doing it."

The living flame let loose an incredulous cackling sort of sound before voicing an intricate series of clicks and whistles.

"Hovering?" the dragon said with a puzzled frown. "How would that be any easier than taking off…" He was interrupted by another rapid-fire series of clicks. "What do you mean, 'you can do that without using your wings'?"

Fawkes half-hopped and half-glided over to one of the smaller crates before gripping one of the anchor points used load it with a crane firmly in his talons. The fire-bird then firmly folded its flaming wings on its back before both it and the crate began rising smoothly into the air. Fawkes got about ten feet into the air before settling gently back down with the crate clunking on the soft earth. He hopped off and gave a one-winged gesture that could mean nothing other than "Now you give it a try."

The dragon, for his part, was looking at the phoenix with open wonder. "Wow! How did you do that?"

Fawkes chirped again impatiently.

"'I already do it'?" Harry repeated dubiously. "I'm pretty sure I've never done something like that before?"

Another chirp.

"I already do it to supplement my wings when I fly?" the dragon asked. "But how do I do it without my wings?"

The phoenix hopped up again and glided to a stop on Harry's back, right over his spine. The bird pecked at the dragon's spinal ridge, once on one side, and once on the other, before sending a pointed stare at the green eye turned back to watch what it was doing.

Harry thought for a moment. "Oh! You mean those not-rocket thingies Madame Pomfrey told me about!" The fire-bird gave a moderately exasperated-sounding twitter. "What? I didn't know I was using those already!" the young dragon defended himself. "And if I was using 'em accidentally, I have no idea how to just push with 'em! I mean, how do I just use those thingies?"

Fawkes nodded his relatively small head at that as he hunched his neck in consideration for a few minutes while pacing back and forth along the dragon's spine. Harry spent the time slowly flapping his wings and attempting to isolate what he was doing with his other flight organs at the same time.

It proved to be a fruitless endeavor for the young dragon.

Eventually however, the friendly fire-bird let out a triumphant squawk, recapturing the attention of his draconic friend.

The immortal flame had an idea.

Three minutes of explanation and another two of shuffling had the darkened clearing playing host to an exceedingly odd tableau. The phoenix had resumed his perch on Harry's spine between his wings, but now the dragon was splayed out across the of the clearing, all six limbs, neck, and tail lying limply on the grass. He looked for all the world like the most terrifying rug in all of God's creation.

"You sure this'll work?" Harry mumbled to his avian friend. "I feel kinda silly."

Fawkes gave an ambivalent tweet in response and rocked back and forth on his talons.

"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," the currently pinned dragon opined. "Go ahead."

And with that, the phoenix pushed once more — this time in reverse — driving the silvery dragon even deeper into the loam. For his part, Harry struggled to push back without using any of his limbs, not that he could get purchase with them in any case. With his limbs splayed out as they were, he couldn't get nearly enough leverage to push back against the unnaturally strong magical fire-bird pinning him down.

As Harry fought back against the already crushing — and ever-increasing — weight of his fiery friend, he reflexively scrabbled for purchase against the soft dirt of the clearing but found none. Eventually, though, he flailed about enough to find what he was after; a slight lessening of the pressure against his breastbone let Harry know he had hit upon the right thing to do. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and he repeated it, varying his efforts slightly as he homed in on the proper effort to exert until he finally started to consistently push back against Fawkes' artificially enhanced weight.

Then, just as he managed to counter the crushing force exerted by the phoenix, Harry had the bright idea to throw as much effort as he could into this new endeavor.

As the young dragon dumped far more energy into his flight organs than he ever had before, the edges of his spinal scales reflected a greenish-white light from the glowing skin beneath as magic coursed along either side of the ridge of his spine, and Fawkes let out a startled squawk as the phoenix was suddenly flattened against the dragon's back by the unexpected acceleration.

Wind whistled around the pair as they precipitously gained altitude for the better part of five seconds before Harry finally realized he was no longer lying on the clearing floor and opened his eyes — only to see the clouds spread out below him, faintly illuminated by the stars above.

"What?" the young dragon exclaimed looking at the scene for a moment in consternation before realizing he was the better part of half a mile in the air. Harry traced a still-rising ballistic trajectory for a few seconds as he lost concentration before his wings firmed up and snapped as they caught the wind, flight organs seamlessly picking up the slack that the wind couldn't support just as they had before, with just one small change.

Now the young dragon could feel them.

It was an unqualified success!

"Thanks, Fawkes!" Harry called out to his fiery passenger, who gave a tired chirp of acknowledgement as he hunkered down on the dragon's back to stay out of the wind and rest from his exertions even as the pair glided back towards the still-darkened clearing.

As he settled in for a landing smoother than he had ever managed before, the young dragon's eyes narrowed in realization, "Hey! Is that how you always managed to win in our games of tag?"

Fawkes hopped off and shot his draconic friend an exasperated sort of glare accompanied by a honk that seemed to imply that that should have been obvious.

"Well, I didn't know, okay," Harry said defensively. "I'll definitely win next time, though!"

The phoenix sounded off with a tired, but still patronizing, trill before abruptly flaming away.

The dragon stared after the bird for a few moments before letting out a snort — a non-flammable one this time — and turning back to the massive shipping crate with a grin.

The rest of the night passed with no further frustrations.
 
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World-Building: But what about dragons!
Okay, so here's my massively over-detailed dragon crib sheet. I've tried to remove any hints about future story events, but in case I missed something, there might be some very minor spoilers included. Hence the tags.

This is not canon information for Shadowrun dragons, rather it is a combination of elements from Shadowrun and Earthdawn, combined with my own ideas and what I took from Doghead13's original then melted down and refined into what I hope is a cohesive and self-consistent whole.

As a note, various elements of this may well change as the story progresses, and none of this is required reading to understand the rest of the story --- at least it shouldn't be if I do my job properly.

Dragons
Dragons are large, vaguely reptilian, creatures, though they are 'reptilian' in the sense of not fitting in any other category rather than being similar to other reptiles — as is the case for most of the members of the reptilian class.

Dragons are generally more intelligent than humans, are functionally ageless after they reach their prime, can usually fly, can breathe fire, and are physically and magically powerful. There is only a single sapient dragon species, but there are several wildly disparate body types or dracoforms. There also exist a variety of physiologically-similar but non-sapient species who may or may not be the results of various magical experiments on the part of the sapient dragon species over the year (Hint: they probably are).

Dragons are a major feature of the sixth world's political and economic landscapes. They live a long time and are generally quite happy to make their influence felt. Many dragons are among the wealthiest individuals in the world, and they all wield a great deal of very personal physical and magical power. Great Dragons, in particular, are almost uniformly major players on the world stage.

As a note, the dragons of Shadowrun canon are somewhat altered in this iteration. Some social taboos are altered, and there is significantly more variety in basic physiology. These changes are made both for plot reasons and for reasons of internal consistency.

Draconic Biology

Dragons are highly magical beings. Much of their physiology runs on magic or is only able to run because of magic. While dragons do produce a tremendous amount of magic on their own, it is not enough to maintain their physiology in anything other than a torpid state. Because of this, dragons are only active when the magical background levels are high enough to support their activity, hibernating through low-magic ages.

Also because of this basic integration of magic into their physiology, dragons exhibit much more variety, even in basic biochemistry, than is seen in any other single species. Most dragons have a physiology reminiscent of most other life on earth, carbon-based with aqueous biochemistry, but some are wildly different while still somehow remaining genetically compatible with their fellows. Some, like iron dragons, have non-carbon-based biochemistry, and some are even able to exist as an undifferentiated classical element given form.

Dracoforms

Despite being a single species, Dragons come in several wildly different general phenotypes called dracoforms. These forms sometimes have additional sub-variations as well. There are four such general types.

  • Western Dracoform
    • Western Dragons are six-limbed with two hind legs, two forelimbs and two central wings. Their builds vary from scaly-lion-with-wings to four-legged-snake-with-wings. Adult western dragons are generally about 20 meters long when full-grown, with a wingspan up to 30 meters. Standard forms have highly-variable scale colorations but are otherwise similar to most other magical reptiles in biochemistry.
      • Iron Dragon
        • One narratively-significant subtype of the western form are the iron dragons. Iron dragons have a biochemistry based on metallic phase iron and copper rather than carbon, and the majority of the iron dragon's body is iron rather than water. Iron dragons are about seven to ten times denser than other dragons, and they tend to have a much more widely variable diet, getting most nutrition from mineral sources rather than animal.
        • While some other magical creatures — notably drake-dogs — have similar biochemistries, iron dragons are likely the result of a long-forgotten magical accident with the others resulting from subsequent experimentation. Harry is the only member of the subspecies currently known to be living. There have been such in the past, but they have died or otherwise dropped out of circulation.
  • Eastern Dracoform
    • Eastern Dragons are four-limbed and generally range from serpentine to crocodilian in shape. Adults can reach nearly 35 meters in length, of which more than half is tail. Even though they lack wings, Eastern Dragons can fly just as well as their western counterparts. Standard forms also have a widely-varying range of scale colorations, and some may have fur.
      • Sirrush
        • The sirrush variant has proportions similar to a whippet, much longer legs than usual and a more compact body with almost no tail.
      • Elemental
        • Elemental dragons are a class of eastern dragon variants whose physiology is made entirely of an undifferentiated classical element. These characteristics never breed true, so such dragons only show up by random chance. Often, these are water-based. Earth-based ones tend to have similar habits as iron dragons. Fire and air dragons are unfortunately incapable of hibernating through the non-magical ages, so they have only rarely reached adulthood.
      • Aquatic
        • Normal eastern dragons are terrestrial, but there are some aquatic variants. Aquatic variants often have a dorsal ridge of long fur, much like leviathans, and they may be the result of interbreeding between eastern dragons and leviathans. It is often very difficult to see the line between aquatic eastern dragons and their more specialized leviathan brethren.
  • Feathered Serpents
    • Feathered serpents are serpentine in shape, with body proportions similar to a very slim eastern dracoform but feathered. They possess two pairs of limbs, one of which is a pair of brightly-colored feathered wings, and one pair of relatively short rear legs. Both sets are used for ground locomotion (like a bat rather than a bird), and the rear legs have an opposable thumb and are sufficiently dexterous to be used for fine manipulation. This tends to lead to some rather interesting resting postures for feathered serpents — think reading a book while holding the book with your feet.
    • These dragons are generally under 20 meters long and have a disproportionately short wingspan of 15 meters. Because of their proportions, feathered serpents tend to have a subtle oblong cross section, biased towards the vertical, in order to increase their stiffness during flight. This is in contrast to the western dragon tendency towards horizontal bias.
    • Feathered serpents tend to have the shortest tempers of any of the Dragons, and they also tend towards violent solutions more easily. This is not a universal tendency, but it is fairly common, and has been attributed to several factors, ranging from the rainforest areas they live in and the thoroughly vicious food web there (which is a silly distinction because everywhere else is just as nasty) to some sort of association with the classical element of fire. It seems more likely that it is a draconic variant of 'short man's syndrome' considering that the feathered serpents never reach sizes even close to those of the other variants.
    • Some feathered serpents have a toothed beak, and some may have a feathered body as well as wings.
  • Leviathans
    • Leviathans are sea-dwelling dragons. They have a heavier build than eastern dragons but are similarly wingless. It is not known whether they can fly in the manner of eastern dragons, but they never seem to do so where anyone can see them. Leviathans are capable of walking on land, but they do so infrequently.
    • Given the body sizes involved and their relatively delicate limbs, this is one of the best arguments for leviathans being able to fly as if they did not have the capability to float most of their weight, their limbs would certainly not be up to the task.
    • Leviathans are quite large, upwards of 60 meters counting the tail. They are quadrupedal, but have poor manual dexterity, favoring webbed flippers for better swimming rather than talons for grasping.
    • Most of the variation in leviathans comes in their build and color. Some are heavyset with proportions like an unnaturally wide crocodile crossed with a manatee, and some are thin, looking more like oversized sea snakes. Heavy builds are more common among ocean dwellers, and the lighter builds tend to live in large rivers and lakes.
Great Dragons

While not actually a distinct dracoform, some individual dragons exhibit an indeterminate growth habit — that is, they continue growing after they reach what would normally be the maximum size of their particular subspecies[1]. These individuals are called Great Dragons, and they can get quite large indeed. There are physical markers which indicate whether a dragon will exhibit such growth, but no one other than dragons know what those markers are.

For example, Dunkelzahn is a Great Western Dragon with blue scales. At the beginning of the story, he's about 15,000 years old and is nearly 200 meters long, ten times the length and a thousand times the weight of a normal adult western dragon. He's still quite youthful by the standards of Great Dragons, roughly equivalent to the early-thirties for a human, and he is thus not terribly large by those same standards. He has an unusual charisma to him, however.

Others are similarly ridiculously huge, though their size varies wildly with age and subspecies. The indeterminate growth pattern seen in Great Dragons generally averages out periods of time larger than a century to a constant rate of increase in volume per unit time; thus, the length of a Great Dragon will be proportional to the cubed root of its age for sufficiently large units of time.

Great Dragons never stop growing, and they never stop getting stronger. This has some interesting effects on population dynamics. Most of the population gets killed off by infighting and accidents, sometimes even by a particularly determined non-dragon opponent, but a small number survive long enough to become effectively invulnerable. Examples of these are never really seen in-story, nor are they known in-universe, but they should exist, simply going by the population dynamics argument.

Then again, some of the oldest dragons may have simply gone to sleep and not woken up on time after a low-magic age. Given the growth rate seen in Dunkelzahn, even the oldest possible ones (65-70 My) would only be about 5 km long, barring odd circumstances. This is definitely small enough to curl up comfortably under a good-sized mountain, if you allow for magical construction methods.

Great Dragons only get more powerful with age, but power and sanity are independent variables. The older a dragon gets, the more likely it is to exhibit odd personality traits. These do not necessarily interfere with the dragon's ability to interact with the world as it actually is (i.e. their sanity), but they do tend to make for odd behaviors. Strange obsessions with seemingly inconsequential minutiae, withdrawal from society at large, and paranoia are some of the more common traits. These tend to combine to make meeting a very old dragon an interesting experience on the rare occasion that you can actually find one.

Reproduction

Like many other highly-magical creatures, magic plays a critical role in draconic reproduction. It facilitates the physical act of mating in the case of very large dracoforms, sometimes taking the place of external genitalia entirely and sometimes modifying the form of such to be more effective. It also makes dragons reproductively compatible with just about anything else with sufficient magical potential.

The offspring of such unions will vary in nature, depending on the actions of the parents. Most asymmetric breeding in the past was intended to produce servitor races for the dragons involved, most notoriously the elves, and the involved dragons guided conception and development to bring this about. Left alone, the resultant offspring will be a mix of traits between the parents weighted by the relative amounts of magic used.

Most dragons choose not to acknowledge this fact, but past interbreeding with metahumanity is the ultimate source of wizards, though none of the dragons involved were Great Dragons. Given that the predecessors of humans in their modern form were an old genetic engineering project of dragon kind from before written draconic history, many dragons feel that interbreeding with them is distasteful, similar to bestiality in human societies, though not nearly so severe a taboo given that humans are sapient beings. Perhaps the more accurate comparison would be to an interracial union in the immediately post-Jim Crow south, but with less risk of violence.

Drakes are dragon-metahuman hybrids made in a less traditional, but ironically more traditionally acceptable, manner.

Diet

Dragons are consummate omnivores; if a human can eat it, a dragon can eat it; if a human can't eat it, a dragon can probably still eat it. Dragon nutrition requires high magic levels in the environment to support most digestion, thus environmental magic can be considered a required macronutrient for the draconic diet. Without it, dragons go into hibernation (hence the Awakening). Growth also requires magic in addition to food.

Dragons produce some of their own magic, but not enough to maintain high activity levels in a low-magic environment.

Modification/Tinkering

Dragons change the life around them, and those changes extend to themselves. This is in part due to their metaphysical significance; dragons are a major force in the world, and therefore will have major effects. More directly, though, magic allows dragons to change themselves and others, and over the course of the last seventy-thousand-odd millennia a lot of stuff has gone down.

Dragons originally evolved as a quadruped species with an elongated body, shaped very similarly to a very large lizard, or, more accurately, a crocodile. The various dracoforms resulted from enterprising dragons trying different changes out on themselves and their offspring. Some traits were invented out of whole cloth, like the spinal-mounted reactionless drives and the fire breath. Others were copied from successful designs in other animals.

If a dracoform seems to be a collection of different traits from different creatures that were stitched together into a single body… well, there's a very good reason for that. The wings of the western dracoform were cribbed from bats (about 50 Ma back). The muscular structures supporting the wings were stolen from birds (within the last 40 million years, previously the design was different). The extra set of limbs was added because no one wanted to lose relatively dexterous hands.

Feathered serpents cribbed their feathers from certain bird species as well as their wing designs. A design with wings like those of a pterosaur was popular for a time about 50 Ma before the present time, but the tight restrictions on associated body shape due to the nature of the wing membrane anchorage saw the population transitioning to the bat design.

Leviathans patterned themselves after some of the great sea creatures that existed in the late cretaceous period. The body shape is taken from mosasaurus. The dorsal hair was actually inspired by a variety of different critters and serves a variety of purposes from camouflage to luring and capturing prey. Bioluminescence is another common trait which is not widely known to the world at large. Teeth shapes are cribbed too. Often individual leviathans will slightly change their own forms depending on what they choose to eat, though the one that made baleen for filter feeding was mercilessly ridiculed by her peers until she changed back to more respectable teeth[2].

The impressive abilities seen in all dracoforms: regeneration; the flight organs; the spectacularly effective brains; the uniform magical ability; the effective immortality; even the wildly improbable size; were all specifically engineered into the species by dragons themselves. The massive variation seen in a single species is due to this tendency. Dragons decided early on to take a personal hand in evolution.

Dragons have done the same thing to one extent or another with a large variety of other critters over the history of their species, including proto-humans and the vast majority of sapient species. Most of these changes were made through what is essentially extremely advanced transfiguration[3]. Some were made through more… traditional methods; the most notable of these were wizards and elves. Wizards are the only other group to routinely do the same. Non-magical humans are perfectly willing to dabble though once they figure out how.

Lifespan

Dragons are ageless, after a fashion — that is, they do not die of 'old age'. A dragon can die of injury, disease, poisoning, or any number of other causes, but dragons just don't wear out over time.
Normal dragons tend to die within the first few millennia after reaching adulthood due to random chance catching up to them. They grow to a certain adult size and power, and then they can only improve through practice and learning to better apply what they have. Thus, a normal dragon basically keeps rolling the dice until they get sufficiently unlucky — a recurrent gamble not helped by the average dragon's tendency toward tender pride and aggressive defense thereof.

Great Dragons, on the other hand, follow an indeterminate growth pattern, and they continue to grow physically and magically stronger with time even after reaching adulthood. They can — and do — improve with learning and practice, but their base form improves continuously too. Great Dragons can fairly easily reach a point where the number of things which can harm them is exceedingly small, and thus the likelihood of encountering a lethal situation tends toward zero as a Great Dragon ages.

The average draconic lifespan is some few hundred-thousand years. For the population of normal dragons, this average looks more like 30-35 thousand years with a few particularly canny individuals stretching this up from the mode of about twenty-five thousand. There aren't many Great Dragons, but they drive up the average lifespan considerably because they can reach some truly spectacular ages.

Effects of Age

Really old dragons tend to be a bit… strange. The oldest surviving dragons are a trio of clutch mates who hatched during the Eocene, about 37 My ago. They started playing a game of hide-and-seek 27 million years back in which everything else on the planet was 'it'. None of them have lost yet, and none of these young whippersnappers are going to make one of them give up. These three are completely irrelevant to the story, just as they've been almost completely irrelevant to the entirety of human history.

They do periodically orchestrate secret organizations searching for their clutch mates (if the other ones get found, they win!), but this is always done from the shadows. The most recent such was the Illuminati, engineered by the sibling lairing under the Antarctic ice sheet using astral projection and dream manipulation while the dragon in question was hibernating through the Fifth Age.

This sort of situation is surprisingly common among older Great Dragons; for every Great Dragon that dies tragically or heroically, there is at least one more that retired quietly into what any other race would consider senility. Unlike other races, though, senility among Great Dragons makes them no less skilled or powerful; it just means that they direct that tremendous skill and power towards oftentimes just plain silly goals.

Aside from the hide-and-seek triplets, there's one slightly younger dragon that transfigured itself into a mountain in the Canadian Rockies four million years back and currently amuses itself by staring at hikers until they get uncomfortable. Another one just doesn't bother to wake up any more. It lairs in a cave in Cherry Creek Lake, Colorado, specifically the same cave Dunkelzahn laired in during the Fifth Age. The cave is much larger than Dunkelzahn thought it was, the rest is just very well hidden.

Another one decided to start hoarding socks when they were first invented, but only unmatched ones; it secretly steals them. That one hides because it is paranoid about other dragons stealing its precious treasure (secrecy is the first line of defense!). Still another one lairs in a giant faux-pineapple under the Arctic ice sheet and hasn't left since the Pliocene. That one was actually responsible for engineering the human species, or at least their predecessors, and has recently begun ghostwriting a children's television series in secret.

The tendency towards isolation seen in most dragons only gets worse with age; during the Sixth Age, there are actually more ancient Great Dragons in hiding than there are publicly active ones, and not even the active Great Dragons know this.

Language

Dragons have the rather unusual problem of truly being too large to make effective use of a normal audible language. An adult dragon has vocal cords that are longer and heavier than an adult human's entire body and a voice box approximately the size of a minivan, the resonant frequencies of such an organ are too low to carry any real amount of data in a reasonable amount of time.

Thus, while dragons do have a spoken language — mostly invented just so they can say they have one — it is used only in the most tediously formal of situations. Like the ents of Tolkien's work, saying anything in spoken draconic takes a very long time, so anything you want to say in it should be worth taking a very long time to say. Real vocalizations from dragons are normally used to convey very simple ideas, like challenge in combat, simple acknowledgement, or warning — dragons are very good growlers.

Because of this, a different method of communication has been developed for use among dragons. The unimaginatively-named dragon-speech is a mixture of projective telepathy, psionic divination, empathy, body language and interpretive dance. Of all the languages used by the Named, it is perhaps the richest and most expressive, conveying thoughts in their entirety — complete with context and reasoning and emotion and imagery all in one go.

Dragon-speech can be used to speak to non-dragons, though it is often an unsettling experience for non-dragons so addressed. The speech method is in fact universal enough and forceful enough that dragons can often control sub-sapient animals by commanding them through it — no magic, preparation, or domestication necessary. Even sapient creatures will perceive dragon-speech as tremendously forceful. Dragon-speech does, however, suffer from the limitation of being at least in-part mental, and thus entirely unsuitable to transmission through lower-dimensional communications media like video.

Dragons are very proud of their language, and they often find other languages rather limited and awkward to use in comparison. Because of this, even though dragons can emulate other spoken languages through magic — and, in fact, find doing so to be very simple — most will use a metahuman interpreter when they need to translate for whatever reason, usually to use technological means of communication.

Behavior

Dragons are very strange critters. They are the oldest surviving intelligent species on the planet. They are universally magical, curious, long-lived, and inventive. This combination of traits has led dragons on a convoluted path as a species.

Dragons are curious, and they tend to look into everything and anything that catches their interest, regardless of whether doing so is a good idea. They also have a massive helping of self-assurance which blurs the distinction between confidence and arrogance. Long life means that dragons have a lot of time to look at things, a lot of time to polish things, and a lot of time to go a bit off in the head.

Dragons tend to be possessive and will hoard things. Many dragons focus on hoarding wealth and political power. Some hoard knowledge. Some have other habits.

Dragons tend to be touchy about status and insults, which is a direct consequence of their social structure and individual strength. Draconic society, like many similar human societies, is a polite one by necessity. Everyone in it is perfectly capable of killing everyone else with little preparation or planning.

Dragons tend towards grand plans and ambitions; those plans and ambitions are highly varied in nature, but the name of the game is always, "go big or go home."

Society

Draconic society, to the extent that such a thing exists, is highly-formalized and ritualistic. Formal rites have been created and strictly followed for almost every aspect of life from mating and child rearing to greetings, apologies, farewells, and funerals. This was directed towards reducing the number of casualties resulting from interactions between dragons — both among the dragons themselves and those around them.

Every dragon is a dangerous combatant, and worse, almost every dragon is absurdly touchy about personal respect and status. Because of this, while dragons are often quite brusque to the rest of the world, they are normally painfully polite to each other, because the slightest insult is very likely to draw a violent response — a violent response which, given the lifespans and memories involved, is often wildly disproportionate to the initial offense and which has been plotted out in exquisite detail for centuries in advance.

Formal society essentially outlines a set of actions and responses which no one is allowed to take offense at because they are the 'appropriate' way to go about things. Dragons who behave informally might get away with it outright if they're lucky and have a good relationship with those they interact with, but it is far more likely that someone or other will take offense at something and will then wreak bloody revenge for whatever they determined was a slight — possibly centuries down the road. Most will make some allowances for very young dragons who don't know any better — though only if they are obviously trying to be polite and put the effort into learning the proper forms as quickly as they can manage.

Aside from their prickly personalities, the other reason for such formal interactions is the draconic tendency to form magical connections with everything in the vicinity because of the nature of dragon speech. This means they can accidentally enter into rituals with alarming ease. The formal rites, and particularly the mating rites and the shift of child rearing to the respected elders rather than the actual parents, were established to cut down on accidental ritual formation by making such relationships more emotionally distant.

Despite draconic claims to the contrary, this system of formal manners was only established relatively recently in draconic history — specifically during the Second Age — in response to the development of certain magics which greatly increased the lethality of interpersonal duels.

The combat magic advances were later countered by further tinkering with draconic biology, but the forms were kept, and in fact tightened, in response to the creation of accidental rituals and their horrific consequences — one during the Second Age which triggered an ice age, and another during the Fourth which triggered the destruction of a continent.

Towards the end of the Fourth Age, it was discovered that those supposedly accidental rituals were actually arranged clandestinely by a malicious actor — a dragon whose name has since been expunged from history as a punishment for those and other crimes, now known only as Outcast — and as a result, the restrictions on mating and child-rearing have since been lifted to an extent.

Dragons tend to keep quiet about the reasons for their social conventions because it would reveal that they are just as silly as the other Name Givers, and they feel it would completely ruin their image.

Draconic History

Dragons have a recorded history going back to just before the First World. Recorded draconic history started with the invention of draconic memory crystals[4], which were the first storage medium reliable enough to last without maintenance during the five-odd millennia of a low-magic hibernation cycle and information-dense enough to fit in a reasonable hidden lair for those years while still holding a worthwhile amount of information.

Previously, the low dragon population combined with their prodigious memories and very long lifespans made creation of a physical historical record a low priority. Dragons have a reliable oral history going back to the latter part of the Mesozoic Era. This is less than a thousand times the average draconic life-span, but still quite impressive since it is proportionally (lifespan-normalized) almost ten times longer than human recorded history.

Evolution

The species originally evolved from one of the large crocodile species that flourished during the Mesozoic era. The critical change between the previous species and the first dragons was the simultaneous development of sapience and magic. Thus, dragons originated as sapient magical super-crocodiles. One of the first magics the species developed was the ability to change themselves, and every member of the species made extensive use of this magic.

Unlike humans, who are a social species, crocodiles are generally not social, and thus their early magics focused on self-improvement with no regard for societal body-norms, which would have been an alien concept to the early dragons. Within the first five thousand years or so, individual dragons had managed to increase their size and healing abilities to utterly absurd levels — in response to the dinosaurs inhabiting the same time period — and customization continued from there.

The magical cycles and the accompanying Scourges have been a part of world history since before the first dragons evolved, and even at this point in their self-evolution, Horrors remain a very real danger to dragons. The early improvement of their self-healing mechanisms produced dragons with effectively indefinite lifespans. Thus, the long gaps between Scourges did not leave dragons forgetful and unprepared as it would later do for humans. This spurred on development in the individuals of the species and even the creation of a very loose social structure. Dragons are not naturally social, but they learned to cooperate when faced with a sufficiently dangerous common enemy.

Over time, the process of draconic self-guided evolution continued, eventually producing the present-day physical, magical, and intellectual juggernauts that make up the species. Dragons are perfectly willing to beg, borrow, or steal — mostly steal — advances from other races in addition to creating their own. The draconic willingness to tinker with the stuff of life also extends well outside their own species. The evolution of meta-humanity is rife with such meddling, and it is debatable whether humans would have evolved as they did without it.

Creation Mythology

The draconic creation myth begins with a dark time in the beginning, when Horrors ravished the earth, fighting among themselves for the amusement of the Great Dark One, a supremely powerful Horror which created the others to fight to the death for its own bloody amusement. None of these Horrors had names, for none were able to understand the value of such.

According to the myth, eventually one of the creations of this Great Dark One was different, containing within it some spark of life and individuality. This one did not wish to fight for its creator's amusement, and it fled into the distance. There it chose for itself a name, Nightslayer, and became the First Named.

After some time, Nightslayer looked over the world, and wept with joy at its beauty. From these tears, came nine creatures. The first, Dayheart, proudly proclaimed her name as the first dragon, and the others, unable to name themselves, were given names by Nightslayer. These were the progenitors of the Name Giving races.

Soon after this, the Dark One discovered Nightslayer's actions and tried to destroy him and his children, but the Dark One was unsuccessful, unable to stand against the power given by Naming. After vowing to hunt Nightslayer's children for all eternity, particularly the dragons who would be corrupted rather than killed as an extra affront, the Dark One fled. In its flight, though, the Dark One sent a parting shot in the form of a giant fireball from the sky. Nightslayer shielded his children, but died in the process and was honored by all his children. The Dragons, in particular, burn their dead in memory of this sacrifice.

After this, the children of Dayheart, the first dragon, became numerous and grew in skill and power. They prepare for the return of the Dark One, the Great Hunter who now bears the name Verjigorm.

This creation myth carefully sidesteps any explanation of the presence of the Horrors, and it is conspicuously slanted in its treatment of several facets of reality. No attention is paid to the origin of the Dark One or the world itself, just that before the origin of Naming it was formless. The progenitor figure, Verjigorm, is also the ultimate evil being, and all that is good springs from it in defiance of its nature, through that progeny's own strength. Also, the act of Naming is given pride of place in the myth, granting the Named power sufficient to overthrow the great Dark One.

The importance of Naming likely derives from the development of thread magics which are tied up in identity. These seem to be an intrinsic and essential part of the draconic worldview — and that of all the name giving races, for that matter.

Draconic culture seems to accept the world as they find it, something hinted at in the origin story. No thought is given as to the ultimate origin of the world, the why or the how of things, only a blanket exposition. There isn't even an attempt to hint at how the world came to be, no primordial sea of chaos from which order was wrested or creation, just an already existing beautiful world which was horribly marred by an already existing Dark One.
Finally, the myth is significant in that it attributes all that is good in the world, the wresting of control of the world from evil, to Nightslayer, the proto-dragon, and his children, but mostly his favorite child who was made in his image, the Dragon.

If there was ever a sure indication of hubris, setting yourselves as the heroes in your own creation myth has to be it.

Revisionism

Dragons may maintain an accurate history of their own race privately, but if they do so, it is very private indeed. Those few dragons willing to speak to other races about draconic history and culture tend to be very sparse with any details which might be embarrassing or indicate past mistakes and they tend to be quite willing to take credit for the good things produced by other races if they think they can get away with it.

To hear most dragons tell the tale, dragons have always been impeccably wise and all-knowing, and they have never ever done anything morally wrong with their magic. True, there have been unspecified mistakes made in the past, but they have always been tightly controlled, and they never impacted anyone else.

Point in fact, it is certain that dragons have manipulated others using magic in the past; even their own forms are the result of it. This is despite vociferous denials of ever doing such things from Vasdenjas in his interviews with the scribes of Throal in the Fourth Age. Dragons tend to maintain a public party line, and they will almost always stick to it, even to the point of telling bald-faced lies about their history.

Some of the topics covered up in this way include the origins of wyverns and hydras[5], the question of whether dragons have ever reproduced with non-dragons (they have, extensively), draconic involvement in other forms of experimental breeding and experimentation on other creatures (there was lots of it, accounting for almost three quarters of the magical species on the planet), sapient or non, just how far back the current dragon civilization extends (not nearly as far as they'd like you to believe), why dragons decided to eschew long-term meaningful relationships in favor of ritualistic and highly-impersonal one-off matings (despite their claims to the contrary, dragons and rational behavior have only a passing acquaintance with each other, particularly in emotionally charged situations), the reasons behind draconic misgivings about ritual magic and blood magic (as recently as the Third Age there were eight continents), past usage of such, the mysterious relationship between dragons and the very strongest of Horrors (avoiding another incident of this is the reason dragons have put so much effort into rendering themselves corruption-resistant over the last few tens of millions of years), and anything else that might be construed as embarrassing or demeaning. In this way, the dragons are just as bad as the elves (who are another embarrassing issue for the dragons, as the previous servitor race which turned on them).

Magic

Physically, dragons are built like tanks wish that they were built. This is nothing compared to their magical structure.

Dragons have been altering themselves to be better equipped to survive and thrive almost since their beginning as a species. Many of their physiological characteristics were chosen to deal with relatively transient issues. For instance, a dragon's massive size was once an effective advantage against the contemporary dinosaurs and to a lesser extent, the lesser Horrors, but it now largely superfluous; the same relative advantage would be just as well-served by a body less than half the size. Dragons tend not to get rid of excessive adaptations, but they do stop improving them.

One constant in draconic history, though, are the Horrors. They have been a serious threat to dragons since the beginning, and they remain one today. The little Horrors that attack physically are no threat because of the draconic physique, but the Greater Horrors that rely on mystical effects and mental corruption are much more problematic. For this reason, dragons have focused their mystical alterations mostly defensively. The prodigious mental capabilities of dragons are used to actively counter threats, with the spectacular intellect being a happy side effect. The astral sight allows dragons to actively find and counter the Horrors that don't take physical form. Even the astral topology of a dragon's soul is made to be self-contained and as utterly inviolable as possible. This continues to be a work in progress, but the species has already come a long way.

As a consequence of this, mystically speaking, dragons are built like bunkers — not just little tornado shelter bunkers, either; they're more like full-on, NORAD strategic command bunkers. They are almost impossible to affect with purely mystical means without their active consent and participation. Other creatures might pack more of an offensive magical punch than a dragon --- a pseudo-divine spirit, for instance, might be able to cause far more damage using magic than a dragon of similar power --- but the dragon could weather that strike mostly undamaged.

Dragons obtain this durability through a variety of means. The simplest is their magical capacity; dragons are massive reservoirs of magical energy, and their sheer metaphysical inertia goes a long way toward keeping them safe. In addition to this magical mass, dragons are built with layered defenses both on the material and astral planes, and a spiritual topology which minimizes their effective metaphysical surface area. This optimization makes external dragon magics significantly less effective than their raw power levels would imply, which is why many dragons seem disproportionately fond of physical confrontation despite their obvious mystical clout.

To revisit the earlier example, a pseudo-divine spirit is a magical construct which forms around the idea of a domain --- that is, the idea of having certain capabilities --- and like most spontaneous natural constructions, it automatically forms in a minimal-energy structure which is still satisfies those restraints of capability. Such a spirit is thus optimized for effecting change on the world, a state which necessarily leaves it greatly open to outside influence. This is why pseudo-divine spirits are so very vulnerable to Horrors.

Dragons, on the other hand, are optimized to resist changes from the world, which has the necessary consequence of making them less able to effect changes on the world. They can make such things simpler by temporarily changing themselves, essentially flexing their metaphysical topology into a different configuration, and they call the act of doing so 'using raw magic'. As might be expected, use of this raw magic makes dragons themselves greatly vulnerable to Horrors, and thus they tend to do so only in safe locations, usually their lairs.

It should be noted that the Horrors have not remained idle over time. Despite draconic efforts to make themselves less mystically vulnerable, every advance is eventually met by a corresponding increase in capability from the Horrors, leaving the two groups fairly evenly matched on balance in their eon-long mystical arms race. Dragons traditionally have the edge in remaining alive and increasing their numbers, while Horrors typically have an edge in sheer mystical lethality and refusing to stay dead.

Given the relative strength of draconic defenses from an outside perspective[6], Horrors truly live up to the name at this point. Greater Horrors have become the sorts of things that hunt pseudo-divine spirits the same way a human might hunt a rabbit.

[1] This is contrary to my understanding of the Earthdawn/Shadowrun continuity in which all dragons grow indefinitely and have the potential to eventually become Great Dragons, with the Great indicating a social status rather than a biological one. Here, only a few dragons have the ability to become Great Dragons, and they are correspondingly greater than their canon counterparts.
[2] Teeth which she then used to good effect on her detractors, leaving herself as the only surviving Great Leviathan. Afterwards, no one was stupid enough to question her dietary preferences, though she still switches back to real teeth before meeting anyone.
[3] An existing creature was changed with enough detail to be fertile, then bred to make the new species before the transfiguration reversed itself. Thus, the temporary transfiguration produced a new real species.
[4] These crystals were invented by Dunkelzahn's predecessor as Loremaster, whose chosen name became the title for the position as a form of recognition.
[5] The origin of hydras was eventually revealed too publicly to be covered up during the Fourth Age, and dragons of the time reluctantly owned up to the story. After that bit of history was lost during the Fifth Age, specifically during the accidental misplacement of the Library of Alexandria, the dragons are now back to denial, and the story will likely never see the light of day again since the last of the original hydras (thus the last evidence) was killed off during the waning days of the Fourth Age.
[6] This is doubly true for real "outside perspectives" like crossovers. I have some vague ideas for side stories and such which involve temporarily dropping Harry and his core family into other settings from other works mediated through [REDACTED FOR MAJOR SPOILERS]. This will inform the relationship between Harry's magic and those other settings.
 
Section 3.7 - Crime and punishment
3.7 Crime and punishment

3.7.1 An unpleasant morning

The first rays of morning light filtered through a window of leaded glass, casting a distorted network of shadows across the eclectic contents the Hogwarts Headmaster's private suite. The dappled light roused said Headmaster gently to wakefulness, and Albus Dumbledore immediately set about preparing for the day. Such had been his custom for the better part of a century, nearly half of it while occupying the very same suite.

This morning was not the first time the old man had had cause to regret the habit, but it was a paragon of the breed. The previous night had been truly unpleasant.

His new Defense professor stealing the spotlight during the opening feast — and more importantly, delaying the food for the hungry children after their long day traveling — had been just the tip of an iceberg of irritation. The Weasley twins triggering the castle siege wards had easily topped that, and then before the staff could handle that bit of mischief, their transformation prank had come to light in spectacular fashion.

The means the boys employed had necessitated immediate contact with law enforcement — including the Department of Mysteries, of all the bloody irritations — to contain the problem before it could cause greater troubles for the wizarding public. At least Minerva had been able to handle contacting the boys' parents in his stead — that had been a relief.

Then had come the blasted staff meeting.

With the investigation into Mr. Potter's transformation mostly suspended until the winter break, the core classes had reverted to the traditionally divided scheduling, and with that shift had come increased scheduling pressure. In a sharp contrast to the previous year, fights among the staff over class scheduling had been vicious, yet Gilderoy Lockhart had somehow managed to eke out an open schedule on Monday and Friday and restrict all his classes to either late morning or early afternoon on the other three days.

How the man managed to finagle a four-day weekend and a half-day schedule for the rest was beyond the aging headmaster's understanding. Even he hadn't managed that back when he was in the scrum, particularly not as a new hire!

In any event, the scheduling meeting had been long and hard-fought, and Albus had only managed to put his elderly bones down to rest two short hours before the sun had prodded him back into wakefulness. He therefore found it thoroughly unpleasant to be greeted by an unexpected and irritable voice as soon as he entered his office proper.

"Headmaster, we need to have a bit of a conversation about keeping promises," the Sorting Hat's gravelly voice ground out.

Oh, botheration!

3.7.2 Parent-teacher conference – redux

Barely seven months had passed, yet once more a familiar scene played out bright and early in the morning. Once again, Arthur Weasley found himself walking along the path to the main gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It seemed the boys hadn't even had the decency to give him a full year before raising enough of a ruckus to drag him in to the school for another parent-teacher conference.

Not that he had expected anything else after the twins had stolen the family car.

In all honesty, the late-night floo call had come as a relief to both Arthur and his wife, informing them as it did that their troublesome boys had made it to school at least mostly safe, despite their current knotty predicament. Between the late-night timing and Minerva's tone during the floo call, Arthur held little hope that the reasons would be even half as benign as those which had brought him to the school on Ronald's behalf the previous school year.

The Weasley patriarch was met at the castle door by an unusually stern-looking Minerva McGonagall. There was nothing of the subtle amusement and pride that had been lurking around the edges of her expression when he had last seen her. No, this time, Arthur saw traces of barely-suppressed irritation and even hints of outright anger, which was a first for his interactions with the Scotswoman. Even though she hid it well in the interest of maintaining discipline among the students, Minerva was usually at least a little amused at the boys' antics.

Arthur sighed, anticipating that this would be an unpleasant ordeal.

When the transfiguration mistress led him to a conference room where both the Headmaster and a seething Severus Snape awaited, that anticipation worsened.

By the time the potions master explained just what sort of trouble the boys had managed to get themselves into, that anticipation crystallized into certainty.

This was not going to be an enjoyable conversation for anyone involved.

3.7.3 Buyer's remorse

Two identical pairs of brown eyes locked on the retreating back of Arthur Weasley as he left the Hogwarts infirmary. Those twin sets of eyes remained locked on the door long after it had closed behind the man, their owners frozen in mortification. That had been an outcome they had never anticipated — though to be fair, the twin brothers hadn't realized just how risky their actions during the prank had been. Over the years, the twin pranksters had seen enough examples to fancy themselves connoisseurs of angry parental expressions, and they had developed a finely-tuned ability to judge just how far they could push things while still remaining in general good graces.

This time, however, they might just have pushed too far.

It was one thing to face a disappointed and angry father who was manfully suppressing his amusement at his sons' antics. It was quite another to face a disappointed and angry father who was manfully suppressing his worry that his sons might well have gotten into trouble too deep for him to pull them out.

That was an expression that neither of the twins ever wanted to see on their father's face again.

"George," Fred eventually began, "you know when you said you weren't sure about going out behind our parents' backs to do the prank?"

"Yeah, Fred," George replied. "I remember."

"Next time I try to brush off that objection, hit me," Fred requested. "Really hard."

"You got it, brother," his twin agreed. "Might kick you too, just to be sure."

"Good idea, George," Fred acknowledged. "I never want to see Dad looking like that again — though, on the bright side, I do believe we have regained our title as the chief troublemakers in the family."

"No contest there," George acknowledged with a wince. "Might have graduated to 'black sheep', though. Bit of a step too far, I'd say."

"No question of that," Fred acknowledged, thinking back on his father's words and, more importantly, his expression. "Definitely a step too far. Though, when Snape was talking about teaching us until he was sure we knew enough not to cause that much trouble again… didn't that sound kind of like an apprenticeship to you?" As his twin nodded, Fred continued, "Seems like it wasn't all bad."

"It does seem that that is the case, brother," George acknowledged slowly. "Though I'd point out, if anyone would know how to turn an apparent reward into a punishment straight out of the depths of Hell, it'd probably be Snape."

Both brothers shuddered at the idea — it seemed all too likely.

3.7.4 Unwelcome changes

It had been a decidedly odd morning for Hermione.

She had awoken in her bedroom bright-eyed and eager for the start of classes, gotten ready, and then gone to check on Harry only to find the big lug passed out in dragon form surrounded by packing crates, weird mechanical bits, and a massive stack of three-ring binders, one of which was draped over his muzzle.

After scolding her friend for pulling an all-nighter right before the first day of classes, Hermione had rushed him through getting ready and they had set off for the school with Suze in tow. They had made their way along the same familiar paths to which she had become accustomed the previous year, and they arrived at the Great Hall for breakfast only a tad later than normal.

Then the schedules had arrived.

Upon receiving her class schedule for the year, Hermione had immediately rushed over to her friend at the Hufflepuff table to compare, only to learn a shocking truth.

"What do you mean we don't share any classes?" she yelped.

"Sorry," her friend said, visibly uncomfortable at her distress. "That's what the schedule says."

"Usually, the Gryffies get paired with the Snakes, and we get put with the Ravens," Cedric chimed in helpfully from across the table. "Not sure what was different last year, but the whole 'put everyone together in one big class' was really weird. Guess whatever it was is done with now, and they set the schedules back to normal."

"But… but," the bushy-haired girl sputtered, mentally scrabbling for a way to put the reasons for her distress into words, "who am I going to sit with in class if Harry isn't there?"

"I'm sure you'll figure something out," Susan chimed in warmly, trying to reassure her troubled friend. "You can think of it as an opportunity to make new friends!"

"Yeah! You can never have enough friends," Susan's constant companion, Hannah, chimed in as well. "Plus, you can always study with us outside of class, we still cover the same material, I think."

"Well, I guess," Hermione said dubiously. "I still don't like this, though."

"What's not to like?" a familiar voice interjected.

"Good morning, Abigail!" Hermione greeted her friend, momentarily cheered. "Um, I was just looking at Harry's schedule, and…"

"And you found out they moved back to the standard scheduling, right?" the older girl asked.

At Hermione's confirming nod, she continued, "Well, like Abbot there said, we'll just have to get together outside class." The seventh-year shrugged, "Not like you're supposed to be socializing in class anyway."

"I suppose," the bushy-haired girl grumbled, scowling as she reached for Harry's schedule again. "I still don't like it, though."

3.7.5 Rumors

While Hermione Granger was quietly panicking about not sharing any classes with her friends, the rest of the student body went about their own business, some of which was rather unusual.

"Professor McGonagall?"

"Yes, Mr. Weasley?" the transfiguration mistress acknowledged.

"Would you like me to deliver my brothers' schedules to them in the infirmary?" the sixth-year prefect asked. Doing so was, while not exactly his personal duty, something that he thought it appropriate to offer. They were his brothers, after all, and he was a prefect.

It certainly was not an attempt to inquire after the truth of all those rumors about his little brothers being expelled.

Not in the slightest.

"That will not be necessary, Mr. Weasley," the Scotswoman declined.

Percy gulped in subdued apprehension. Had there had been more substance to those rumors than he had thought?

"Professor Snape will be delivering their schedules personally," McGonagall continued prompting Percy to sigh in relief. "He has graciously volunteered to oversee your brothers' punishment for their recent misbehavior personally, and their schedules have been adjusted to properly allow for that."

"I see," Percy said with a nod as he turned to head for the exit. "Thank you for your time, Professor."

The twins surely deserved whatever punishment they were going to get, he thought with a nod. Percy would have tried to do something if they were getting expelled; he wasn't sure exactly what, but he'd have thought of something. They weren't, though, so it was a moot point, and there was no reason for him to get involved any further in their mess.

Particularly not now. It was time for class, after all.

3.7.6 Punishment?

"I suppose I should welcome you back for another year of instruction in the great and dangerous art of potions," Professor Snape drawled as he came to a stop from his usual dramatic pacing before the class in the dungeons. "Ideally, we would pick up where we left at the end of the previous term, but long and bitter experience has taught me well that the indolence and irresponsibility of your summer repose will have pushed all thought of basic safety precautions and potions skill clear out of your vacant skulls. Thus, we will begin the term with a remedial lecture."

All told, it was a fairly normal beginning to any class with Professor Snape, Hermione thought even as she paid close attention to the review lecture. The gruff manner and liberal sprinkling of insults were almost reassuringly familiar, but there was one thing, a singular change that Hermione was just dying to ask about at the first opportunity.

"In conclusion, for no reason whatsoever will I tolerate tomfoolery of any sort in this laboratory!" the potions master concluded. "Have I made myself exquisitely clear?"

The bushy-haired second year raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss Granger?" the sallow-faced man acknowledged with a raised eyebrow, clearly not expecting a question so early from one of his most attentive students.

"Professor," she greeted. "Why are the Weasley twins standing up there with you?"

The man's eyes widened in realization. "Yes, I suppose that would prompt a few questions, particularly with the accompanying injunction against tomfoolery on my part," he nodded in acknowledgement. "Your elder colleagues, the Misters Weasley, engaged in some spectacularly asinine behavior recently, the results of which you all experienced yesterday evening."

This prompted a susurration of low conversation throughout the room before Snape's voice easily powered through the low murmur. "Careful consideration was given to their punishment for the various irresponsible stunts they pulled, and I am afraid that the administration of the sentence has fallen to me. Among other things, the two will be serving as my teaching assistants for the next several years, and their schedules have been rearranged to allow for such." The man looked intently at the bushy-haired girl. "Does that satisfy your curiosity, Miss Granger?"

"Yes, Professor Snape," she replied dubiously, clearly still questioning the situation but unwilling to voice anything further.

"Very well," the potions master nodded in acknowledgement. "Now, direct your attention to the board at my left. Today we will be brewing the calming draught. Timing and stirring patterns are of particular importance in this brew as, aside from the usual collection of caustic and explosive failure modes, this particular potion can be completed to multiple end products depending entirely on preparation timing and stirring."

As his students diligently took notes, the sallow-faced man continued, "Completed as described in the instructions on the board, the potion will turn robin's egg blue under torchlight — changing to orange-standard 14 under sunlight — and will produce a temporary state of calm in the recipient, the duration of which is determined by the size of the dose. Completed in a slightly different manner — namely, if you stir for slightly too long immediately after adding the chamomile extract — it will be the same color under torchlight but will turn orange-standard 11 under sunlight."

His face took on a pinched expression of distaste as he continued, "This product will induce a state of hyper-aggression in the recipient, rather than calm. The duration of the effect has never been measured, as it has so far proven impossible to safely restrain the subject long enough for them to recover. Such attempts generally end with the subject lethally injuring themselves while attempting to kill everyone in the vicinity. The sunlight color test is the only known way to tell the potions apart prior to taking them. I have chosen this particular potion as an excellent example of the subtle complexities of the art as we continue into the higher echelons."

"You will note," Snape shot the entire class a steady glower, "further research into the aggression draught has been forbidden for nearly a century, and intentionally brewing it without first obtaining special permission and oversight from the potions guild carries a hefty legal penalty, as does improper disposal of a batch brewed in error."

Maintaining the glower for a few more moments, Snape then went on. "Now, we begin with a myrtlesap base. Can anyone tell me why we have chosen myrtlesap rather than water?"

From there the lesson continued, keeping Hermione far too busy to wonder further about the red-haired teaching assistants and their so-called punishment.

3.7.7 A practical lesson?

Currently in human-shape, Harry bounced through the door of the Defense classroom — literally, his control exercises continued apace, and Mrs. McGonagall had forbidden him from doing the arms-on-fire thing in class shortly after he had figured out how to do it — eager to see what the new professor had to offer.

The young dragon hadn't been terribly impressed by the man during their encounter in the Alley, and his books seemed an odd choice for scholarly reading material. They actually worked fairly well as adventure novellas, solidly written and fairly engaging, but not particularly easy to teach from or go back and reference in Harry's estimation; however, the young dragon was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps he was going to use some unusual teaching method? Maybe something based more on stories than lectures? Harry nodded to himself at that idea. It could work. He liked stories, so that might be fun. Magorian managed well using that medium, too, so it was certainly possible.

In any case, Harry eagerly looked forward to learning from yet another new person even as he bounced to a stop at his seat.

Shortly thereafter, Lockhart emerged from his private office at the top of a set of stairs to one side of the room and paused dramatically at the landing. "Allow me introduce you to your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," he intoned dramatically after a momentary pause to allow everyone time to notice him. "Me. Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, third class, honorary member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-times winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award."

As said award-winning smile flashed, Harry sniffed in confusion as the scents of several of his female classmates changed subtly. A quick glance around the room showed many of them to have slightly flushed skin with a number sighing about something or other.

What was that all about?

Waiting just long enough for the fluttering sighs to begin to wind down, Lockhart continued. "But I don't talk about that — I didn't get rid of the Bandon banshee by smiling at her, after all!" There was an answering titter of high, girlish laughter when the handsome professor chuckled at his own joke.

"Now then, we will begin. I do hope you have read the required reading list, because we will be leading off with a quiz!" The blond man began handing out parchments.

Harry nodded amiably. That seemed like a reasonable way to start out the year, and he had certainly done the reading. On reading the questions, though, Harry's eager enthusiasm began to wane.

With questions ranging from Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color to what he wanted for his birthday, the quiz seemed to be something of a joke. Sure, Harry could see how they worked as reading-comprehension questions, a sort of spot-check on whether you'd read the books or not — Harry had, which was why he could answer the silly things — but it didn't ask about relevant stuff, like what sorts of creatures he faced or where he encountered them. It seemed like a poor choice to him.

Maybe the professor was just bad at writing quizzes?

Harry hoped that was the case, or this was going to be a long year.

After collecting the completed quizzes, the man spent some time going over the answers for those who had missed questions. Along the way, he made a point to peddle several of his hygiene products along the way, from hair care to tooth whitening, which Harry considered to be a plus. After his lessons with Mr. Slackhammer, that sort of economic opportunism was an attitude Harry could respect. It continued until he finally made an announcement that caught Harry's attention.

"Now be warned," Lockhart intoned in a stentorian voice, "it is my job to arm you against the foulest of creatures known to wizardkind."

He turned to walk to a side table and retrieve a wooden crate with a solid-looking hinged door on the front and studded with iron reinforcements. If not for the wood, Harry would have thought it looked rather scrumptious. Maybe the contents would be tasty? Harry settled in to stare at the door with a hungry sort of light in his eyes.

It had been almost three hours since breakfast.

"You may find yourself facing your worst fears in this room," Lockhart continued dramatically as he placed the box down on his desk at the front of the room. "Know only that no harm can befall you while I am here. I must ask you not to scream," his voice dropped to a stage whisper. "It might provoke them."

Then he threw open the door on the crate, and a small humanoid figure stepped out to stand on the table.

The tiny, blue, winged creature paused for a moment to look around the room.

"Cornish pixies?" one of the Ravenclaws demanded incredulously. "After all that build-up?"

"Laugh if you will," Lockhart scoffed, "but pixies can be devilishly tricky little…"

The blond man trailed off as the pixie in question flinched. Its scanning gaze had finally encountered an answering one from Harry Potter, and showing uncommonly good sense for a pixie, the tiny blue man cautiously backed up a few steps before pulling a full about-face and half-sprinting, half-flying for the open door of the crate. Upon reaching it, he shoved several of its compatriots back into the box before grabbing the crate door from the inside and slamming it quite emphatically shut.

"What in Merlin's name was that about?" Lockhart wondered aloud.

Harry could only look after the small creature with a forlorn expression on his currently human face.

It really had looked delicious.

3.7.8 Library meeting

"Lockhart is so bloody useless!" Abigail vented as loudly as she dared while a guest in Madame Pince's domain.

Friday had rolled around, bringing the first week of classes to a close, and the rainy afternoon found Abigail meeting with Harry and his damsels for a study session. In truth, it was more of an excuse for socialization, but to be fair, they did get a fair bit of work done in the process.

"That hardly seems fair," Hermione protested her senior's assessment. "Sure, the books are kind of poorly chosen, and the quiz at the beginning was more about reading comprehension than defense," she allowed. "But he led off the year with a practical demonstration with real, live creatures! For the first day of class, that's pretty impressive."

"Were they pixies?" Abigail asked flatly.

The bushy-haired second-year nodded in confirmation. "Yes! They got into everything, and I ended up having to hit the whole lot with a wide-area immobilization charm. How did you guess?"

"Because he used exactly the same demonstration for us," Abigail said flatly.

"Really?" Hermione frowned. "But you're in seventh year."

"Yes... yes, I am," the older girl ground out. "Every other class has been hammering through a review of all our old material so that we can get down to business and prepare for the NEWTs. Every. Single. One. Except for Defense, where the professor has us on the very same lesson plan as the second years!"

"First years too," Harry piped in. "Susan and Hannah were telling me about how they had to comfort some of the younger kids who were crying because they got tossed around in class." His expression turned thoughtful. "Not sure why. The pixies went back into the box on their own in our class — heck, they refused to come out in the first place." The currently human-shaped dragon shook his head dismissively, "Weird."

"Right! So, he's got us on a first-year curriculum, and that's supposed to prepare us for our NEWTs!" Abigail allowed Harry's lack of self-awareness to pass without comment; she had more pressing concerns. "The man's a menace to proper education; we'll never pass the Defense NEWT at this rate." She sighed, "Why did I get stuck with the useless fop on my NEWT year? It's just not fair!"

Hermione nodded sympathetically, "I know. Just look at what they did for the Weasley twins!"

"What about the Weasley twins?" Abigail asked curiously. "I hadn't heard anything on that front."

"They pulled off all those pranks and caused all that trouble at the opening feast, and then they got to be Professor Snape's teaching assistants! Some of the older students even said he's treating them a lot like apprentices," Hermione huffed. "I mean, when you do bad things, you're supposed to get punished, so why are they getting rewarded for it?"

"That does sound kind of odd," Abigail agreed, "and it sounds really out of character for my Head of House. He's not normally one to tolerate any foolishness, much less reward it."

The table fell silent for a time as they considered that for a time before the centaur in the room spoke up.

"Mayhap it is a punishment disguised as a reward?" Suze ventured.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, puzzled. "How would that work?"

"Well, when Cousin Julius was young, he snuck out of camp to follow Father on a border patrol, and in his clumsiness, he managed to alert some of the spider plague to their presence. Several of our best warriors were gravely injured, and Father said that it was a close-fought battle to safely retreat. Grandfather was livid, but with so few able-bodied warriors, the Clan could not spare Julius, despite his recklessness, so Father took him on as a student with the intent of turning him into a competent warrior."

The centaur maiden shuddered. "Father is the premier warrior of the Clan, and his tutelage is much sought after by the young colts, but I am certain Cousin Julius did not see it as a privilege. Father was very strict, much more so than normal. Perhaps Mr. Snape is handling the situation similarly."

Hermione frowned. "It still seems unfair."

"Maybe you should ask Professor Snape," the dragon in the room suggested reasonably. "I mean, that's the only way you're going to figure it out for sure."

"I already asked though, and he didn't answer," the bushy-haired girl most assuredly didn't whine.

"Um, did you actually ask him, or did you just hint at it?" Harry asked. "Mr. Snape doesn't like to pussyfoot around things, so you need to just ask outright if you want to know."

Abigail nodded her agreement with that assessment as the currently human-shaped dragon continued.

"He'll keep things to himself on principle otherwise. I mean, he might not answer you anyway if he doesn't think he should, but hinting will just guarantee he never tells you anything."

With that nugget of Snapely wisdom dispensed, Harry turned back to his current work, some arcane task which appeared to involve a fair bit of geometry and an absurdly complicated runic array, alongside which sat a huge list of apparently-randomly chosen letters and numbers arranged in regular groups. His compatriots followed suit shortly after, and for a long while, the only sounds to disturb the silence of the library were the pattering of rain on the outside of the stonework and the quiet scratching of quill on parchment until eventually, an outside interruption intruded itself.

"Mr. Potter?" Madame Pince had approached in her usual near silence.

"Uh-huh?" the dragon in question acknowledged absently. He looked up from his work after he finished the current line. "What do you need?"

Quirking an eyebrow at the informal address, the Hogwarts librarian decided not to make an issue of it. "The Headmaster has requested that you meet with him."

"Huh," Harry scratched his head. "Do you know what he wants?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Potter," Madame Pince averred. "You will simply have to find out for yourself."

"Okay," the young dragon-in-human-form acknowledged with aplomb, gathering his effects as he made to stand up, an action immediately echoed by Suze. "Um, Hermione, did you want to stay here, or…"

"I'll stay and try to finish my work for transfiguration," came the bushy-haired girl's reply.

"Okay," Harry said brightly. "I'll see you after I talk with Mr. Dumbledore, then. Bye, Hermione! Abigail!"

And with that, he and his centaur damsel were off to see the wizard.

3.7.9 Scheduling

"Ah, Mr. Potter, Miss Suze, welcome," the Headmaster greeted warmly. "Do come in!"

"Hi, Mr. Dumbledore!" Harry answered brightly, while his damsel gave a warm smile and nod but remained otherwise silent. "What did you need to see me for?"

"I find myself in the position of delivering a request for your time on the behalf of a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Potter," the elderly wizard began. "I'm afraid that the request has been much delayed due to my own negligence, but I was recently reminded rather forcefully."

"Oh?" Harry asked, puzzled. "Who is it?

The Headmaster explained, and all was made clear.

"Monday, then?"

At Harry's affirmative nod, the matter was settled.
 
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Section 3.8 - Mentoring and advice
3.8 Mentoring and advice

3.8.1 Picnic games

Saturday afternoon was clear, full of sun and blue skies with a stiff breeze in off the sound ruffling the heather of the moors as it blew inland. The conditions were brisk enough to warrant a coat though certainly not so cold as to be unpleasant.

All told, it was a perfect day for a picnic in the Scottish Highlands.

It was therefore unsurprising to find Hermione and Suze seated together on a blanket laid out on a grassy patch on the moor north of the Black Woods. A pair of picnic baskets held the remains of their lunch, and a large insulated carafe full of hot chocolate sat next to another full of tea in the middle of the blanket.

"This is nice," Hermione commented to her fellow damsel as she took another sip of tea, her eyes focused on the bluish bulk of the Cuillins across the sound to the northwest. "It's a beautiful day — too bad Abigail's prefect duties kept her from coming."

Her centaur counterpart took a sip of her own hot chocolate as she nodded in agreement. The drink was one for which she had acquired a taste during one of the Great Wyrm's meetings with the goblins.

Harry found it a decent second choice as well, though he preferred a more traditional version — unsweetened with a healthy dash of cayenne pepper — being rather more partial to the subtle bitterness of the cocoa than the sugary sweetness of the more modern variants. That preference had led to the third, already emptied, carafe stowed away in the picnic basket.

Of course, the dragon still preferred goblin tea as his hot drink of choice; however, it had the unfortunate tendency to eat through the plastic bits of most insulated containers, making it less than ideal for picnic fare.

"The Great Wyrm has been entirely too busy of late," Suze noted. "Between his studies at the wand-waver's school, his own projects, and assembling that mechanical monstrosity he has been working on, it seems as if he hardly sleeps! It is good for him to take time to relax and play; he is still quite young."

A faint but familiar voice rang out overhead, rapidly increasing in volume as its source drew closer, "I'm gonna…"

Hermione sighed as she nodded in agreement, sipping her tea as she relaxed in the sun.

Perhaps forty feet overhead, a fiery avian shape streaked by, flames snapping in the wind of its passing.

Hermione and Suze calmly and simultaneously reached out to steady their respective carafes of tea and hot chocolate just in time to be hit by a violent wall of wind as a massive draconic form the size of a small commercial aircraft whipped by in hot pursuit — also barely forty feet overhead.

"…catch you this time, Fawkes!" Harry's determined voice suddenly reached a peak as he shot by, then the pitch dramatically lowered as he sped away.

As the wind died down, Hermione picked absently at the leaves in her hair. Suze was much too inured to her dragon's antics to bother at this point; she would hardly be able to keep them out for any length of time while the Great Wyrm and the phoenix were still playing, in any case.

"Why does he always have to fly so close?" her human counterpart complained.

"I believe the fire bird finds your reactions amusing," Suze opined. "The Great Wyrm simply follows along as their game dictates."

Suze fell silent for a moment, watching the relatively small but brilliantly glowing bird pull of a series of implausibly tight turns as he led her dragon on a thoroughly impressive chase. She shook her head in disbelief as Harry's much larger form pulled a hairpin turn in pursuit, reversing course entirely within his own length at full sprint.

She couldn't even do that on the ground!

"Harry's gotten a lot better at flying lately," Hermione offered conversationally as Fawkes took off on a new tack.

Suze nodded, her eyes glued to the spectacle as she polished off her current cup.

The phoenix had now managed to line himself up on the picnickers, approaching from the front this time at a slightly higher altitude.

"What is he up to now?" Hermione frowned at the bird, absently refilling her cup of tea. "He usually doesn't repeat tactics so quickly."

The answer came when Fawkes turned sharply just as he passed overhead, heading off at right angles to his original flight path, and more importantly, prompting Harry to bank sharply even as he turned directly over his damsels' heads, scales along his spine limned in luminous magical discharge as his flight organs took up the strain of accelerating his tremendous mass at rates that would make a modern fighter pilot drool with envy. The maneuver brought his extended wingtip within just a few meters of the ground, and, more importantly, enveloped the picnic site in the vortex of wind generated by the passage of such.

"Harry James Potter!" Hermione yelled angrily even as she levered herself off the ground and clawed the upturned blanket off her face. "You come down here right this minute!"

The bushy-haired girl scrambled to her feet to run across the moor after the flying pair, waving her arms at them angrily. Her now-empty teacup flashed in the sun, its former contents matting down her hair and contributing rather prominently to her current ire.

All the while, the honking laughter of the mischievous phoenix rang brilliantly across the moor.

3.8.2 Interview with a Hat

Monday afternoon found Harry, accompanied by his centaur damsel, walking down a seldom used hallway high in the east wing of the castle on his way to a recently reopened classroom. He had never had the opportunity to visit the area, which led to the young dragon using the occasion to gawk at all of the unfamiliar paintings and other scenery like the most blatantly obvious tourist imaginable. Had it not been for Suze's grounding presence and occasional insistent prodding, he might well never have made it to his destination.

Hermione and Abigail's schedules were still quite thoroughly occupied for the next hour and a half, but Harry's classes had ended for the day, prompting the young dragon to book the time for a long-overdue conversation. As he reached his destination, Harry opened the door for Suze and felt the newly installed wards take his measure, only to be greeted by a gruff voice from inside the room.

"It took you long enough, Mr. Potter," the Sorting Hat complained peevishly. "When I told you to take your time to get settled, I meant a few weeks, not over a year!"

"Sorry, Donald," the contrite dragon apologized as Suze settled in to one corner of the small classroom with a book. Harry had warned that this would likely be a boring conversation for her, contained as it would be within the minds of the participants. "I meant to, but then that thing with the troll happened, and then I was busy making friends with Hermione and Abigail, and then there was that whole thing with the philosopher's stone, and, well, I kinda forgot in all the hullabaloo until Mr. Dumbledore reminded me last week."

"Well, don't dawdle any further, put me on so I can catch up!" the animated headwear demanded. "If you've been so busy, then you should know better than to delay."

Harry quickly complied, shifting the conversation from an audible to a mental forum in the process.

"Hmm, you have been busy, haven't you, Mr. Potter?" Donald mused. "Very busy indeed. Though you seem to have adapted well to your life as a student. So many independent projects! All four of the founders would have been delighted to host such a diligent student."

"Thanks!" Harry replied with a pleased smile.

"How have you progressed on your political aspirations, then?" the Hat asked.

"Couldn't you just read that from my mind?" the dragon queried with a thoughtful frown. "I thought that's what you were doing."

"I could, indeed, Mr. Potter," Donald confirmed. "And were the purpose of this exercise simply to keep me informed, that would be sufficient; however I am to offer counsel, and that requires an active conversation for it to be of any use to you."

"Oh! Okay, that makes sense," Harry replied. "And on that stuff, well, Mr. Snape, Suze, and I have talked a lot, and I just recently bought out Hog's Haulage. I figure we can use that to out-compete some of the nastier folks what supported that Voldemort-guy, and Mr. Slackhammer talked about setting up something using that to help get some of the people who got enslaved out of the country." Harry frowned thoughtfully, "I think they've got something arranged with the Confederacy for housing and rehabilitation, but they haven't shared the details. Mr. Snape figures the first thing to do is economic warfare, then we'll go to political, and then we'll finish up with violence when we push as far as we can without."

"I see," the Hat mused. "Rough, but perhaps serviceable."

"We're still working on it," Harry protested.

"I understand, Mr. Potter. I certainly wouldn't expect you to have a perfect plan so quickly — not for such an ambitious goal," Donald assured him. "Though, on that note, perhaps we should touch on an aspect of the problem that your co-conspirator has missed."

"What do you mean?" the young dragon asked curiously before his tone shifted to one of dawning horror as a possibility occurred to him. "Is the wizarding world actually worse than Mr. Snape described?"

"Not exactly, his descriptions fit my understanding of the situation for the most part," the sentient headwear temporized, giving the oddest mental impression of a hand waving dismissively — quite the trick from something which lacked anything resembling a hand. "When Severus laid out the reasons for the moral decay of the wizarding world — the rampant slavery and exploitation and everything else — what did he claim was the root cause?"

"Um…" under the Hat's brim, Harry's currently human face screwed up in thought. "Mostly it was the mind spells and stuff, right? He said they let people do really bad stuff and get away with it, so over time everyone just got worse and worse."

"He did," the Hat affirmed, having seen the conversation itself in perusing Harry's memories. "And that is correct, as far as it goes. Allowing crime and immorality to go unpunished does have a corrupting effect on society, but it is not the spells that are to blame. They do not cast themselves, after all."

As his draconic conversation partner perked up with interest under his brim, Donald continued, "I have had the unique opportunity to encounter countless young minds over the course of my millennium-long existence. Some have gone on to do great good, and some have gone on to do great evil. Do you know the difference between the two groups when they passed under my brim?"

"No, what was it?" Harry asked eagerly.

"Nothing."

"Huh?" A puzzled frown crossed the young dragon's currently human face.

"There was no perceptible difference between those who went on to do great good and those who went on to do great evil when they were Sorted — no common thread that would allow you to choose between the two," Donald explained. "From that point, they were raised the same way, taught the same things — including many of those spells that young Severus is so quick to blame — and released into the same larger world. Then from those common beginnings, some went on to become saints, and others twisted themselves into demons."

"Then what changed?" Harry asked, still frowning. "Why did some go one way and not the other?"

"I cannot truly speak with authority on the subject as I am incapable of speaking from personal experience," the Hat demurred, "but I would hazard the guess that it is 'choice'. People, souls, Namers — whatever you call them — are capable of recognizing good and evil and freely choosing to pursue one or the other. It is your greatest power, and it is your greatest responsibility."

The conversation fell silent for a moment as that sank in.

"But what about those mind spells? Don't they force people to act a certain way?" the young dragon asked after a thoughtful interlude. "I mean, wouldn't that mean people can't choose good or evil?"

"Those spells… they can force the behavior of other people, but they do nothing to force the actions of the ones using them," Donald clarified. "The choice to do evil by using those spells is one freely made. It does no one any good to absolve those who do evil of responsibility in favor of blaming some collection of tools, no matter how ill-conceived. If you wish to fix the world, Mr. Potter, you will have to get people to choose of their own accord to do good rather than evil."

The young dragon pondered that for a few moments. "So how do you get people to pick good over bad?"

"Well, your plan addresses half of it," the Hat answered. "Not completely, of course, but as you said, it's a work in progress. Your plans currently focus on punishing people for doing bad things, and that is necessary. However, if you only do that, then eventually someone will learn to hide well enough to avoid you, and things will slowly creep back to where they are now. You need something more."

"Like what?" the young proto-revolutionary asked eagerly.

"The bit you are missing, Mr. Potter, is the encouragement to do good."

"You mean like bribing them?" Harry cocked his head and considered the idea with a thoughtful frown. "I guess if we got enough money…"

"No, no," the Hat laughed. "For some small things that might suffice, but not for the long term. To be sure, it is a good secondary incentive, but if you tie the motivation to do good solely to a desire for wealth, then eventually someone is going to find a way to accrue a greater benefit by doing bad than you're offering them to do good. It is unreliable. You need to find a way to convince people to behave properly for no other reason than that it is the right way to behave — a code of conduct for society as a whole."

"In short, you need to find a way to instill a moral compass into the wizarding population," Donald concluded. "Give them something to aspire to, rather than simply a set of things to avoid, else you will be fighting a losing battle."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Harry whined. "I mean, I'm still learning how I'm supposed to behave!"

"How am I supposed to know? I'm just a hat, thinking or otherwise," the Hat laughed. "There is a reason I told you your dream was the most ambitious I'd ever heard of back when I Sorted you!"

"Then why did you bring it up?" Harry frowned, somewhat distressed.

"To get you thinking about it," Donald replied matter-of-factly. "I may not know how to solve the problem, but I can at least tell you it exists!"

"Well, thanks, I guess," Harry said uncertainly before trailing off into silence.

The mental silence stretched on for a time as Harry processed what had been said. The young dragon shook his head, Donald flopping about gently with the motion but not protesting. That would require a lot more thinking than he had time for now.

Though, come to think of it, the Hat had said something which Harry thought needed a bit more explanation. He was about to bring it up, when another voice interrupted him, this one audible.

"Harry, it's time for us to meet Hermione and Abigail at the library," Suze broke the silence, looking at the angle of the sun coming through the classroom window. "You wanted me to remind you."

"Thanks, Suze," Harry acknowledged quietly. It seemed his other question would have to wait for another time. "And thanks, Donald. Do you think I can come back and talk some more after I think about things?"

"Any time, Mr. Potter, it's my raison d'être, after all," the Sorting Hat replied audibly once more as his two visitors prepared to leave the classroom. "My schedule is free until next September!"

3.8.3 Projects

Harry's conversation with Donald had given the young dragon a great deal to think on, and as was his usual habit, much of that thinking took place while he occupied himself with other things.

Over the course of the past weeks, Harry had come to treat Defense much the same way he had always treated History with Professor Binns — as a free study hour. Unlike Binns, Lockhart actually called on him sometimes, so he had to keep an ear out, but the man never actually asked anything substantive, so it was a fairly safe strategy.

Between Defense and History, Harry had plenty of time to finish his homework during the class day, which left him with little to occupy his off-hours. Still, between his general reading and other pursuits, Harry managed to find ways to fill the void. For instance, two months' hard work had developed Harry's control with the first alchemy exercise quite well, but he still fell short of the standards Dumbledore had set for the second, so that remained an ongoing pursuit.

Harry's work with electricity likewise continued apace. His most recent attempt was a runic array with one-hundred-seventeen-fold symmetry designed to, hopefully, convert raw magic into electric current efficiently. While even his first attempts had proven effective at the task, tolerable efficiency remained as distant as ever, and etching the runic arrays…

Ugh.

At first the task had been a pleasant one, a good choice to occupy the hands and leave the mind free, but as the arrays became more complicated, the task stretched out to absurdity. Absurdity exemplified by the latest monstrosity which, if etched by hand, he estimated would take nearly a year and a half to complete, assuming no screw-ups.

It was that circumstance which had led to his current favorite project, a project which, judging by the last test he had just run, was now ready for operation.

3.8.4 Showing off?

The year had passed well into autumn, and autumn had painted the Black Woods with great swathes of fiery color interspersed with the dark green of the pines. The vibrant panoply of the trees passed by far beneath Abigail's feet as she flew overhead on a borrowed school broom on her way to her friend's home.

Harry had apparently finished something he wanted to show her, and he had asked her to visit which had resulted in her current descent towards the excitedly bouncing dragon waiting at the entrance to his Lair. As he was currently in his native form, that made for a whole lot of 'bounce'.

"Hey, Abigail!" he greeted her enthusiastically as touched down on the lip of the Lair. "You gotta come check it out!"

"Let me at least set down the broom first, Harry!" Abigail protested good-naturedly. "There's plenty of time yet before I have to be back for my patrol."

Harry bounced along impatiently as she put her words into action. As she did so, Hermione and Suze waved at her from the sitting area, making no move to get up. Their innocent smiles clearly showed their delight at having Abigail there to absorb some of the dragon's burgeoning enthusiasm — and consequently avoiding it themselves.

Lousy gits, Abigail groused to herself good-humoredly, shooting Harry's damsels a gimlet glare which was received with aplomb. See if she helped them with anything any time soon.

"Now, what is this about?" she asked the dragon in the room.

"Ooh, ooh, come on, I'll show you!" her draconic friend gushed, heading off into the deeper parts of the Lair. "It took me a whole month to put it together right, but I finally got it."

"And what is it?" she asked again as they approached what looked to be a recently excavated room.

Harry looked back under his shoulder and met her eyes with his own even as he smoothly shifted into his human form — the transition made for an odd sight, particularly since he started out looking back under his wing and ended up looking back over his human shoulder.

"You remember when we talked over summer?" he asked.

"Yes," Abigail said leadingly, "but we talked about a lot of things. What is it in particular?"

She hoped desperately that it wasn't one of the awkward bits. She had no desire to revisit those.

"Well, you remember I told you how I'd ordered a CNC machine to help with engraving those runes?"

"Yes," the older girl nodded.

Thank goodness, she was clear!

"Well, it came in with us on the Express," Harry said, "and I've been working on getting it working ever since. Now I've got all the parts working, and I got 'em put together right, and now it's time to start the whole thing properly! Come on!"

And with that, the currently boy-shaped dragon disappeared around the rough-hewn corner of the opening into a larger room beyond. Abigail followed only to stop in shock when the contents of the room came into view.

"What on earth?" she exclaimed.

Roughly twice the size of the Great Hall back at the castle, the space was hewn out of solid stone, claw and bite marks still clearly visible on the walls and ceiling, though the floor was much smoother. It was lit by some sort of brightly glowing tubes — much brighter than the little glowing jars lighting up the rest of the Lair — contained in pairs in small metal boxes which were tacked up to the ceiling in a fairly regular grid pattern and connected by some sort of gray cable strung up along the ceiling. That same cable also ran along the ceiling to the end of the room where it came down and ran into… something.

Whatever it was, it seemed to consist of a number of large cabinets, each composed of a gleaming combination of aluminum, glass, steel, and some sort of dull whitish material with which Abigail was unfamiliar. The strange construction she could have dealt with, but the scale threw her for a loop. The collection was easily larger than the Slytherin common room.

"You need all of that to engrave some silver balls?"

It was the first question that came to mind when she finally recovered her voice.

"Um, well," her friend began awkwardly, "I might have gotten a tad more than I really needed." He looked down at the floor while scuffing at the rough stone with his foot. "I kinda just got the highest-end model they had in the catalogue. It's got enough precision though! Accurate down to a ten-thousandth of an inch over the full working range, if you run it with the right settings. That's about a tenth of the thickness of a human hair!" Harry boasted. "That means it'll be able to handle my runes easy."

Abigail wandered over to the device, running her hand over the smooth surface. "How much did you pay for this anyway?"

Her friend looked away again, mumbling something unintelligible.

She deliberately met his eye. "Harry," she said expectantly.

"About two hundred thousand galleons," he said sheepishly.

"Two hundred thousand... Harry, that's almost a fifth of what you spent on Hog's Haulage!" Abigail exclaimed. "Can you afford to spend that much on a hobby?"

"Well... I probably should have bought something smaller," her friend admitted, "but I've got the money, and the engraving stuff will pay off eventually if I can get it to work right." He brightened, "Plus, even though I hadn't thought of it when I ordered it, this'll be really useful for the trains too! I mean, it can handle stuff up to eight feet wide and up to ten feet long, well thirty feet really, as long as you turn between centers and it's shaped right to use intermediate supports... oh, and you've got enough ballast to keep the machine stable, this one's bolted to the bedrock though, so it should be good. Anyway, that means it's big enough to handle just about any part of the trains except the actual boiler!"

"Fine," she said, exasperated but dropping the question of fiscal responsibility for the moment. "So how does this work?"

With that, the currently boy-shaped dragon jumped into action beginning by walking her through loading a blank into the machine, a fist-sized silver casting which looked utterly ridiculous mounted within the room-sized apparatus. The he explained the functions of the various pieces, before turning on some weird device that displayed pictures on a glass screen that she couldn't really make sense of. Supposedly that was the thinking part of the contraption which controlled the rest of it.

"And then, you throw this switch to power up the control and power circuitry that runs the servo motors that actually do the work," Harry explained as he put his words into action.

After one final check, he flicked one heavy-duty toggle switch on a board sporting several dozen similar ones.

There was a brief groaning hum before first the glass screen from earlier went dark, followed shortly thereafter by the lights on the ceiling, plunging the pair — and for that matter, the entire Lair — into inky darkness.

"Hey!" an unseen Harry objected. "That's not supposed to happen!"

There was a click from the same direction as her young friend's voice, and the lights slowly flickered back on, revealing a vision of Harry frantically checking and rechecking the various connections he had earlier explained in far too much detail for Abigail's comfort.

"What went wrong?" Harry's voice echoed plaintively from where he had his head stuck in an electrical cabinet. "I checked out everything like five times, and then it goes and stops working right when I try to show it to my friend?"

"This is so embarrassing."

It was a side of her friend that Abigail didn't often see. Normally the young dragon was self-assured to a fault. Seeing him so flustered was… well, it was honestly kind of funny, and it had the older girl right on the verge of laughter, only barely managing to restrain herself to salve her friend's feelings.

"It's not my fault!" the young dragon's voice rang out.

Abigail choked back another laugh.

"Huh, wait a minute…" Harry said, still partially muffled by the cabinet he was searching through. "If there's six of those, then the computer for control, then the main drive, the spindle, plus the other servos, then it'd need… oh..." he trailed off, falling into silence for a moment.

"Huh, I guess it kinda was my fault after all."

Abigail lost her valiant struggle and burst into giggles.

3.8.5 Mentor of Heroes

A sixth-year girl blushed rosily as she handed in her homework assignment, and the young, handsome Defense professor absently flashed her a winsome smile. She hurriedly retreated to her desk, throwing furtive glances back at her professor all the while — passing a darkly scowling male classmate on the way — and almost reluctantly prepared to leave along with the rest of the class.

She would have been disappointed to learn that the man had barely registered her presence, his thoughts turned inward.

Gilderoy Lockhart was already more than a month into his tenure as the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and things had not gone to plan. Oh, he was getting by well enough with his teaching by his reckoning; half his students seemed to hang on his every word, so obviously he must be passing on something worthwhile. Nevertheless, that was not enough.

Despite his words at the opening feast, the famous author had not taken the job because he wanted to teach.

Appearance trumped substance. That was a lesson that Gilderoy had learned early in life, and it had only been reinforced since. His job as a Ministry Obliviator when he first graduated from Hogwarts had been entirely predicated on that maxim. Obliviators were responsible for ensuring appearances were maintained, and it was a task at which Lockhart was supremely talented.

Later, when he had tired of the capped Ministry salary, he had parlayed that talent for spinning tales into his current career as a swashbuckling adventurer — on paper.

The stories he had written were true, just… a tad exaggerated. A few details here and there changed to make for a better story — things like dramatic timing, appropriate weather, a few names here and there. Nothing too important, in Lockhart's estimation. After all, someone vanquished the Bandon Banshee, why would the name matter? The events were the same regardless, but the books sold better when the characters were consistent across the entire series.

The fans never would have gotten so invested if he'd kept changing the hero's name between every volume!

Even so, Gilderoy had treated his contributors well, paying them handsomely for their stories — not that they knew those 'gifts' were royalty payments, of course, but you had to take the bad with the good if you were going to get anywhere in life. They might not clearly remember their roles in the adventures, but then they clearly hadn't been turning them into profit, either.

The Gentleman Adventurer, on the other hand, had.

It was Gilderoy's talent for spinning a yarn that had made him such a successful obliviator, and it was the same talent that let him turn stories that otherwise would have been worth at most a few free drinks at a local bar into a gold mine of book sales and royalty payments. The original deeds might not have been his, but the polish and showmanship certainly were. In his estimation, the value added was more than enough to justify a few measly obliviations here and there.

Gilderoy knew his business model was a risky one. Book-worthy adventures were by their nature few and far between, and he'd already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. Acquiring further stories would necessarily incur greater risks — either by attempting to lift stories from more talented combatants rather than the unusually lucky but otherwise normal people he'd hit up before, thereby running the very real risk of violent retaliation; or by hitting up more widely-known events, risking the exposure of the masquerade. No, at this point, any future adventures of the Gentleman Adventurer would need to be advanced by keeping his ear to the ground and waiting patiently for new business opportunities.

Unfortunately, that course ran straight into troubled waters.

The sort of reputation Gilderoy had built required a regular stream of fresh material — otherwise the Gentleman Adventurer would quickly become the Washed-Up Has-Been. He had succeeded so far by stringing together a long series of those 'fifteen minutes of fame' people were so fond of talking about; it was a myth built on glitz and action but lacking real substance, and that sort of thing had no real staying power.

Gilderoy hadn't taken on this job to get a new story, nor was it simply an opportunity to promote his already stellar book sales — no, he was here to tell a story. The Gentleman Adventurer was getting to the point in his heroic journey that he needed something more — a certain maturity to solidify his reputation in the long term — and when the opening at Hogwarts had come up, Gilderoy had seen a plum of an opportunity just sitting there, ripe for the taking.

Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, would be one of his students.

By virtue of the events back in 1981, the last Potter already had a formidable reputation as wizarding Britain's boy hero, and from what Lockhart had managed to find out over the months leading up to his acceptance of the post, the young wizard had managed to overcome at least one fairly significant challenge in his first year at school. The boy had all the raw talent needed to succeed as a real adventurer, not just a paper tiger, and Gilderoy was certain he would go on to do great things.

Ability aside, though, the boy was young and naïve to the ways of the world. Gilderoy felt that, as the older and more experienced hero, he could step in as a mentor — teach young Harry how to handle the business, manage his reputation, that sort of thing. It would be a good and decent thing to do; there were hidden perils to the sort of fame the young Potter enjoyed, and Lockhart could show him how to navigate them.

And if by doing so, Gilderoy Lockhart could establish himself as the Boy-Who-Lived's mentor in the public eye, then the Gentleman Adventurer, would cement his reputation for the long haul.

Turning the Gentleman Adventurer into the Mentor of Heroes, now that would be lasting fame, and then Gilderoy could delay as much as needed between books without losing momentum. He might even be able to pull down speaking engagements! Having a figure like the Boy-Who-Lived linked to his own reputation would mean the boy's successes would prop up his own, and the boy's fame would only enhance his teacher's. In his business, that was practically a license to mint money! It was a grand plan…

…it was just a bloody shame it wasn't working!

Nothing he had tried had caught Potter's notice. The free books had been accepted with no further comment. The opening quiz hadn't sparked a single smidgen of interest. The pixies he had chosen as a practical lesson — creatures which had sparked so much chaos and confusion in the other classes — had refused to even leave their bloody cage when Potter was in the room. Heck, they took one look at him and slammed the door shut themselves!

Every attempt he had made to engage the boy in class had been met with indifference; that was not to say Potter had been reluctant to participate, but there had been no enthusiasm, no spark. It was almost as if the boy saw him as just another part of the scenery.

It was a knotty sort of problem, one Gilderoy had no idea how to address. Luckily, he had the rest of the year to go. He was sure to think of something eventually.

Until then, he supposed he'd have to play it by ear.

3.8.6 Jury-rigging

Currently in human-looking form, Harry knelt near the entrance to the Lair, tightening down the last of the screws on an electrical junction box he had installed next to the car-sized bulk of his diesel-powered welder. Heavy electrical wire stretched off from the junction box to the ceiling of the Lair, and from there off into the depths of the tunnel network he had been steadily expanding whenever the mood struck. At the far end, it ran into the electrical cabinet on the overlarge CNC the young dragon had so embarrassingly failed to demonstrate for his friend the previous week.

Harry had been quick to realize his folly once he had calmed down from embarrassing himself in front of Abigail. The entire Lair ran off one tiny improvised hydroelectric turbine. It worked fine for lighting — though even that would have overtaxed things eventually as the facility continued to expand — but the machining equipment was much more demanding than mere lighting.

When the young dragon had tested things beforehand, he had tested each subsystem independently, and the electrical grid had handled the strain. Attempting to run it all together, though, had overloaded the system, and everything had shut down.

It had taken Harry a while to figure out a workable solution, but he'd gotten a good piece of advice from one of his new engineers at Hog's Haulage — and wasn't it cool that he had engineers now? Meeting the new-hires over the course of the previous week had been loads of fun, and Harry had decided then and there that they were having a company Christmas party, barbecue and all, so he could meet the rest of his employees! It was going to be awesome! But anyway, his new engineer had suggested getting a generator, and then Harry had remembered his other major purchase from the beginning of the year.

Harry patted the chassis of the welder fondly as he plugged a specially designed cable into the welder's auxiliary power output, the other end of which he had just finished wiring into his recently installed junction box. The welder he had purchased ran on diesel, chosen because Harry already had a ready supply of that for his own consumption. Rated for continuous duty and with a fuel tank sufficient to run for eight hours before refueling, the diesel-powered welder/generator combination would be an excellent intermediate solution until he figured out something more permanent.

"Right," he took a deep breath and started up the generator.

As the diesel engine roared to life, Harry winced and rubbed at his ears before heading off into the depths of the Lair. He had a job to set up on the CNC, and then he had classes to attend.

And maybe, depending on how the job he was setting up turned out, he might soon have a quieter alternative to the current generator available.

3.8.7 Soiled

Gilderoy Lockhart gazed out over his classroom, a sea of eager young faces looking back at him, awaiting his every word. Well, all except one, anyway.

Unfortunately, it was that one whose attention Gilderoy was after.

Perhaps his new gambit would work better than the previous ones.

"Today, we try something new," the dandy professor began, causing most of the room to perk up. "We will reenact the events of one of my books, Wanderings with Werewolves, so that you all might get firsthand experience — or at least as close as you can get without risking life and limb!"

He chuckled at his own witticism, prompting a tinkling twitter of laughter from the class in response.

"We will begin with the scene in the tavern. Miss Abbot, Miss Bones, how would you like to play the waitresses?"

The beginnings of the class went swimmingly. The various students participating with unusual enthusiasm, rather intrigued by the change of pace. Gilderoy skillfully managed the ensuing chaos as he led up to the point he had been aiming for from the beginning.

"Now, for the werewolf!" The blond dandy looked around, pretending to deliberate over his choice for the one role which interacted most closely with his own. "Mr. Potter! You haven't played a role yet! How about this one?"

Harry Potter looked up in surprise before smiling and nodding agreeably as he rose from his chair.

Lockhart could hardly believe his luck! He finally had an in! Who knew the Boy-Who-Lived would appreciate acting?

Acting was even something Gilderoy was genuinely talented at. It would be a prime candidate for mentoring!

He had set the hook — now he just had to land it.

"Now, Mr. Potter, you are playing a ferocious werewolf," Lockhart explained. "How do you think you should sell the character, so your classmates can really get a feel for it?"

"Um," the small boy frowned in thought. "Maybe I should growl? Werewolves growl, don't they?"

"Of course, they do!" Gilderoy didn't really know whether they did or not, nor did he care so long as the Potter boy stayed enthusiastic and interested for once. "Now, the scene calls for you to approach me from around the corner — we're treating the desk there as the corner of the building — and growl menacingly. Go for it!"

The energetic boy bounced around the desk before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, seeming to concentrate on something. His green eyes snapped open, and he boldly stalked around the desk with an unnaturally smooth gait — almost seeming to glide over the ground, his shoes making no sound at all on the stone floor.

The blond dandy already felt his guts clenching nervously. The undersized boy who looked like he was at least a few years too young to even be attending Hogwarts moved oddly, like he was the most dangerous thing for a thousand miles in any given direction, and he knew it.

And then he growled.

The growl started out low, pitched below human hearing but intense enough for Gilderoy to feel each successive pressure front at it impacted his gut, each one a jarring reminder that there was something dangerous afoot, something predatory, something that a deep, atavistic part of him recognized and regarded with unabashed and unadulterated terror.

The successive impacts came faster and faster until they finally transitioned into the audible range as a basso-profundo rumble. The volume then kept rising, louder and louder until the desks rattled against the floor, not that Gilderoy knew that. His world was filled entirely with the sound of the growl and a vision of cold green eyes.

It was, far and away, the most intimidating sound the blond author had ever heard! For that matter, it was the most intimidating sound he had ever heard of, and he had talked with a lot of people who had faced a lot of very intimidating things.

Then the sound abruptly cut off.

"How was that?" asked a bright, childish voice, even as those same terrifying green eyes looked innocently into his blue ones.

Gilderoy's mouth moved soundlessly for a few moments as he attempted to regain a sense of equilibrium. "That was… excellent work?" he managed to squeak out.

The blond man looked around at the class, noting all the stunned expressions on the faces of children frozen in place by stark terror. As he turned to get a view of those behind him, he felt more than heard a faint squelch. The dandy frowned at the feeling before he realized it was accompanied by an unpleasantly moist warmth and it became clear what had happened.

Well, shit.

"Yes, Mr. Potter, that was truly excellent work!" He said hurriedly, fear of mortifying humiliation temporarily giving him the impetus to overcome his recent bout with literally bowel-voiding terror. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid we will need to cut the rest of the class short for now; I've just remembered a pressing appointment. Class dismissed!"

And with that, Gilderoy beat a hasty retreat to his office and a set of clean clothes.

He hoped he managed to get there before the silk soaked through enough to be visible.

3.8.8 Growling lessons

As the office door closed behind the blond fop of a Defense professor, the classroom remained silent for a moment before a voice rang out.

"Bloody hell, Potter, how did you do that?" one of the Ravenclaw boys demanded. "That was awesome!"

"Awesome?" another of the boys asked. "That's an understatement if I ever heard one; that was bloody terrifying; I almost shat myself!"

For his part, Harry preened under the attention. "Um, well, a few years ago, I really wanted to learn how to growl real good, right?" At the other student's nods, he continued, "Well, I knew Mr. Snape already, and he's a really good growler, so I asked him if he could teach me how…."

"Wow, Snape can do that too?" one of the Ravenclaw girls interrupted incredulously. "I know you said he really wasn't out to get us last year, but I had no idea he was holding back that much!"

"Um, well, I don't actually know if Mr. Snape can do that," the dragon in the room qualified. "See, Mr. Snape didn't want to bother teaching me to growl, but he set me up with one of his friends who he said could growl even better than him, Mrs. Chelmsford! Eventually, I got to meet her, and she taught me how to growl proper." He finished with a firm nod.

"You mean a girl can do that?" Susan spoke up for the first time. When her housemate nodded, she breathed, "I could be even scarier than Aunt Amelia!"

With that, the class descended into excited chattering about growling lessons and the potential utility thereof, while one petite, dark-haired Ravenclaw sat quietly in the corner and watched the one at the root of the whole business speculatively.

The chaos lasted until someone finally thought to check the time, and then everyone rushed to get to their next class.

3.8.9 Dead end

Warm, artificial lighting glinted off the precisely machined edges of a silver hemisphere as Harry held it up for inspection. Both the internal and external surfaces of the piece were etched in a minutely detailed tracery of almost impossibly complicated runework.

The dragon sighed in relief that it had worked. It would have taken forever to do that by hand. Using the computer-controlled mill, it had still taken five days — the tool path was almost fifty miles long — but that was for two copies, plus a custom-machined Delrin ring to separate them which actually let the pieces snap together without screws or anything!

It was so neat!

However, Harry hadn't made the thing just to look pretty, and now it was time to test it. He snapped the two hemispheres and their insulating ring together before attaching the leads to his test apparatus. It still included an incandescent bulb for nostalgia's sake, but after his third attempt had made the original explode, he had added a supplementary bank of heavy-duty resistors to safely dissipate any excess energy. He had also invested in a multimeter which was currently hooked up across the test load to give a more precise picture of how things were working.

"Well, I guess this is the moment of truth," Harry murmured to himself. "Here goes nothing."

And with that, he inserted the tip of his wand into the newly machined device and pushed in a measured amount of magic. The bulb lit, much brighter than it had a year before, but the young dragon still frowned. Taking note of the measured voltage from the multimeter, he quickly switched out the newest sphere for one of his previous ones and repeated the procedure, working his way methodically through each of his previous attempts.

Harry had gotten far enough along in his alchemy studies to have a solid idea of just how much real energy he was putting into his casting now, at least he did if it was a big enough chunk of his total capacity for him to feel it properly. Armed with that knowledge and the multimeter readings, a bit of math led him to a plot of conversion efficiency versus runic complexity across his various attempts.

"Well, darn," the young dragon slumped in disappointment.

The plot was flattening out much too fast for Harry's peace of mind. Grabbing a ruler, he extrapolated out to an acceptable sort of conversion efficiency, given the current rate of improvement, only to realize the truth as his extrapolated curve reached the edge of the graph paper.

"Oh, man," the currently human-shaped dragon slouched back in his chair. "At this rate, even if we got it down to writing out the runes using individual silver atoms, it'd still barely hit twenty-five percent conversion efficiency."

"I wonder what's causing that? The lightning-rod runes are way more efficient... way simpler, too," he scratched at his head. "Maybe some kind of asymmetry, so it's easy to go one way, but not the other?"

"Huh."

The dragon shook his currently human-shaped head. "Something to look into, for sure, but no matter how you slice it, this kills my direct runic-conversion idea for good. With those losses, it won't work for much of anything, not unless energy gets so cheap it's free."

He buried his face in his hand as he sighed in frustration.

Harry sat, staring at the results from between his spread fingers for a few long moments before getting up and smoothly transitioning to his native form as he walked away.

"I'm gonna go for a fly," he announced to the Lair at large. "Suze, Hermione, either of you want to join me for a flight? I need some fresh air."

A few minutes later, the damning graph fluttered gently in the backwash from its author's wings.

3.8.10 Irritation

Another October day and Hermione Granger again found herself in the potions lab. Her partner, Neville Longbottom, was currently focused on finely mincing the spriggan leaves required for their current potion — a task which she had finally managed to train him to reliably accomplish after nearly a year's worth of effort — leaving Hermione with time for her mind to wander off to other, unrelated subjects.

The bushy-haired girl's interest was currently caught by two of the boys in the class, not because she was developing an interest in them as might be expected for a girl her age, but rather because she was quite infuriated at their very presence.

Which, come to think of it, was probably the second most probable reason for a girl her age to be focused on a boy.

The boys in question were a few years older than her cohort, and they were helping her professor administer the class, purportedly as a punishment.

Some punishment.

It just wasn't fair! Hermione bemoaned the situation, gripping the edge of the lab table until her knuckles turned white. The twins had caused all that trouble back at the beginning of the year, and then they got to be teaching assistants. Why couldn't she be a teaching assistant? She worked hard and studied ahead; they just pulled a stupid prank and then got rewarded for it!

Some of the older students even said Professor Snape might be taking them on as apprentices!

So unfair! What were the professors thinking?

Almost subconsciously, her hand released its white-knuckled grip on the lab bench and snapped over to keep Neville from adding the entire stack of minced leaves at once, a mistake which would have led to the potion bubbling over and being lost beyond recovery. It was a skill she had learned the hard way over the course the last year. She sighed in exasperation before catching Neville's attention and explained — again — what he had almost done.

At least he was a good distraction.

3.8.11 Requests

"Are you feeling alright, Harry?" Abigail asked her young friend.

They were once again at their usual library table, and Abigail sat at her usual spot across from the boy. Suze sat at the end, but Hermione was elsewhere, something to do with potions, if Abigail recalled correctly.

"Yeah, I'm okay," the currently boy-shaped dragon replied in an unusually subdued voice as he stared listlessly at a blank notebook before him, quill in hand.

"You don't sound okay," she countered.

"Just had that project I'd been working on take a bad turn," Harry explained, setting down the quill in favor of the conversation. "The rune systems I made just aren't gonna cut it for what I wanted to do, so I gotta think of something else to try. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but it's a bit of a let-down, ya know?"

"Ah," the seventh-year said knowingly. "I know how that goes. I mean, Defense has just been one long let-down this year; Professor Lockhart doesn't teach us anything."

"I know," Harry commiserated. "I've just been treating his class as a study period — like History."

"Same here," Abigail agreed. "The problem is I've got the NEWTs coming up, and I have no idea if my independent study is going to be enough." She sighed, "Why couldn't we have gotten a competent teacher this year?"

"Would you like me to help?" Harry offered after a moment's thought. "Not so sure I can do much for you with the practical stuff, but I can at least look over the theory and quiz you on it and stuff."

Abigail's eyes lit up. "Would you? It'd be great to get a fresh perspective on things."

"Sure!" Harry smiled. "Always happy to help a friend! Plus, it'll give me something to work on while I try to figure out a different approach to that project, too. Everybody wins!"

"Thanks, Harry!"

The table fell silent for a time before Harry spoke up again.

"Hey, Abigail?" he asked.

"Yes?"

"I was just thinking; who runs the NEWT thingy?"

Abigail frowned thoughtfully, "I think it's the Examinations Authority, but I don't know who's in charge there. Why do you ask?"

"Just had an idea that might help," Harry replied evasively. "I'll try to remember to give it a shot next week, figure they might be away for Halloween."

"Oh!" Abigail exclaimed. "That's this weekend, isn't it?" At Harry's incredulous look, she said defensively, "I've been worried about the Defense thing, so I haven't been looking at the calendar."
 
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Section 3.9 - Troubling developments
3.9 Troubling developments

3.9.1 Remembered promises

Severus Snape sat quietly in his personal laboratory, the room for once devoid of active brewing stations, and stared deeply into the flickering liquid flames of the still-unopened bottle of Ogden's firewhiskey on the lab bench in front of him. It was a hypnotically beautiful sight, so much so that the man was almost reluctant to crack open the bottle and disturb it.

Tearing his eyes away from the flames, the sallow-faced man's listless gaze wandered to the empty glass in his hand as he sank back into gloomy introspection.

It was the day before Halloween, the day before the anniversary of his childhood friend's death. Severus Snape still struggled mightily with that fact, even after more than a decade. It was all the worse because he rightly blamed himself for the circumstances leading to her murder. It hadn't been his intention — absolutely not — nor did he cast the spell, but still…

If only he had thought through the implications more carefully.

If only he had found another way.

If only...

The fact remained that he hadn't done any of those things, and the monster he had allowed to ensnare him in his youthful idiocy had murdered Lily all those years ago. That stark reality had chased him back time and again to the dubious comfort of the bottle.

In the first few years, time had slowly managed to dull the pain somewhat. Then Avebury had happened, and Lily's boy had been thrust into his life — green eyes, curiosity, good cheer, and a thousand different things painfully jogging the potions master's memory at every turn.

The wretched lizard just had to be too likeable for Snape to simply write him off as his father's son — blasted beast!

It was the same every year, the memories of his friend were painful, full of bitter regret and self-loathing, but they were all he had left of her. He was loath to block them out with the oblivion of alcohol, even temporarily. Remembering was the only thing he could do for her now, but the comforting nepenthe offered by the bottle was always there in the background, promising a respite... if only for a time.

It remained to be seen whether he would manage to resist the temptation this year.

At least Halloween proper usually saw him too busy with school activities to dwell much on the past, small comfort though that was. Unfortunately, sometimes the distractions were worse than the memories; the man gave a humorless chuckle as he thought back on the previous year's troll incursion.

Though, that did spark a half-forgotten memory…

Perhaps there was something he could do for Lily after all. Snape set his still empty glass down on the benchtop with a firm click and stood up to make for the door, his movements firm and purposeful.

He had a long-overdue reunion to arrange.

3.9.2 Visiting campus

It was an unusually sunny afternoon in late October, and the Hogwarts grounds were awash in sunlight. Tom walked through the brisk autumn air and pleasant scenery, eyes darting around to take in the sights as if for the first time in decades.

There! That was the bench he used to sit on and read back when he was a firstie — ooh, and that was the alcove where he practiced charms back in the day! Through the window there, you could see his favorite tree down by the lake from back when he was a student; it had grown so much!

For Tom, the walk through the school was a trip down memory lane. It was so nice to be able to walk about once more... and to do so through his old alma mater?

Priceless!

Though, nostalgia aside, he was running on borrowed time; he had to get a move on. He increased his pace, heading purposefully through one of the doors back into the castle and towards one of the many flights of stairs. First Tom needed to visit an old friend, and then he had a certain commitment back at the dorms that could only be put off so long.

As he turned to go up the next flight, he stumbled, catching a foot on the lip of one of the steps and falling heavily. As caught himself on his hands and got back up, he rubbed at the painful bruise forming on his delicate wrist as he tried again, more carefully this time.

"Bloody legs!" he cursed under his breath in a pretty soprano. "Why are they so damned short? How am I supposed to get around on these bloody things?"

Regardless, he only had so much time, so he made do, short legs or not. Now on the second floor, Tom cut through the crowded hallway, making for the girls' bathroom and entering unremarked-upon. He made for the sink and exchanged a friendly greeting with one of the Gryffindor sixth-years as she finished up at the sink and left without incident.

Now he was alone, and it was time to get to work.

A wand flicked at the door, ensuring he wouldn't be interrupted, and he turned towards the sink, quickly finding one tap ever so slightly different from the others.

There was a low hiss, and the stonework around the sink issued a grinding noise as it slowly opened, revealing a secret passage running down into the depths.

Tom calmly entered. It was time to meet with that old friend.

3.9.3 Solemn Visit

Mr. Snape had approached him the previous evening with an offer to take Harry to visit his parents' graves, just like they had talked about almost exactly a year before. It was an offer that Harry had quickly accepted; well-adjusted or not, Harry was still an orphan and, perhaps unsurprisingly, still quite eager for any connection he could manage to forge to his missing parents once someone had reminded him of the possibility.

It was only after Snape had left that Harry realized he had no idea what one was supposed to do on such a visit. After all, it wasn't like his parents would just say "Hello, son" when he walked up and then things could proceed like visiting any other person for a chat.

At least, he was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to work like that.

So, with no idea what he was supposed to do, Harry had turned to his usual go-to for such situations…

He had asked his damsels.

In this instance, Suze had proven rather less than helpful as an advisor. Though intimately familiar with dealing with the grief of losing loved ones, centaurs in the Black Woods Clan burned their dead on the occasions that they were able to retrieve bodies at all — not often the case when the acromantula had been on the loose in the forest — rather than burying them, and thus there were no graves to visit.

Hermione, on the other hand, was a font of useful information, having gone with her parents on quite a few occasions to visit the graves of several family members, including one of her grandparents and several of her great uncles who had died young during the War.

And so, armed with a wreath Suze had woven out of fresh evergreens from the forest just below the Lair — one of Hermione's suggestions — and sympathetic company in the form of his damsels, an unusually subdued Harry walked up the path to meet with a stoic Severus Snape and a quiet Abigail by the main gate of the school.

"Are you ready, Mr. Potter?" the potions master asked without preamble.

The young, currently human-shaped, dragon nodded affirmatively. "Yeah, and thanks for remembering about this, Mr. Snape." At Snape's nod, Harry turned to Abigail. "And thanks for coming, too, Abigail." The older girl gave him a brief hug in lieu of a verbal response.

With that, the group walked to the portkey transit point — a little off the beaten path around the school, it was in fact the same grassy area Harry remembered arriving at nearly four years previously. It was actually the first time the young dragon had been back there since; most of his portkey travel went to and from his Lair…

Harry shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts. It was weird what went through his head when he was nervous about something — all sorts of unimportant trivia when he should be focusing on more important stuff…

Important stuff like the fact that it was the eleventh anniversary of his parents' death, and it was about time he went for a visit.

Harry nodded to Mr. Snape, who said a word, and the quintet vanished from Scotland.

3.9.4 Petrified cat

Albus Dumbledore surveyed his domain from his thronelike perch at the staff table, and he deemed it good.

The Halloween feast had been in full swing for some time now, and the dull roar of students enjoying the celebration was music to the old teacher's ears. Joyful noise, happy conversations, and full stomachs stuffed with sweets — the students were a delight to observe this year, and judging by the smiles, his staff were of a like mind.

No invading trolls, no injured students, no roar of gunfire, and no ankle-deep lakes of blood in the hallways this year!

Admittedly, there were a few faces missing from the tableau, Albus thought with an audible sigh; though he supposed even those were more encouraging than not. He was about to reach for another lemon drop when his deputy chimed in with a question.

"Trouble?" she asked quietly, a subtly-cast privacy charm reducing the noise of the room to the point that her low voice was easily audible.

"No, why do you ask, Minerva?" Albus responded in a similar tone.

"Such a sigh is not like you, not at this sort of celebration," the stern Scotswoman explained.

"Ah," he had forgotten how good her hearing was — one of the minor traits that carried over from her animagus form. "No, I was simply reflecting on Severus' absence — it would have been agreeable to see him enjoying one of these feasts for once. The young Mr. Potter and his friends as well, for that matter."

Minerva nodded in understanding; she had had to arrange for others of the staff to cover Severus' duties after all.

"It certainly would have been — though I would not discount the importance of his current errand either," she offered. "It may be a more somber occasion than the feast, but do recall that Severus hasn't been able to bring himself to visit Lily's grave even once before tonight. I take it as a good sign that he is finally grieving properly. Not to mention Mr. Potter finally gets to visit his parents' gravesite."

Her face took on a distressed expression and her native brogue snuck into her diction, "Ah cannae believe ah forgot tae tell th' puir laddie where they were buried."

"Do not treat yourself too poorly, Minerva; you were certainly not the only friend of the Potters to forget that he would not know," Albus commiserated. "I bear just as much fault. Though I must admit it is heartening that Severus of all people was the one to remember and remedy the situation! Perhaps you are correct in your assessment of his state of mind."

Minerva nodded and would have continued were it not for the castle Caretaker bursting into the Great Hall shouting for the Headmaster to come quickly.

"Argus, what seems to be the matter?" Albus asked as he drew close to the man.

"It's Mrs. Norris," Argus explained in the angry-sounding voice that only those who knew him exceptionally well would realize meant he was close to tears. "On the second floor near bathroom seven… someone… she's…" the curmudgeonly man's explanation trailed off before he finished with genuine anger, "One of the little monsters has gone too far this time!"

Knowing that he would not be getting a coherent explanation out of the man any time soon, Albus set off for the location he had described, several of the staff and more of the curious students trailing along behind. When he arrived, it was to a discouraging scene.

A shallow puddle of water flooded the hallway, flowing out of the bathroom just down the hall — thankfully from a sink, judging by the lack of odor — and Argus' pet cat Mrs. Norris hung by her tail from one of the candle sconces that lit the hallway. That was not to say she had been tied there by her tail, rather she had been frozen stiff, and the natural curve of her tail had been hooked over the ironwork.

The animal had been petrified, and that was a troubling circumstance. Particularly when the elderly wizard's wand flashed into a standard dispel which failed to restore her to mobility. That meant it was beyond the similar charms taught to students.

Of course, perhaps even more troubling was the message on the wall next to her, written in blood — a message that hearkened back a long time indeed.

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware," Minerva read, her low voice clearly audible in the quiet hallway. "Albus, if this was a prank it was in exceedingly poor taste."

"Indeed, Minerva," Albus agreed thoughtfully.

"She's dead!" Argus interjected angrily. "One of the little blighters killed my cat! I'll have blood for this!"

"She's not dead, Argus, simply petrified," Albus explained gently as the distraught Caretaker's eyes lit with hope. "The restorative draught is simple enough to brew, though it requires fresh mandrake root."

"My second-year classes are growing a crop right now," Pomona Sprout volunteered from the back of the group. "They'll not be ready to harvest for another few months, however."

"Don't you have any in storage?" the Caretaker asked, sounding a little desperate. "I… I've got some money saved, if it'll help."

"I'm terribly sorry, Argus," the herbology professor apologized sadly. "Mandrake doesn't keep more than a few days after the harvest, and the adult plants are far too dangerous to keep around in their live state. I'm afraid we'll just have to wait."

"What about buying some from elsewhere?" the Caretaker turned to the Headmaster, grasping at any possibility. "Couldn't we get one from the apothecary or something? Maybe even an already prepared potion?"

"Ever since the counter-charms for petrification were developed, the demand for readily-available mandrake fell through the floor," Albus explained with an apologetic shrug. "It is only grown as needed now, mostly for producing seed stock or as training specimens for learning to deal with hazardous plants. It is — much as I hate to use the term in the present circumstances — a fortunate chance that we have some growing already, shaving nearly two months off our expected wait."

Dumbledore sent a sympathetic look at his subordinate. "We can, of course, ask around to see if anyone has a batch further along than our own, but the likelihood is extremely small. I would be remiss to mislead you with false hope."

Filch slumped in disappointment. His obvious dismay prompted Sprout to speak up again, her voice artificially bright in an attempt to raise her colleague's spirits, "At least since she's been petrified, your cat will be perfectly safe, Argus. She's in stasis now, so you needn't worry about her in the meantime."

At that point, the flamboyant Defense professor surged to the forefront, seemingly unable to resist interjecting himself into the situation, his sky-blue silks fluttering and his obnoxious cologne wafting through the hallway. As soon as he was certain he had the attention of everyone in the hallway, he spoke. "I'm terribly sorry I wasn't there, my good man; I know just the counter curse that could have spared her."

"Be that as it may, Gilderoy," the Headmaster interrupted, "you were not there, and we have other things to discuss. Minerva, see to it that the children are dismissed to their dormitories for the evening. Argus, if I could prevail upon you to intercept Severus at the gate when he returns from his current outing, please inform him that we will be holding the weekly staff meeting in the west conference room tonight to discuss recent events."

As the Caretaker nodded, Dumbledore turned to his other staff. "Complete your duties for the evening and make time to attend the staff meeting, please. We have much to discuss."

With that, he swept out of the hallway, colorful robes swirling in his wake and mind dredging up memories of half a century previous. After all, this was not the first time such a message had been sent, and the last time had culminated in the false accusation of a good man and the addition of a new ghost to the castle.

It would not be repeated, not on Dumbledore's watch.

3.9.5 Catharsis

Grave markers carved of the native gray stone crowded the lush green grass of the Godric's Hollow churchyard. The tiny parish was an ancient one which had already been nearly two hundred years old when the village saw the birth of the one who would eventually lend it his name, Godric Gryffindor, one of the founders of Hogwarts. While the church looked to have been well-maintained through the dozen or so centuries of its existence, many of the grave markers plainly showed their age.

One of the less-weathered markers played host to a young boy who, after an initial awkward attempt at solemnity, now chatted animatedly to the silent stone before him. He was under the close watch of two slightly older girls and a centaur in her late teens. Farther back, a dark man stood his own vigil.

Severus Snape watched, silent under a gray and cloudy sky, as Lily's boy reunited with his mother... at least as much as would ever be possible in this world. The scene was bittersweet, a sad-eyed but cheerful-sounding boy making the best he could of a visit to his mother's grave, but nothing would change the fact that the woman in question was dead.

Bittersweet or not, the dour potions master felt better than he had in more than a decade.

Finally, he had managed to do at least some small thing to atone for his horrendous judgement, something to at least partially apologize to Lily, a pittance to start paying down the tremendous debt he had incurred at her expense. Severus still dared not approach Lily's grave himself — he had done too much, too many terrible things — to be worthy of that honor, but seeing the boy do so…

The sight eased a weight on his soul the man had never thought would lift, even if only slightly.

And so, as the gray afternoon dimmed towards twilight and the cold bite of the evening wind began to nip at him despite his robes, Severus Snape remained silent, giving Lily's boy as much time as he needed before heading back to Scotland.

Even if only for the briefest of moments, his troubled soul was content.

3.9.6 Cologne

Of course, that content could not last. It would have been too much to ask for.

"Severus!" the much put-upon voice of Argus Filch rang out across the darkened courtyard near the school's main gate.

It was enough not only to catch the attention of the returning potions master, but also to catch the interest of the returning dragon, who paused in trek off campus to listen in.

"What is it, Argus?" Snape asked his colleague.

The gray-haired squib took a deep breath. "The Headmaster wanted me to tell you that he's moved the staff meeting to the west conference room after what happened tonight."

"'After what happened'? What exactly has occurred, Argus?" the potions master asked.

"Someone got my cat!" the unkempt man wailed. "Petrified 'er, they did."

"I presume with something more severe than the usual petrification jinx," Severus surmised, "else it would have been the work of but a moment to remedy the situation. Do we have a suspect?"

"Dumbledore said it'd take a restorative draught," Filch relayed. "And no one's got any idea what horrible monster attacked my poor cat! If I knew, I'd get 'em myself!"

"I see," the sallow-faced man acknowledged. "Thank you for the information, Argus."

And with that, Severus Snape swept off in a billowing cloud of dark robes.

"Um, Mr. Filch," a childish voice piped up.

The Caretaker whirled to the voice only to find the resident dragon, currently in human form, looking up at him in concern.

"What do you want, Mr. Potter?" Filch asked gruffly, holding back on his choicer vocabulary. This Potter, after all, rarely made extra work for him, unlike his father.

"Um, I heard you talking about Mrs. Norris," Harry began, "and I thought I'd offer to sniff around where it happened... you know, to see if I can figure out anything for you."

"That's…" Argus teared up a little, that simple offer was the nicest thing any student had done for him in years. "If you'd be so kind, Mr. Potter."

Harry's answering smile was like the sun coming up, and the pair made their way to the hallway in question, Harry's damsels trailing along in his wake.

"Achoo!" Harry's flaming sneeze dried off a small patch of the still-damp stone of the second-floor hallway in a puff of steam.

"What? What is it?" the Caretaker asked frantically. "Did you find something?"

"Sorry," Harry apologized, rubbing at his nose and breathing shallowly, before asking, "Um, was Professor Lockhart up here after Mrs. Norris got petrified?"

"Aye, he was," Filch replied. "Walked all over looking at everything. 'E said he knew the right counter curse, but I'm not so sure."

"I thought so," the young dragon said apologetically, "I'm sorry, but I can't smell anything here other than that nasty-smelling perfume stuff he wears all the time. It's why I sneezed."

"Nothing?" the Caretaker confirmed disappointedly.

"Nothing I can smell, anyway," Harry said sadly. "Sorry, Mr. Filch."

"Don't worry 'bout it," the bitter man allowed. "At least you tried, better than rest of the little monsters at this school. Most of 'em would'a cheered."

And with that, Harry bid the man good night.

3.9.7 Plans of action?

Severus Snape arrived at the west conference room just as most of his colleagues were leaving.

"I see that I have missed our planning session, then?" the sallow-faced man ventured.

"Indeed," the Headmaster confirmed. "Though there was precious little to share in any case. What do you know of the situation?"

"Only that Argus' cat was petrified at some point using a method potent enough to necessitate the use of a restorative draught," Severus informed him. "Argus was not forthcoming with more detail."

"Ah, yes, he rarely is," the elderly wizard allowed, "and even less so when distraught. Argus discovered the scene of the incident and informed me during the feast. Mrs. Norris was discovered, petrified and hung by her tail from a wall sconce on the second floor, at the corridor junction just outside the girls' bathroom. The corridor was flooded by overflowing one of the sinks, and a message was written on the wall in blood…"

"What kind of blood?" the potions master cut in.

Albus sighed, "We are uncertain at this point. Madame Pomfrey was able to confirm that it was not human, but spellwork was done to paint the message, and any magical traces are rather muddled." At the potions master's raised eyebrow, the elderly wizard nodded. "I will, of course, have a sample delivered to you for an assay."

"Was there anything of note written in the message?" Snape asked.

"It hearkens back to a similar set of messages written some fifty years ago during my predecessor's stint as Headmaster, referencing the Chamber of Secrets and an heir," the Headmaster sighed. "It seems I will have to badger Nicholas into returning my pensieve that you might review the scene. I am afraid Gilderoy managed to spoil most of the potential evidence in his attempts at grandstanding, behavior for which I have since reprimanded him. The student body traipsed through the rest."

"I see," Snape said tightly, lips thinned in irritation. "So, there is little hope of proactively hunting down the culprit?"

"Almost none, sadly," Albus tiredly agreed. "The order of the day is vigilance. The petrification was an advanced variant, so we are likely looking for student in their final year, or more likely an adult infiltrator."

The potions master nodded his agreement to the orders. "What about creatures or artifacts?"

"Creatures are a possibility," Albus allowed, "and a terrifying one at that, as nearly every creature known to be capable of petrification is absurdly deadly. Thankfully, they also tend to be rather difficult to move in secret, thus I am hopeful that we are not dealing with a cockatrice or — Merlin forbid — a basilisk."

"And an artifact?" Snape prompted.

"If it is an artifact, then we have little to fear," Albus stated matter-of-factly. "Anything small enough to move would have been single-use only if loaded with such a powerful curse, and I have since brought the detection wards up to wartime footing. The perpetrator will not smuggle in a replacement while they are in engaged."

"And how long until they will no longer be engaged?" the potions master asked pointedly.

The elderly wizard sighed tiredly, chin falling to his chest. "I should be able to handle the strain through the end of the winter break, though I will have to drop them before the students return. The mental strain of processing so many new arrivals in such quick succession might well render me catatonic. We can only hope that the perpetrator will reveal his or her hand before then."

Snape nodded. He had thought that would be the case. Most scanning wards co-opted the mind of their supervisor to perform such tasks which took its own toll, and a rather hefty one at that. They were wartime wards for a reason, extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures. Though, come to think of extraordinary times, there was another possibility to bring up.

"Concealment magics?" he asked, thinking of a similarly extraordinary time involving trolls during the previous year.

"Such do not work well with projective magics like petrification curses," the Headmaster reassured him. "The spell topologies interfere with each other, again necessitating a much larger container so that they might be kept separate. For concealment effective enough to evade the wartime detection wards and contain a petrification enchantment, we would be looking for an artifact about the size of one of the student beds — canopy included. I have already tasked the elves to be on the lookout for such things."

"Very well, Headmaster," Snape replied. "If that is all, I will seek my own rest."

"Severus?" When the man paused, Albus asked, "How was your visit to Godric's Hollow?"

The dark man fell silent for a moment. "It was… a relief."

"Ah," Albus smiled genuinely for the first time since Argus had burst into the hall that evening. "Sleep well then, my friend."

3.9.8 Refrigerator raider

Harry had been disappointed with his inability to help Mr. Filch, but the disappointment hadn't lasted for long. Soon it had been replaced by another, more immediate, concern.

On the morning after Halloween, Harry awakened bright and early to make his rounds of his various haunts in the forest as he was periodically wont to do, when upon entering a particular portion of the forest, he came across a decidedly horrifying sight!

"What happened to my spiders?" Harry demanded plaintively of the world at large.

His acromantula ranch was running perilously low on stock — fewer than half a dozen of the remaining giant spiders were big enough to be worth eating, and there had been nearly three times that number just the previous week! Worse yet, dozens of the little ones were scattered about, stone-dead and left to rot where they fell. It'd take months to replace them all, and who knew whether whatever killed them would happen again?

The spiders were sure to be less than forthcoming if he asked. Even though some of the largest ones could speak, they tended to be thoroughly reluctant to speak with him. The young dragon supposed it was understandable, given their respective roles in the situation — dinner and diner having some irreconcilable differences, and all — but that made the situation no less irritating.

However, the question remained: what else could he do?

Who else might know what had happened, if not the spiders themselves? Harry pondered the question for a few minutes while looking out over the clearing dotted with dozens of dog-sized dead spiders.

Maybe he could ask the centaurs?

3.9.9 Professional assessment

To Bane's experienced eye, it was obvious that something momentous had occurred.

As the Great Wyrm had reported, a number of adult spiders were missing and many of their young were scattered about the area, stone dead, a sight which inspired within the veteran centaur warrior no small amount of vindictive glee, but that was hardly the only evidence apparent to his experienced eye. Seemingly random trees were rubbed clean of bark on one side or another, strange arcing trenches were dug into the ground — always in conjunction with an adjacent ridge on the convex side of the curve — and much of the undergrowth was crushed and shredded.

The stripped trees and the disturbed earth almost reminded Bane of the traces of a snake, but the sheer scale of them caused the experienced hunter to immediately shy away from the conclusion and dismiss the similarity as coincidental. A snake large enough to leave those traces would be larger than the Great Wyrm!

Ludicrous!

While the cause remained a mystery, there was one particular feature of the scene that nagged at the centaur. Despite the damage to the clearing, there were no obvious signs of struggle from the spiders. There was no webbing strewn about, no stripped leaves in the higher branches from attempts to flee, not even any scrabbling in the dirt. The tracks around the smaller spiders indicated normal movement for the eight-legged monsters, right up to a certain point, then there was simply an unbroken line from the imprint of their last step dragged through the dirt to where the legs lay in death — obviously traced by the limb as the spider's muscles contracted post-mortem.

The chitinous horrors seemed to have dropped dead in their tracks — literally in their tracks — no struggle, no panicked attempt to flee, nothing, simply instant death between one step and the next.

This left Bane rather understandably concerned.

"I see," the centaur mumbled.

"Do you know what happened?" the Great Wyrm asked, his still young voice eager.

"I cannot fathom the cause, Great One," Bane explained, "the traces are unlike any I have encountered previously; however, the methods used to kill the spiders give me pause."

"What about them?"

"The placement of the corpses indicates neither struggle nor flight, Great One," the centaur explained, pointing to the remaining spiders. "Every trace implies that nearly fifty acromantula dropped dead instantly, too fast for them to even register the threat. Worse yet, the remaining dead show no injury. The only method I know to kill in this manner is the wanded Killing Curse, but for so many to be cast nearly instantaneously, with such unerring accuracy... the idea strains credulity."

The Great Wyrm considered that for a moment before slowly nodding in acceptance. "I suppose we'll have to keep an eye on things to see what's going on, then. Do you think you can help?"

"Great One, we will of course assist in this endeavor should you ask it of us — we owe you much, after all — but I ask you to mind the difference in our durability," Bane said carefully, wincing internally at the idea of ordering any of his scouts to track a foe capable of accomplishing what he had seen with the acromantula. "We cannot prepare for that which we do not understand, and whatever killed so many of the spider plague is just such a thing. My scouts are unlikely to survive such an encounter to report what they learn."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that!" Harry exclaimed, sounding horrified at his oversight. "Sorry. Um… I guess I'll have to check it out myself, then. I guess I can just go wait out there myself, but I only have time on the weekends 'cause of classes…"

He squinted speculatively up at the thick forest canopy, rustling in the ever-present wind. "I'll probably have to stay on the ground to make sure I can see whatever it is." The young dragon looked around the area. "Maybe that one spot up on the east ridge? That's got a good view."

"If I might make a suggestion, Great One?" Bane offered carefully, barely suppressing a cringe at the naivete on display. Though, to be fair, the centaur supposed, the Great Wyrm normally hunted from the air; perhaps different considerations came into play. "While the east ridge provides excellent visibility, it also leaves you very visible as well. You may wish to conceal your presence in order to avoid scaring off the culprit."

"That makes sense," the dragon said brightly, though his face fell as he looked for another spot with good visibility that could provide him proper cover and found none. "Maybe I could wait around as a pigeon or something?"

"Perhaps that might not be the best idea," he said, carefully considering the situation. "You are concerned about the survival of your livestock, correct?" At the young dragon's nod, the centaur warrior continued, "The young spiders are quite stupid, and I fear they would attack you continually were you to wear such an unobtrusive form. You would either need to kill them — defeating your own purpose — or you would need to fend them off constantly, drawing attention to your position."

The dragon nodded in understanding. "And any other form I might take would either be too intimidating, just like my real one, or would have the same problem with the spiders…" Harry's face fell. "Darn. I don't think I'd be able to manage a disillusion spell any time soon, though. I mean learning that messenger spell took weeks…"

Bane considered that for a moment. "Perhaps my clan can assist you after all," the centaur warrior offered tentatively, "though it would require a great deal more rope than we currently have ready. Hmm…"

"What are you thinking of, Mr. Bane?" the Great Wyrm asked. "I mean, I can get a lot of rope if we need it, but it won't be as strong as the acromantula silk stuff…"

"It needn't be so strong for the purpose I have in mind, Great One," Bane assured him.

"What are you thinking of then, Mr. Bane?" the Great Wyrm asked.

And the experienced hunter explained.

3.9.10 Ambush predator?

The ensuing explanation had made a great deal of sense to the young dragon. Harry was very large and intimidating-looking, as was right and proper for a dragon, but having something like that hang out in an area was a good way to discourage any intruder from showing itself. Thus Harry's search would be fruitless if he advertised his presence to the world at large, and magic was off the table simply because Harry would not be able to practice enough with the spells to perform them in a reasonable period of time. Instead, Bane had suggested that Harry hide himself through a more mundane method.

Camouflage.

It was a something the Black Woods Clan had used from time to time to great effect, particularly during the heights of the spider plague when the woods were at their most deadly and the prey were accordingly cautious. Tying a screen of fresh branches to the hunter provided a mobile screen against prying eyes — a screen that, unlike dyed fabrics, worked even in the face of creatures like the acromantula that viewed the world differently than most. There was no way for the spiders to tell the difference between the screen and normal foliage simply because it was normal foliage.

Perhaps more importantly for the current situation, it was also a scalable solution. Bane saw no reason that such a method wouldn't work just as well for Harry as it did for a centaur — provided, of course, that they could get enough rope, which was a significant proviso to be sure.

But once again, as it had so many times during the young dragon's childhood, the industrial revolution came to the rescue.

Unlike his CNC machine, the rope order had arrived quickly, purchased by a Gringotts-employed agent that very evening and added to the daily train shipment the next morning. What would have represented, quite easily, years of continuous work for the centaur clan was available as ready stock from a supplier in London.

So it was that, as the sun rose above the horizon on the next Saturday morning, the young dragon made his way down to the centaur encampment with Suze in tow and stood impatiently as his allies decked him out with a shaggy covering of various cuttings from the local underbrush. Once Bane pronounced him properly attired, Harry made his way to a carefully-chosen vantage point overlooking the spider preserve — moving carefully to avoid snagging his new suit on the surrounding foliage.

Once the ambulatory hedgerow settled into place, the hunt was on; though it soon proved to be a hunt to which the young dragon's temperament was singularly ill-suited. While the notion of quietly lying in wait to ambush his prey felt indescribably right to Harry in a deeply atavistic manner, possibly due to his new species' long-ago origins as a sapient offshoot of their crocodilian ancestors, he had never been prone to sitting patiently for long periods of time with nothing to do.

It promised to be a long, long weekend.
 
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Section 3.10 - Asking advice and mounting tensions
3.10 Asking advice and mounting tensions

3.10.1 Aftermath

The excitement of Halloween soon faded from the minds of the students. Whoever had been responsible had not seen fit to offer a reprise, and rightly or wrongly, a significant percentage of the student body were torn on how to view the attack. On the one hand, the perpetrator had left a thoroughly distasteful message written in blood on the wall of one of the hallways, but on the other… well, the only victim was Mr. Filch's cat, bane of pranksters, troublemakers, and hormonal teenagers alike in her role as the single most effective hall monitor in the school.

Many saw the incapacitation of Mrs. Norris as a public service.

There was even some talk among the more mischievously-inclined students — at least those of their number not currently under the supervision of Severus Snape and were thus too busy to do much talking about anything at all — of sending the perpetrator a gift basket in thanks for his or her services.

For most, the first weeks of November passed as a quiet blur of classes attended and homework completed, punctuated by uneventful weekends that nevertheless inevitably formed the high point of any given week.

Of course, 'uneventful' meant different things for different people.

3.10.2 Correspondence

A thick gray layer of clouds scudded by overhead, driven by the perennial stiff breeze blowing in off the sound. Far below, the breeze ruffled the trees of the Black Woods, shaking the needles on the evergreens and slowly stripping the autumn finery from their more colorful neighbors. Under that restless canopy, the resident dragon of the Black Woods settled into the same hollow he had used the past weekend. The day promised to be a miserable one — dull and cold, damp and cloudy, accompanied by the occasional spattering of icy rain just to ensure that you didn't manage find some way to get comfortable.

Once again covered by freshly cut branches tied artfully to hide his massive form from easy view, Harry prepared for another interminable session of standing watch over his spider ranch, vigilant for any sign of the poacher who had killed so many. It was bad enough he had already been forced to rework the menu for his planned Hogs Haulage Christmas Party because of the recent losses, and he didn't want to lose the stock entirely. That would be a tragedy!

Where else was he going to find shellfish big enough to grace his table?

Despite its importance, the mission had nonetheless proven to be exceedingly boring, and this time, Harry had prepared accordingly. In a waterproof case he had brought along several books, a pad of paper, a clipboard, and a self-inking dictation quill complete with penknife — all looking exceptionally tiny as he laid them out on the forest floor under the protection of his slightly-extended wing. The young dragon had craned his neck around to keep an eye on his progress as he put all those magical control exercises to a practical use unpacking for the day; he couldn't do it the normal way, switching to human form would make all the ropes come undone.

Harry just hoped the quill would work okay with the paper — rolled parchment was way too difficult to work with on a standard clipboard, and he had yet to find anyone who made a pad of the stuff. Paper was supposed to wear down the point on the quill quickly, but he was nonetheless hopeful. If it wore down too quickly, he was really going to be stuck testing the limits of his fine control one way or another. Turning pages with his magic was easy enough, but actually writing directly was a whole other ball of wax. Nonetheless, he had also included a few cheap ballpoint pens in his supplies for just that eventuality.

Massive green eyes narrowed speculatively; maybe it would be worthwhile to enchant a fountain pen instead?

After a moment's speculation, Harry shook his head and dismissed the idea. That was a question for the future; there were a lot of those stacking up. For the present, Harry needed to keep an eye out for anything suspicious on the ranch and catch up on some correspondence he had been meaning to handle.

First up was the next round in his ongoing exchange with his uncle and his cousin. Dudley's last letter had informed him that his cousin had made the junior wrestling team at Smeltings School, and Harry wanted to congratulate him on that.

Uncle Vernon's had relayed that the man was still working on getting Aunt Petunia to agree to visit. He was not hopeful for this year but fully intended to keep on trying. Harry wanted to thank his uncle for that, but he also wanted to share how his first experiments in automated machining had gone. The Grunnings carbide tooling Vernon had sold him had performed perfectly, and Harry wanted to let his uncle know that. Plus, it was a good opportunity to keep in touch.

The letters had taught Harry that it was kind of nice to just talk to family, even if it was at a distance.

For a time, the forest was filled with the pattering of rain and the rustle of wind-blown leaves — the low mumble of the young dragon's voice only sporadically audible as he dictated to the quill. Eventually, with his personal letters finished, Harry paused to sharpen the quill — a fine trick when levitating both the quill and the penknife — and turned his thoughts to a new topic, this one somewhat less straightforward.

The last time he had spoken with Abigail, an idea had occurred to him which could help her out with a particular spot of trouble. Harry thought it would work, but he figured he ought to run it by Mr. Slackhammer first. The dapper goblin was much better versed in the labyrinthine twists of wizarding politics than he, and Harry didn't want to accidentally step in another metaphorical manure pile like he had with that nasty Umbridge woman a few years back. It was hard to tell ahead of time with the Ministry.

Not to mention, he needed a name for the person to approach to get what he wanted — it was a bit hard to talk someone into doing something when you didn't know who to talk to in the first place.

3.10.3 Brooding

Hermione stood alone on the lip of the Lair with her attention turned inward as she stared out over the wind-tossed forest, bundled up in several layers topped with her pointed school hat to fend off the wind and damp. There had been an embarrassment of time to think recently, and this afternoon was no different.

Hermione had finished organizing Harry's library during the previous month — including assembling the rare books section to her own satisfaction. The only thing left to add was a pensieve, and Harry was still trying to track one down for purchase, so that would have to wait. With that diversion put to bed, Hermione had turned her full attention to her schoolwork, schoolwork which had so far proven categorically incapable of occupying her days.

Normally, Harry filled the gap for her. Despite his generally boyish manner, her friend was amazingly well-read for his age, and there was rarely a time when he was not working on something interesting. The Lair had never lacked for conversation topics or interesting research problems to catch her interest and occupy a few dozen hours with subsequent wide-ranging journeys through Harry's impressive library — not until recently.

Not until the past few weeks.

Hermione sighed as the rain picked up again, as it had been doing on and off all day. She pulled the brim of her hat down to ward off the spitting, icy-cold rain before settling back into her thoughts.

Her often dragon-shaped friend had been thoroughly preoccupied of late, spending every weekend on some project of his involving the giant spiders. Just this morning had seen him fly off to the centaur's current autumn camp in pursuit of it.

Come to think of it, that meant he was bearing the full brunt of the current weather. The bushy-haired girl shivered in sympathy — she hoped he was staying warm.

She vaguely remembered Harry saying something about 'protection' and 'ambush', but to be honest, as soon as she had heard the word 'acromantula' Hermione had immediately tuned out the rest. She wanted nothing to do with the cottage-sized highly aggressive spiders. They were dangerous, and they creeped her out, no matter how delicious they could be when properly cooked.

Unfortunately, that snap decision had left the bushy-haired girl out of the loop, and being out of the loop had left her with an embarrassment of free time, and an embarrassment of free time had left her bored, and boredom was a serious problem for someone like Hermione Granger. Other people might treat quiet times as a time to shut the mind off and enjoy life — perhaps sitting down with a cup of tea in hand to watch the world go by. Not so for Hermione, her mind refused to shut off. She had to think about something, and without new questions to pursue she usually reverted to old, unanswered ones.

Old, unanswered, generally frustrating questions that she gnawed at like a particularly stubborn dog worried a bone.

Such generally led to no good; a case-in-point being her current conundrum, which had led the bushy-haired girl to stand on a ledge halfway up a cliff, outside, during a Highland rainstorm in November in the vague hope that the change in venue would lead to some new insight into a months-old question that really wasn't very important in the first place but nonetheless refused to release its grip on her mind.

As she had for the past two months, Hermione had been turning the question of the twins' supposed punishment over and over in her head. Why had they been rewarded for making trouble? How was that fair? And perhaps more importantly, why did they get to do that when she didn't? She couldn't see the logic in the teachers' actions in this case — it seemed unjust, a transgression which was rewarded rather than punished — and the perceived injustice was bothering her to no end.

The trouble was, she couldn't see a way to get her answers, either. She'd already asked Professor Snape months ago during the first class of the term, and he hadn't explained anything about the why of the situation. He'd just said it was a punishment duty and left it at that!

Some punishment!

Advanced tutoring, helping to teach, even what was effectively an apprenticeship started years early, if that was the punishment for rule-breaking she was tempted to sign up! But she couldn't help but think that there was something she was missing, some peculiarity of the situation that led to the twins' 'punishment' that wouldn't happen for her if she were to try to imitate them.

She wouldn't want to act out and ruin her reputation only to fail to achieve the result she wanted.

If only there was someone to ask so she could make sure. Someone who might explain the situation better…

…well, she supposed there was someone; she would just have to make sure she asked outright this time, rather than implying things.

3.10.4 Baby steps

All done up in darkly varnished wood, leather cushions, brass fittings, and green glass, Crackjaw Slackhammer's office was the picture of a plush, if somewhat old-fashioned, executive's suite — a fitting choice for the plush, somewhat old fashioned, executive who occupied it. The goblin in question currently sat at his desk reading a letter sent to him by his youngest business partner. On reading the last of the missive, he set the paper gently down on the green leather blotter covering his desk and looked up, beady black eyes gleaming with interest.

"Already looking into political solutions, is he?" the Vice Director chuckled. "At least he had the good sense to seek advice before leaping in with all four paws!"

There had been a time when the young Great Wyrm had done just that to a real pond. Slackhammer smiled as he recalled the tale, relayed by a member of Color Sergeant Griphook's security detail. After jumping in with a yell, his youthful business partner had apparently been quite surprised when the pond turned out to be much shallower than he had anticipated, leaving him ankle deep in mud with most of the water ejected out onto the surrounding moor by the rapid introduction of his not-inconsiderable bulk to the small body of water. A small, but still significant, portion of that water had ended up drenching the young Miss Suze who had gently but very firmly berated him.

The infantry gob's description of the poor dragon's bewildered expression had been hilarious, drawing many a good-natured laugh from his drinking partners in the months since. He hadn't needed to pay his bar tab for weeks.

The Vice Director chuckled, "Good times, good times."

Then the dapper goblin's eyes narrowed, and his smile faded as his sharp mind turned back to business. "So, how best to approach this?" he mused. "The Examination Authority is headed by… hmm, she might actually be the best target, I seem to remember…"

"Mr. Steelhammer?" the slightly rotund goblin's voice rang out. As his aid entered with alacrity, the Vice Director scrawled out a note. "Please pull our dossier on this witch, I need to refresh my memory of certain details." Steelhammer took the slip of paper with a businesslike nod and left.

Slackhammer smiled to himself as he waited for his aide to return. It was a fine thing indeed to watch over his young friend's growth... almost as fine a thing as it had been to watch over his own sons'. Mr. Potter might not be of the Vice-Chairman's own line, nor even of his own species, but some things seemed to be universal, growing up among them. Even if the specifics varied, the gestalt remained quite familiar.

Of course, there was also no doubting the young dragon's critical, and above all thoroughly practical, importance to the future of the goblin nation. The young dragon was already directly responsible for the biggest increase in Gringotts profits since the introduction of the steam engine, and Slackhammer could see nothing on the horizon that might slow that trend in the foreseeable future. That fact would have seen Slackhammer looking out for his young partner in any event; that the boy was so likeable was simply a generous gratuity on the exchange.

And this particular request appealed on a number of levels.

The young lad sought to ensure his friend learned to protect herself properly. To be sure, the young dragon wasn't doing the sensible thing and gifting his young lady a proper gun, but Slackhammer supposed different standards applied. The young Miss Abercrombie was after all a witch, not a goblin. In any case, it seemed a romantic sort of gift, much better than those flowers or sweets humans usually seemed to prefer for such things.

The dapper goblin sighed. Most importantly, it was a gift that he'd be all too happy to help his young friend procure, and not solely for sentimental reasons.

Mr. Steelhammer returned with the requested dossier, and the Vice Director thanked him before cracking open the folder.

While the Vice Director would hardly deny his matchmaking tendencies — nor would any of his children, who had suffered through them for years — they were hardly his only motivation, nor even his primary one. Slackhammer also saw in this an opportunity to help his business partner get his feet wet in wizarding politics without making too much of a splash — a bit of a political primer, as it were. Best to get any adolescent floundering out of the way while the stakes were low, and failure would pose little risk to the Nation.

Neither Slackhammer himself nor the goblin nation as a whole had any desire to see the aftermath of the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts jumping into the political pond with all four paws and end up standing ankle deep in the bloody mud of a mostly-emptied wizarding world — no matter how satisfying it would be to see the wizards receive their comeuppance. The muck would splash all over everyone, including the Brethren, and they would all be worse off for it.

It was hard to make a living as the premier merchant bank serving a graveyard, after all.

3.10.5 An ill-considered question

As she made her way through the dim, torchlit passageways of the castle dungeon outside Professor Snape's office on her way to ask a question, Hermione Granger wondered not for the first time why she cared so much about this.

Here she was, taking up some of the limited time in her schedule she normally spent with her friends to go ask her teacher about the punishment he was doling out to two people she barely even knew, and not even because she thought it was too harsh! She could have understood her own motivations if she was trying to spare someone unjust punishment, even if it was a stranger, but no, she was after this because she thought they weren't being punished enough!

Seriously, who did this kind of thing? It just seemed kind of… well… vindictive, even to her, and she was the one doing it! Did she really want to be that kind of person? Going out of her way just to make sure someone got punished enough to satisfy her sense of fair play — well, she could kind of understand that, she supposed, but it was Professor Snape doing the punishing!

If you couldn't trust Professor Snape to punish someone properly, then who could you trust?

The bushy-haired second-year shook her head, trying to dismiss her misgivings. The question had been bugging her for months now, and she just knew it wouldn't leave her alone until she finally got her answers — plus, she was here already, so she might as well not waste the trip.

She knocked and then opened the door when she heard an acknowledgement from within.

"Miss Granger," Professor Snape spoke without looking up from the parchment on his desk. "What brings you to my office this evening?"

"Um… I had a question, Professor," she said before she fell silent as she tried to formulate the question properly.

A long moment passed before her professor grew tired of waiting for her to continue.

"And?" he prompted impatiently. "What is your question, Miss Granger? I cannot enlighten you if you do not do me the basic courtesy of telling me what you wish to know."

The bushy-haired girl swallowed nervously and then began, "Well, you remember back on the first day of class, when I asked you why the Weasley twins were standing in front of the class with you?" At her professor's nod, she continued, voice gaining strength as she went. "Well, you said they were being punished for the thing at the beginning of the year, but you just had them working as your teaching assistants, and some of the older students said you were treating them pretty much like your apprentices."

"Yes, that is an accurate summary," Snape confirmed impatiently. "Where, exactly, are you going with this, Miss Granger?"

"Well, how exactly is that a punishment?" she burst out. "I mean they made all that trouble at the beginning of the year and they get apprenticeships out of it? That doesn't seem fair at all!" she huffed.

She was met with an expectantly raised eyebrow.

Hermione colored. "I mean, 'that doesn't seem fair at all, Professor Snape'?"

"A fair question, Miss Granger," Snape allowed with a nod, "one which I shall endeavor to explain. Your senior colleagues engaged in two distinct escapades at the beginning of the year; one involving flying an enchanted car over the castle in a stunt which managed to trigger one of the castle siege wards, nearly killing the two miscreants through thaumotoxic shock in the process…"

Hermione gasped at that revelation.

"…and one which resulted in nearly the entire student body, as well as one member of the staff, being temporarily transformed into copies of the two troublemakers." Snape continued, "The first was unquestionable idiocy, but it was idiocy which only truly risked the wellbeing of the Misters Weasley. Had that been the extent of their activities, no doubt they would have received detention as normal. The far more serious issue was the transformation."

"Why is that, Professor?" the bushy-haired girl asked when the man paused to take a sip from the glass on his desk. "When I asked, some of the older students said they'd pulled transformation pranks lots of times before."

"The issue lies in the method employed, Miss Granger," the professor explained. "I will not name the method to you, but it is exceedingly dangerous. The Misters Weasley risked not only their own wellbeing by using it, but also that of every person who interacted with the portal to the train platform between the time they placed the trap over a week beforehand and the time law enforcement placed it under quarantine at my request during the opening feast."

Seeing his student's wide eyes, Snape continued, "I have no idea what deity smiled down on us that day that we managed to avoid the worst, but by all rights, that particular bit of stupidity should have cost at least several hundred people — possibly the better part of a thousand — their lives."

"Oh my God!" Hermione gasped, horrified.

"A distinct possibility, Miss Granger," her teacher acknowledged. "In any case, had the Misters Weasley been a few years older, they would have been referred to Magical Law Enforcement and charged appropriately for recklessly endangering a significant portion of wizarding Britain. As they are still underaged, however, the worst we could do in the absence of actual deaths resulting from their actions would have been expulsion."

His bushy-haired student gasped in horror at the idea.

"While such a punishment would have been quite well-deserved, it would not have addressed the true dilemma," Snape explained. "With this incident, the Misters Weasley have proven themselves to be both talented enough to cause a great deal of damage and simultaneously foolish enough to go ahead with such actions despite the dangers."

He paused for another sip as Hermione listened in rapt attention. "I could not in good conscience inflict such a combination on the world, so I have taken it upon myself to… render them safe, as it were."

The bushy-haired girl thought for a time as her professor returned to whatever task had absorbed his attention before she interrupted, leaving her to her thoughts. Eventually she frowned.

"That makes sense, I suppose, Professor," Hermione allowed. "But it still seems odd to essentially give them apprenticeships for doing what they did — like you're rewarding bad behavior instead of punishing it."

Her teacher smiled thinly; it was not a pleasant sight. "I assure you, Miss Granger, I know my business. Why don't you ask the perpetrators themselves whether they feel properly 'rewarded'?"

He gestured to the other side of the room where, when Hermione turned around, she saw for the first time a table set up in a corner behind the door — thus not visible when she walked in to the room — with both the Weasleys in question hunched over separate stacks of parchment and books. They looked up at the professor's words.

"It's hell," one twin said simply, haunted eyes locked on hers as he nodded at the younger girl. "George and I haven't done anything but eat, sleep, go to class, and work for Professor Snape since we got out of the Infirmary."

"Not a single bloody thing," the other twin, presumably George, echoed then his voice fell to a horrified whisper. "We even had to drop quidditch!"

"Idle hands are the devil's playground, Mr. Weasley," the professor cut in. "You may have at least a modicum of your leisure time returned when I can trust that you and your brother will behave responsibly on your own. At present, I cannot."

"He does spot checks on obscure potions stuff all the time, too!" Fred volunteered.

"And when we get something wrong," George broke in again, "he makes us run laps around the castle. Laps! Who does that in a wizarding school, anyway?"

"Exercise is important for your health, Mr. Weasley," Snape spoke up in a reasonable tone that nonetheless somehow carried an edge of sadism. "Now that I am occupying so much of your time, you do not have the luxury of regular exercise during your free time. It thus falls to me to look after you as my students."

His tone shifted to a pedantic one, "As to running laps in particular, Mr. Weasley, it is simply because you continue to insist on forgetting the proper order of addition for the neurogenesis potion, and that particular error would lead to the potion burning through the bench and melting off your legs at the knee. I had hoped that the burning in your legs resulting from exercise would serve as a reminder of what you would have lost and encourage you should study harder."

He smiled darkly, "See to it that you do not neglect to recall an interaction which would release toxic gas, Mr. Weasley — you will not enjoy the reminder I have in mind for that eventuality."

The twins both shuddered in horror, turning back to their work with a renewed fervor.

"Their tutelage shall continue until I am satisfied that the Misters Weasley are ready to use their potions knowledge responsibly, Miss Granger," the potions master turned his attention back to his bushy-haired student. "If they work hard, they may manage to graduate with their original cohort. If they do not… if they do not, I am prepared to continue their training until they do... or until it kills them. In this, for once, I find that I am not selective."

"Does that satisfy your curiosity, Miss Granger?" the potions master asked in a tone implied that any answer other than 'Yes, Professor Snape' would be foolish in the extreme.

"Yes, Professor Snape."

Sharon Granger hadn't raised any fools.

"Excellent," he said, pausing for a moment before continuing in a serious sort of voice. "Miss Granger, I have indulged your curiosity in this instance as it served a greater purpose," he paused to shoot a significant glance at the two Weasley brothers, "but note in the future, that, fair question or not, as a student of this institution the punishments of your peers are not subject to your approval, nor are they within appropriate bounds of inquiry."

She swallowed nervously.

"Do not interject yourself into such things again unless asked to do so by a member of the staff," he instructed firmly.

"Yes, Professor Snape," she repeated, mortified at the rebuke.

"You are dismissed, Miss Granger," the dark man nodded, turning back to his work with the matter settled.

After she had closed the door behind her, Hermione wandered down the hall, wide-eyed.

She'd just been reprimanded, reprimanded for reasons she even agreed with!

She'd known she was out of line from the beginning of this whole thing; she was just a normal student, punishments were only her business if she was the one being punished. So what had possessed her to do that, anyway? Was she really just that much of a nosy busybody?

Hermione shook her head, disgusted with herself. She knew better than that! She should have just trusted that Professor Snape would handle things, rather than butting into it. He hadn't even told her anything new; the explanation was basically a repetition of Suze's take on the situation.

Asking had been a stupid idea, and she'd known it was a stupid idea, but then she'd gone and done it anyway. She walked faster as if she were hoping to outrun her embarrassment.

What had she been thinking?

3.10.6 Overindulgence

"I can't believe it took you so long to recover," Tom hissed loudly — raising his voice to make himself heard over the grating rasp of his companion's sedate locomotion through the otherwise empty stone hallway. "Why did you eat so much, anyway?"

His companion hissed plaintively in response.

"I know you were hungry, Charlotte. That's why I let you out to hunt," he allowed. "I just want to know why you thought it appropriate to gorge yourself. You ate so much you slept for two and a half weeks!" Tom shook his head, long hair swishing about his dainty shoulders. "You knew perfectly well I had plans for you last week!"

Another hiss.

"You weren't sure when you'd have another chance?" Tom asked, incredulity obvious in his hissing voice. "Did you actually think I'd just leave you down there without a chance to eat?"

Yet another hiss.

"I'm sorry about that, Charlotte, but I couldn't figure out a way to manage it," Tom explained, scrubbing at his face with one hand in embarrassment. "And even then, I made sure to put you back in stasis! Seriously, what kind of friend do you take me for?"

There was yet another hiss, this one somehow apologetic sounding.

"It's alright, Charlotte, just... try not to do it again," he sighed, reaching up to pat his companion comfortingly on the side. "We'll figure things out, just you wait and see. I only ask that you make sure to let me know about these sorts of things ahead of time, so I can plan around them."

At the sound of another hiss, this one somewhat more involved, Tom perked up. "Not for another couple weeks, you say? That is rather helpful, Charlotte, thank you. Just don't push yourself too long; I don't want you to eat so much at once again. Things will be easier if you are indisposed more frequently for short periods rather than infrequently for long ones."

He was answered by an affirmative-sounding hiss as the pair ambled on down the empty hallway. Silence descended for a time, broken only by the dull rasp of the movement of Tom's companion, until he spoke up once more as they came to a junction with another hallway.

"Charlotte, make your way to the Badgers' territory. Your target will be returning there within the hour after he completes his detention — remember, inner eyelids shut!" He drew to a stop at his companion's interrogative hiss, hand moving to pat his companion's side. "I need this one alive for now. There's a rhythm to this sort of thing; we need to keep the fear building so people don't forget, but if we push too fast, we'll get more of a response than I can manage at this point. Slow and steady is the way to go — it will put the prey in the right mindset while my subordinate puts the rest of the plan in motion. I will let you know when the time comes to strike in earnest."

Another affirmative hiss came from Charlotte.

"I had planned to start with that annoying brat with the camera," Tom narrowed his eyes in distaste. "A small target, but annoying enough that most people would be torn between fear that he was attacked and relief that they didn't have to deal with him... and they'd be feeling a subtle undercurrent of guilt for thinking the latter. It's always easier to put something over on someone if you manage to convince them they deserve it. It would have been ideal for promoting delay and indecision. Since you were asleep for so long, though," he shot a pointed look at Charlotte, "he's no longer going out to take pictures of the campus at night, got caught by one of the prefects. He'd have been ideal, but we can make do." He nodded to himself, long hair bouncing with the motion. "We can make do."

Tom turned to his companion briskly. "After you finish, await me in your lair," he commanded. "Take care, my friend, and let no one aside from your target see you."

With one final hiss of acknowledgement, the pair parted company — Tom heading off towards the nearest stairway up, and his companion pausing before a seemingly blank section of wall before a hissed command had the stone grating aside to reveal a secret passage.

As the doorway to the hidden passage closed after her, the grinding of stone on sliding on stone faded, leaving the hallway silent as a tomb.

3.10.7 Building concerns

The morning had begun much like any other. Harry had awoken after a good sleep, gotten ready for the day, and made his way to the school, carrying his damsels along for the ride. All seemed well with the world until the trio arrived at the doors to the Great Hall where the tension seemed thick enough to cut with a knife.

Heck, it was thick enough that Harry noticed it right away!

As the two children and a slightly older centaur made their way to their customary place at the Hufflepuff table for breakfast, Harry took in the worried looks on the faces of his housemates. The young dragon reviewed his memories of the previous few days to try to think of anything that might have upset so many people. He couldn't think of anything to fit the bill.

"What happened to make everyone so upset?" Harry asked of the table at large.

Cedric, who had been staring blankly at his currently untouched plate, jerked at hearing his younger housemate's voice. "Huh? Oh, Harry, good morning. Um, what did you ask?"

"I was just wondering what's got everybody so nervous," the currently human-shaped dragon reiterated. "I mean, I don't remember anything…"

"Oh!" the fifth year exclaimed in understanding. "I forgot you didn't come to campus over the weekend. Right." He paused long enough to take a fortifying breath. "There was another attack over the weekend."

"An attack?" Hermione asked, concerned. "Did someone get hurt?"

"Oh, hello, Hermione," the handsome older boy smiled wanly in greeting. "And, yeah, they got Justin."

Harry's eyes widened at that. Justin Finch-Fletchley wasn't a close friend, but he was a fellow Hufflepuff, and to lose him over the weekend… no wonder everyone was so down.

"I am sorry for your loss," Suze spoke up sympathetically.

"What do you…? Oh," Cedric shook his head, "sorry, I misspoke. He's not dead, just petrified — like Mrs. Norris back on Halloween. If he'd died the place would be swarming with aurors now. As it is though, since it's just a petrification, it falls under school jurisdiction. The way the law's written it doesn't matter that it's a fancy kind that doesn't respond to the standard dispel; Susan asked her aunt already. At least he'll be okay once they get the restorative draught brewed, but it won't be ready until the mandrakes the second-years are growing mature — close to the end of the year."

"How did you know we're growing mandrakes?" Hermione asked. "Did you do that too back in your second year?"

"No, it changes every year; we grew fanged geraniums," Cedric replied absently before continuing. "It's just that the whole situation is the talk of the school, so the mandrake thing came up more than a few times. Most people are trying to figure out who's going to be next, though. A whole lot of people are really worried."

"Is it really that bad?" Harry asked.

"Yes," Susan spoke up for the first time from her spot at the table, absently holding Hannah's hand in reassurance. "It was bad enough with Mr. Filch's cat because of the severity of the curse and the fact that no one knew who did it. Now that whoever it is has attacked a student… well, people are talking about having to close the school if they can't find the culprit."

"Close the school!" Hermione hissed in outrage. "They can't do that!"

Harry frowned thoughtfully. "Huh. I tried to sniff out who petrified Mrs. Norris, but I couldn't smell anything over that perfume stuff Professor Lockhart wears. You guys have any idea where to look to find out who did it?"

"No," Cedric answered, not thinking too hard about the younger boy's implicit declaration that he could hunt by scent. It was Harry after all, and those sorts of revelations had long since become normal. Cedric doubted anyone in Hufflepuff would bat an eyelash if they found out he could see magic after the past year-and-a-bit. "The professors couldn't find anything either."

The young dragon closed his eyes in thought for a few long moments before opening them again and looking at the older boy rather intensely.

"Well, I'm not sure how to find the one doing this stuff, and I got a couple other things I'm working on so I'm kinda busy," Harry admitted, "but as soon as you figure anything out about who's doing this, you let me know. I'll fix his shit."

And with a firm nod, Harry sat down to eat, his piece said.

3.10.8 Unusual resolve

Pastel silk robes fluttered behind him as Gilderoy Lockhart made his way through the passageways of Hogwarts. He walked with a firm step and an uncommonly stern expression on his overly pretty face. It was an unusual occurrence for the man who normally sported a winning smile specifically tailored — he practiced in front of a mirror — to win over the affections of the fairer sex.

All in all, it was an unusual look for the man. Then again, he was on an unusual errand, so perhaps an unusual look was to be expected. It wouldn't do to be improperly attired.

These latest developments were an unexpected, and thoroughly unwelcome, wrinkle on Gilderoy's tenure as a professor. He had expected a simple and uneventful year during which he could teach the young Potter to navigate the pitfalls of fame; after which he would leave, secure in his reputation as the young hero's mentor and able to milk that reputation for everything it was worth. He did not expect to have to deal with a crisis such as the one this situation was rapidly becoming.

It was the sort of thing he thought he'd left behind at the Department when he resigned.

However, expected or not, he was now a professor, and it was now his job to look after the wellbeing of the students and school. Ulterior motives aside, he had taken the job in good faith, and he fully intended to perform the duties expected of him to the best of his not-inconsiderable abilities. Gilderoy was hardly going to renege on that agreement in the face of a crisis; teaching might be touch-and-go, but crisis management was his bread and butter.

The methods he used in that pursuit were simply not the ones advertised in his books.

Before he had insinuated himself into the role of gentleman hero, Gilderoy Lockhart had been a Ministry obliviator. A typical workday at the Department involved dropping into an unknown, probably hostile, crisis situation and taking charge of it through a combination of quick thinking, psychology, charisma, and sheer bloody-minded audacity — aided, of course, by a judicious helping of magic — before adjusting or rewriting the perceptions of everyone involved to fit the story Gilderoy wanted to tell. Dealing with crisis situations and delicate public perceptions was simply what a Ministry obliviator did.

And Gilderoy Lockhart was a very skilled obliviator.

Admittedly, it had taken a while for Gilderoy-the-author to collect his wits and recall his old habits, but recall them he had, and he was now applying all those crisis management skills to his current employment. The restrictions posed by the situation, specifically the injunctions against mind-altering magics used against the students, made for an unusual challenge, but it was nothing Gilderoy-the-obliviator couldn't handle, given a bit of time to think.

And after taking that bit of time to think, Gilderoy had concocted a plan on how to proceed, a plan which would keep his students calm and focused in the face of danger, a plan which would channel their nervous energy into something other than panic... a plan that he now had to sell to the Headmaster.

As the blond dandy opened the door to said Headmaster's office, he smiled and prepared to do exactly that.
 
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Section 3.11 - Fighting words
3.11 Fighting words

3.11.1 A dueling club?

"A dueling club, you say?" the Headmaster raised a curious eyebrow.

"Yes," Gilderoy Lockhart nodded calmly from his seat in one of the visitor's chairs set before the Headmaster's desk. "In light of the events of Halloween, I feel that such a club could only benefit the students. If they know how to handle themselves, then they will be less likely to panic in the event of another attack."

"You do realize, do you not, Gilderoy, that dueling skills are rarely directly transferrable to real conflicts, tailored as they are to the regimented environment of the dueling platform," the elderly wizard prodded. "And even for those skills which are transferrable, it is exceedingly unlikely that you will be able to train any students to the point that they will see significant benefits in any useful timeframe?"

"Of course, I know that," the blond man scoffed, dismissing the question with a flutter of pastel silk. "The students are in no position to solve the problem, nor do I have any intention of attempting to force them to do so. I am simply attempting to prevent them from becoming part of the problem and making our job infinitely more difficult."

"How so?"

"Panicked and fearful people do stupid things, and doing stupid things with an unknown danger lurking about is a recipe for disaster," Lockhart explained with the air of someone who had seen entirely too much of such behavior. "But by the same token, fearful people will often latch on to the first person who gives them direction, and then they will follow blindly until the panic fades... which is admittedly its own variety of stupid, I suppose."

He paused, shaking his head slightly before continuing, "Stupid or not, however, it is what people do. I aim to take advantage of that tendency and turn it to a useful purpose. I propose that, rather than leaving the children to their own devices to follow whatever hare-brained idea wins out in their heads, we give them a clear course to follow to ensure that they latch on to us and our instruction. Then we can control the situation however you see fit without needing to worry overmuch about the students following along!"

"That seems a terribly cynical way to view the world, Gilderoy," the elderly wizard chided. "How do you intend to inspire the youth with such a depressing approach?"

"Perhaps you have a point there, Headmaster," the blond acknowledged with a nod. "I would hardly presume to tell you your job as an educator, as you are very much my senior in that department, but in much the same way you know teaching, I know panic, and I know how to manage it."

The elderly wizard's eyes widened in realization. "Ah, yes, I had nearly forgotten your history with the obliviators — your subsequent career in writing has quite overshadowed it — but I suppose this is well within your field of expertise. However, are you certain that this is the best approach for us to take? Perhaps another, more immediately useful subject?"

Silky blond hair swayed as Gilderoy shook his head and leaned forward, "This is a situation where appearance is more important than substance, Headmaster, and I can think of no other relevant field with more immediate recognition by a wider audience than dueling."

"Come to the dueling club and learn to defend yourself!" he gestured grandly, silken sleeves flowing. "It will give them something to do rather than stew in their own fears. For the purposes of managing panic, it doesn't even truly matter if it even teaches anything relevant. Even busywork would do, as long as we can convince them it will help, but the dueling practice is an easy sell."

"I'm open to suggestion, of course," he shrugged. "Between you and your staff, you have a great deal more experience to draw on than even I do. If you can come up with another, more practical, topic to teach that has the same sort of universal cachet, I would certainly have no objections, but in the absence of such, we're left with dueling as the best choice."

Albus stroked his long, white beard contemplatively as he considered the idea. The concept was sound — as was his professor's assessment of the reputation of dueling among those unfamiliar with the demands of real combat. As for the rest, dealing with whoever was behind this Chamber of Secrets debacle promised to be challenging enough on its own given the dearth of evidence — attempting to do so within a school full of panicking children didn't bear thinking about.

The elder wizard slowly nodded; this course of action had merit.

"I have already approached Filius to secure his services as a referee and secondary instructor — contingent of course on your approval — so most of the organization is already lined up," Gilderoy sweetened the pot, sensing the old man starting to come around and seeking to close the deal. "Though, I had also intended to secure at least one more professor's time to serve as a secondary instructor and supervisor."

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded, beginning to seriously consider the practicalities of the idea, "adequate supervision would be of crucial importance with so many students involved. Did you have anyone in mind?"

Lockhart affected a thoughtful demeanor as he pretended to consider the options while patiently waiting for the Headmaster to think his way through the problem.

It did not take the aged wizard long to reach his own conclusion. "Perhaps Severus? He has expressed an interest in teaching defense in the past," the elderly man mused, "perhaps this would give him the opportunity to try it out for a time without losing his services as a potions instructor."

"Capital idea, Headmaster!" Gilderoy immediately enthused.

Albus was warming to the notion now. "I suppose the Great Hall would be the best venue, if we are to include the entire student body. The elves can handle remodeling easily enough, but we will need dueling wards…" The elderly wizard winced. "Ah, if Mr. Potter is to participate, those will be… hmm, perhaps a delimeter-wardstone combination for quick setup and takedown?" The Headmaster closed his eyes as he ran through the requirements and capabilities of such an arrangement.

On the other side of the desk, his Defense professor waited patiently as the Headmaster slowly worked himself into taking ownership of the whole idea. Sometimes the best cons depended more on what you didn't say, rather than what you did — a concept the blond man knew quite well.

"Yes… yes," Dumbledore concluded. "That would be our best bet. It will be a great deal of work to set up, but we will be able to reuse it — a portable dueling platform would be a fine addition to the school. Gilderoy, please ask Filius to join me; this will require his assistance."

"Of course, Headmaster," Lockhart agreed, standing up immediately. "I would be delighted to help!" And with a flurry of blond hair and powder-blue silk, the dandy swept out of the room, his mission accomplished.

3.11.2 Belated realizations

It was about twenty minutes after Filius had come and gone — a time during which Albus busied himself with planning ward schemes and runic matrices to bring his vision into reality — that a thought occurred, prompting the elderly wizard to pause in his labors, brow wrinkling.

Hadn't this been Lockhart's idea in the first place?

The elderly wizard thought back on his recent conversation with his subordinate and nodded to himself.

Yes, yes it had been.

The elderly wizard frowned. So… why was he doing so much of the work to bring it into fruition?

Here he was poring over runic complexes, and all Lockhart had done was talk to two people and agree to pass on a message, after which he seemed to have disappeared into the ether. Somewhere along the way, Gilderoy had managed to get him invested enough to treat the idea as his own, and in so doing, the man had weaseled his way out of doing any of the real work…

Sneaky little whippersnapper.

As the absurdity of the situation hit him, the Headmaster chuckled ruefully.

"Well, I suppose that explains how he managed to finagle himself a four-day weekend."

3.11.3 To each his own

As was his habit, Snape sat quietly in his personal lab, numerous brewing stations bubbling and simmering, holding diverse potions in various stages of completion. In a sharp contrast to his usual habits, however, he was not working busily at one or another of them; instead, he stared contemplatively at the door through which the Headmaster had recently departed and reflected on his recent conversation with the man.

Albus had approached him with a request, a request that the dark man had every reason to deny, yet he had not.

Why on earth had he agreed to help proctor a dueling club? The potions master sighed as he finally deferred to his professional instincts and turned to one of the brewing stations to give the bubbling potion a very precise stir. He had wanted no part of helping his students learn something as useless as formal dueling.

Admittedly, the very best of the dueling circuit — among them his colleague, Filius Flitwick — were terrifyingly formidable outside it, but that only held true for the very best, the crème de la crème. Until a duelist developed the sort of repertoire, control, and reflexes that pushed him to the top of the dueling circuit, the restrictive rules of formal dueling made for a rigid and generally ineffective combatant outside it.

It was a truth he had seen proven many, many times during the war — as attested to by the number of skilled duelists, on both sides of the aisle, he had put down with his own self-taught mish-mash of practical skills and dirty tricks.

Were he to teach defense, it would be practical defense, defense that worked. He would teach dirty tricks, unfair tactics, and a properly lethal mentality when dealing with aggressors — not useless claptrap like good sportsmanship and fair play. The dark man sneered at the very thought. Such things had no place in personal defense and certainly should not be taught as such, particularly not to falsely prop up the students' pathetic egos with unwarranted confidence.

If the delicate porcelain dolls of the student body could not deal with the shadow of danger in their lives, that was hardly his problem, now was it? They would have to learn some time, and they might as well screw up their courage to the sticking point and start wrestling with their fears now. Teaching them the basics of dueling while lying to them about its usefulness would hardly aid with that process. It would take years to develop dueling skills to the point that they might conceivably provide a practical advantage in real combat.

Furthermore, Snape had no desire to spend any more time than necessary in the presence of that blond twit of a defense professor. He sneered even as he walked over to add the next ingredient to yet another potion. It took most of his iron self-control to refrain from throttling the self-aggrandizing fop during meals — the potions master knew himself well enough to know that spending several hours with the dandy was tempting fate.

Though in the end, he supposed with a self-deprecating sigh, it was that very temptation that led him to agree to help.

During his negotiations with the Headmaster, Snape had managed to slip in the provision that he would participate in a demonstration duel against the irritating blond, and he was looking forward to it.

Oh, was he looking forward to it!

Nor was he the only one, judging by Albus' subtle smile when he had agreed.

The temporarily conjured note the elderly wizard had left — which dispersed itself shortly after Snape had read it — requesting a pensieve recording of the bout had been significantly less subtle. Though, the potions master had to wonder what the blond had done to make Dumbledore of all people refer to him as a 'sneaky little weasel'.

The Headmaster usually made a point of remaining above such pettiness.

The sallow-faced man shook his head dismissing the question — he didn't particularly care if Dumbledore wanted to be petty. Snape was the last person to object to petty acts of revenge — the hypocrisy would be too rank, even for him — so there was no point in considering the topic further. The potions master had more important things to do.

Important things like preparing to enact petty vengeance of his own.

To that end, the potions master turned to verify the progress of his various potions one last time before hurrying out the door and back to his private quarters. It was a minor risk, but he should have just enough time to retrieve his box of old school notebooks before the potions needed more attention.

If he recalled, there was a way to twist the disarming charm just right to disarm the target of all weapons — including their natural complement — if you pushed enough power into it. Snape remembered it being finicky, but with enough practice, he might just be able to retrain himself to dredge it up in time for the demonstration.

Snape smiled a nasty sort of smile. Petty it might be, but the mental image of his blond colleague scrambling to gather his teeth and fingernails off the floor warmed the dark recesses of his heart.

3.11.4 Furtive goings-on

A boy of perhaps sixteen years stood quietly in an otherwise abandoned classroom, the sharp black and deep blue of his Ravenclaw student uniform standing in bold contrast to his dull and dusty surroundings. As he waited impatiently, he whiled away the time idly drawing designs in the thick accumulation of dust coating one of the student desks until the door creaked open on poorly lubricated hinges.

"It took you long enough," the Ravenclaw complained as a second boy, this one wearing robes trimmed in red, entered the room. "You took practically the entire term to come around to our way of thinking. For a while there, I was afraid you weren't going to finalize the deal before the end of term. Seriously, we're tight on galleons; I was beginning to worry I wouldn't be able to close the deal over the break."

"Did you really think I wouldn't come through?" the newcomer protested. "I gave you my word!"

At the first boy's skeptical look, the second's face fell.

"Yeah, sorry, but… well, it took a while to work up my nerve for this," the Gryffindor deflected, reaching into his robes to withdraw a small pouch which jingled when he shook it in emphasis. "This is a lot of money, you know? I wasn't sure I wanted to spend it on something like this — especially not to an uncertain result."

"I understand," the Ravenclaw nodded sympathetically, even as he eagerly snatched the pouch from his compatriot's extended hand. "Just remember, it's a down-payment on your future happiness! And well, as for a discount or a guarantee, I'm hiring from Knockturn for this, and I really don't feel comfortable trying to haggle. My contact might take offence." He shuddered at the idea of what that offence might entail. "I figure it's best to take the offer given and leave well enough alone. Knockturn's a scary sort of place, and I'd like to make it out alive."

"I know, I know," it was the Gryffindor's turn to nod. "I'm not trying to complain; I mean, you're setting it all up, so you're taking the real risks. It's just… well, I wish the Slytherins had pitched in, too. If we could have split the expense another five or six ways, the decision would have been a whole lot easier!"

"Slimy cheapskates, they are," the Ravenclaw agreed. "But I guess it paid off for them. They're going to benefit from our hard-earned cash, this time, anyway. I'm certainly not going to cut them any slack the next time something like this crops up." He shook his head disbelievingly. "I don't buy their excuses about not needing it, but there's no help for it, I suppose."

"I don't know about that, there's not a whole lot of green trim in those crowds," the boy in red grudgingly admitted with a shrug. "The Slytherins might be onto something... with that, at least."

The admission garnered a skeptical eyebrow from his compatriot. "Look at you — a Gryffindor defending the Slytherins for their stinginess!" his blue-trimmed compatriot snickered. "What's the world coming to?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Gryffindor said with his own chuckle. "I'm just saying, observation kind of bears their claim out. Just 'cause they're slimy snakes doesn't mean they lie all the time... just most of it."

"Sure, they don't," the first boy scoffed. "I don't buy it. Even if they're telling the truth about not needing the service, I still say they're lying about why!"

"You might be on to something there," his Gryffindor counterpart admitted as they made their way to the door.

"What could blond hair have to do with anything, anyway?"

3.11.5 R.S.V.P.

Fresh from her last class of the day, Abigail set off for the library with a spring to her step. It was time for her usual meeting with Harry, and that made it the highlight of the girl's day. She waved a friendly but silent greeting to Madame Pince as she entered the woman's domain and turned the corner on her way to the usual table, only to be greeted by a rather unusual sight.

Harry was already hard at work — not an unusual sight in and of itself; the young dragon was almost always absorbed in some project or another — but the work before him was not his normal fare. This time, he was not busily scrawling arcane formulae in one of his notebooks or intently reading some obscure tome written in a language no one had used in millennia. No, this time Harry was writing letters. Judging by the hefty stack, he had already written thirty or so, and by the number of still-empty envelopes before him, he was likely about a third of the way through his task.

"Hello, Harry," Abigail greeted her younger friend as she arrived, asking curiously, "What are you up to there?"

"Hi, Abigail!" the currently human-shaped dragon answered cheerily, looking up from his latest missive. "I'm writing invitations," he explained. "I'm going to have a Christmas party for all my new employees at Hogs Haulage! It's gonna be great!"

"He has greatly enjoyed meeting his new management staff and engineers over the past few weeks and has been looking for an opportunity to do the same with the rest of his employees ever since," Suze volunteered, looking up from where she had busied herself with proofreading her dragon's letters and addressing envelopes.

Harry nodded enthusiastically. "Yep! And I remembered how well the barbecue went last summer, so I thought I'd try that again. We're gonna use the main lawn at the Hogsmeade office, so there should be plenty of space, and Mr. Wardale said he'd get the machine shop to work up a proper grill, so we don't get big scorched spots like I had from the bonfires. He said they'd probably get a kick out of setting it up."

"The only problem is I won't have any acromantula ready in time," the dragon's cheerful expression fell. "Too many died, so I need to leave 'em alone for a while before I can take any more. I had to order a bunch of extra beef and pork and stuff instead." He sighed, "I hope no one's too disappointed."

"I'm sure it'll turn out okay," Abigail assured her friend. "It may not be as... exotic, but I'm sure no one will hold it against you."

She certainly wouldn't... roasted spiders, indeed. She suppressed a shudder.

"I suppose," he said uncertainly, "but I was hoping to make up for you missing out during summer, and… oh yeah! I almost forgot!" Harry rummaged through the pile of already-completed invitations before he held one up triumphantly to offer to his friend. "Here! I know you're not technically an employee yet, but you will be as soon as you graduate in June, and I wanted to get you an early start on meeting everyone."

Abigail took the envelope, addressed to her in Suze's meticulous hand. "Thank you, Harry! I'll be sure to come," the older girl beamed then turned thoughtful. "Though, speaking of things I'm going to have to explain to my parents, when are you planning on dealing with that stone circle thing you mentioned back during summer?"

Harry nodded agreeably. "Yeah, we're planning on that the day after the barbecue. We wanted to get it done early during break in case there are complications and it knocks me out for a while or something. Mr. Snape figured it would be better than missing school."

"That should work out nicely," Abigail said with a smile. "What do you think about…"

At that point Abigail was interrupted by the arrival of the fourth member of their group.

"Hello, everyone!" Hermione greeted breathlessly. "Sorry it took so long to get here, class ran a bit long."

A round of greetings echoed hers as the bushy-haired girl settled into her usual seat at the table. "So, what were you talking about?"

"I was about to ask what everyone thought about the new dueling club Lockhart's been hawking to everyone," Abigail spoke up. "I was thinking about going to see what it was all about."

"Really?" Harry spoke up, looking up from his letter writing in surprise. "I thought you thought Lockhart was useless. Why do you want to spend more time with him?"

"I do think he's useless as a teacher," Abigail assured him, "but he might be a better duelist, so that might be worth looking into. It's always a good idea to learn as much as you can."

"I suppose..." the young dragon allowed.

"Plus," Abigail continued, "Snape and Flitwick are both going to help with it, and they're bound to contribute something worthwhile. Flitwick is a world-champion duelist, and Snape is… well, Snape."

Harry nodded agreeably. Mr. Flitwick was really skilled, and Snape was indeed Snape.

"Maybe I should check it out too?" he mused.

"Hermione, is something bothering you?" Suze spoke for the first time in a few minutes, looking at her junior damsel in concern.

"No, nothing is wrong — why do you ask?" The bushy haired girl noticeably straightened from her previously hunched posture and tried — poorly — to pretend that it had never happened.

The centaur looked down her nose skeptically at the younger girl, an exceedingly simple task for a centaur.

"Hermione," she said patiently, "you flinched at the mention of Mr. Snape's name... there, you did it again! That is not normal behavior for you."

"No... no it ain't," Harry interjected, looking closely at his bushy-haired damsel. Her hunched posture made her discomfort obvious, even to him now that Suze had pointed it out. "What's wrong, Hermione? Has someone been botherin' you again, 'cause I said I'd protect you and I will… even if it was Mr. Snape."

"No, no, it's nothing like that," Hermione assured him hurriedly. "I just… well, the thing with the Weasley twins' punishment back at the beginning of the year was still bothering me, so last week I went and asked Professor Snape about it directly." Hermione drew a deep breath, "And he told me about it, and the reasons make sense, but then he pointed out that other students' discipline really wasn't any of my business and told me not to poke into that sort of thing again."

The only male at the table looked at his bushy-haired damsel expectantly for a moment. "And?" he prompted when it became clear that she was not going to continue. "What happened then?"

"What do you mean, 'and what happened then'?" Hermione exclaimed, only her deeply ingrained respect for libraries preventing her from shouting. "I got a reprimand, and I even deserved it. It was mortifying!" The bushy-haired girl buried her face in her hands, "I can barely stand going to potions anymore."

Abigail made to speak up, but Harry beat her to the punch.

"Was Mr. Snape really that angry?" he asked doubtfully. "I mean, he's told me off plenty of times before, and he never really holds much of a grudge — aside from needling you about it sometimes — as long as you listen and don't do it again. How much did he insult you when he did it?"

"Insult me?" Hermione asked, perking up at the unexpected question. "Why would he insult me?"

"Well, that's just how Mr. Snape is," the young dragon explained. "He insults just about everybody, except the goblins because that's bad for your financial status. You mean he didn't say something about 'stop snooping in other people's business, you meddlesome wretch' or anything?"

"Of course not!" the bushy-haired girl snapped.

"Wow, Mr. Snape must really like you if he was that polite!" Harry marveled, wide-eyed. "He insults me all the time — I mean, often enough that we even make games of it — and we're business partners. Huh, I never would have guessed…"

The currently human-shaped dragon trailed off, stunned silent at the idea of Mr. Snape not insulting one of his students, and Abigail picked up the conversational gauntlet.

"You know, Hermione, Harry is right about that," the older girl assured her junior. "Snape usually makes his punishments very, very obvious to the one being punished. If he just told you not to do it again and left it at that, it means he trusts you to follow his instructions without any further reinforcement."

"So, he's not mad at me?" Hermione asked in a small voice.

"Not in the slightest," the seventh-year assured her, then quickly clarified, "Not for the question, anyway. If you've been slacking off in class because you were embarrassed, all bets are off."

"Oh, okay," the bushy-haired girl acknowledged in a small, relieved voice. With that, Hermione finally calmed down enough to take in the scene at the table for the first time since her arrival, and on doing so, Harry's unusual work materials jumped out at her just as they had at Abigail.

"Harry," she asked, unknowingly echoing Abigail's earlier question, "what are you up to there?"

3.11.6 Club meeting

"Gather round! Gather round," Gilderoy Lockhart called from his place in the middle of the Great Hall, drawing the attention of the students as they filed in and gathered around the edges of the room.

The massive room had been radically transformed over the course of the hour since the end of the midday meal. Gone were the House tables, and in their place stood a great platform, raised to waist height above the stone floor and occupying the center third of the Hall for perhaps half its length. A dark blue cloth covered it, draping all the way to the floor on all four sides. Complicated designs picked out in bronze thread adorned the blue fabric — abstract patterns which many of the students recognized as carefully engineered runic arrays, though few were learned enough to divine their purpose.

Massive granite cubes, easily two meters on a side, stood silent and imposing guard at each corner of the platform, their polished surfaces sporting carven runic arrays which despite being quite visibly distinct still somehow gave the impression of complementing those on the cloth covering the dueling platform. To the green eyes of the one student in the room able to see such things, they, along with the blue cloth, served to anchor a nearly transparent, glowing box encasing the volume directly above the platform to about three times the height of a tall man.

"Can everyone see me?" the blond professor asked. "Can everyone hear me?"

As the students responded with a sea of affirmative nods, the dandy smiled broadly before continuing. "Excellent! In light of the dark events of recent weeks," he paused briefly to allow a nervous rustle to spread through the room, "Headmaster Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this Dueling Club to train you all up in case you need to defend yourselves, as I have done on countless occasions."

"For full details, see my published works," the man shot off another smile, prompting a fit of giggling from many of the female students.

"Now, while I would have been happy to teach you all myself," another smile, "in light of the overwhelming interest," he gestured to the crowded Hall, "I have chosen to enlist the help of several of my esteemed colleagues."

"Professor Flitwick has graciously volunteered his services as an instructor," Lockhart gestured grandly to the diminutive figure of the half-goblin professor who gave a nod of acknowledgement. "He has also contributed in creating this handsome covering for the dueling platform, as you might have guessed from the Ravenclaw color scheme," Gilderoy gestured to the platform at his feet. "He assures me that, in addition to forming a smart backdrop for the club, it also serves as an anchor for the dueling wards, which will catch any stray spells before they can harm the audience."

"The other half of those wards were provided by our esteemed Headmaster himself in the form of the large stone cubes," the man gestured briefly to direct his audience's attention to the imposing devices. "Rest assured that we have taken every reasonable precaution to make this club both informative and safe."

An appreciative murmur swept through the students, even as Gilderoy turned to the last of the staff present. "And finally, we have Potions Master Snape, who has graciously agreed to help proctor the club and has even offered to participate in a dueling exhibition with me."

Many of the boys in the audience perked up at hearing that.

The defense professor smiled again, though a particularly attentive observer would note that this smile seemed a tad forced in comparison to his usual fare. Lockhart gave a forced chuckle. "Rest assured that you will have your potions master back in one piece afterwards, never fear!"

"Now, before we begin, I will tell you all that this first lesson will focus on two charms, the disarming charm and the basic shield charm — a combination which, Professor Flitwick assures me, is an excellent introduction to dueling. For this reason, our demonstration will be limited to those two charms in order to provide a proper example of what you all will be doing when we get down to individual practice."

"In all honesty, I do not expect this to go particularly well for me," Lockhart admitted as he set aside his powder blue silk outer robe and retreated to one end of the platform. Even as his students gasped at the admission, he continued with unusual humility, "I do not often run into situations where such charms are useful, I'm afraid. My usual opponents tend to rely more on their natural abilities, which are rather more difficult to remove. While her voice cut like one, I can assure you that the Bandon banshee did not come after me with a knife!"

The young professor chuckled self-deprecatingly. "As a result, I am afraid I am rather woefully out of practice. I am certain, however, that I will be able to provide an excellent example of their use, even if only as a demonstration target."

As the blond defense professor had been speaking, his opponent had finished making his way up to the other end of the platform. For his part, Snape had raised a derisive eyebrow at the obvious excuse before reluctantly nodding in acknowledgement of the good play. Through his preemptive admission, the dandy had taken what promised to be an embarrassing defeat and turned it into a badge of honor, highlighting his willingness to sacrifice his own dignity for the opportunity to teach his students something. Whatever his faults, Lockhart was definitely a quick thinker — though that didn't prevent Snape from smiling a nasty sort of smile.

The potions master would enjoy himself, regardless; even if slightly less than he would have had the blond man received his full measure of humiliation.

The blond man took a deep breath, then called out to his half-goblin colleague, who had moved to stand just off the platform at its midpoint. "If you would be so kind as to officiate, Mr. Flitwick?"

"Of course!" the diminutive man agreed, his small form almost lost among the crowd of students. "To reiterate, per the agreed-upon rules, this bout will be fought with disarming and shield charms only. Begin on my mark; stop on my command. If you do not stop on my command, I will intervene to stop you. The same will happen if you should use any magics forbidden by the rules of the bout. Are you ready, Mr. Lockhart?" The blond man nodded. "Are you ready, Mr. Snape?" The dark man nodded.

The half-goblin nodded in acknowledgement. "Begin!"

Both wizards burst into motion, moving to cast a disarming charm. Unfortunately for Lockhart, Snape proved to be significantly faster, completing his charm and twisting his wand smoothly to cast a shield before Lockhart's return fire reached him. The blond's disarming charm deflected from his shield, going on to dissipate with nary a trace on hitting the dueling wards surrounding the platform.

On the other end of the platform, things were decidedly less sedate.

Snape's disarming charm had caught Lockhart just below the sternum just as the blond man released his own spell. It had thrown the man's wand clear of his hand — directed vaguely towards Snape himself, as the charm was intended to do — but that was not its only effect. It also managed to throw Lockhart for a loop, flipping him end over end and depositing him in an undignified heap of baby blue silk and blond hair a few yards back from his starting position.

The room fell silent for a moment before Flitwick's voice rang out, "Victory to Mr. Snape."

And then, for the first time in his entire history with the institution of Hogwarts, every male student in the Great Hall cheered loud and long for Severus Snape.

Truly, it was a red-letter day.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and as the applause died down, Lockhart made known the fact that he had managed to untangle himself from his robes.

"Excellent work, my friend!" the blond dandy said with admirable aplomb for someone who had just been sent arse-over-teakettle in front of an entire room full of his students. "I must admit, I had never realized the disarming charm could do more than simply disarm someone."

Snape simply smirked until Flitwick jumped in to volunteer an explanation.

"As with many charms, the specific effects of the disarming charm can be modified, either through the will of the caster, or through slight variations in the casting process," the half-goblin explained. "Normally, sending the target flying is an indication that too much power was pushed into the casting, but such castings normally result in broken bones, or severe bruising at the least. Given Mr. Lockhart's apparent lack of injury, I would assume that Mr. Snape used a deliberate alteration."

The dark man nodded. "One that I developed during my sixth year at this institution," he volunteered. "I had intended to use the variant which completely disarms the target — down to his teeth and fingernails — however, I was unfortunately unable to reproduce it in the time for this exhibition."

Lockhart winced at that idea, alongside the entire student body.

"I do not believe I've ever heard of that variation, Severus," the diminutive duelist said avidly, showing no sign of discomfort with the idea of brutally mutilating a fellow wizard. "Wherever did you come across it?"

"Another invention of mine," the potions master said amiably, "also developed during my sixth year; though I must admit that one was developed accidentally. I still have my notes, however reproducing it after so many years has proven to be difficult."

"Remarkable!" Flitwick enthused. "Is that how you put Mr. Black in the infirmary for a week during that year?"

The dark man continued to smirk.

"I see. I see. Tell me, Severus," Flitwick asked conversationally. "Would you be open to sitting down with me and attempting to reproduce it — perhaps over winter break? It sounds like a fascinating piece of spell-work. I would assume there is a significant component of intent behind the casting — perhaps a specific focus on the target's natural weapons… hmm. It might even prove useful for dealing with your usual fare, Gilderoy," the half-goblin addressed his other colleague. "After all, a charm that removed teeth and claws would have been quite useful during your werewolf encounter, I suspect."

"Yes, of course," Gilderoy sounded sick at the idea, but put on an admirable front. "It certainly would have."

"I would be delighted," Snape agreed with his senior colleague even while shooting a nasty smirk at his junior. "Provided we have the time over break, of course. Perhaps we might complete it in time for the next session of our dueling club?" His smirk grew even nastier as Lockhart paled.

"Perhaps..." Lockhart's voice broke as he spoke. He cleared his throat. "Perhaps it would be best if we continued with the current session before we run out of time."

Not waiting for a response from his colleagues, he turned back to the student body at large. "Everyone, give your potions master a round of applause for that excellent demonstration of the versatility of the basic disarming charm!"

The room dissolved into applause once again, this time including the girls among the audience as well.

"Now," the foppish man said as the applause died down once more, "I know many of the older students are already well-versed in the disarming and shield charms, and I would like you to break off into small groups and introduce your junior colleagues to the basics of their casting. In the meantime, we will devote the central platform to volunteer duels among those who have managed to cast the charms. Do we have a volunteer to start us off? You may pick whomever you wish to challenge; though remember, they are free to decline should they so choose."

And so, the first meeting of the dueling club picked up steam, and the Great Hall descended into a messy sort of order, dozens of groups split off and reviewed the basics of casting a pair of moderately advanced charms. In the background, a series of practice duels, fought with varying levels of expertise, took place on the dueling platform under the watchful eye of Professor Flitwick, until eventually something happened to catch the attention of everyone in the Hall.

A second-year student had reached the front of the line of dueling volunteers, and, upon ascending the platform, he brushed back his already perfectly-coiffed blond hair, raised his wand in the standard gesture of challenge, and called out, loud enough for the rest of the room to hear over the general din.

"I, Draco Malfoy, challenge Harry Potter."

3.11.7 Student dueling

Draco watched in expectantly as his opponent slowly made his way up to the dueling platform through the packed room. The last year had been difficult for the young Malfoy, and he planned to use this opportunity to turn that around.

Ever since that debacle back in January, the blond had been scrambling to reaffirm his place in life. Before, he had been secure in the knowledge that he was the Heir to the great and powerful Malfoy House, but the bloody ginger peasant's boot had shattered that security, along with one of his testicles... an inch to the left and all would have been lost! Sure, it hadn't actually happened that way, but it had been a wakeup call.

Draco needed something else to fall back on, just in case something else happened to finish the job. If he couldn't rely on his inheritance, he reasoned, then he would have to build his own place. Of course, in his inexperience, Draco had no real idea of how to accomplish that, so he did what most children do when faced with a new and unfamiliar situation.

He tried to emulate his parents.

His attempts to convince his peers of the wisdom of following his lead had fallen on deaf ears, as had the later attempts to browbeat them into submission. Falling back on the old mainstays of blackmail and intimidation had met with some success until his new subjects had sought alliances with each other and countered his efforts. By the end of the previous school year, the youngest Malfoy had been at his wit's end, with his housemates countering his every gambit almost before he could begin.

It almost seemed like everyone had conspired together against him, but that couldn't possibly be right. That never happened to his father when he did the same sorts of things.

When Draco had approached his father to ask for help, the man had explained to his son that the trick to using such techniques was negotiating from a position of perceived strength, and Draco simply didn't have the reputation to pull it off.

Thus, he reasoned, he obviously needed to boost his reputation in the school. Draco had thought long and hard about how to do that over the summer break, and nothing had occurred to him. The one possibility he had come up with, beating someone up to showcase his prowess, had been immediately forbidden by his father as soon as he had proposed the idea, citing something about Draco needing to keep his head down after the incident the previous year.

Draco hadn't really been able to follow the logic, but he trusted that his father knew what he was talking about.

So, the young blond had persisted in an awkward sort of holding pattern for most of the first term of his second year, waiting for an opportunity. That wait had ended when he had learned of the dueling club. There he could flex his magical might without making disciplinary trouble for himself! Better yet, he had learned that the Potter Heir would be in attendance, and that fact had cemented his plan.

Somehow or other, Potter had built a name for himself during the previous year. Rumors abounded about the scrawny little wizard managing to somehow punch out a troll on the previous Halloween, and that action had laid in a formidable reputation. Personally, Draco doubted the veracity of the rumors, but most of the student body had bought into it, rightly or wrongly.

In that reputation, Draco saw an opportunity. If he could defeat Potter in a duel, then that reputation would serve to enhance his own. Potter was known to be strong, and by beating him Draco would immediately be seen as even stronger!

Heck, even if the rumors were somehow correct and Potter was physically strong enough to punch out a troll, it still wouldn't be a problem in a magical duel. Physical contact was strictly forbidden in those circumstances, and Potter was notorious for his poor performance in spellcasting practicals. The professors always had him doing some sort of remedial exercise while everyone else practiced actual casting. Between that and Draco's years of private tutoring before Hogwarts, his success was assured.

It was foolproof!

With that in mind, Draco drew his wand and settled into a slightly awkward version of the standard dueling stance as his unsuspecting opponent finally arrived. Potter took his place at the far end of the dueling platform, smiling like an idiot and bouncing in place briefly before drawing his own wand. The room stilled in anticipation until the charms professor signaled the beginning of the duel.

"Begin!"

Draco snapped his wand down in as quick a disarming charm as he could manage, the incantation leaving his lips as a shout. As the spell left his wand, the blond second-year noted that his opponent had managed to mis-cast his own charm, leaving his wand lightly smoking as the other boy stared at it in frustration.

What luck!

Draco had expected the bout to be easy, but not this easy! His disarming charm was right on target, and his opponent wasn't even looking in his direction. There were just a few more feet to go before it connected, and then — success!

Draco smiled broadly as his disarming charm connected. That smile quickly melted into an expression of slack-jawed astonishment when the charm proceeded to have no discernable effect whatsoever; the Potter Heir didn't even seem to notice the impact as he continued fiddling with his wand in an attempt to get his own casting right.

Several seconds passed before the Malfoy Heir collected himself enough to try again. Again, a perfectly-cast disarming charm flew down the dueling platform; again, it connected with his opponent; and again, it failed to have any effect whatsoever. This time, he clenched his teeth and immediately tried again, pushing as much power into the casting as he could manage.

This pattern repeated five times before Potter smiled broadly as he finally managed to cast a successful charm, releasing a brilliant slug of scarlet light larger than Draco's entire torso. Thankfully for the blond, it hadn't been properly aimed, shooting off to the side where it almost instantaneously slammed into the dueling containment wards protecting the audience... wards which momentarily turned visible as they struggled to dissipate energy dumped into them.

What?

The world seemed to slow as he processed what had just happened and adrenaline began to flow in earnest. Potter had just cast… what was that? How did he go from not being able to cast to turning a disarming charm into that? The dopey smile on the magical incompetent's face suddenly took on a decidedly sinister cast to Draco's newly opened eyes.

He could not take one of those!

Panic and a magically enhanced endocrine system kicked Draco's efforts up to a new level as he threw more disarming charms downrange as fast as he could manage. In the process, his accuracy took a hit, not that it mattered; improved accuracy wouldn't have helped in the slightest when none of the hits even seemed to register on his opponent.

After a couple more false-starts, Potter's counterattack began in earnest, the still-smiling twelve-year-old sending bolt after bolt of burning red magic in Draco's general direction. His accuracy was abominable, bad enough that he might have been better off aiming away from his opponent, but with those freakishly powerful spells he would only need to hit once.

Draco scrambled for an idea, any idea, on how to get out of his predicament, until his adrenaline-soaked mind finally hit on a spell he had learned from one of his private tutors over the summer. It wasn't much, but it was different, and that difference might be enough to buy him just a few seconds to come up with something else.

As another wildly inaccurate disarming charm shot past him a couple yards to the left, Draco cast, "Serpensortia!" His wand flashed white as a trio of large black snakes shot out of the light and landed heavily two thirds of the way across the dueling platform, drawing his opponent's attention immediately.

Unfortunately for Draco, the distraction came too late as one of Potter's spells finally managed to find its target, slamming into his chest with a dull thud and the wet crack of breaking ribs and knocking him backwards off his feet. Before he hit the ground, the magic took effect, ripping the blond boy's wand out of his hand with brutal force, dislocating three of his fingers and breaking his wrist on the way.

Between the pain of his injuries and his rising exhaustion in the wake of the adrenaline rush, the Malfoy Heir lost consciousness even before he skidded to a stop.

3.11.8 At least it's not French

As that annoying blond kid's unconscious form came to a halt on the fabric-covered dueling platform, Harry had already dismissed him in favor of the snakes he had conjured, catching their beady black eyes with his own brilliant emerald ones. The conjured reptiles took one look at the currently human-shaped dragon and sensibly decided they desperately needed to be somewhere else, fleeing at the best speed they could manage.

That was kind of unexpected. Harry cocked an eyebrow curiously as he watched the snakes slither off; normally, conjurations didn't have such good sense. Had that annoying blond kid managed to summon real snakes from somewhere, instead?

As he relaxed and stowed his wand, Harry reflected on his performance... a rather embarrassing performance, if he were to be honest. Harry rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly. He'd flubbed casting the disarming spell so many times during the last thirty-seconds, in front of so many of his fellow students, that he really couldn't think of it any other way. Even when he had finally managed to connect, it had barely worked like it was supposed to; the disarming charm was supposed to disarm the target, not hammer them into the ground.

Worse yet, his accuracy was terrible; Sergeant Major Hooktalon would have been ashamed of that performance. Harry frowned; he'd have to start putting in a lot more practice if he didn't want to embarrass himself like that again. Aiming a wand was completely different from aiming a rifle.

A scream from the crowd to his left interrupted his reverie, and a quick glance revealed that one of the fleeing snakes had encountered two of Harry's friends in Hufflepuff, Susan and Hannah. The two clutched each other in fright as they attempted to cower away from the snake which was hissing demands that they get out of the way.

"Hey, you!" Harry hissed at the snake in the same way, storming over and hopping down off the platform. "You stop that!"

The snake turned on Harry, rearing back to strike before Harry's hand shot out faster than it could react and grabbed it behind the head, incidentally snapping its spine and dissipating the reptile's conjured form.

Harry cocked his head curiously as he looked down at his empty hand. So, the snakes were conjured after all. But they spoke parseltongue! How had...?

Weird. After a short moment's consideration, Harry shook his head in dismissal. He'd have to give it a bit of a think later.

With the immediate threat removed, the hullaballoo died down, and an accusatory voice called out from the crowd.

"You're a parselmouth!"

3.11.9 An unlikely defender

The room descended into shocked silence as the accusation sank into people's minds.

"I'm a what?" Harry spoke up.

"You're a parselmouth," the voice — belonging to a Ravenclaw Harry wasn't familiar with — repeated.

"And that is...?"

"It means you can speak parseltongue," The Ravenclaw explained.

The currently human-shaped dragon gave him another blank look.

"That means you can speak to snakes!" He sounded a bit exasperated now.

"Yeah, so what?" Harry asked, completely failing to read the mood.

"Only dark wizards can speak parseltongue," another anonymous voice asserted.

"Why?" Harry was confused. "It's just another language. You know, just like English or French or Spanish or Gaelic or German or Norwegian or Or'zet or Greek or…"

Before he could continue his listing of languages — a process his audience likely would have found much more impressive had they known he was fluent in every single one of them — the same Ravenclaw interrupted, insisting, "But parseltongue is special!"

"But why?" Harry demanded, a little exasperated himself now. "I mean, snakes aren't even interesting to talk to; they're way too dumb to have a proper conversation!"

It really did seem like a rather silly thing to make a big situation out of.

"For cryin' out loud, the one just now didn't even respond right to a threat when I told it to back off. I was like a thousand times its size, so you'd think it'd know better, but they're just too dumb. Even porpoises are better conversationalists, and half of what they say is swearing!" The dragon shook his currently human-shaped head.

"But You-Know-Who was a parselmouth!" the Ravenclaw insisted. "And we had that 'Heir of Slytherin' thing back on Halloween. Slytherin was a parselmouth, too!"

"So? That's a silly argument." A few of the Hufflepuffs had finally wrapped their heads around the changed situation, and one of them loyally stepped up to the defense of their own, even in the face of creepy-sounding magical languages. "You-Know-Who also spoke English, and no one's insisting English is an evil language because of it."

"Yeah! And Harry wasn't even on campus on Halloween," one of the Hufflepuff prefects chimed in. "He was off-campus with Professor Snape for something. I remember checking since I was responsible for roll-call that night." At the odd looks from his counterparts in the other houses, he clarified, "We started checking during the feasts after that debacle at Halloween last year." The puzzled looks dissolved into thoughtful nodding at that.

As the stubborn Raven gathered himself for another round of belligerent insistence that Harry Potter must in fact be evil because he could speak to snakes, a second Ravenclaw entered the conversation, this one a petite girl with Asiatic features.

"It's Harry Potter," the girl scoffed at her housemate, "he's about as likely to be secretly evil as you are to spontaneously grow wings and fly away... and with your transfiguration grades, that's hardly likely. Some of us actually pay attention to the rest of the school."

The girl, Su Li as Harry recalled — she had been memorable as the only student smaller than he was back when he had been Sorted — then turned to him. "I'm more interested in the fact that you can apparently talk to porpoises. That's a magical language I've never heard of before."

"Um… I'm not sure its magical, really." Harry thought about it for a moment. "It didn't seem any different than when I learned French and Norwegian last summer or when Mr. Slackhammer's nephew taught me Or'zet. I learned it when I was nine from the pod that lives in the sound just off the coast."

"So, you can pick up languages just by hearing them?" She seemed extremely interested at that. "I'm assuming there isn't a pod of porpoises that speaks English and used it to teach you their own language."

"Yeah, that's right," Harry admitted. "The 'picking up languages by hearing them spoken' bit, I mean. They don't speak English as far as I know."

Su Li nodded at the clarification, turning back to the room at large with an oddly shark-like smile on her face. "There you go, Harry's just a polyglot who happens to have learned to talk to snakes," the diminutive girl concluded. "No dark magic involved."

3.11.10 Crouching tiger, hidden dragon

As the confrontation died down and the students began to filter out of the hall, Snape stifled a relieved chuckle.

When his dunderheaded godson had gone and picked a fight with the resident dragon, the potions master had feared the worst. Draco was hardly the most skilled duelist at the best of times, and the youngest Potter was absurdly deadly, even in human form. Even with a Healer onsite, had one of those monstrous disarming charms hit his godson's empty head, the boy would have been hard-pressed to survive the impact. As it was, the hit to the chest had broken two ribs and the rapid departure of his wand had dislocated three fingers and broken the boy's wrist.

When the fool boy was released from Poppy's care, he would have to do something unpleasant to Lucius' idiotic spawn. Apparently, the previous year's bludgers had not been enough to drive home the notion that Snape's instructions were not to be ignored. Though, to be fair, the potions master mused, judging by the boy's continued, if ineffectual, attempts at harassing Miss Granger partial castration hadn't been sufficient to keep Draco on the straight and narrow, either.

If that didn't get through to the boy… well, Snape was fairly certain he had no means available to escalate further. At least, he had no means that would not risk his own arrest, and that was off the table. Godson or not, seeing to Draco's education rated far lower on Snape's personal hierarchy of priorities than avoiding seeing the inside of Azkaban.

Of greater concern to the potions master were the potential pitfalls for the dragon involved, and those were varied and quite troubling. Apart from the emotional fallout over the accidental killing of a classmate, no matter how unlikable, there was the potential damage to the Potter Heir's political position, and through that, damage to Snape's long-term strategic goals.

Harry's immense personal strength was not his sole asset. His position as the Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter and — much as Snape loathed the folly that had led to that detestable moniker — his position as the Boy-Who-Lived were very nearly as important for their long-term goals. If his reputation were to be seriously damaged before the boy was mature and in position to defend himself, the boy's political clout could be severely eroded by the time it became crucial for the revolution.

Caution was advisable.

Among things to be cautious about, dead children rated near the top of the list. Admittedly, teaching magic was a risky business even if they had gotten very good at managing those risks over the centuries, and Harry would have faced no legal consequences given the ages and situation involved. Regardless of legal culpability however, accidental manslaughter during a schoolyard practice duel would have significantly damaged the young dragon's reputation, and that could have been nearly as damaging in the long run.

The same could be said for the revelation of the boy's talent with parseltongue. Rightly or wrongly, the serpent language carried a stigma in Wizarding Britain, and Snape's long-term plans could ill-afford such a blot on the boy's good name.

Miss Li's fortuitous interference had been a godsend in that regard.

As the last of the disorganized mob of students filed out of the room, the potions master considered how he might thank the girl. Such service deserved appropriate recognition, to encourage the girl to continue, if nothing else. Perhaps he could offer her access to one of his rarer tomes? That was usually a safe sort of reward for a Ravenclaw…

...though, perhaps he could do one better.

The former spy paused for a moment as he recalled that final smile from the girl before he smiled a devious sort of smile of his own. Yes, he could definitely do something better, not to mention potentially more amusing. That smile was not simply an expression of satisfaction at winning an argument and besting a rival; over the years, the potions master had seen enough of those to differentiate.

No, that was the smile of a predator... a tiger crouching as it prepared to pounce on an unsuspecting stag.

Thinking back on what he knew of Miss Li, it took Snape little effort to piece together her motives. The girl hailed from Hong Kong, and while the city was currently under British rule on the non-magical side of things, it was firmly part of the Han Empire on the magical side.

It begged the question: why had they sent one of their daughters halfway around the world to a British school rather than keeping her close to home?

Given the diplomatic relationship — or more accurately, the lack thereof — between the British Ministry and the Han Empire, it could be safely assumed that Miss Li had come to Hogwarts neither out of any sense of respect for the British wizarding world, nor in an attempt to forge a better life for herself. No, he'd be willing to bet a month's salary the girl had been sent to acquire new blood for the family.

Just like perhaps two-thirds of the girls in his own House, she was at Hogwarts to get her MRS, as the saying went.

In light of that, the reasons for her predatory smile became painfully obvious. A magical talent for understanding any spoken language would be an invaluable addition to the family bloodline, and when combined with his utterly absurd magical strength…

The sallow-faced man smirked. Given the information Miss Li had to work with, it was no wonder the girl was on the hunt!

Now the only soul remaining in the cavernous dueling hall, the potions master no longer felt the need to stifle his chuckling. Miss Abercrombie in his House and now Miss Li in Ravenclaw, in addition to Miss Granger and Miss Suze who were practically joined to the boy at the hip — both sets of hips in the centaur's case — the wretched lizard certainly seemed to have a way with the ladies. Had Snape thought it in any way intentional, he might have taken the boy aside for a chat about appropriate behavior; as it was however, Severus felt nothing but amusement at the situation.

What would Miss Li do when she found herself playing crouching tiger, not to the stag she expected, but rather to a hidden dragon? Snape was uncertain, but he was certain that whatever it was would be thoroughly amusing.

Perhaps he ought to shuffle the lab partners in his classes again? Learning to work with a variety of people was a valuable life skill, after all... and if Ms. Li were to find herself fortuitously partnered with the young man who had caught her interest...

Hmm… he nodded firmly.

Yes, that would do nicely as a thank-you gift for the girl. That would do nicely, indeed.

3.11.11 Rumors

Despite Su Li's eminently reasonable explanation, Harry's supposedly-depraved activities as a parselmouth quickly made the rounds of the Hogwarts rumor mill, and as they did, various elements of the student body each painted their own picture of the young dragon's supposed private life.

Vivid imaginations were aided and abetted by Harry's recent habit of spending his weekends away from the school. After all, if Harry had nothing to hide, why wasn't he showing up to meals on the weekends?

The pastime was not limited to those with an unhealthy obsession with ophidian linguistics. Even those who disagreed with the idea of Harry as the 'Heir of Slytherin' came up with their own stories, for reasons as varied as the individuals telling them.

An older Slytherin spread the idea that the Potter Heir was faking the talent to try to erode lingering support for the Dark Lord, who had played on his own parseltongue talent as proof of his pedigree.

A young Gryffindor played up the dark wizard angle in a vague hope that it would keep Harry from dating anyone else until she was old enough to snap him up.

A certain blonde Ravenclaw claimed that Harry was, in fact, speaking dragon — not parseltongue at all — and that the two languages were simply mutually intelligible. She went on to explain that this was eminently sensible because Harry was obviously a dragon, so he would know.

In the considered opinions of her housemates, she was obviously deranged.

One of the Hufflepuffs even posited the idea that Harry was a honey-badger animagus who had cultivated the talent expressly for the purpose of taunting snakes before killing and eating them. While his housemates dismissed his explanation for the most part, they also did little to counter its spread. Most rather liked the idea; after all, what could be more Hufflepuff than that?

Other people just made up stories because they liked telling stories, and they saw no reason to let a little thing like truth get in the way of their hobbies.

Regardless of reason, Harry's defenders had their hands full trying to keep up with the proliferation.
 
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Section 3.12 - Clash of titans
3.12 Clash of titans

3.12.1 Invitation

Mac McDonald and Jim Coates walked in companionable silence through the misty pre-dawn streets of their home neighborhood on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. It was a calm sort of place with friendly neighbors and lots of children, all told, a great place to raise a family. That and its location, situated within easy walking distance of the Hogs Haulage offices and yards, made the neighborhood a favorite for company men and their families.

Such was that popularity that the disreputable appearance of the pair, trudging by in the pre-dawn twilight in their work clothes and filthy with coal dust, drew little comment even from those few awake enough to notice. Two company men trudging home after a long shift, covered in the evidence of their labors was nothing to get excited over.

"Good work today, Mac," Jim told his fireman as they came to the turn where he would break off for his house. Clapping a congratulatory hand on the man's pitch-black shoulder, the senior engineer continued, "'Specially pitchin' in t' help unload the coal wagons. Tough enough handlin' the night run, but goin' straight to extra shovelin' afterward's a real kick in tha teeth."

"'s nah problem, Jim," Mac waved off his coworker. "Weren't 'awkins' whiskey 'is father died, and ya daan't make someone come back from buryin' 'is da' ter a big pile o' work." He shook his head at the idea, then gestured to Jim's equally coal-encrusted countenance, "An' 's not like you didn't hedge in too, Jimmy." Mac chuckled, "Can't 'ave ya makin' me look sorry!"

"Right-o! Right-o," Jim laughed at that, shaking his head even as he turned to go. "Clock ya' tomorra, Mac!"

For his part, Mac walked on toward his own home. Already visible down the lane, it was a small but well-kept residence whose most important feature, in Mac's considered opinion, currently had her arms crossed over her heavily pregnant belly as she tapped her foot impatiently on the front step.

"Well, ain't you a sight fer sore eyes, luv," Mac called to his wife, Irene, hurrying as much as he was able after a very long night's work. "Wot's got you out in tha' mornin' chill?"

"Ah! No hugs 'til you shower, Mac," she fended off her husband as he made to embrace her in enthusiastic greeting. At his comically exaggerated pout, she assured him, "I'll hug the stuffin' out of you once you wash off that coal dust, Mac, don't you worry. I'd have asked what took ya' so long, but you're even dirtier than usual. Had to fill in moving coal, then?"

Mac nodded as the couple made their way inside. "'awkins lost 'is da' an' 'ad ter go ter the funeral. Didn't want 'im ter come back to a load o' extra work, so me an' Jimmy filled in fer 'im."

"You're a good man, Mac," Irene smiled proudly, eliciting a somewhat bashful smile in return from her husband. "I've got a hot meal for you on the stove, and once you're cleaned up, there's a letter you should take a look at."

Mac paused on his way to the shower. "Problem?"

"Only that if you don't get a look at it soon, your daughter may squirrel it away in her room, never to be seen again," Irene laughed. "It's not every day you get a letter from the Boy-Who-Lived, after all!"

Mac chuckled at that. He could certainly see their little Colleen hoarding such a letter to herself; the excited squeal when the six-year-old had learned her hero had purchased the train company had been deafening. He'd have to hurry and get cleaned up.

Fifteen minutes later, and what seemed like five pounds of coal dust lighter, Mac made his way to the kitchen to join his three children. From her perch on her older brother's lap, his youngest, Colleen, stared intently at the letter in question when it was laid out on the table, busily sounding out the words. His eldest son Mike, the owner of said lap, had dressed for his new job at one of the Hogsmeade warehouses but nonetheless sat patiently helping his little sister with her reading. To complete the scene, Mac's second son, Evan, sat off to the side eating his breakfast and periodically fidgeting as he glanced back and forth between the letter and the door.

Seeing that, Mac figured it'd probably be best if he went ahead and dealt with the situation right away. Evan was obviously curious, but he'd be late for school if he stayed much longer, and that was something to be avoided. The group tutoring arrangements that took the place of Hogwarts for most of wizarding Britain tended to be fairly informal affairs, but there were limits... in this case, limits in the form of Mac's irate sister coming over to rag on him for letting her nephew show up late to her lessons.

"Wot ya got there, kiddo?" he asked as he made his way to the table.

"Daddy!" the excited six-year-old looked up at the sound of her father's voice, immediately climbed out of her brother's lap, and ran over to give Mac a hug. "Did you see? We got a letter from Harry Potter!"

"'s 'at so?" Mac asked. "An' what did Mister Potter 'ave t' say t' us?"

"He's inviting us to his Christmas party!" the small girl gushed, hugging her father again out of sheer exuberance.

Mac returned the hug even as he looked over her head to his eldest for an explanation.

"Looks like he's havin' a company Christmas party, Da'," Mike relayed to his father. "Barbecue and such o'er at the company offices according to 'is letter." The young man in his early twenties gestured to the paper on the table. "'Says he's lookin' ter meet all o' 'is new workers, now that 'e bought tha company an' all."

"Can we go, Daddy?" Colleen asked from her position hugging her father, looking up to deliver a dangerously cute look. "Please?"

"I'll 'ave ter take a look at the invitation, sweetie," Mac temporized, gesturing to his son to hand over the letter for his perusal. "Daan't kna if tha invitation extends ter family."

"It does, Da'," Mike volunteered even as he passed over the letter. "Says so specifically, just asks us ter tell 'im how many yer bringin'. I'd like ta go, if yer gonna'."

Mac looked from the cautiously hopeful look on his eldest's face over to the quietly hopeful face of his second son, who was trying not to look eager with all the subtlety a teenager could muster. His daughter's ever tightening hug was a constant reminder of her opinion, so there was only one left to check, and Irene's approving nod decided the issue.

"Well, I guess we're goin', then," Mac said, unfolding the letter to look for himself. "When is this fin' 'appenin', anyway?"

3.12.2 Christmas plans

"What do you have there, Sharon?" Tony Granger asked.

His wife had just come in the front door of their modest home in Crawley carrying a handful of envelopes from the daily post, staring intently at one item in particular.

"I'm not entirely certain," she replied, looking up from her examination with a puzzled frown. "It's addressed to us from Hogsmeade, but it came through the normal post rather than by owl like Hermione's letters always do."

"Who do you think it might be from?" he asked as he walked over to join her. "The school always uses the owls."

"Well, Tony, I suppose the only way to tell for certain is to open it and give the letter a read, now isn't it?" she said, setting down the rest of the post and opening the letter in question. As she freed the missive from its containing envelope, the Sharon's eyes narrowed as she took in the unfamiliar handwriting.

"So, who's it from?" her husband prodded.

"It's a letter from Harry," she said absently as she continued to read. "It seems he has invited us to several of his Christmas events this year."

"Judging by last summer, I doubt we'd be able to pry Hermione away to come home, so there's that to consider," Tony mused, thinking back on the festivities almost a year past. "That, and I suppose last year wasn't too bad. Decorating the tree was kind of fun; you never appreciate how awkward ladders are until you don't need to use one, that kid could reach everything."

"That happens when you can palm the entire tree, I suppose... and yes, he's invited us to celebrate Christmas at the Lair," Sharon relayed, "but apparently we're also invited to a Christmas party he's throwing for his new company, Hogs Haulage..." the woman trailed off before turning to her husband. "Did you know that our daughter's friend had purchased a railway company?"

"I can't say that I was aware of that, no," her husband replied. "I'd picked up on the materials business before, but that one is news to me. We might be able to find out more by attending the party, I suppose. When is it scheduled?"

"This Friday, it seems," Sharon relayed, sounding amused. "Do you think Harry realizes just how far we have to travel in order to visit?"

"I rather doubt it," Tony chuckled himself.

Magic seemed to twist perspectives about some things, travel times among them — he'd noticed the same tendency in his daughter as well, what little he'd seen of her over the past year, anyway.

"In any case, we've got the Johnson appointment scheduled for that day for late morning," he shook his head sadly. "There's no way we can reschedule, not after how long we've been trying to set it up."

"You have an excellent point there," his wife agreed reluctantly. "I suppose we'll have to ask about it at Christmas proper."

She paused to shake her head in disbelief. A boy her daughter's age not only owned his own company, but he apparently actively participated in running it. The magical world was a very strange place, indeed. She turned back to the letter and read further.

"Hmm, he asks that we not show up before Monday," she relayed. "It seems he's planning to be out doing something away from home during the weekend. I wonder what he's up to?"

"I suppose we'll have to find out when we get there," Tony shrugged.

It couldn't be that important could it?

3.12.3 Pantry raid

From Harry Potter's perspective, the latter part of the fall term had been characterized by a series of quite amazingly dull weekends. This one, the last of the fall term, had been no different thus far.

The day had begun in the manner of every weekend for the past several weeks, with the young dragon stooping low to allow his centaur allies to tie green branches onto him as a disguise. Then he had lain in wait within sight of his acromantula preserve, standing vigil in search of the nefarious snacker who had raided his pantry to such devastating effect. Acromantula were in short supply these days, and he didn't want to lose the last of his spider-snacks!

Saturday had passed uneventfully, and with sundown approaching, Sunday threatened to end similarly, when suddenly there was movement in the brush! Harry stilled completely and watched.

The leaves parted to reveal a reptilian snout — even larger than his own! — covered in scales of a green so dark as to appear almost black in the fading sunlight. Above and behind the snout, a pair of forward-facing eyes shined a sickly yellow as they emerged from the brush. At their appearance, Harry noted an odd sort of sensation wash over him, akin to the feeling when the professors tried to cast on him before he was ready but amplified several hundredfold.

It kind of tickled... just a little.

Harry shivered slightly, brushing off the feeling with about the same level of effort a human might use to brush off a cobweb, as the massive snout and strange eyes were followed by the rest of an utterly enormous snake. By the young dragon's estimation, the thing had to be at least half-again as long as he was... and that was just the part he could see so far!

The revelation was a bit of a shock; it was the first time since Avebury that Harry had seen any living creature larger than he was! His leafy camouflage rustled slightly as he shook off the momentary surprise. Big or small, magical or mundane, it was still just a snake, Harry reasoned with an inward shrug, and he was a dragon, so there was really no contest.

The important bit was saving his livestock! To that end, Harry stood up, still covered in branches, and barreled into the clearing like a battering ram.

"Hey you!" Harry hissed loudly in parseltongue. "What do you think you're doing stealing my spiders? Don't you know you're supposed to ask first? You're being rude!"

The gargantuan snake reared back, head towering at half-again Harry's height as the young, camouflaged dragon came to a stop in front of it, the branches of his disguise rustling about him as they shook from the rough handling.

"What is this?" the snake hissed, taken aback. "A Speaker? But you are a bush! Can bushes Speak?"

"Hey! I'm a dragon, not a bush!" Harry protested, sounding thoroughly miffed at the misidentification.

"You do not look like a dragon, Speaker," the snake said, cocking its massive head to one side and looking quite decidedly puzzled. "You look like a bush, or perhaps a short tree?"

Realizing the problem, Harry turned his head and let out a stream of fire, torching his leafy disguise.

As the burning foliage fell off revealing Harry's dark silver scales, the snake exclaimed, "You are a dragon, Speaker! And you can turn into a bush? How remarkable!"

"But I didn't turn into… oh never mind," Harry sighed as he gave up on trying to explain to the rather dull beast. It seemed pretty smart for a snake, but the fact remained: it was a snake, and that was a very low bar to clear. "Anyway, I wanted to tell you to stop eating my spiders! If you keep eating them and killing off all the little ones there won't be any left to make more to eat later."

"Speaker, I am the Greatest of Serpents," the snake hissed, rearing back threateningly. "I answer only to those of the Master's blood, and you are not of his kin. You may not command me! I hunt where I wish."

"You'd better listen, or I'll have to do something unpleasant to you," Harry warned, not intimidated in the slightest.

"You threaten me?" the snake reared up even higher, its back end coiling in preparation to strike. "You have already forsaken your advantage by revealing yourself, Speaker. How do you intend to hunt me? Turning into a bush once more will not help you!"

"But I didn't turn into a…" Harry's protest was interrupted by the snake's powerful strike.

Caught by surprise, Harry failed to react in time to prevent the snake's jaws from closing on his neck. Envenomed fangs smashed against Harry's silvery scales, grinding with a terribly jarring clangor. The serpent bore down with the full strength of its jaw, releasing a rush of caustic venom which bubbled and hissed against the metallic scales. Its great teeth ground harder against the dragon's unyielding metal hide, straining harder and harder until eventually something had to give...

...and give, something did.

With a cascade of sharp cracks, the snake's fangs broke, splintering the young dragon's neck.

"Hey, that was rude!" Harry complained as the snake muttered sibilant curses around a mouthful of broken teeth and undamaged dragon neck. "We were in the middle of a conversation — you don't just go biting people in the middle of talking to them!"

He then brought one paw up to push the snake's head off of him, finding purchase on the massive lower jaw and giving a heave. Hooked around Harry's neck and unable to move freely, the snake's jaw first dislocated and then snapped under the pressure.

That proved to be too much for the basilisk.

Somewhat used to broken fangs — an injury which occurred with reasonable frequency during normal hunting — the additional pain of a broken jaw was something it had never encountered before. The giant snake recoiled, writhing across the forest floor, smashing trees to splinters, and crushing the undergrowth into the dirt.

Watching as the gigantic reptile writhed in shrieking, inarticulate agony, Harry considered what to do. He was rather curious as to where the large serpent had come from as it seemed like the sort of thing that Bane would have known about if it were a normal denizen of the forest, but Harry kind of doubted it'd be particularly eager to answer questions. The young dragon shook his great head, dismissing the idea. It probably wasn't worth the effort; he'd never found snakes to be good conversationalists, anyway, even when their jaws were intact. And speaking of broken jaws, he thought, it was probably best to put the poor screaming creature out of its misery.

Harry's great green eyes hardened with resolve, and wind whistled as his powerful wing sliced through the air. The wing knuckle, claws fisted, slammed into the massive snake a meter or so back from the head, and the reptile's half-yard-thick spine snapped with a tremendous, wet crack. The shockwave from the impact rippled along the body in both directions, separating scales from skin close to the point of collision in a shimmering greenish shower with the hydrostatic shock rupturing organs even farther away. The snake fell silent, a splash of blood and venom cutting off its final scream abruptly as its eyeballs first bulged, then popped from the overpressure.

Harry reflexively went for the bite to make sure of it only to rear back just as reflexively as he caught a whiff of the venom smoking on the ground as it dissolved the dirt.

"Huh," the dragon mused, looking down at the spilled venom curiously.

It seemed those biting instincts weren't insurmountable after all — or at least there was a counter-instinct tied to his sense of smell. Either way, it was probably a good thing in this case. That stuff smelled nasty, even to him, and after his last bout of severe indigestion, he was not eager to risk a repetition.

Harry looked over massive carcass stretching off into the splintered wreckage of the surrounding trees. That smell was not a good indicator for the general palatability of the creature, but that was a lot of meat, and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste. Maybe there was a way to process the carcass so he could eat it safely?

Harry frowned. Returning to the Lair to try to look it up would take too long. The spiders would eat the carcass before he could even find the right book; it didn't matter if it was poisonous, the young ones would eat anything. That left asking somebody, but who? Harry's green eyes narrowed speculatively — who did he know that would know how to process highly magical creatures into usable... Green eyes lit with realization.

"I know!"

3.12.4 What the dragon dragged in

Decorated with all the flamboyance typical of most magical celebrations, the Great Hall made for a spectacular sight during the final meal of the term. Evergreens lined the walls at regular intervals, splitting the distance between the hanging braziers providing the bulk of the illumination in the room. Garlands adorned the stone walls with massive wreaths above the twin fireplaces. Behind the staff table stood the focal point of the festive decorations, a monstrously large tree reaching nearly twice the height of its smaller brethren and stopping just short of disappearing into the illusion used to make the roof seem transparent.

In an unusually well-coordinated effort which had been organized by Gilderoy Lockhart of all people, every inch of the room had been decorated in a unified theme. The effect was both quite lovely and a sharp contrast to the normal cacophony of conflicting styles that typically resulted from skilled spellcasters working 'together' on a project.

The trees sported illusory icicles and silvery ornaments to go with the dancing fairy lights in all the shades of a moonlit snowy evening. The wintry theme carried through the rest of the room, from the garlands and wreaths to the stonework itself. Even the flames roaring in the braziers and fireplaces had been charmed to provide an enchanting white light more reminiscent of starlight than their usual fiery hues. In the considered opinions of the students, however, the unquestionable crowning feature of the display was the illusory snow falling gently from the ceiling only to dissipate just as it reached the heads of the students.

The evening meal was winding to a close, and conversation in the Great Hall had died down to a dull roar as the students began to consider wrapping things up and going to bed. They might not have class in the morning, but it would be a long day of travel on the Express for winter break. The children knew they would be well served by a good night's sleep; however, they also knew this was their last chance of the term to catch up with their friends... and their last chance to catch up on the latest Hogwarts gossip.

And there was a lot of that to catch up on. The autumn term had been a productive season for the Hogwarts rumor mill, a circumstance aided in no small part by the mystery of the petrifications and the revelation of Harry Potter's linguistic talents. Aided by his conspicuous absence the past few weekends, the rumors about the resident dragon continued to flourish despite the best efforts of the Hufflepuff students to quash them, and with his absence on this last day of the term, Harry's friends among the student body feared that they would just have time to fester over break.

The call of "Professor Snape?" that rang out from the doorway to the Great Hall thus came as something of a welcome relief to the young Potter's defenders.

The loud scraping sound interrupting the ensuing deafening silence was less of one.

"Professor Snape?" the small boy called again, dragging the scaly head of a mammoth creature behind him by means of an oddly-textured milky-white rope of a size that would not have looked out of place attached to an anchor on a large sailing ship. "Look what I found!"

All the while, Harry had been walking steadily forward towards the staff table, dragging more and more of what was slowly resolving itself to be an utterly enormous snake behind him, step by unlabored step. The thing was as wide as one of the House tables, including the benches, and it was very nearly as tall as it was wide. As more of the critter passed through the doors, it became obvious the snake had died from a tremendous blow just behind the head, one that had shattered the thing's spine, judging by the sharp kink when that part had rounded the door frame. With that bit of evidence, the more perceptive students reassessed the broken and missing scales, the burst eyeballs, and the blood on the thing's chin in a new light, revising the strength of that killing blow upwards by a wide margin.

"Mr. Potter," the potions master said in a long-suffering tone, "why did you deem it appropriate to drag that thing in here?"

"Um, I found it raiding my pantry, and I was wondering whether it was safe to eat. The meat smells pretty tasty, but something... I think it's the venom, anyway something smells kinda off, and I figured I should ask," the young dragon explained. "And, well, I guess I was just kinda excited, y'know? I've been trying to catch this thing for like five straight weeks now! Plus, I didn't want to leave it near the spiders, or they'd have eaten it before I got back, so I ran over and asked Mr. Bane for some rope so I could get a good grip. When I tried to pull it on my own, it just broke," he finished, sadly gesturing to the upper lip of the snake's mouth which had a large chunk torn out of the edge.

"I see," Snape sighed as he rose to his feet. "Very well, Mr. Potter. It so happens that I do know how to process this beast, which is a basilisk, for reference; however, the Great Hall is not an appropriate venue for such activities. Drag it back to the clearing behind Hagrid's hut, and we will see about cleansing it of any harmful substances so that you may consume it without danger."

"Right!"

Harry started to drag it around to go back out the door only to encounter the Gryffindor table, filled with students staring at him and the wall of scales stretching out the door with looks of awestricken horror.

"Um, Mr. Snape?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"I don't think I can get it turned around."

"Then drag it by the tail," Snape snapped as his rather limited supply of patience ran out abruptly.

"Right!"

And with that, the small boy quickly hauled himself up onto the carcass, loosening and then removing the smooth white rope, and leaving the massive basilisk's head to loll to the side as every student in the hall stared at it in trepidation. Quickly gathering up the now-detached rope, Harry scampered back to the door, hopped lightly up on the carcass in order to squeeze through the door frame and disappeared from view. The hall remained utterly silent for nearly a minute before the scraping began again as the snake slowly inched its way back out the door, its dreadful head flopping limply with each tug.

As the terrifying visage of the basilisk rounded the doorframe, leaving only a three-meter-wide blood smear as evidence that it had ever been there, Snape shook his head in exasperation, turning back to his plate he quickly finished the last few bites of his meal before sweeping out of the still shocked-silent Great Hall in a billowing cloud of dark robes.

"Argus," the Headmaster spoke from his chair at the center of the staff table, breaking the silence and drawing the attention of the castle Caretaker, who had been staring at the blood trail with shock slowly giving way to ire. "I strongly suspect that that beast was responsible for your pet's unfortunate predicament. Basilisks normally kill with their gaze, but if eye contact is interrupted — such as through a reflection in a mirror, or more cogently, through a reflection in a puddle of water such as the one filling the hallway on that night — petrification can result."

"Really?" the perpetually bitter man perked up, irritation at the bloody mess clearing. "I suppose the thing got what was coming to it, then."

"Indeed," the elderly wizard nodded gravely.

The Hall quietened for quite some time as everyone struggled to process the incredible sequence of events, until the silence was eventually broken by a certain Hufflepuff rumor-monger, the very same one that had put forth the idea that Harry was a honey-badger animagus.

"See? I totally called it!"

Then, one of his housemates threw a roll at him, and the spell was broken.

3.12.5 Raising a glass

"Thank you all for taking time away from your winter activities to attend this meeting," Albus began. "As you all know, there is much to discuss."

The Hogwarts Express had left earlier that morning carrying most of the student body off to their homes for the holidays, and the Hogwarts staff had taken advantage of the lull in activity to gather once more in their customary conference room. The meeting was just as well attended as usual, though the reason for that attendance was no longer primarily the top-shelf open bar.

As the Headmaster had said, there was much to discuss... though none of the attendees were about to pass up the booze.

Filius stepped smoothly back into his unofficial role as bartender, making his rounds. As Albus accepted his own portion, a lowball glass of an icy blue liqueur going by the name Winter Campfire, he proposed a toast.

"In light of recent, rather disturbing events, I would like to raise a glass to Mr. Potter's prodigious appetite," the elderly wizard began, "without which we would have faced the truly unenviable task of rousting an absurdly large basilisk from the school."

The old man joined his staff in drinking to that in a wordless affirmative. The affirmative noises turned appreciative as they took in the taste of Pomona's latest brewing efforts. The icy blue liquid felt frigid going down, only to be slowly overtaken by a swelling fiery sensation and a subtle smoky aftertaste as the ice faded. It was an interesting combination to say the least.

"I suspect the task would have proven quite startlingly difficult," the elderly wizard quipped, prompting a titter of nervous laughter from the younger members of his staff. His beard shifted as the old man smiled, after the spectacle at the feast the previous night, a little levity was overdue. Even dead and being dragged as a trophy, that basilisk had cut a thoroughly intimidating figure.

"You've not lost your knack for understatement Albus," Minerva quipped wryly as she sipped again from her own glass. "That beastie was far larger than anything I would care to tangle with."

"Come now, Minerva, where is your sense of adventure?" Filius chimed in. "Basilisks aren't so bad. Bring a few roosters along to the fight, and they die easily enough."

"Oh, aye, they do at that, Filius," Minerva allowed. "And I am sure we would have been able to handle the beastie easily… had we known what the monster was beforehand, a luxury we did not have, if you will recall." The Scotswoman paused to shake her head and take another sip of her drink. "Finding out would have been a world of trouble if not for young Mr. Potter's efforts."

"Indeed," Pomona spoke up, her own glass in hand. "And trying to do so in a school full of children would have been asking for tragedy, no matter how many roosters you enchanted."

There was a general murmur of horrified agreement as that concept percolated through the room, which made the sense of relief all the more palpable. While the ludicrously dangerous beastie did have a rather well-known and easily procured weakness, it was still a massive magical super-predator. It could kill at a glance, had venom deadly to almost every known creature, and was of a size such that even its death throes would likely have killed several people by accident, even if the staff had managed to kill it.

Harry Potter's appetite had done the school a great service, indeed.

"Speaking of the basilisk," Sprout asked as she finished her glass, "how did your efforts at butchering the carcass go, Severus? I am rather surprised to see you up and about so soon after processing something like that basilisk. Merlin knows how tired I get when harvesting some of the more difficult plants; that sort of magic resistance is a real pain to work around."

"Mr. Potter is a surprisingly quick study when spells are able to properly take advantage of his tremendous reserves," the potions master offered in an unusually free bout of praise. "Despite his typically abominable control, the harvesting charms are forgiving to being overpowered, particularly when used on a subject as recalcitrant as that basilisk. In the end, I did little more than demonstrate the spells and guide the dratted lizard's efforts. It was actually quite a relaxing evening."

"At least we don't have to worry about facing that monster anymore," Septima Vector offered from her usual chair, the relief in her comparatively young voice almost palpable. "Maybe we can go back to a more normal school term after the Christmas break."

"I would not be so quick to relax," Snape warned his younger colleague. "There remains one final issue."

"What do you mean?" she asked, sounding puzzled. "The snake is dead, right?"

"While the basilisk itself is quite thoroughly deceased, we are still short the perpetrator of this debacle," the potions master pointed out. "Even should we assume the basilisk managed to wake up on its own and begin terrorizing the school, we still must account for whoever wrote that threatening message on Halloween. While the abilities of a basilisk are formidable, they do not include writing, lacking as they do opposable thumbs... or for that matter, hands."

"Yes, you have a point, Severus," the headmaster reentered the conversation. "And it is a point I had intended to raise myself. Despite Mr. Potter's decisive termination of the villain's main weapon, we are still left with the unenviable situation of facing an unknown perpetrator, presumably still in the school. I implore you to remain vigilant."

"Of course, Headmaster," Vector offered automatically before looking around as if noticing something for the first time. "Um… not to change the subject, but given all the talk about remaining vigilant in the face of continuing threats, shouldn't our defense professor be in on this meeting?"

The question prompted several of her less-observant colleagues to notice that absence themselves. It seemed a fair question given the current holder of the title's rather lofty reputation.

"I already took the liberty of informing young Gilderoy earlier today," Dumbledore offered, sipping at his drink.

"And why did the popinjay choose not to attend this meeting with the rest of us?" the potions professor's acidic voice chimed in with the obvious question. "After our experiences with Quirrel, I should think that should require investigation, at least."

"Unlike our unfortunate colleague's absences last year, this one is neither unexpected nor unwarranted," the elderly wizard explained. "Gilderoy had a prior commitment away from campus, a book signing in Glasgow, if I recall, which had already been arranged long in advance of accepting his teaching contract. He departed shortly after the Express."

"An acceptable excuse, I suppose," the dour man grudgingly allowed. "In that case I would propose that we move on to more immediate concerns. The time for our grand experiment at Stonehenge approaches. How fare our preparations?"

"Mr. Potter is the picture of good health," Poppy spoke up for the first time in the meeting. "As his primary Healer, I have no objections to his participation. In fact, I suspect his ability to absorb magic has only increased after his ordeal at the beginning of the summer; the increased magical capacity seems to have remained stable."

Filius spoke up in turn, the half-goblin practically dancing in eager anticipation. "Between Nicholas and myself, I believe we have worked out a sufficiently comprehensive and durable sensor system to monitor the discharge process. When are we due to start?"

"I believe Mr. Potter has scheduled the event for next weekend," Albus offered.

"I suppose that's it until the end of the week then," Septima spoke up in the ensuing silence, raising her mostly empty glass to Sprout in salute. "At least we have some excellent drinks to take the edge off the waiting."

That was a sentiment everyone could agree with.

3.12.6 Ophidian charcuterie

"That's a lot of meat," Harry marveled, standing next to Suze and taking stock of his newly excavated cold-room.

Under the direction of Mr. Snape and aided by both Hagrid and one of the centaur patrols who had passed by in the normal course of their rounds, Harry had dressed the basilisk. First, he had gutted the snake to remove the viscera, separating almost the entirety of the bloody mess into specimen jars helpfully provided by Mr. Snape. Oddly enough that had included the remnants of the snake's eyes; Mr. Snape showed him a neat trick to pull them out without damaging them further. Then Harry had skinned the carcass and set aside the massive hide, which Hagrid had volunteered to tan for him.

Harry thought that was very nice of him, and the young dragon had made sure to tell him so.

Finally, he had to chop up the remainder of the snake into reasonably sized pieces, carefully removing all the bones — so many ribs, it took forever — and setting them aside as he went. Harry had some vague hopes of setting them up in a display like the one he dimly remembered from a long-ago field trip to the Natural History Museum back before Avebury. He'd have to go visit again some time.

At that point, he was left with the meat.

The basilisk had been a big one, and a big snake could be upwards of ninety percent lean muscle. Now all of that lean muscle now hung from the rough stone ceiling of his new larder using yet more of the rope Harry had ordered just a few weeks prior. Mr. Snape had demonstrated a clever series of charms to drain the foul-smelling blood out of the cut pieces which Harry had eagerly used. Unlike the venom, the blood was technically edible — for Harry at least — though it was certainly not tasty. The potions master had then assured Harry that hanging really was the only way to regulate the humidity and temperature of such large cuts of meat even after they had been drained, and thus there were now about five hundred slabs of basilisk meat hanging in his Lair. At a quarter-ton apiece, they made for an impressive sight; though to be honest, a quarter of a million pounds of meat would make for an impressive sight no matter how it was sliced.

The problem remained, of course: what to do with it?

Harry knew he averaged several tons of food intake a day, but most of that was in mineral form, primarily scrap metal and coal. He rarely ate more than the equivalent of two or three deer per day in actual normal-people-food. Two to three whole deer were about as much meat as three-quarters of one of those magnificent steaks, and including food for his damsels into the mix hardly changed things. Their dietary needs were barely a rounding error on his own. That meant the basilisk represented almost two years' worth of meat, even if he ate no other meat at all!

"That might actually be too much food," in an awed whisper, the young dragon voiced words no one would have ever expected to hear. "I don't think I can actually eat all of that before it goes bad."

Well, not unless he had another growth spurt in the next few months, then all bets were off.

"That might actually be a problem," his centaur damsel agreed with a slow nod. "Even salted or smoked, I am unsure if it will keep long enough. Perhaps the wizards have a method?"

"Well, I suppose I can ask," Harry said with a shrug, then called in a loud voice. "Frizzy! Can you come here a minute, I've got a question for you."

There was a soft pop of displaced air as the Hogwarts elf who usually handled food deliveries to the Lair arrived. She was also the only Hogwarts elf who made it a point to listen for him while he was in the Lair; the others were still terrified of catching his attention.

"What does the young scary master need?" Frizzy asked in her squeaky voice.

"Um, well, I got all this meat, you see," he indicated the cold-room with one talon, "and I was wondering how long it would keep, 'cause I figure it's about two years' worth of meat for me if I don't eat any other kind."

The elf turned her bulging eyes to take in the sight. "Young master's eyes is bigger than his stomach!" she chided with a sigh. "You should not order so much meat at once; is wasteful!"

"Um, I didn't buy it," the young dragon clarified. "I got into a bit of a fight with a snake, and I won, but I didn't want to waste the meat, so Mr. Snape helped me butcher it. Now I've got a whole bunch of meat, and I wanted to see if you knew any other ways of preserving some of it so it would last long enough to eat before it went bad."

The diminutive elf simply nodded at that and considered the problem. "You is right. Even the young scary master would be eating this for two years... five if you pay attention to a proper diet. Eating different foods is important!" she wagged a finger at the dragon before settling in for a bit of a think.

"Cold will work for a while," Frizzy nodded to herself. "Maybe one or two out of every five, so you can eat them before they's not tasting so good. Frizzy can use salt and smoke for some — maybe another one in five — and about that many more making sausages and jerkies." The house elf frowned thoughtfully, "After that… no, everything will be tasting bad and starting to grow fuzzy stuffs then."

"I guess four out of five isn't bad," Harry said thoughtfully. "Maybe I should invite more people over to eat?"

"You might give some away as gifts," Suze suggested. "I know you always have trouble coming up with ideas for the winter holiday."

The young dragon's big green eyes lit up at the suggestion. "That's a great idea, Suze!" He began counting off on his talons, "Some for Mr. Dumbledore, some for Mr. Slackhammer, some for the Sergeant Major, some for Mr. Snape... maybe a bit of venom and other stuff for him too…" He frowned thoughtfully, "Hey, Suze, I know your family doesn't celebrate Christmas, but do you think they'd like some?"

The centaur maiden smiled, "I am certain the Clan would accept your gift in the spirit with which it was intended."

"Right!" Harry decided. "We'll do that, then. Frizzy, can you help with preserving the meat like you described... or maybe at least show me what to do if you don't have time?"

"Frizzy will do," the house elf nodded. "Other elves may help, is good work."

The dragon nodded his great head in gratitude.

"Thanks!"
 
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World-Building: Magical Capabilities
One thing to remember about transfiguration in this setting, which I've said before, but I'm not sure if it was on this thread, is that when a transfiguration is performed, it's essentially telling the world to treat the target like whatever you are transfiguring it into.

A consequence of that is that the change is only as convincing as you have the skill and inclination to make it, so when you perform a transfiguration, it will take whatever characteristics you're concentrating on, if your attention slips or you don't care about a particular bit, it stays the same. When you transfigure a mouse into a snuffbox, if you forget to concentrate on the surface finish, you will end up with a furry snuffbox.

When Harry transfigures himself, he concentrates on being human-sized, looking human-like, and having skin sufficiently sensitive to enjoy hugs. He doesn't really care about anything else, certainly not his strength, or his weight... or, for that matter, those handy reactionless drive organs he has mounted along his spine. The ones that he had to learn specifically how to use independently, since he sort of instinctively filled in with them before (much like he's doing now).

And while I'm at it, have an exposition piece on magic in the setting. I've removed references to the third crossover setting which I've not yet revealed outside my own notes.

Magical Capabilities

Magic in the setting, outside the Wizarding World or [REDACTED], tends to focus on combat boosts and relatively large-scale battle magics. Magic exacts a cost for use, usually in personal effort, and therefore is only used when a suitable non-magical method doesn't exist or is too unwieldy.

Off-the-cuff magical casting generally costs just as much effort as actually doing the task non-magically, but that effort comes all at once and in different forms. Despite the additional complications of non-magical setup, magic is generally still more difficult to do actions on the fly; sometimes, however, the desired actions are too unwieldy to set up non-magically.

Outside of off-the-cuff casting, more variety is seen in support magics and other magical effects. Complicated or subtle effects are normally seen in laboratory settings or from ludicrously advanced spell-casters. There is a fair amount of magitech in use as well, produced by those laboratories. Just as with non-magical systems, magical technology effectively stores earlier effort for use at a later time. As the Sixth World goes into full swing, magical technology becomes more and more commonly available, but outside the Wizarding and [REDACTED] traditions, active on-the-fly casting remains mostly combat-focused.

By contrast, wizards have a tradition in which those subtle and complicated effects are the norm and are used for even simple chores like washing dishes. This is made possible by elaborate and extensive spell design. Wizarding combat magic has been forced into hiding by secrecy; the big flashy stuff has gone unused long enough to be forgotten. In the Sixth World, it will be rediscovered, but it is little different than the stuff from the other Hermetic traditions.

[REDACTED]

Traditional Spells

Traditional spell work involves moving magic directly in such a way that it accomplishes a desired effect. This sort of casting is an arcane, unintuitive, and byzantine procedure, requiring extensive training, discipline, and strength. The results, however, can be remarkable, more than enough for a single caster to change the course of a battle of armies. With proper practice, this sort of casting is powerful, adaptable, and fast, making it ideal for combat.

While these spells are adaptable for combat, they are only flexible within a certain range, and their precision is poor. Working magically with delicate things in this system is problematic, and generally involves a different style of training and the aid of tools.

Naming and Thread Magic

In traditional magic, names have power. That is, the true Name is associated with a person's being, and it carries great power and influence over the one so Named. The Name is a central part of the Pattern of a person, and it is therefore an integral part of their very being. This holds true only for the Namers, or those who give themselves and others names. Non-Namer entities and objects still have Patterns, but no associated Name.

A Name is both a strength and a vulnerability. If others learn your Name, then they can do a great deal to you, both for good and for ill, but one's Name helps to reinforce one's own identity in the face of outside interference. This second effect is of great importance in fighting against Horrors which often assault the soul and sanity directly.

Thread magic is the process of weaving a Thread, usually a central aspect of one's power, along a Pattern to add strength and weight to that Pattern, and in the process to tie it to the caster. Performing Thread magic requires the ability to both manipulate one's own magic to an insane degree and the ability to discern Patterns. Even Dragons, with their innate sensorium, require a great deal of practice and learning to accomplish this.

Wizarding Magic

The wizarding world has developed casting methods for highly-repeatable, precise, routine casting during their seclusion in the Fifth Age. These are done through the use of a tool, the wand, around which has been built a huge variety of spells which are triggered by supplying the wand with energy and direction.

Wizarding, or 'wanded', magic does not require the same depths of personal control needed for traditional casting. Instead, the effort is expended in tool-making and spell design. Despite outward appearances, a wand is a tremendous feat of magical engineering, involving the sort of precision design and fabrication which would not be rivaled in any other field until the development of modern computer microprocessors.

Just as modern computers allow tremendously complicated programs to be developed and run on them with a single trigger, so too do wands allow tremendously complicated magical effects to be achieved with a simple trigger. Spell design is another tremendously complicated field for wizards.

Charms
These spells, built on the wand system, are generally called charms, and they make up the vast majority of what modern wizards consider to be magic. Despite the artificial classifications of curses and hexes and such, most are simply charms with differing effects. It is telling of the sheer variety of magic available that such distinctions were introduced over the years.

As mentioned above, the sort of control necessary for traditional casting is not required for charms, but with enough practice, such control can be substituted for some or all of the control mechanisms for the wand (silent casting). The requisite effort goes in at the time of spell design and wand crafting, with the caster supplying the energy and the trigger. Because of this, wand magic is absurdly simple to perform, and wizards have managed to incorporate it into everything they do.

Transfiguration

One field which is technically distinct from charms is that of transfiguration. Transfiguration is an art of changing the form of an object or material into another. That is, the caster uses magic to make one thing appear to be another. Transfiguration is a broad discipline, capable of a tremendous variety of effects, including the apparent creation of living creatures.

Despite appearances, transfiguration does not change the underlying nature of the target. Transfigurations can be dispelled, and when they are, the object will revert to its original state. Thus 'living' creatures produced are not actually alive. Changed materials are also not exactly 'real', as the changes are not truly permanent.

Transfiguration is a special case in that while the wand serves as a convenient channel, each casting is specialized, thus the wand system can only handle so much of the workload, with the rest being made up by the caster. Transfiguration is thus considered to be a generally challenging field by wizards, and expertise in transfiguration is seen as a mark of some skill.

Because of its lessened dependence on the wand, some transfiguration is still commonly done without wands in the wizarding world. The jump between wanded and wandless casting is much less for certain transfiguration disciplines than it is for charms.

Animagi

One such wandless transfiguration is the Animagus transformation. An Animagus overlays magic on himself to make his body seem to be that of an animal to all outward appearances except magical ones. By necessity, this must be done wandlessly, since most animals are unable to handle a wand — dependent as it is on opposable thumbs. There are additional considerations about spiritual compatibility and such which influence the Animagus transformation.

Harry's transformation back into a human is not, strictly speaking, an Animagus transformation due to these spiritual considerations, but it is a wandless transfiguration on a similar order. Harry never stops being a dragon, he just makes the world act as if he was shaped like a human. This is the reason that he retains his strength, intelligence, and magical resistance despite having an apparently human body.

Alchemy

There are two magical disciplines which involve changing substance and form, alchemy and transfiguration. Despite their similarity in appearance, they are quite distinct processes. Alchemy is effectively a fabrication process, changing the form of a substance; though it is one which can fabricate objects down to a sub-nuclear scale. Transfiguration is an emulation process, essentially telling some material to behave differently than it should through the persistent use of magic.

Alchemy is one area of magical endeavor that has been around for a very long time[1]​, but has advanced to almost unheard-of levels in the wizarding world, driven both by internal experimentation and observation of the advances of the non-magical sister field, chemistry. At its base, alchemy is discipline wherein a material can be converted into a new form while facilitating the change with magic. That is, an alchemist can change one thing into some other thing while ignoring at least some of the intervening steps that would be required to do so without magic.

Alchemy can be used for reshaping material in bulk, but such is generally much more difficult with alchemy than it is using more traditional non-magical methods. The changes associated with the field are usually those which cannot be accomplished otherwise (or cannot be accomplished efficiently otherwise) including nuclear transmutation and changes in intrinsic magical properties.

It should be noted that alchemical changes are permanent; the substance really does change, just like it would in the equivalent non-magical process. This is distinct from the transfiguration discipline where the substance is changed to all outward appearances except the magical. Transfigured changes are reversible through dispelling the transfiguration magic; changes are only stable while the magic is in place, telling the object how to behave. It is possible to semi-permanently transfigure objects, but this is done by stabilizing the transfiguration magic so that it will not dissipate naturally. Transfigured objects can be identified as such through their magical signatures. Alchemically transformed objects cannot.

It should also be noted that an understanding of conservation of energy is critical to alchemy while it is nearly irrelevant to transfiguration. An alchemical transition from a low-energy to a high-energy state will absorb energy from outside the system, and the inverse will make energy available. Transfiguring something only adds a little energy in the form of the cast magic, the underlying material is unchanged.

This is one of the major reasons that alchemy has a reputation as a dangerous discipline in the magical world. Knowledge of mass-energy equivalence is not widely disseminated in the magical world, and even for those who are aware, the amount of energy that can be released or absorbed in such reactions is staggering.

While alchemy does not allow the alchemist to ignore mass-energy conservation, it does allow the alchemist to mostly ignore activation energy and the associated reaction rates through judicious application of magic. Certain fundamental symmetries of the physical world are also mutable through the application of magic, including CP symmetry.

Alchemy amounts to a field of magic capable of producing quite literally anything that can, in principle, exist. If you can describe the end product sufficiently, you can transmute something into it — frictionless materials, magnetic monopoles, materials with differing inertial and gravitational masses, they're all potentially feasible if an alchemist puts in sufficient effort to find a way.

Wards, Enchantments, and Runes

Some spells can be cast in such a way as to affect an area or object persistently. These persistent spells are wards (area) and enchantments (object). These are used to a wide variety of effects, and they are similar to charms in that the effort goes in early with the effects coming out whenever triggered later.

Sometimes, the wizarding world even goes back to its roots, making machinery for the direct manipulation of magic. These machines mix physical systems and magical ones through the use of magical circuitry called runes. At one point, these were so widely used that the prototypical symbols were used as primitive alphabets, but they fell into disuse for this purpose as people realized that purpose-built alphabets were much more effective for language — as well as being less likely to accidentally explode if read by magical persons.

Potions

Potions are a magical mix of the non-magical fields of chemistry, nanotechnology, and biology. The discipline involves mixing different ingredients so as to change their composition, tailoring the end result to have certain desired effects. This is like chemistry, but there is more complexity than that, since some of the processes involved work on the principles of self-assembly, effectively making tiny magical machines to accomplish complex tasks, usually within larger bio-magical systems. The field is spectacularly complicated and immensely difficult to learn as anything other than a series of recipes to memorize, but it can accomplish truly amazing things.
Ritual Magic

Ritual magic is a casting method which allows multiple casters to cooperate in order to produce a result which is normally beyond the capabilities of any of the individual casters and in fact, is often beyond the capabilities of a hypothetical caster who is as strong as all the involved casters combined. Ritual magic is a wooly sort of practice, and it can have unexpected results if the ritual is not carefully designed, or if the casters' commitment or focus falters in mid-casting.

Ritual magic, in this sense, was developed by the dragons early in their history after its accidental discovery and was used extensively prior to the Fourth Age. During the Fourth Age, a series of accidents occurred due to sabotage by the dragon who would later become known as the Outcast, though its interference would not become known until late in the Fourth Age. These mishaps had some rather severe consequences, leaving the world in the middle of a short but severe ice age and short a formerly heavily-populated continent. The dragons involved cracked down on ritual magic use until the reason for the rapid-fire disasters could be discovered.

As a result, the use of ritual magic died out during the Fourth Age, and no modern magical traditions make use of ritual casting in the traditional sense. Many of them have things that they call rituals, but none of these provide a power boost over on-the-fly casting, they just provide more precision or ways to work around missing components and tools.

A ritual consists of several components: the casters, the framework, the ordeal, and the result. The casters are self-explanatory, these are the individuals involved in the casting. Casters of a ritual do not even need to be aware that they are involved in the casting; they simply must be linked together magically as part of the framework. However, it is generally a good idea to alert them to the goings on and have them knowingly and willingly involved. Rituals take time, and the mentality, emotions, and, perhaps most importantly, will of all the casters combined is critical to the function of the ritual.

The framework is simple, consisting of some sort of mystical bond among the casters. This is the first part where power boosting comes into play. The final strength of the ritual is proportional to the number of bonds of cooperation among the casters, that is, the more links there are in the framework, the more potent the ritual. While, in principle, the framework can consist of any topology, the ritual will have its greatest potency in a fully-connected ritual, where all casters are joined to every other caster. The bonds in question can be anything which allows the flow of magic between casters. Such bonds can be formed due to a variety of reasons, but they can range in severity from simple physical contact up through the sorts of soul-deep marriage bonds that have never been common enough to be well-known. As rituals can often take place over the course of months, even years for major workings, maintaining these bonds can require some logistical planning for the less permanent options.

The ordeal is the other place where power-boosting occurs. Symbolically, the ritual ties the actions of the casters during the ritual to the result the ritual is supposed to attain; thus, the more effort the casters expend during the ritual, the more potent the result of the ritual. For this reason, the casters in a ritual will normally undertake some major challenge during the casting process in order to cause themselves to expend more effort. While the ordeal does not necessarily have to be conceptually related to the result, because it is simply the effort expended that is needed, it should be remembered that the state of mind of the casters is also important, and the casters will find themselves much more focused on the result if the ordeal is closely associated. This is the reason for the concept of symbolic importance.

The result is the outcome of the ritual. It can be almost anything, as determined by the intent of the casters. The permanency of a ritual can vary. Some rituals perform a physical action, which itself leaves permanent results, but the ritual result is temporary. This is the sort of ritual which removed the eighth continent during the early Fourth Age. Other rituals perform an ongoing action, which relies on the casters to perpetuate. This is the sort of ritual which resulted in the Ice Age.

An interesting facet of ritual magics is that they can be performed by accident. The creation of the ritual, while an exceedingly difficult task, consists of components which might be performed for other reasons. For instance, magical beings might form a framework through marriages or friendships and cooperate on a major task. Given the right circumstances, these unrelated actions can result in a ritual.

This potential was the major driver of the shifts in draconic society, specifically the overly-formal and impersonal mating practices, which took place leading up to the late Fourth Age seen in Earthdawn. These "traditions" were put in place specifically to prevent the accidental formation of ritual frameworks.

[REDACTED]

[This section held a description of magics relating to the third crossover setting I have planned but have not yet revealed. It has been hinted at in precisely one scene so far in the story, so kudos to anyone who can catch it. As it will be some time before it shows up in the forefront, I've removed references here.]
[1] The Earthdawn continuity's True elements are a central example of such.
 
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Section 3.13 - Trial run
3.13 Trial run

3.13.1 Shifting priorities

Unlike the Flourishes and Blotts of London, the Mackenzies of Glasgow had not been in the bookselling trade long enough to have derived their name from it. Nevertheless, Mackenzie's Bookshop had been a fixture in the magical quarter of Glasgow for the better part of a millennium, and despite periodic remodeling, that age shone through in the general feel of the place. Closely packed shelves stretched from floor to ceiling framing too-narrow aisles; the air was permeated by the musty smells of ink and old parchment; and the overall ambiance teetered on the edge of claustrophobic. In its current circumstances, packed full of a tittering throng of enthusiastic witches eager to meet the hero they had read so much about, it shot clear over that edge into downright panic-inducing for anyone with that condition.

Gilderoy Lockhart was not one of those people.

Such places were, in fact, among Gilderoy Lockhart's preferred environments, and he took to the interminably repetitive, artificially cheerful meet-and-greet of a book signing like a fish to water. He truly enjoyed such events and was perfectly willing to spend hours at the grind and relish the experience, but they were also the sort of activity he could handle on automatic while considering other matters... exactly as he was doing now.

Even as he signed another book while wearing his well-practiced sparkling smile, the blond dandy's thoughts were miles away — about a hundred miles away, to be exact — back at Hogwarts. The closing feast had given him much to think about.

So far, Lockhart's stint as a defense professor had been one long series of setbacks and frustrations. Between the continual missed cues in his attempts to insinuate himself into Mr. Potter's social circle and the jarring mid-term shift in tone precipitated by what he now knew had been basilisk attacks, nothing had gone according to plan.

He sighed, smoothly hiding the action as part of an exaggerated stretch to loosen his cramped fingers drawing yet another wave of giggling from the women in line.

Potter simply didn't react at all as Gilderoy expected him to. There had been no excitement at the prospect of meeting a celebrity, nor had there been nervousness at the same. Young Harry seemed perfectly calm when put on the spot in front of others... which Gilderoy would have been able to deal with, except for the fact that the boy showed none of the arrogant bravado he would have expected to see instead.

Gilderoy simply had no idea what to make of the boy. None of it made any sense!

He had even gotten to the point of considering the use of some brewed persuasion to get his foot in the door. Nothing too serious and certainly nothing of any significant duration, just a little something to get the boy interested in actually talking for once rather than mostly ignoring him. Gilderoy was still confident that, given a decent opening to start a conversation, he'd be able to win the boy over.

The end of term feast had changed all that.

Seeing the tiny waif of a boy dragging a snake the size of a large whale into the Great Hall like a cat carrying a freshly-killed bird had scuttled that plan, thankfully before it could be put into motion. There was something going on with the young Potter that was well beyond Gilderoy's understanding, and the blond author now realized he had better avoid any actions the pint-sized juggernaut could conceivably interpret as aggressive...

...no matter how frustrating the slow progress had become.

The famous author graciously accepted another book, smoothly asking to whom he was to make the signature out, even as his internal monologue continued.

As for the rest… well, that he was more optimistic about, despite the rude awakening represented by that giant basilisk. While the ever-frustrating Mr. Potter had rather decisively stricken the terrifyingly lethal ophidian monstrosity from the board, an unknown danger lingered about the school threatening the students he was charged with protecting, but fortunately for Gilderoy, all available evidence pointed to the otherwise shadowy danger being human. Humans he could deal with.

Despite their common appearance in his novels, Gilderoy tended to avoid even moderately dangerous non-humans in real life. All too often such creatures possessed some degree of magic resistance, and mental magics tended to be quite delicate when applied across species. Between the two effects, the interspecies barrier rendered most of his spell repertoire useless, and without those spells, the former obliviator knew he was mostly helpless in any real conflict.

Humans, on the other hand, were a mostly known quantity, and mental magics, Gilderoy's stock-in-trade, were designed to work on them. Admittedly, some individual humans would give him pause, legendary monsters every bit as dangerous as that behemoth Mr. Potter had unceremoniously dragged through the school, but in this case he felt confident. With Voldemort dead and Dumbledore paying his salary at the moment, Gilderoy was unlikely to encounter any such monsters in the course of his investigations. Even Mr. Potter, who had recently been showing all the earmarks of joining that rarefied company of wizards so strong as to be nearly untouchable, was unlikely to be on the opposing side of things… for obvious reasons.

Gilderoy smiled winsomely as he handed another freshly signed copy of Magical Me to a blushing middle-aged woman.

In the end, Lockhart supposed there was only one course to take when he returned to his post as the Hogwarts defense professor. His plans for becoming Harry Potter's mentor might well end up slipping beyond his grasp in the end, though that was by no means certain. Regardless, he would have to stay the course and accept whatever came on that front, no tricks... not without a better understanding of the lad's capabilities, anyway.

For the rest, he would have to remain vigilant. He'd been in enough similar situations as an obliviator, after all. While many calls to the obliviation squads were simply to cover up after accidents, not all of them were. Reading the situation to know when to call for backup was another essential skill.

Who knew? He thought, a genuinely hopeful smile sneaking its way onto his face. Perhaps if he played his hand well, he'd have a thrilling detective novel published in a year or so, one based on the true story of this year's events at Hogwarts.

This time, the hero might even have the right name!

3.13.2 "Romantic" aspirations

Just a few days after the fall term had ended, the halls of Britain's premiere magical school lay quiet and empty.

In the normal course of events, perhaps one student in ten would have stayed on campus for the winter break. The vast majority tended to be quite eager to get off campus, but there were always those few who were reluctant for various reasons. After the attacks, first on Mrs. Norris and then on Justin Finch-Fletchley, that number was closer to one in fifteen. While the basilisk might have been dealt with, plans had already been made long before the end-of-term feast.

Of course, that one-in-fifteen fraction was subject to the usual vagaries of random sampling, and of the fifty or so students currently counted among the ranks of House Ravenclaw, only two had decided to stay. One of those had only stayed on account of his girlfriend in Hufflepuff also staying, and with a mostly empty castle available to explore with said girlfriend, he was rarely to be found at the Ravenclaw dorms.

Thus, Su Li found herself with the essentially uncontested run of the tower, a situation she was currently exploiting for all it was worth. She had spread out messily to occupy the entirety of the large table to one side of the house common room. Normally, the table served as a common study area and was almost always occupied by at least half a dozen of her housemates, but for the next few weeks, it was all hers.

Sweet, sweet elbow room.

The petite girl sat back from her work, arched her back, and spread her arms wide in a languorous stretch. She had never realized just how much of a luxury space could be until she had managed to acquire so much of it. Quarters back home had been tight, shared as they were with a gaggle of cousins, and the situation at Hogwarts, while improved, was similar. Having the entire House to herself, though?

"I could get used to this," she moaned as her shoulders popped with her movement.

Indulging in one final stretch, the petite girl shrugged her shoulders and bent back to the task at hand. She had work to do, and this assessment was the first part of it — a critically important precursor to the rest. It was also a part she had only recently acquired enough information to complete to a borderline-acceptable standard.

The folder in front of her, one of several dozen spread across the table, was the only one of its fellows which had yet to be tied shut with string and sealed with wax. It lay open, its first page a neatly formatted grid featuring a full-color wizarding photograph of one Harry Potter. The accompanying text presented, if one were literate in traditional Chinese, a fairly detailed biography of the boy so pictured.

"Almost done," she muttered quietly as she began flipping through the pages of the dossier, thinking back on the work that had led up to this point. "Just need to finish up the personal assessment."

Potter had proven himself the most challenging of the lot by far. Between the boy's tendency to disappear off campus and his irregular habits even when he was available, pinning down the Potter heir was a difficult task... so difficult, in fact, that she had been seriously contemplating leaving him out of her target evaluations. He was just one boy among many, after all.

Oh, she had known he was powerful; the signs were almost impossible to miss, and there had been those stories about punching out a troll in his first year. The physical strength had been interesting, but it could easily have been a secondary effect of the boy's tremendous magical reserves. That sort of magical power very rarely bred true, not in full, which made it less than ideal for her purposes. As a result, she had been leaning toward Longbottom as her favorite candidate; of the available pool of males, his unnaturally deep understanding of plants had seemed the most likely talent to prove to be heritable.

Until the dueling club, that is.

Su Li chuckled at the memory. She had never expected to receive such an intelligence windfall at that dueling club — for that matter, she hadn't really expected to learn anything there at all, attending mostly to pass the time. To think, if not for the Malfoy heir's idiocy, she might have passed over a diamond in the rough.

"Perhaps I ought to arrange something as thanks?" she mused, considering the situation and the resources she had available for a moment before dismissing the idea with a shake of her head. "No, not worth the effort, really."

Steering her thoughts back to topics that were worth the effort, Su Li considered what she knew of Harry Potter. When he had simply been a frustratingly mysterious loose end, it had been easy enough to consider writing him off entirely, but the boy's talent for languages had changed that calculus entirely. Such a talent was far too valuable to ignore out of petty frustration.

Unfortunately, Potter had not become any easier to reconnoiter, despite her renewed zeal, and even now the green-eyed boy's profile remained woefully incomplete. Some parts had proven simple enough. As the last Potter, the boy's family history was a matter of public record, and as the Boy-Who-Lived, so was his very early life. Pictures had been easy enough to acquire from an enthusiastic Gryffindor first year. An aspiring photographer, the excitable boy had been willing to provide her with copies any of his photographs in exchange for the cost of film.

From there, things got fuzzier. From the incident in Godric's Hollow to the start of the 1991 school year, Potter's life was a black hole. She had managed to dig up some rumors of involvement with Gringotts in the last few years, rumors which had been lent some weight by the events of the opening feast, but nothing concrete. The goblins ran a tight ship.

Of course, for purposes of her evaluation, the boy's personal history was hardly of primary importance. As far as she was concerned, a history shrouded in uncertainty was irritating at worst. The lack of a tissue sample, on the other hand, might be a deal-breaker.

Personality and character were secondary; Su Li needed to know about genetics. If that linguistic talent wasn't heritable, then Potter was useless. Hints of that could be gleaned from family history, but direct samples were much more reliable.

Had she been running this mission even fifty years ago, Su Li would have been stuck acquiring blood samples... a very risky proposition. Blood could be put to a wide variety of nefarious uses, and if she were caught, she would be suspected of all of them. Fortunately, she didn't have to run that risk. The clan had developed analysis methods which could use a wide variety of different samples, of which hair was the easiest to obtain. Hair was far less damning than blood, polyjuice and its variants being the most common use for such things. Being caught collecting hair left Su Li at risk of being labeled a sexual deviant, and she only cared about that insofar as it would affect her primary task.

Su Li shook her head, dimissing the idea. In any case, it had been simple enough to devise a method for unobtrusively acquiring hair samples; people rarely made the effort to secure their shed hair. She had settled on a highly-refined summoning charm as her method of choice; it was a difficult charm to master, but easy enough with practice. Using it, she had managed to complete the rest of her dossiers within a month of her Sorting.

Harry Potter, however, continued to remain elusive, even after a year and a half.

No matter how she tried, the charm returned nary a single hair. It was almost as if the boy didn't have any hair to lose... a ridiculous proposition, considering the unruly black mop clearly visible on top of the boy's head! Regardless, whatever the reason, none of that shaggy mop ever seemed to come loose for her summoning charm to pick up.

It had been incredibly frustrating.

So vexed had she been that after Halloween of her first year, she had even visited the site of the boy's purported battle with a troll in hopes of finding some of his spilled blood, despite the risk of discovery. Yet, even then her efforts had come to naught.

It had been that failure which had left her inclined to abandon her efforts entirely. Even if Potter could kill a mountain troll at eleven, doing so unscathed seemed too far-fetched to believe, which had led her to doubt the veracity of the tale entirely.

Though the events of the end of term feast had led her to reconsider the situation once again; a troll was less than nothing compared to the likes of that basilisk, and she had seen that evidence with her own eyes. Heritable super-strength was back on the table; though again, she still couldn't verify that. Su Li grimaced.

In any event, she still had not managed to acquire a sample from Potter, which left far more uncertainty in her report than she was comfortable with. On the one hand, he represented the potential to gain a universal linguistic talent and tremendous physical strength for the bloodline. On the other, one or both of those could turn out to be non-heritable, leaving her with efforts wasted.

It was a high-stakes gamble, high risk, high reward, and it was really too much to ask of a twelve-year-old girl. Su Li had no idea whether the potential benefits were enough of a prize to gamble her entire future; she simply couldn't decide.

Luckily, she wouldn't have to.

Su Li let out a heavy sigh as she finished writing out her explanation of the situation. Giving the picture of the green-eyed boy one last lingering glance, she closed the folder, tied it shut, and reached for her sealing wax. Once sealed, the dossier joined the rest of the messy pile, landing right atop the one labeled "Neville Longbottom."

She closed her eyes in satisfaction. Her initial task was essentially complete, all that remained was to package the lot for delivery and ship the whole batch home to Hong Kong. After that, she could relax for a few months while she awaited orders.

When they arrived, she would have her target, and then she would be able to get on with her real business at Hogwarts.

3.13.3 Gumshoe

In a grungy office above a seedy dive on Knockturn Alley, a hard-bitten man going by the name Frank sat at a ramshackle desk smoking a cheap cigarette. His lips twisted into an irritable frown around a smouldering stub of a cigarette as he glared at the door through a haze of tobacco smoke, automatically tuning out the usual assortment of questionable noises wafting up from the bar downstairs.

It was a nice door. Solidly built of finely joined wood, darkly stained and varnished, and sporting a glass window with the words "Private Investigator" etched into the glass, mirrored to be readable from the outside of course. It stood head and shoulders above the quality of the rest of the office, the contents of which all but shouted that the owner was hard-up for cash.

Of course, the relative extravagance of a quality door was understandable, since it served as the anchor for the expansion enchantments which enabled the entire office — along with the modest personal residence accessible through the office's other, decidedly less impressive door on the wall behind his desk — to fit into the depth of the door frame. Compared to the cost of the enchantments, the cost of the carpentry was barely an afterthought, and even at that price, the enchantments were a frugal investment. Rent in the Alleys was murder —in Knockturn, sometimes literally — and such expanded apartments reduced the cost of living astronomically.

However, Frank was not the sort of man to spend any appreciable amount of time simply staring at a door, no matter how fancy. Rather, he was impatiently awaiting a knock on that door.

His prospective client was running late.

A few months previous, Frank had been contacted with a proposal for a job, an investigation into the past of some dirtbag or other... the client hadn't mentioned a name. The request was vague, but Frank wasn't particularly bothered by it; he got a lot of those. People rarely hired private investigators when they already knew the answers.

What did bother him was the delay. He hadn't often encountered clients that insisted on waiting for two months after first contact to even describe the job, and the few times he'd encountered something similar, they'd had ulterior motives. When someone approached him for legitimate business, they were usually in a hurry... a real hurry, not just impatient and annoyed like Frank was now. Private investigation work was generally a response to something unexpected, not a routine chore. Frank chuckled ruefully at the thought; not that he'd object to a little more routine, the steady income would be nice. The fact remained though, his clients were normally desperate, scrabbling for answers.

Just like Frank had been when he'd gotten into the business.

He sighed, blowing out a plume of fragrant smoke as the memories once more rose unbidden. Back then he'd been bright-eyed and optimistic. Betty, his sweetheart from Hogwarts, had just given him the most important 'yes' of his life, and Frank had been over the moon. Then not even two weeks later, she'd disappeared overnight without a word, leaving behind nothing but an engagement ring and unanswered questions — questions Frank had been desperate to answer.

Back then, there'd been no one to help him, so he'd rolled up his shirtsleeves and gotten to work, teaching himself magical investigation and tracking in the process. When the money started to run out, he'd started hiring himself out to use those skills to keep himself afloat. One thing led to another, and eventually he came to where he was. As the only game in town, it hadn't taken long to build a reputation as the man to hire if you needed to find something or someone.

Frank knew desperation; he knew it all too well. He'd been in ugly situations before — still was, in truth; he thought, fingers straying to where a delicate golden chain dipped into his shirt collar — and he knew from hard-won experience the sorts of actions and attitudes desperation engendered.

'Lackadaisical' and 'sedate' did not fit the pattern.

Something was dodgy about this deal, and 'dodgy' was a dangerous prospect... especially in Knockturn Alley, where 'dodgy' and 'deadly' coincided often enough to be mostly interchangeable.

Of course, Frank thought as his fingers almost absently fished that delicate golden chain out of his shirt, the other side of desperation was being willing to take stupid risks. Frank sighed, fingering the simple but elegantly feminine gold ring threaded onto the chain next to a similarly styled golden locket. While the particulars of his desperate situation had changed, the urgency had not.

Unlike all those years ago, Frank now knew what he was about. He had the skill; he had the knowledge; and he had the plan. It was a desperate, ugly, and, above all, expensive plan, but Frank was confident he could make it work — provided he could get together the funds.

In short, Frank thought as he tucked the ring safely away, he needed cash, in quantity, and he was desperate to get it. The price this new client had offered was simply too high to dismiss out of hand, no matter how dodgy the situation.

A knock on the door roused Frank from his ruminations. It seemed that the source of that plentiful, potentially dangerous, cash had finally seen fit to show himself.

"Come in," Frank called in a rough voice as he ground the pitiful remains of his cigarette into the ashtray.

The door opened revealing a boy in his mid-teens, dressed in a Hogwarts uniform of all things.

What was this?

"Mr. Nadgett?" the boy asked tentatively.

"I answer to it," Frank acknowledged with a nod. Nadgett was not his real name, of course — he'd wanted to avoid having his work follow him home, so to speak, so he'd picked the name out of a book. The oft grim and depressing Dickens had seemed an appropriate source; it fit right in to the grim and depressing underbelly of the wizarding world. "I take it you're my mystery client, kid?"

"Yes, sir," the boy confirmed, fingering the blue trim of his robe nervously.

"The two-month delay would have been waiting for the end of the school term, then," Frank nodded to himself. So far it seemed he'd been working himself up over nothing, which, while a relief to his worries, did nothing to alleviate his irritation.

The boy nodded.

"I suppose that answers one question," Frank allowed before allowing a little of his annoyance to seep into his voice. "Though the question of why you are nearly an hour late for this meeting still springs to mind."

"Ah… yeah, sorry about that," he looked down sheepishly rubbing at his neck. "Um… well, when I was coming through the bar downstairs, one of the women was… well… insistent…"

Taking in the teenaged boy's embarrassed blush, Frank sighed and wiped at his face in exasperation before taking a closer look. "Well, judging by your clothes, you managed to resist getting dragged off to a room."

The boy nodded with a glum expression. "Yeah. I mean, it felt bad to turn her down, but I kinda want to save that for something special, right?"

"Save your regrets, kid," Frank said with a harsh laugh. "I'm sure she got exactly what she wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"She wasn't interested in sex, kid. She was looking to rob you blind. Check your coin purse on the way out, she probably emptied it while you were flustered," Frank suggested with a dry chuckle before his expression twisted into a scowl. "In fact, check it now. If you lost my fee, we might as well save ourselves the trouble."

The boy's eyes widened in horrified understanding as he shoved a hand into his hip pocket. "Oh, damn!"

"She got you, did she?" Frank scoffed, leaning back in his chair. "See yourself out, kid, and be careful on the way. You've already lost your money, don't let your life be next." He turned away, already reaching for another cigarette, and mumbled, "Bloody waste of time…"

"Wait!" the kid protested. "I can still pay!"

"Are you telling me that you've got enough to cover my fee twice over?" Frank shot him a skeptical look. "Pull the other one, kid. You're a Hogwarts brat, so I might believe you could scrape that together once, but not twice."

"No, not that," the student explained, reaching for his boot. "I just made sure not to carry that much in one place." He drew a sizeable pouch from a small expanded pocket on the inside of his boot. "She just got the money I brought for lunch."

"Not bad, kid, not bad," Frank congratulates his visitor with a laugh. "Well, since you've got the cash, I suppose you have my attention. What's this mysterious job of yours?"

The younger man took a deep breath to compose himself before he began. "Well, Mr. Nadgett, we've got this one really annoying teacher at school, Gilderoy Lockhart…"

As the private eye listened to his prospective client's description of the situation, his opinion of both the job and the boy currently in his office fell precipitously. Nonetheless, he listened carefully.

After a few minutes, his visitor finally concluded his explanation and fell silent — his Ravenclaw-blue trim seemed to have been well-earned. In Frank's experience, long-windedness was a house trait.

"So, let me see if I understand the job correctly," Frank clarified. "You have a teacher you don't like, and rather than learn to deal with disappointment like a normal, decent person — or, for that matter, rather than approaching the headmaster of your school to complain like a whiny little twit — you decided to try to hire me to sift through the man's past for something embarrassing enough to get him fired. Is that what you're asking?"

His visitor nodded.

"No deal," Frank flatly denied. "Kid, real investigations start with a question, not an answer. I'm not going to take a job expressly intended to smear an innocent man; my professional ethics won't allow it. The office might be in Knockturn, but I'm here for the rent, not because I like the neighbors."

"There's no way that smarmy git is innocent!" his teenage client objected, sounding a little desperate. "He's just so… so slimy, and he leads all the girls around by the nose! I mean, he's gotta be thirty or so, and the girls are my age. That's about as sleazy as it gets! He's gotta be guilty of something!"

"So, this is all about the girls in your school paying attention to the handsome young teacher and ignoring you?" At the boy's sheepish nod, the hard-bitten private eye sighed in disgust. This case just got better and better. "God save us all from the teenage libido," he muttered. In a clearer voice he continued, "Look, without a reasonable suspicion that your professor committed some sort of crime, I'm not going to take on this job. I'll leave the unfounded smear campaigns to the Prophet, thank you very much."

"What if I doubled the fee?" his young client offered.

Frank froze for just a moment. That was a lot of money, and he needed it for... no, there was no way...

"Don't make an offer we both know you can't back up, kid," Frank bit out in a harsh growl. He trailed off when the boy reached back into his boot and drew out another pouch. "Damn, kid, where'd you get that kind of cash?"

The kid looked well-off, but not that well-off.

The boy coughed, looking off to the side awkwardly. "I passed the hat at school and I might have overstated your original estimate a little."

"I see," Frank eyed the teenaged would-be con-artist with a raised brow. "And I suppose you were intending to take a commission on hiring me? One that you conveniently neglected to mention to your friends?"

The boy nodded; his eyes downcast.

The private eye shook his head in disgust as his opinion of his prospective client fell even further. This kid was a slimy little brat...

...though, he was a slimy brat who was offering a great deal of money.

Frank drummed his fingers on the desk, torn, as he considered the possibilities. He didn't have much, but he still had his principles… mostly, and he was reluctant to give them up. He'd already done enough questionable things along the way; adding what was essentially character assassination to the list was not something he was eager to do.

On the other hand...

Frank's fingers ceased their drumming and slipped involuntarily to the golden chain around his neck. The amount on offer was enough to move the timetable on his personal mission up by nearly a year...

No.

He groaned, slowly pulling his hand away and shaking his head, reluctance in his every movement. "Still not happening, kid. Not unless you can give me something he's done that's worth investigating — and no, having a gaggle of teenage girls chasing after him because he smiled at them and they're too stupid to realize it was just a smile doesn't count."

There, he'd said it. Frank cringed at leaving that much cash on the table, but he'd stuck to his principles — cold comfort to be sure when Betty was still… He shook his head to break off from that train of thought, trying to ignore the feeling of her engagement ring burning accusingly against his breastbone.

If only he'd had some excuse…

"Well, when we were looking for something ourselves, we noticed that a couple of his books seem to take place at the same time, but they're on opposite ends of the continent," the teenager offered. "Is that suspicious enough?"

It was a bit weak, but…

"That'll do, kid," Frank nodded. "Payment up front, and no guarantees that I'll find anything. The premise is pretty weak, but there might be fraud involved."

And there might be... if he squinted hard enough. He could squint pretty hard for that kind of payday.

"So, you'll take the job?" his client asked.

"Just as soon as you pass me those coins," Frank confirmed with a nod to the pouches in his client's hand. The caveat 'and I've counted them' was left unstated but clearly implied.

The transaction was completed quickly, both parties eager to get it finished, if for different reasons. Frank was interested in getting the ball rolling so he could do his job and move on to the next, his client, on the other hand, was simply eager to get out of Knockturn Alley.

As the boy hustled out of his office, Frank rose from his desk.

It was time to get to work.

3.13.4 Networking

It was a fine afternoon in December. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and while the air was brisk, no one needed more than a light coat to ward themselves against the chilly breeze. AII told, things were shaping up well for a superb picnic on the front lawn of the Hogs Haulage Hogsmeade offices.

As Mike McDonald trailed along after his parents, holding his much younger sister's hand to keep track of her in the crowd, he couldn't help smiling at the scene; perhaps all the finagling he'd had to do to arrange to take off work for the afternoon would prove worth the effort after all.

Colleen certainly seemed to think so — the excitable bouncing and wide-eyed looking-about his much younger sister was doing from her place at his side made it seem a good guess. Mike made sure to keep a firm grip on her hand. It wouldn't do for the girl to run off after something that caught her fancy before the family got itself situated... particularly not when he was responsible for looking after her. Mike loved her dearly, but like most small children, his little sister could be a pain to keep track of.

Whether they'd come for the promise of free food, the chance to meet the Boy-Who-Lived, or simply for the excuse to have a party — he was fairly certain his own family was here for a combination of all three reasons — the turnout was impressive. It seemed nearly the entire company had shown up for the barbecue. Between the employees and their families, there were over a hundred and fifty people on the lawn already, and it was still early in the afternoon.

From the fragments of conversation Mike was able to pick up on as they picked their way through the throng, he gathered that most of the attendees expected quite a few more guests to show up as the afternoon wore on towards meal time. He wouldn't be surprised if practically the entire population of Hogsmeade managed to find some way to put in an appearance eventually.

He was about to ask his father why they were walking through and bypassing so many of his coworkers when the reason became abundantly clear.

"'ey, Jimmy!" his father's voice rang out above the general din. "O'er 'ere!"

As the man so addressed waved to his father and began making his way as to meet them, Mike chuckled. Of course, he should have expected his father to seek out Mr. Coates before anything else. The pair had worked together for longer than Mike had been alive, and he was fairly certain that neither man would want to participate in any company function without the other present. He was hardly an unwelcome addition for the rest of them, too. Uncle Jim always had a kind word and a friendly gesture for all the McDonald siblings, a habit which had made the man a favorite of the children as they grew up. That status was proven once again as Colleen tore her eyes away from the sights around her to focus on the man in question.

"Uncle Jim!" she cried joyfully as she slipped away from her brother in favor of hurrying over to give the man an enthusiastic hug about the knees. "You're here too?"

"O' course, ah am, little lady," the man answered, giving the six-year-old a pat on the shoulder in return for the hug even as he gave Evan and Mike himself an agreeable nod. "'s a company picnic, innit? Ya couldna thought I woz gunna leave your da' ta face it all alone?" Jim's voice fell to a stage whisper, "'e's 'opeless for this kind of thing, 'e is."

Colleen giggled at the joke, and then her attention quickly returned to the surrounding celebration as the conversation turned to other, less interesting, topics — at least, less interesting from the perspective of a little girl. For his part, Mike kept a gentle hold on his little sister's shoulder and nodded absently as she excitedly pointed out various sights and sounds while keeping the bulk of his attention on the conversation among the adults. It hit on the usual range of topics for his father and Uncle Jim, ranging from lighthearted topics, like the upcoming match between the Magpies and the Bangers — Hogsmeade residents tended to follow the local Scottish teams rather than the English ones the southerners favored — to more serious ones like how Mister Hawkins, known to Mike as their long-time neighbor from the next street over, was handling his father's recent death. Eventually, however — perhaps inevitably — the conversation turned to the picnic itself and the rather famous personage hosting the event.

"'ey Jim, whatcha think o' the young Potter?" Mikey's father asked his friend, predictably drawing Colleen's attention at the mention of her favorite boy-hero's name.

For his part, Mike was actually kind of surprised it took this long for someone to ask. The Boy-Who-Lived's purchase of Hog's Haulage had been the talk of the town for weeks after the news broke in September, and it had quickly regained center stage as soon as word of the boy's company picnic had hit Hogsmeade's gossip mill.

"Probably best if you see for yourself, Mac," Jim told Mike's father. "Not too sure what to make of 'im, myself. 'e's… well, 'e's a bit of an odd fellow from what I can tell. 'e's over by the grill it you want to meet 'im."

"Ooh, ooh! Can we go?" Colleen had been practically vibrating with excitement ever since the young Potter's name was mentioned and the knowledge of where the boy could be found had finally pushed her to the end of her rope. She hugged her father's knees and directing a devastatingly cute pleading look up at him through her eyelashes. "Please!"

Out of all the McDonald family, it was a weapon only their mother could stand against with any regularity.

Mike's father folded like a wet napkin.

And so, the family set off again, this time towards the grill to meet the famous new owner of the world's largest — and, in fact, only — magical rail company. It didn't take them long to reach their destination.

Oddly enough, Mike's first impression of the scene didn't touch on the Boy-Who-Lived, despite him being the goal of their expedition. Neither did it include the admittedly rather more imposing sight of the eight-foot-tall centaur maiden hovering attentively beside said small boy... and in light of that oversight, it was unsurprising that the nearly-teenaged girl with bushy brown hair on his other side didn't register at all.

No, Mike's attention was immediately commandeered by the trestle table set up next to the grill. It was a perfectly normal sort of table, sturdy but easily put up and taken down for temporary events like the picnic, hardly an unexpected sight. What was unexpected were the three colossal slabs of meat, each several times the size of a full-grown man, which the table strained to hold up. What little of the table which remained uncovered by those gargantuan cuts of meat was in turn laden with a variety of more conventional fare, but that hardly rated a mention by comparison.

What manner of beast had yielded those?

The only thing Mike could think of was a dragon, and no one ate those... at least not away from the dragon reserves where they had to do something with all the excess meat. From what he had heard on the subject, dragon meat was all but inedible without a tremendous amount of preparation, and even then, it was an… acquired taste, certainly not the sort of thing one would expect at a barbecue hundreds of miles from the closest dragon reserve.

Nor did he seem to be alone in that assessment. From what Mike could surmise, several of his father's coworkers — men who had presumably volunteered to man the grill for the occasion — were engaged in a heated discussion over how to prepare the monstrously large steaks even as the last of their number pointedly ignored the ridiculous sight in favor of preparing the mound of more normal cuts occupying the remainder of the table.

After gaping at the unusual sight for several long moments, Mike finally dragged his attention away from the sight just in time to catch the tail end of the discussion they had walked in on.

"… a minute; if the precision machining is so effective, why didn't everyone just do that from the start?"

The question came from a small boy who looked to be just a few years older than Colleen. He was engaged in an intent conversation with a pair of much older gentlemen who had that unmistakable sort of technical look about them, a look Mike recognized well from a childhood spent around the railyards. People with that sort of look tended to do some of the most interesting stuff in the yard, forever taking giant locomotives apart and putting them back together using cranes and grease and fire and all sorts of stuff of that nature... practically irresistible for a young boy such as he had been at the time.

Honestly, he'd be hard-pressed to stay away from it even now.

One of the men — a Scotsman by his accent, who looked to be of an age with Mike's father — replied with the air of one who felt he had been asked a question with an obvious answer. "Because precision machining is expensive, laddie, and the economics of early steam made the costs prohibitive. We talked about this just last week!"

The other man, a significantly older fellow who spoke with a foreign accent with which Mike was unfamiliar, chimed in, "Coal was simply much cheaper than the time of a skilled machinist. Fortunately, the economics have changed, a situation which we can now turn to our advantage."

The boy, presumably Harry Potter given that Uncle Jim had stopped nearby, frowned thoughtfully.

"I got that, I think, but if precision stuff is so expensive, how come we've got stuff like this?" He gestured with a white plastic fork. "I mean that's just as precise as you're talking about for the pistons and wheels and stuff, right? Why is the fork so cheap? I know it's not the materials. After we talked last time, I looked it up and steel is actually cheaper than the raw plastic resin per unit mass."

"Ah! So that's where you got turned around," the first engineer exclaimed, sounding rather pleased that his young friend had, in fact, been paying close attention during their previous discussions. "That fork was molded, not machined… well, the mold was machined, but that's just the once, and then it produces millions of those forks."

"Why don't we do that then?" the boy asked. "I mean, if we're running a whole train company, we'll need lots and lots of parts, right?" At the man's nod, the boy continued, "So why not make them like they make those forks if it's so much cheaper?"

"It's because you can't make molds like that for steel," the man explained patiently. "To cast something to final dimension, like that fork," he nodded to the utensil in question, "you need to have a mold formed in just the right way. For plastic, that works fine, because there are plenty of things that will make a durable mold that won't stick to plastic and stay solid when the plastic is liquid. For steel, you've pretty much got sand casting and investment casting. Sand just won't hold enough detail for what you're talking about, not reliably, and investment casting isn't easily repeatable, so it's not really any cheaper than machining."

The young boy's expression turned thoughtful as he considered that, but before he could formulate a reply, Mr. Coates took the lull in the conversation as an opportunity to break in to introduce them.

"Beggin' yer pardon, Mr. Potter, Mr. Wardale, Mr. Porta," Jim nodded to the young boy, the Scottish gentleman, and the older man whose accent Mike hadn't been able to place, respectively, "but if you'd be so kind, I'd like to introduce my fireman, Mike McDonald." He gestured to Mike's father who nodded in wordless greeting as the two older men so addressed gave friendly greetings.

"Hi!" The young Potter was somewhat more enthusiastic.

"And this is his wife, Irene, their sons Evan and Mike," Mike nodded agreeably alongside his younger brother, "and their little daughter, Colleen."

Colleen waved shyly from her position half-hidden behind Mike's leg where she had retreated when her bold cheer had deserted her upon actually seeing her hero right there in front of her. She hid her face completely when said hero offered her a brilliant smile and wave just as he had the rest of the family.

For his part, Jim grinned on seeing the little girl's reaction and elaborated, "Little Colleen was the one who really wanted to meet ya, ya' see." He teased the girl who responded by pushing herself even closer to her older brother's leg. "She's been lookin' forward to it ever since she found out ya were takin' over tha company."

"Well, I'm happy to meet you, too!" Mike wouldn't have thought it possible, but the Potter boy's smile grew even wider. "It's always nice to meet someone who's happy to see you. Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about?"

Mike felt his sister's hand tighten on the back of his trouser leg and looked down to see her folding in on herself nervously. Taking pity on the terminally embarrassed girl, Mike spoke up with the first question that came to mind, hoping to deflect the conversation away from her until she could recover her equilibrium. "So where did you get those giant cuts of meat over by the grill, anyway? And what exactly are they? Don't think I've ever seen an animal big enough for that before."

"Oh, those?" the boy gestured to the table. "Those are from the basilisk I killed last weekend." Those calm words were enough to draw the undivided attention of everyone within earshot. "The thing was raiding my pantry, so I had to hunt it down. I didn't really know what to do with all the meat, so I brought some to share here."

"That's only some of it?" Mike choked out around his astonishment.

"Well, yeah," the small boy said absently. "When Mr. Snape helped me butcher it, we ended up with about five hundred of those; it took forever to remove all the bones. Do you know how many ribs a snake has? Way too many, I'll tell you. Even with how much I usually eat, I didn't think I could go through all that before it went bad."

"Five-hundred?" he breathed, thinking of just how large such a creature must have been to provide such a bounty of meat. "How the heck did you kill something that big?"

"Forget the size," Jim broke in, the first of the magical adults to pull himself together enough to say something. "How the heck did you kill yourself a basilisk, lad?" He shook his head in wonder. "An' for that matter, where'd you find one?"

"Huh?" the young boy asked. "Oh, I just punched it after it tried to bite me. Ended up rupturing a bunch of its organs and breaking its… neck? I dunno, it's kinda hard to say what's neck and what's not-neck on a snake. Anyway, I found it near where I live in the Black Woods — um, I think most of you probably know it better as the Forbidden Forest — but Mr. Snape seemed to think it probably lived somewhere in Hogwarts, a secret chamber or something."

"I see," Mike said dully.

"Wow!" Evan, the middle McDonald, spoke up for the first time. "So, all those Harry Potter adventure books are actually true?"

"Those things," Harry Potter grimaced distastefully. "No, none of those actually happened, and me and the goblins are still trying to pin down the authors about not marking them properly as fiction."

"So, you didn't grow up in a magical castle and go off on adventures all the time?" Colleen spoke up for the first time since encountering her hero in person. She sounded very disappointed.

"No… well, sorta?" the boy frowned thoughtfully. "I mean I lived with my aunt and uncle up until I was eight, then I had a magical accident which meant I had to move, and I moved to Hogwarts, and Hogwarts is a magical castle, and I've had a few adventures since I got here, so I guess the description fits since I'm still growing up now. The actual adventures were really different, though."

Harry shook his head frowning mightily. "I don't see why they had to write me as such a git, anyway," he muttered. "Going about and slaying all those poor dragons just minding their own business... 's just not right."

The conversation among the McDonald siblings fell silent for a moment, long enough for their father to break in himself. "A basilisk at 'ogwarts, y'say? That'd explain why Brown was fit ta be tied on our last run, eh Jimmy? Sumthin' like tha' in tha school 'is little girl's at? I know I'd be jus' as angry if it were my little Colleen."

"Brown?" Harry interjected quizzically.

"Kelly Brown," Jim volunteered. "'e's your shunting foreman at King's Cross, an' 'is youngest daughter is in your year at 'ogwarts."

"Brown…" the boy frowned thoughtfully. "So, he's Lavender Brown's dad?" At Jim's nod, Harry beamed. "I didn't know her dad worked for me! I'll have to make sure to introduce myself proper."

From there, the conversation turned more towards personnel and other corporate matters which the young Potter waded into with all evidence of enjoyment. The boy seemed positively gleeful at learning about each and every one of his new employees, treating every new name as if he were meeting a brand-new friend.

While his younger siblings had lost interest about the time the basilisk dropped out of the conversation, finding the subject matter thoroughly dull, it was an eye-opening experience for Mike. He'd only been working at his new job for a few short months, but the attitude around the place was already crystal clear. At the warehouse, the management looked down on their employees with guarded suspicion, as if everyone there fully expected him to abscond with some of the merchandise as soon as no one was looking.

That same attitude seemed to filter down all the way through the corporate hierarchy to his coworkers on the ground level, as illustrated by his difficulties in arranging time off to attend the barbecue. It took forever to convince one of his coworkers to cover his hours for the afternoon, and even then the man had seemed convinced that it was all part of some scheme to make him look bad in front of the boss.

It was a far cry from the warm camaraderie he saw between his father and Mr. Coates, and the difference in management styles could not have been more apparent. If only the jobs had opened up a few months earlier, Mike would have jumped at the opportunity to work for the company he saw on display here. In fact…

"Mr. Potter?" Mike spoke up.

"Hmm?" the boy acknowledged.

"Umm, I've got to finish out the rest of my contract at the warehouse, 'cause I gave my word, and I'm not gonna go back on it, but after that, do you think you'll still be hiring?" the eldest son of the McDonald household asked tentatively.

"How long is your contract?" Harry asked, seeming to become more focused under the direct question.

"A year and a half," Mike answered, "er… well, about thirteen months now, I suppose. It's been a while since I started."

"I expect I probably will," the boy confirmed. "I've got big plans for Hogs Haulage, and I'm gonna need a lot of people to see them through."

Harry looked at him closely, and Mike was struck with the oddest feeling, as if he were being laid bare before something far larger and far stronger than he was. It was an… unsettling experience, and it seemed an odd fit with the pint-sized boy in front of him... until he recalled the discussion about the basilisk.

At that point it made a great deal of sense.

"Are you interested in working for me?" the suddenly rather intimidating boy asked.

"I am, sir," Mike snapped straight upright at the question.

Harry nodded. "I'll look forward to interviewing you then when you're free. Mike, was it?"

"That's right, Mr. Potter," Mike confirmed. "Mike McDonald."

"I'll keep an eye out for you," the young Potter promised, reaching up to pat Mike on the shoulder before turning back to his earlier conversation.

Mike let out an explosive sigh of relief at the end of that unexpectedly intense exchange. Nonetheless he smiled brightly, unknowingly echoing his father's proud smile at the exchange. Working here would be infinitely better than the warehouse, and he just had to make it through to the end of his contract. He could do that.

After all, he was just moving stuff around a warehouse; what could go wrong in a year?

3.13.5 A working vacation

As Harry gazed out over the still-lush grass of the Salisbury plain, his two damsels and his friend, Abigail, standing quietly at his sides, he couldn't help but marvel at how quickly events could move. With the conclusion of his company Christmas party just the previous evening, Harry had given the final go-ahead on the project to drain the Stonehenge nexus and here he was the next morning, standing beside the ancient stone circle as his friends put the finishing touches on their preparations.

His friends could work fast when they wanted to.

Still, they weren't quite finished yet. Mr. Snape and Mrs. McGonagall were hard at work reinforcing the already-formidable notice-me-not wards that had been raised to cover their morning activities, and Mr. Flitwick was still fiddling with the sensors he'd developed in conjunction with Mr. FlameI over the course of the last six months. They were apparently supposed to measure the magical field strength all over the site during the drain, and after he finished with those, there were apparently a few dozen more that were supposed to attach to various portions of Harry for much the same reason. Madame Pomfrey had insisted those go on at the last moment, though, so for now he remained unencumbered.

As the young dragon waited patiently for his friends to finish their various preparations, he couldn't help but be a bit nervous. His friends had done everything they could to ensure he'd survive this, and he knew that, but they had done nothing to hide the potential risks. In fact, they had taken great pains to point them out to him and ensure he knew what he was getting himself in to.

Yes, as far as Madame Pomfrey and Mr. Snape could determine, he ought to be able to handle the amount of magical flux they expected from the circle when it discharged, particularly since his recovery from the incident with the philosopher's stone, as his changed composition was even more amenable to storing massive quantities of magic. But at the end of the day, that 'ought to' was based on educated guesses about both his still poorly-understood biology and the even-less-understood stone rings.

There were no certainties in this situation, only guesses and assumptions, and if those guesses turned out to be wrong… well, there'd be little left of Wiltshire, much less Harry and his friends.

It was a sobering sort of realization, even for the usually ebullient dragon.

That said, no matter how nervous he was, Harry remained resolute on continuing; it wasn't like he had a choice, not really. Oh, his professor friends wouldn't have forced him, he knew that well enough — they really couldn't in any event — but everyone agreed the stakes were clear. Either they found a way to discharge the nexuses safely, or the ancient devices would do so of their own accord, unpredictably and in a decidedly less-than-safe manner. It was a choice between a potentially lethal gamble to fix the problem and invariably lethal cowardice.

That hardly counted as a choice at all in Harry's books.

But resolute or not, necessary or not, the young dragon really didn't want to dwell on the absurdly dangerous risk he was about to take... best to find something else to think about.

"Hey, Abigail?" Harry began without turning his head. "You remember that conversation we had before break, you know, about studying for your defense NEWT?"

"Yes," Abigail acknowledged readily. "What about it?"

"Well, I heard back from Mr. Slackhammer, and he had some more ideas on what I could do," the young dragon told his friend. "I'm going to be meeting with him later during the break. Just thought I'd let you know I'm still working on it."

His friend smiled. "Thanks, Harry." There was a pause. "Are you nervous about this nexus thing?" she asked, rightly interpreting his abrupt change in subject from the task at hand.

Harry nodded wordlessly, eliciting a pair of attempted comforting hugs from his two damsels which unfortunately passed unnoticed by the young dragon due to his natural armor.

"Well, from what you've told me, this is really important, right?" his older friend confirmed.

He nodded again.

"'Then I suppose there's nothing to be done but get on with it and hope for the best." Abigail sighed, "I know I'm not saying anything you didn't already know, but it's all I've got."

"No, I know what you mean," Harry hurried to reassure his friend. "But... it's nice to hear it from someone else. Makes you feel better about your reasoning, you know?"

Abigail nodded in her turn.

"Um, you know, I had an idea the other night when I was talking to a couple of my new engineers," Harry began. "And since you're going to be working at Hogs Haulage soon, I thought I might run it by you while we're waiting."

"Oh," the older girl cocked a curious eyebrow. "When was this? I don't think I remember that conversation."

"It was pretty early in the afternoon," the young dragon clarified. "I think it was when Mr. Rowland took you over to introduce you to the management team."

Abigail nodded; that scheduling seemed plausible. "So, what is this new idea?"

"Well, it's like this…" Harry began only to be interrupted by Madame Pomfrey and Mr. Flitwick. It seemed the time had come to rig him with the final sensors, and then it would be showtime.

Business ideas would have to wait for the future.

3.13.6 Winter lights

A cold wind gusted across the Salisbury plain in southern England, shaggy green grass flattening before it until it splashed to either side of a large metallic dragon and rushed on, swirling around and through an incomplete circle of ancient standing stones.

The color of burnished steel and large enough to stretch nearly halfway across the stone circle itself at full extent, the dragon made for a curious sight — large metallic dragons being rather uncommon in these bucolic locales — as he very deliberately picked his way between the ancient stones. A handful of humans and a single centaur watched carefully from a prudent distance as he approached one unassuming stone in particular. Once there, just as the sun reached its zenith on the cold December day, the dragon took an action which made the already curious scene even curiouser.

Shifting to support himself on his wing-knuckles, he freed his forepaws, and then raised one of them. Bending down to carefully examine the massive appendage, the dragon then raised his other paw holding a knife — a fairly stout and sizeable one by human standards but looking more of a comically tiny lancet on the grand scale of its current holder — which he carefully inserted between two of the massive scales on his paw and then shoved home with a wince. He quickly withdrew the knife, its blade already glowing orange-white and half-melted by the time it cleared his skin, and with it came a glowing rivulet of white-hot blood, a few stray droplets of which were already setting the damp grass to smoking.

He took a deep breath and firmly placed his still-bleeding paw down on the stone in front of him, simultaneously pushing magic into the point of contact. And with that, a set of events was put into motion, the twin of one which had happened two-dozen miles to the north and nearly half a decade earlier at the much larger stone circle in Avebury — a chain of events which had led to the transformation of a small human boy into a massive dragon.

The very same dragon touching off the events on this day.

Once again, magically charged blood came in contact with the stone responsible for discharging the ancient device, forging a connection. Once again the signal was received, this time in the form of a deliberate pulse rather than precise, if coincidental, timing. And once again, the device did as it was designed to do, discharging the accumulated energy of millennia through the freshly forged connection, lighting up the space between the dragon's palm and the bloody stone with a light brighter than the noon-time sun.

That was where the similarities ended.

Avebury had discharged into a scrawny, malnourished, completely untrained pre-teen wizard. This time the recipient was a strapping, young, partially-trained dragon — a dragon whose kind were not only able to tolerate high levels of environmental magic, but which in fact thrived on it. Where the boy's magic had scrabbled desperately for a miracle simply to survive the onslaught at Avebury, the dragon's physiology simply kicked into high gear to process the unexpected nutritional windfall, a task made even simpler by the relative weakness of the nexus. With a capacity estimated to be several orders of magnitude lower than that of the Avebury nexus, Stonehenge had been chosen as an initial test case for precisely that reason.

Rather than a brilliant light show reaching to the heavens and arcane disturbances reverberating around the globe, the draining of Stonehenge had more of the feel of a lightbulb burning out: a bright flash of oddly-colored light, a sharp buzz followed by a dull thump, and then the dim gloom of unmet expectations.

It was honestly a rather welcome relief for everyone involved.
 
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World Building: Magic Cycles and Stone Rings
Since you are here, I have a question:
Obviously, if the things are unlocked, they release magic stored and we have Global Magicking.
If they overfill, we have a big boom, then Global Magicking.

And if someone were to get to ALL of these before they go critical and absorb all that power into oneself? Would that be enough to delay the next Age (seeing as that power would be out of circulation, but the buildup would continue)?
So, for a more complete explanation of how I've pictured the rings working in this version:
  • They were originally designed as storage devices for building up energy in order to perform large-scale magic
  • As such, they have certain functions built into them to assist with that purpose
    • They can automatically gather and store magic from the environment
      • They do so by effectively turning the bedrock beneath them (all the way down to where it starts to heat up enough to begin to melt) into a giant magical battery
      • Because of this, their storage capacities are stupidly high
      • Their placement on ley-line nexuses is intended to allow them to fill faster
    • They can discharge that stored magic in various ways
      • Most are related to the primary use of the stones, performing useful magic
      • The story-relevant one is a safety-release/regulator which would normally be used to drain excess magic from the stones before carrying out something relatively delicate. Throttling magic is hard, so the original designers just made sure there was only enough in the stones to do the job required, releasing the excess to the environment
    • They can be turned off
      • There is an automatic safety to turn the energy collection feature off at a set magical charge, normally quite low. The stupidly high capacities of the rings are an unintended consequence of the design; human mages (who designed the things) can't use energy that intense.
        • As part of an attempt to control the overall magical cycle, a group of mages jammed all these safeties open at the end of the fourth age, resulting in the current situation.
      • When the drain is triggered (what Harry is doing), the collection effect must be manually restarted. This is a design feature, since the drain is intended, when done properly, to ensure that there is a specific amount of magic available for use. Immediately collecting more would be counterproductive. Harry is not giving the stone the proper parameters to tell it when to stop (he doesn't know how), so he's getting the full blast.
  • So when Harry is dealing with the things, he's draining the stored energy into himself (with some amount of spillage) and turning off the absorption effect, effectively rendering the circle inert until someone more knowledgeable turns it back on
Now, as to how the magic cycle works and what is going on on a planetary scale:
Note: none of this is known by anyone in-universe, not the Great Dragons, not the Immortal Elves, nobody.
  • Magic is produced by all life to one extent or another. Non-magical life produces magic in tremendous excess of what it uses, while magical life can vary between net producers and net consumers. Even non-magical life is enhanced by magic; therefore, the more magic there is in the environment, the faster it will be produced (until other factors limit the growth of the life producing it)
  • The excess magic produced sticks around in the environment until something uses it --- the magical field is non-radiative, so it doesn't dissipate off into space on its own.
  • There exist many forms of life which consume magic. Among these are a group of strains of partially-astral bacteria which live in the solid rock of the earth's crust and feed on environmental magic.
  • These bacteria have no natural predators, given their environment, thus they grow unchecked until their food runs out.
  • This results in an oscillating growth cycle
    • The bacterial population starts out at a minimum; magic is thus produced faster than it is consumed. (Beginning of high magic age)
    • With magic available, the bacterial population increases rapidly.
    • Eventually, the bacterial population is high enough that it consumes magic faster than it can be produced, causing magic levels to fall. (Middle of high-magic age)
    • Bacterial populations reach a maximum (End of high-magic age)
    • Without the magic to support it, the bacterial population starts to die off.
    • Eventually, the population falls to the point that it is again consuming less magic than is being produced. (Middle of low-magic age)
    • Magic levels begin to recover as bacterial populations start to stabilize.
    • And we are back to the beginning of the cycle.
This process has some interesting side-effects.
  • The "Living Earth" effect which prevents Horrors and other similar critters from passing through bedrock is due to these bacteria providing a solid astral barrier
  • The presence of these critters and the biofilms they form when in sufficient numbers will severely limit petroleum and natural gas production as the cycle progresses. (In a related note, the die-offs mean that the world's oil reserves will completely replace themselves after the sixth age, so it's a mixed blessing.)

So, in short, the interplay between those two situations means that successfully draining the nodes will precipitously increase the world's effective rate of production of magic with each node dealt with --- he's removing a drain without changing the production rate. This change is immediately reflected in atmospheric sensors (like the ones Flamel uses) because the air saturates very quickly, but there is a lot of magic-absorbent material in the world which needs to follow suit before the steady rise can continue towards the Awakening.

The end result is the Awakening will be on time (a convenient coincidence chosen mainly because I didn't want to have to rework all the geopolitics to account for a change in timeline), but magic levels will be increasing much faster than they normally do at that point in the cycle, which will have its own consequences.
 
Section 3.14 - Denouement
3.14 Denouement

3.14.1 Realizations

It was late afternoon, and the Lair was quiet, empty but for a single head of bushy brown hair peeking up over the leather-covered back of one of the mismatched chairs in Harry's library. Hermione sat alone on the mezzanine overlooking the echoingly empty main room of the Lair. It was an ideal spot to reflect on the day's events.

And those events warranted reflection, for they had been quite important. Harry had participated in the first intentional draining of one of the nexuses that he and most of the Hogwarts staff had spent the last several years fretting about. It had been the culmination of a great deal of work and worry for a great many people, and having it go so smoothly was both a relief and something of a letdown.

Of course, for Hermione, whose primary stake in the endeavor was the safety of her best friend, relief was by far the more prevalent emotion — so much so that she was currently on the brink of exhaustion despite having done nothing but stand around all day before hitching a ride back to the Lair with Harry.

Though, come to think of it, that ride with Harry might have been another contributing factor to her current exhausted state.

She gave a tired giggle at the thought.

Ever since draining Stonehenge, her currently dragon-shaped friend had been more energetic than she had ever seen him before, quite an accomplishment, given Harry's usual bright-eyed, bouncy demeanor. He was like a small child on a sugar-high from hell. Even seeing it was exhausting, almost debilitatingly so after the worries of the day.

Of course just like a sugar-rush — as Madame Pomfrey had assured her when she had asked — Harry would eventually hit the end of his unnaturally-high energy levels and crash into exhaustion himself. In the meantime, however, everyone dealt with the situation in their own ways.

Harry had spent the afternoon playing an interminable game of tag with the resident phoenix, who looked to be enjoying the proceedings immensely. Abigail had returned home immediately, citing family commitments aloud while shooting Hermione and Suze a sly look and silently mouthing, "Enjoy yourselves!"

Obviously, Abigail had a long memory.

After Abigail had left, Suze had gone to visit her family, feeling no need to make excuses. If not for the intervention of the phoenix Hermione would have been stuck dealing with a hyperactive dragon-shaped Harry Potter all afternoon. It was enough to make her reconsider her nascent plots to retaliate against the fiery bird for the picnic incident; getting splashed with tea was a small price to pay, in hindsight. A quiet evening in the library wasn't too bad.

Though, if she were to be completely honest with herself, Hermione would have preferred to take the same route her centaur counterpart had. It had been quite some time since the bushy-haired girl had been able to spend any quality time with her parents.

There had been a great many reminders about what she was missing with the absence of her parents of late — too many for the bushy-haired girl to put it out of her mind. She had missed their sage advice after her recent gaffe with Professor Snape, and after seeing the McDonalds and all the other happy families at the barbecue Hermione had found herself missing her parents dearly. She had been without her family for much too long.

She frowned.

Just how long had it been, anyway?

The last time she'd even seen them was at the beginning of the summer, and that hardly counted. At the time, Hermione had been so sick with worry over her best friend's condition that her parents had barely registered. Before that had been Christmas of the previous year, which again had been taken up either with adjusting to Harry's Lair or the usual whirlwind schedule of visiting various relatives. As Hermione thought back over her interactions with her parents, she quickly realized that the last time she'd had a really good opportunity to spend time with her parents was before she'd started at Hogwarts.

That had been nearly eighteen months ago!

A year-and-a-half without her parents was not acceptable. Hermione's tired countenance firmed at the thought. Hogwarts was supposed to have been a boarding school, not an adoption agency; something would have to be done!

It was too late to alter her plans for Christmas break — for that matter, her mum and dad were already coming to visit for the holiday — but come the end of the school year, she would simply have to insist on going home for the summer. Hermione nodded decisively. She was sure Harry would understand.

And in the meantime, she would make the most of her parents' Christmas visit.

She sighed, rising from her favorite chair to make her way to her bedroom. For now, though, she'd take a nap; it had been a very tiring day, after all.

3.14.2 Failed expectations

When working on a long-term project, particularly one as fraught with uncertainty and danger as the plan to learn about and drain the Stongehenge nexus, certain expectations tend to build. Each level of contingency planning, each backup, and each failsafe ratchets those expectations higher and higher, and the nervous tension of those involved ratchets up right alongside them. When all that build-up comes to a head, and then the project proceeds to go off without the slightest hitch, the sudden release tends to leave a curious sort of mood in its wake. It is an odd mix of relief, disbelief, and lethargy, and it often comes mixed with an undercurrent of irrational resentment at all the effort wasted preparing for contingencies that never happened.

Such was the mood in the Hogwarts staff room following the draining of Stonehenge.

For once, Filius managed to pass out drinks before anyone mustered the gumption to break the heavy silence in the conference room. The various staff members sat listlessly, faces slack and dull eyes staring — into their drinks, into space, even into a blank wall in one case — and marveling at all the effort and worry which in the end had proven entirely unnecessary.

The drink of the day was Pomona's take on the non-magical classic, champagne, chosen beforehand in anticipation of a celebratory mood in the aftermath of draining the Stonehenge nexus. Amber in color and laced with silvery bubbles rising in a shimmering cascade, it could almost have been mistaken for a non-magical drink and would have suited the unexpectedly somber tone of the debriefing quite well had it not been for one, unfortunate feature. When those silvery bubbles burst at the surface of the liquor, they occasionally launched miniature fireworks which detonated in a profusely colorful panoply about a foot above the surface of the drink.

When a cheery pink starburst illuminated the glowering face of the resident potions master, Sprout found the dissonance between the somber mood and the lively display too much to tolerate. Thinking quickly, she raised her glass, wincing at her own cheerful yellow explosion in the process, and offered a perfunctory toast.

"To the success of our endeavors!"

And with that, she drained her entire glass in one go. Her colleagues caught on quickly, aping the action, and soon the overly festive drinks fell silent and dark, much to the relief of those in the room. A quick gesture from Sprout prompted Flitwick to quietly exchange the half-empty bottle of her celebratory brew for a much tamer bottle of Ogden's.

"Thank you for your quick thinking, Pomona," Dumbledore tiredly congratulated his subordinate on her handling of the jarringly cheerful drink. "I confess I was having some difficulty thinking coherently enough to see to it myself."

The amateur brewer shrugged. You couldn't win them all.

"Perhaps we might revisit your creation on another occasion," the elderly wizard offered kindly, even as he took a bracing sip of the old wizarding favorite. "In any case, I understand our trial run went more smoothly than we had dared to hope?"

"Indeed, Albus," Flitwick confirmed. "Mr. Potter managed to drain the Stonehenge nexus with nary a hiccup. There were a few odd lights and a bit of sound but nothing approaching what we viewed in that memory of Mr. Potter's transformation at Avebury."

The dour potions master spoke up, "Our protections against prying eyes proved to be more than adequate." He snorted, "Between our spell choice and the not inconsiderable effort Minerva and I put into their emplacement those wards would have hidden a full-scale war. That it was only called upon to hide that pathetic display seems vaguely insulting."

"Now, Severus," his Scottish colleague chided, "you should not be complaining about things going unexpectedly well — particularly not when the alternatives could have been so dire."

"Blast it, Minerva! I know that," the dark man snapped, "but knowing that makes precious little difference in the face of all that wasted effort. I defy you to tell me truthfully that you are fully satisfied with the way things came out. With how smoothly that went, we could have hared off on an afternoon lark and done just as well, rather than building up to it for half a year!"

"I am happy that we made it through without complications," the transfiguration mistress qualified, before admitting with a reluctant grimace, "but yes, I must admit it was rather disheartening."

"Was the Stonehenge nexus simply that much weaker, or is something else at work?" Albus asked.

"I believe the relative strength of the nexuses played a significant role," the half-goblin volunteered, pausing to sip at his drink, "but I sincerely doubt it was the only factor." A small gout of flame escaped his lips as if to punctuate the statement. "Hopefully, we will be able to glean more insight by analyzing our sensor records of the procedure."

The school Healer finished off her whiskey with a gulp before speaking up for the first time. "I believe I can offer some preliminary insight into that," Poppy volunteered. "Things were not nearly so sedate on Mr. Potter's end of the transaction."

"Mr. Potter was injured?" the young dragon's Head of House spoke up immediately, embarrassment over the poor reception of her latest brew evaporating in the face of her concern for her student. "He seemed so energetic."

"No, Mr. Potter was not injured," the Healer was quick to assure her concerned colleague. "He is quite sound, but even so, this revealed some rather interesting information. First, Filius, I do not know how the rest of your sensors fared, but you need not consider those you placed on Mr. Potter's person. Not one survived intact — the ones farthest away from the transfer point appear to have simply overloaded, but damages became increasingly severe the closer they were to the transfer location. I was unable to recover the remains of any sensors closer than Mr. Potter's shoulder; I believe they were either blown clear or vaporized entirely."

"They were not blown clear," Severus volunteered. "Such a thing would have at least strained our concealment wards. They registered no such disturbance."

The half-goblin charms master frowned in thought. "That sort of energy is more in keeping with what we expected," he allowed, "but the absorption coefficients…" His eyes closed as he tilted his head back in thought. "Mr. Potter couldn't have absorbed so much magic so quickly, not with so little spillage..." the diminutive man trailed off.

"You're correct, Filius," Septima Vector agreed. "At that intensity, there should have been more overflow than we observed. So where did the rest go?"

"Perhaps some other failsafe in the runic structure?" Bathsheda ventured, retreating to her own specialty for an explanation.

The school Healer cleared her throat. "Before speculation travels too far afield, I should reel you in. Based on Mr. Potter's follow-up physical, I believe you should shift your estimation of his capacity to store magic up by several orders of magnitude."

"How so?" the half-goblin asked, intrigued.

"I've not yet worked out how to examine the changes in detail, given Mr. Potter's intransigent physiology," the Healer averred, "but I have noticed significant physical changes on an organ our explorations had not yet identified."

"Which one?" Snape asked, interest piqued. He had been Poppy's closest collaborator in exploring the young dragon's physiology.

"We had designated it LP-31 in our notes."

"One of the paired ones, then," the sallow man frowned. "Was that…"

"The one we had thought might be a redundant liver?" Madame Pomfrey finished for him. "Yes, that's the one."

"So, it is involved in absorbing magic, then," the potions master mused. "I suppose that would explain the structural similarities to the liver. Particularly if it simply filters out excess magic from the blood."

"Storage as well, I believe," Poppy added. "It seems to have changed shape, and the diagnostic returns indicate a change in composition as well." She frowned. "I don't quite know what to think of that. If the boy's basic structure continues to change at the drop of a hat, I have no idea how I will ever establish a proper baseline."

"I believe I am familiar with the class of diagnostic you are using, Poppy," Albus chimed in. "I'd not be overly concerned about the composition returns in this case. The diagnostic uses internal magic densities to infer composition; therefore…"

"…the change in stored magic would alter the returned composition as well," Poppy concluded. "That makes me feel quite a bit better about my prospects as Mr. Potter's Healer, then. Thank you, Albus."

"Think nothing of it, Poppy," the elderly wizard countered. "By all means verify that conclusion, as well. Given Mr. Potter's recent medical history, spontaneous changes in composition are hardly out of the question."

"Of course, I'll certainly do that," came the reply. "What would you suggest as an alternative?"

With that, the conversation spun off for a time into a wide-ranging discussion of the merits of various classes of diagnostic charms which dragged in most of the senior staff. It lasted until one of the younger professors brought the meeting back on task.

"While this discussion is fascinating," Septima broke in, "and I am sure you will be eager to finish it later, for now, perhaps we should discuss where we need to go from here? There are a great many more of these things out there, as I recall."

"Ah, an excellent point," AIbus allowed with a sheepish expression. "Where do we need to go from here?"

The room was silent.

"We now have a second example of a discharging nexus to examine," Albus volunteered when it became clear no one else would. "Perhaps we could use it to better prepare for discharging the next one?"

"We need a better handle on the magic we are working with," Filius agreed. "I'm afraid we got lucky on this attempt, and we will eventually have to go after the higher-capacity nexuses as well." The half-goblin narrowed his eyes speculatively, "Hopefully the surviving sensors will yield some information on that front."

He nodded to the healer in the room. "Madame, if I could request that you share any more information you discover on Mr. Potter's interaction with the magic fields in play, it would be extremely valuable."

The Healer nodded.

"While we have free rein to visit any of the sites within the ICW," Snape began, "it occurs to me that many of these nexuses are not within the borders of ICW countries. Perhaps we should begin examining options to obtain access to them?"

"I take it you have some ideas in that regard?" the elderly headmaster asked. At his potions master's affirmative nod, he continued, "feel free to pursue them, then. Such things will always take far longer than expected, so we might as well begin early."

"Um, Headmaster," Bathsheda called. "While we're on that topic, Sybil asked me to pass something on for her."

"Oh?" the bearded man asked.

"She said she's not sure why, but she is certain the next nexus we look at should be the one in the Canadian Rocky Mountains — near the Seven Sisters, if that means anything to anyone," the arithmancy professor looked puzzled. "I'm not sure what to make of it myself, but that was what Sybil asked me to pass on."

With that, the conference room fell silent.

"I see, well, I suppose that answers the question of where to direct your initial efforts, Severus. If anyone else has further ideas in the future, please feel free to bring them up when inspiration strikes," the Headmaster said. "In the meantime, please take advantage of the remainder of your winter break in order to rest and celebrate a job well done."

The meeting ended much more cheerily than it began.

3.14.3 Too tired to sleep

Despite his initial rush of energy, it hadn't taken long for exhaustion to come crashing in on Harry in the wake of the events at Stonehenge. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, an understanding of the full magnitude of what he had just done had crashed in right alongside the exhaustion, leaving him paradoxically both utterly drained and simultaneously too wired to sleep. As a result, the young dragon found himself sprawled bonelessly on the lip of the Lair in the wee hours of the brisk winter morning watching dark wisps of cloud sweep across the starlit sky even as his mind churned restlessly over recent events.

While Hermione had long since turned in for the evening by the time Harry returned to the Lair, Suze had predictably joined her dragon upon her return from visiting the Clan, stoically wrapping herself in several layers of deerhide blankets to ward off the nighttime chill and hunkering down next to him with the air of someone determined to stay as long as they were needed. She had fallen asleep some hours previous, but the soft movements of her breathing remained a comforting sight for the young dragon... a sight that he rather gratefully returned to many times over the course of the night.

Despite Suze's comforting presence, however, his thoughts wouldn't leave him alone.

What might have happened if he hadn't absorbed the magic fast enough? What if there had been more than they'd expected? Would he have survived it? Would his friends have? There were so many things that could have gone wrong, some of which would have had truly spectacular consequences.

It had turned out smoothly in the end, almost suspiciously so, but draining the nexus at Stonehenge had been the first time Harry had deliberately and knowingly risked his life. Of course, in hindsight, he'd probably been at an objectively greater risk in the aftermath of the philosopher's stone incident during the previous spring, but that had happened while he'd been unconscious.

This one he'd walked into with his eyes wide open.

The young dragon sighed a very deliberate sigh as he attempted to force himself to relax, prompting a sleepy murmur from Suze as she shifted in her sleep. His was a puzzling sort of reaction to Harry's way of thinking. He'd have expected to be nervous in the lead-up to the event and then relieved afterward; instead, he'd proven to be mostly collected before the big day, rock-solid during the execution, and then a nervous mess afterward, unable to stop thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong. Harry frowned as he considered that.

What a weird way for him to go about things.

The dragon shook his head — gently to avoid waking his centaur damsel — in yet another an attempt to rid himself of the endless circle of worries that had kept him awake for the last several hours. It was just as successful as the last dozen attempts had been. He needed to get to sleep, Harry thought with a frown. He had guests due to arrive tomorrow... well, later today by now, and he didn't want to be falling asleep as he welcomed them to the Lair.

That just wouldn't be on!

Perhaps a different tactic? Great green eyes narrowed speculatively. If just trying to not think about it didn't work, maybe deliberately thinking about something else might be more effective. It was probably worth a try in any case; if it didn't work, at least he might get something accomplished.

Harry nodded emphatically, prompting another, louder, sleepy murmur from Suze which caused him to still immediately, a sheepish expression on his reptilian face. There was no need to keep his damsel awake just because he was being silly. When he had assured himself that the centaur maiden was once again sound asleep, the young dragon deliberately turned his thoughts to some of the other irons he had in the fire.

He'd invited Hermione's parents to spend Christmas with him and his damsels, and they were supposed to be arriving in the late afternoon. There wasn't a lot left to do to prepare for that, though. There was plenty of space since he'd dug out a guest room during some of his spare time over the summer, and he'd already let Mr. Bane know to be on the lookout for them.

Though, come to think of it, Harry thought with a quirked brow, there was something he'd been meaning to discuss with Hermione for a few weeks now which he probably ought to handle in the morning before her parents arrived. She probably wouldn't be too keen on going along with it afterwards, not after she'd spent so much time away from them. Or at least, that's what he'd guess; Harry only had his imagination to go on as far as parenting went, though he'd been thinking a lot more about that sort of thinking since visiting his parents' graves.

After that, he had that meeting with Mr. Slackhammer scheduled for two days after Christmas. His business partner had seemed cheerful about his prospects, so that'd probably go pretty well. Harry frowned thoughtfully; speaking of the goblins, he'd also had that other idea when he was talking with Mr. Wardale at the picnic. It might make sense to arrange a meeting with one of the Gringotts engineers, too... maybe Specialist Flame-Eye, he'd probably know the right sort of stuff. Harry had had some more ideas since…

Large green eyes narrowed thoughtfully. That stuff could get pretty involved; he probably ought to write some of this down. The dragon raised his massive head to look back over his shoulder into the Lair and reached out with his magic, levitating his dictation quill and a notepad from where he'd tossed them on returning from his encounter with the basilisk.

Only a few minutes of low whispering passed before Harry finally dozed off, his great scaly chin coming to rest next to his notepad as exhaustion finally took its due.

3.14.4 Insistence

The next day had dawned bright and early... too bright and too early in the eyes of the heavy-eyed inhabitants of Harry's cliffside Lair, which left tempers running a little high.

"Look, Hermione, I don't get why you're being so stubborn about this," Harry, currently in the shape of a small boy, complained with an exasperated huff as his centaur damsel stood at his side looking on neutrally. "Suze and I do this every day — sometimes twice a day. Even Abigail joins in sometimes when she's got time. It's really important."

The girl so addressed was standing with her arms across her chest and an obstinate look on her face, as she stubbornly refused to budge.

"I don't want to," bushy hair rustled as Hermione shook her head in defiance.

"I know you don't want to, you've made that clear enough," Harry acknowledged, "and I guess I can kinda see where you're coming from… maybe?" the currently human-shaped dragon allowed dubiously. "But I'm really going to have to insist."

"No, I'm not going to do it. I refuse."

Harry's expression hardened, "Well too bad, you're going to do it anyway."

Hermione's knuckles whitened as she glared at her friend, her teeth clenched in irritation.

He sighed, "Look, it's not hard. You just turn around, put your feet shoulder-width apart, flex your knees a little, take a deep breath, and we can get started. It'll be over before you know it. You might even enjoy it!"

"I can't believe you're making me do this; it's against the law!" the bushy-haired girl sounded rather distressed.

"Not in the magical world, it's not," Harry countered implacably, hefting his rifle in emphasis. "When I carried you off, I took on certain responsibilities for you, but you have some too, and I've let you avoid attending to your side of things for too long. Now turn around and get to it, we don't have all day. We'll be doing this at least every morning."

Hermione scowled angrily but nonetheless complied. It wasn't as it she was in a position to refuse. "You were never like this before, what changed?"

"I had a bit of a revelation at the dueling club last term," Harry explained as his human damsel turned to face the cavernous expanse of the Lair's firing range. "It's a lot harder to hit a target than you might think, and if I need the practice even after years of learning, then you certainly do too."

"I don't see why I have to learn to shoot," the twelve-year-old witch complained. "I've got you to protect me, don't I?"

"You do, and I'm happy to do so," Hermione's currently human-shaped friend assured her before continuing. "But you need to be able to defend yourself, too. Mr. Slackhammer told me that even if there are people willing to help, everyone is responsible for protecting himself... or herself in your case, I guess. I mean, what if you're on the other side of the school or something? I might not be close enough to help in time, and then you'd have to be at least good enough to stay alive for a little while." Harry nodded, "Best to make sure you know what you're doing, just in case."

"Fine," the bushy-haired girl acquiesced wih a huff. "Am I using your rifle, or what?"

"You want to learn to shoot a rifle, too?" the young dragon asked, pleasantly surprised. "I thought you said you didn't want to do that since you don't have a license."

"Well what else am I going to use for marksmanship practice?" Hermione all-but shouted in exasperation.

"I was just going to have you join me for the spellcasting target practice," Harry explained, gesturing to a freshly-excavated section of the room with a set of much closer targets and backed by a blank wall rather than the metal surfaces of a snail-trap.

"Why didn't you just say that from the beginning?" Hermione demanded, burying her face in her hands in frustration. "I'd have been fine doing that to begin with!"

"I thought you said before you didn't want to do target practice?" the young dragon asked, puzzled.

His bushy-haired damsel glared at him in outrage through her frizzy bangs before brandishing her wand with a huff and stalking off to the indicated portion of the range.

At least she wouldn't struggle to find the motivation to practice; she'd just have to imagine the targets with green eyes and black hair.

3.14.5 Strange detective

Shrouded in the darkness of night and washed by a steady, soaking winter rain, a familiar stone circle stood proud and not quite abandoned on a grassy plain in Wiltshire, showing no evidence of the momentous magical event which had taken place there just a few days before... not visibly, anyway. Stonehenge looked as it generally did, but for one curious detail.

The fact that it was 'quite nearly' abandoned.

Having any visitors at all was a decidedly unusual condition for the landmark in rainy, nighttime conditions. Very few were so desperate to see the ancient stones that they would brave such weather at night. It wasn't like the things were going anywhere, after all.

Nonetheless, a lone figure surefootedly picked its way among the standing stones. Tall and rail-thin, it wore a double-breasted coat made of dark-colored leather, it's full length shedding the rain quite admirably. Boots and a wide-brimmed hat completed the ensemble, warding off the weather and plunging the figure's face into impenetrable shadow.

The shadowy figure paused as it drew near one of the stones, reaching out to touch a particularly rough spot on its surface curiously. Heat-spalled stone flaked off with the gentle touch and stuck to the figure's pale rain-wet hand.

A sharp shake dislodged the stone flakes before the hand withdrew, only to turn palm up and have a light flash into existence above it.

The sudden light illuminated a face painted a stark chalky white. The now-revealed man's harshly angular face was not softened by the pair of long crimson diamonds painted over its eyes, and his vividly green eyes focused intently on the standing stone before him.

"Hmm…" the man hummed quietly, barely audible over the dull hiss of the rain.

Turning to examine the rest of the newly illuminated area, alert green eyes quickly latched onto a few seemingly innocuous depressions in the thick grass, carefully noting their placement and spacing. The man tilted his head forward, revealing a crimson-dyed ponytail peeking out from under his hat. As he scanned the grass carefully, his eyes suddenly widened.

He took two long steps then kneeled to examine a tiny burn mark on a patch of grass. Unmindful of the wet, he brought his conjured light low and searched carefully through the wet grass until he found a tiny, unassuming pebble in the mud at the base of a charred grass stem. Picking it up gingerly, the oddly made-up man straightened to his full height and examined the miniscule thing closely before rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. It left a streak of reddish brown.

Rust.

Green eyes closed in thoughtful consideration as he allowed the conjured light to gutter out. Eventually, the man sighed, pocketing the tiny bit of heavily rusted iron as he walked calmly back towards the nearby road.

"Well, it seems someone is up early."

3.14.6 Welcome visitors

A silvery dragon the size of a small airliner settled in for a gentle landing, his nearly five hundred tons of bulk touching down on stone with barely a thump to mark the occasion. Harry smoothly leaned forward, brought his wings down to support himself and crouched to bring his torso even closer to the ground to ease his passengers' disembarkation. Said passengers wasted no time in taking advantage of the courtesy, quickly unclipping themselves from his carry harness.

"That hasn't gotten any easier," Tony Granger remarked as he staggered over to brace himself against the nearest stone wall.

Flying on a massive dragon was not exactly the dentist's cup of tea. Airplanes were bad enough, but at least they had the benefit of being enclosed. Flying exposed to the open air, the ground racing by hundreds of feet below with nothing but empty air between him and it, was a hair-raising experience to Tony's mind. It had been bad enough the previous year when he had been cradled in the dragon's great forepaw; dangling from a leather five-point harness strapped to the dragon's side was far worse. Every lurch made him wonder when the leather was going to snap and send him plummeting to his death.

It made him wonder why he kept coming back for more.

"Really?" the dragon in question asked, craning his neck about to shoot his erstwhile passengers a concerned look. "I thought I'd gotten a lot smoother with all the flying practice with Fawkes. Was I too rough?"

"Ah, not really, it's just…" the dentist struggled to explain without sounding like an ingrate. His daughter's friend had been good enough to carry him after all, and it seemed in poor taste to complain about the method. He was rather quickly saved from the task by his wife.

"You did much better than last year, Harry," Sharon assured their gargantuan host. "My husband just has trouble with heights, particularly when he's out in the open — he can't stand rollercoasters either. He even has trouble with small aircraft."

"Oh," Harry frowned. "Um, I suppose I could ask Suze to lend him her portkey, but most of my professor friends say those are a lot less comfortable than flying for short distances. They spin you around kinda fast while dragging you along. It doesn't really bother me, but then neither does flying."

"Don't bother, my husband needs to learn to face his fears anyway," Sharon chuckled at Tony's mildly offended look. She didn't have to phrase it like that! "Just two years ago, we were vacationing across the pond, and our flight was redirected due to weather. When he found out we were being re-routed on a smaller aircraft, Tony insisted on renting a car and driving instead! Ten hours in the car rather than…"

Whatever else Sharon had intended to say went unsaid as she was interrupted by a bushy-haired missile in the form of her daughter. As the two Granger females engaged in a heartfelt embrace, Tony looked on warmly.

That was the reason. As reminders went, it was a pretty solid one.

The proud father watched the heartwarming scene for a few moments longer before turning away as his wife and daughter moved on to a quiet discussion. Tony was sure his little princess would get around to greeting him when she was ready, but privacy seemed to be the order of the day for now. A quick glance at his host showed the young dragon to have come to a similar conclusion.

Tony made his way over to his host who, having moved his guests' luggage deeper into the cave complex, was now in the process of removing his portion of the carry harness the Granger patriarch had been so distressed to be hanging from on the way up.

Giving a nod to the centaur currently assisting her dragon with the procedure, Hermione's father struck up a conversation. "So, Harry, what have you been up to recently?"

"Huh?" the young dragon looked up in surprise at being so addressed. "Mr. Granger? I thought you'd still be over with Hermione."

"Sharon seems to have that well in hand for the moment," Tony shrugged. "I thought I'd come over and keep you company in the meantime. Have you been up to anything interesting lately?"

"Well, I guess there was that really big snake I found about a week ago," Harry offered, pausing to contort himself with a slight grunt in order to allow his centaur damsel to release the last in a series of buckles on his harness. With the straps released, he shifted smoothly into human form right before Tony's eyes. "That was kind of interesting, I suppose."

"A big snake?" the dentist prompted, wondering exactly how big a snake would have to be to prompt that sort of qualifier from a dragon of all beings.

"Yeah," the currently boy-shaped dragon nodded as he leaned back against the wall. "It was raiding my pantry, so I found it and killed it, then Mr. Snape helped me cut it up for meat. It's pretty tasty! Do you wanna try some?"

"I see," Tony said uncertainly. "Probably not right now, I'm not really hungry at the moment."

"Maybe later then," Harry shrugged amiably. "Other than that, I put together a barbecue for my new company last Friday. It was really fun!"

"So I saw in your letter," Tony agreed. "Sharon and I had wanted to ask about that, but it should probably wait until she's here to participate."

The young dragon nodded. "That makes sense. Um, speaking of asking about stuff, I'd wanted to ask about something too."

"Oh?" Tony prompted.

"Well, last year, Mrs. Granger gave me a little model thingy she called a nativity scene, and she said there was a really important story behind it, but she never got around to explaining it. I kinda wanted to ask what it was about."

Tony arched a brow in surprise at that. "You've never heard of a nativity scene before?"

Harry shook his head in the negative.

"Well, it's a depiction of the birth of Jesus Christ," the dentist began, a bit nonplussed that a boy Harry's age raised in an ostensibly Christian nation didn't know this already. "I mean, it's the main reason for the holiday — it's why it's called Christ-mas, you know."

"I guess that makes sense," the young, currently human-shaped, dragon allowed. "Why didn't any of the professors tell me about it, though? We've celebrated Christmas four times now, and no one said anything."

"Maybe they assumed you knew already?" Tony offered. "Didn't your aunt and uncle tell you about it?"

Harry shook his head in the negative.

"Odd," the dentist shook his head at the idea. "Well, I know Sharon will be happy to tell the story whenever she finishes up with Hermione, and she'll do a better job of it than me." He paused as a thought occurred to him. "Say, Harry, what do you know about the other Christmas-time traditions?"

"Well, I know you give people gifts, and I know you decorate trees," the young dragon stated.

After it became apparent that he wasn't going to elaborate further, Tony confirmed, "That's all? Nothing about Santa Claus or anything?"

Harry shook his head.

"Well, I can't let that stand, now can I?" the dentist nodded emphatically, immediately walking over to his luggage and rummaging around looking for a certain something he had remembered to bring this year. "You see…"

It was as far as he got before he was interrupted in turn by his bushy-haired daughter. It seemed Hermione had finished with her mother for the time being and was now intent on catching up on her delinquent quota of fatherly attention. As he settled down to the welcome task, Tony vaguely registered his wife stepping in to take up the conversation with Harry. That was good, Sharon would be able handle things.

For now, his daughter needed him.

3.14.7 Up on the rooftop

It was a snowy Christmas Eve in the Scottish Highlands, the light of the moon completely hidden by the thick storm clouds, and it was precisely the sort of evening that made one long for solid roof over one's head, a warm blanket for one's lap, and a roaring fire at one's feet. So, with nothing more pressing to do for once, Albus Dumbledore had arranged for just that.

The elderly wizard had chosen to while away the chill of the evening in the sitting area of the Headmaster's suite, seated in his favorite high-backed chair wearing his pajamas — a rather subdued number by the standards of his wardrobe, midnight blue with animated shooting stars periodically streaking across the fabric — with a roaring fire at his stockinged feet. The hour was late, and even the other staff had long since retired for the evening in anticipation of the next day's festivities. The Headmaster was therefore quite startled when he heard a loud rap on the pitch-black eighth-story window behind him.

A quick flex of will brought his wand to hand before he even had time to blink, and the elderly wizard conjured a light as he rose and walked cautiously towards the window, only to bite back a decidedly ungentlemanly curse as the light revealed a green eye larger than his head peering through the glass. It-was so unexpected that it actually took the man a moment to recognize the rather familiar organ. As he drew closer to the window, other features became more readily apparent to his startled eye — perhaps the most notable being a fuzzy red triangle hanging down beside that great green eye, its bottom extremity capped in an even fuzzier white ball slightly larger than Albus' favorite armchair.

"Mr. Potter?" he asked curiously as he opened his window letting in a swirl of snow. "Whyever are you out there?"

"Hi, Mr. Dumbledore! Merry Christmas!" the young dragon greeted him with a sunny cheer that was quite jarring for the late hour. "I'm here to bring you your Christmas gift," he explained, raising one massive forepaw to brandish a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with unbleached twine. It would have looked quite traditional, were it not more than thrice Albus' size. "I already took some to Suze's family, and I've got a bunch more for the rest of the professors, too."

At that claim, Albus looked down to see a collection of similarly wrapped — and proportioned — packages securely attached to a harness on the dragon's body. He also noted the grasp of Harry's claws on the stonework of the tower and resolved to order a maintenance check done in the near future.

"I see," Albus said neutrally. "I thank you for the gift, but I feel the need to ask why you didn't send the packages with the house elves."

"Well, the packages are kinda heavy, so I felt a bit bad about making Frizzy carry them all. Since it was dark enough that I didn't think I had to worry about anyone seeing me, I decided to deliver them myself," Harry explained. "Plus, Mr. Granger told me about the Santa Claus thing a couple days ago, and I was kinda looking for something to do, and this seemed like a fun idea!"

Albus nodded agreeably, "Fair enough." A quick exchange followed, with the headmaster graciously accepting the gift using a levitation charm. "And a Merry Christmas to you as well, Mr. Potter; though I am afraid you will have to wait until tomorrow to receive your gift from me, located as it is under the tree in the Great Hall."

The dragon waved off the apology. "It's not a problem, I just knew these would be kind of inconvenient. Um, by the way, you shouldn't let it sit for too long — the cooling runes on the paper only hold about a day's charge."

"I will be certain to keep that in mind," the elderly wizard assured his student.

"Um," Harry began, "if it's not too much trouble, I'm pretty sure I know where all the professors' quarters are from the outside, but do you know a way to get Mr. Snape's present to him? I don't think he has a window."

"I would be pleased to deliver it for you, Mr. Potter," Albus offered quickly, half afraid that the resident dragon's alternative solution might include excavating a new window for his potions professor.

"Thanks!" the dragon beamed.

"And, before you go," Albus interjected before his visitor could leave, "I must compliment you on your rather fetching hat."

Harry smiled even more broadly, tossing his head gently and setting the floppy red-and-white furred stocking cap to bouncing. "Isn't it great? Mr. Granger had one that he let me look at, and I transfigured one in my size! It was a whole lot easier than those fiddly little bits Mrs. McGonagall always has us working with in class, and Suze said she'd make a properly real one for me sometime before next year! Um, anyway, I've got more presents to deliver, so I'd better get going." And without waiting for a response from his somewhat overwhelmed Headmaster, the great dragon was gone, a final call of "Merry Christmas!" sounding through the snowy night.

Albus shook his head, closing the window against the cold and snow then marveling at the two colossal packages taking up a good chunk of his sitting room.

Life had surely become more interesting in the years since Mr. Potter's arrival.
 
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Section 4.1 - Quiet conversations
4 Wretched hive of...

4.1 Ways and means

4.1.1 Quiet conversations

While Harry had very much enjoyed it while it lasted, Christmas had now come and gone. Hermione and her parents had left earlier in the day, off for their annual whirlwind tour of the extended family, and their departure had left Harry and Suze to their own devices. Currently, those devices had the centaur maiden once more catching up on her spinning as her dragon lounged indolently next to a large pile of very serious-looking books in the middle of the Lair.

"You know, Suze," Harry mused, his voice breaking the stillness of the Lair. "It sure seems quiet since Hermione and her parents left."

"I suppose it does," she agreed absently, her busy hands never pausing in their work with the nettle fiber.

The stillness returned, broken only by the gentle whirr of the centaur's spinning..

"I'm bored," the young dragon declared after a few minutes.

"I see," Suze acknowledged with the calm air of someone rehashing an oft-repeated conversation. "And what do you intend to do about that?"

"I dunno," Harry answered. "Do you have any suggestions, Suze?"

"You seemed to be quite involved in your reading earlier," the centauress nodded to the large stack of books next to him. "Why not go back to that?"

Harry sighed, the resultant breeze ruffling Suze's hair. "I just wasn't getting anywhere with it! Every book I found touches on casting and injection molding; it'll describe the general process; it'll say people use it all the time; and then it just cuts off and goes to something else without giving any real detail!" He huffed, "It's like they don't want to actually say anything useful!"

His centaur damsel frowned, finally pausing in her spinning to give his words some thought. "Perhaps it is the sort of skill best learned by doing?"

Harry cocked his great head curiously, "What do you mean?"

"Well," Suze paused for a moment to compose her thoughts, "when Uncle Ronan was first teaching me to carve a bow, he simply gave me a piece of wood and a knife and told me to make an attempt before giving me much of any instruction at all. Then he pointed out the problems with it and had me carve another. When I asked him about it, uncle said everyone carved differently, and there was no point in trying to teach me how he did it when I would just have to work it out on my own anyway. Perhaps foundry work is the same?"

"I don't think that sounds quite right," the dragon said with a thoughtful frown. "I mean, I can kinda get carving wood into bows, 'cause you're carving by hand, and wood's really got a lot of variety to it. The whole point of casting is to be repeatable, though, so that doesn't really fit."

The pair fell silent for a for moments before Suze put forth another idea, "Mayhap the authors truly did not want to say anything useful?"

"Why would they write a book, then?"

"Well, if it does take some specialized knowledge to accomplish," the centaur maiden proposed, "perhaps they wish to keep it to themselves so that their customers do not take up the practice and cut them out of the loop. I believe Vice Director Slackhammer referred to the idea as a trade secret."

"Oh," Harry said in a small voice.

That sounded all too plausible.

Hopefully the goblins would be more forthcoming.

For now, though, the young dragon needed something to occupy his time, and to that end he ambled off into his library... maybe that one on electrodynamics? It'd been a while since he'd worked on that project.

4.1.2 Investigations

In a cluttered room, the man currently known as Frank Nadgett sat at a cheap folding table and stared at a notebook thick with writing inked in his own cramped hand. Hundreds of boxes, crates, shelves, and other assorted storage containers, filled the room, from the edge of the table to the walls with barely enough room to get in or out. Every single one was full of parchment, so much so that even the heavy scent of tobacco smoke from Frank's ever-present cigarette could not fully overpower the musty smell of old parchment permeating the entire building.

The room was one of many belonging to a rather eccentric old wizard of Frank's acquaintance, a contact whose existence had played a significant role in Frank's success in his career. That first chance meeting really had been a godsend for the budding private eye.

The elderly man obsessed over truth with an intensity few could hope to match, and the omnipresent lies of the wizarding world deeply offended his sensibilities. In response, he had devoted his life to collecting and preserving copies of every scrap of written material he could get his wrinkly hands on in the faint hope that someone, somewhere would eventually be able to analyze and cross-reference the morass of lies in such a way as to suss out the truth they hid and piece together an accurate accounting of history.

Frank had no idea what had sparked the man's obsession — whether a simple whim or some tragedy of his youth — nor did he hold out much hope that such a monumentally ambitious quest would end in success, but he wished him all the luck in the world, nonetheless. Whatever the motivations, the collection was a priceless research tool for Frank's investigations, and it was available for the low, low price of helping to put the disorganized mess in order as he searched through it. It might be a bit of a slog… okay, scratch that, it was a massive pain in the arse, but Frank counted himself lucky to have struck the deal.

In a world of libraries that were repeatedly and routinely sanitized by the highest bidder and rags like the Prophet that tweaked their own back issues to suit the propagandists' flavor of the week, this sort of unabridged private archive was really the only way to get any reliable research done. At least it let you work with the first set of unpolished lies, which made it much easier to pick out the inconsistencies. All in all, it was an invaluable tool for a private eye.

And, judging by the pattern Frank was beginning to piece together, it might have just paid off once more.

Gilderoy Lockhart's fame made him common fodder for what passed for journalists all across wizarding Europe, and there was a plethora of interviews available... both with the man himself and with other witnesses and bystanders. It was in those interviews that Frank struck paydirt. The pattern was subtle, extremely so, tiny inconsistencies and contradictions between different accounts that would be easy to dismiss as simply poor memory or innocent hyperbole, if not for one niggling detail.

They were internally consistent.

For each of Gilderoy's exploits, the associated interviews varied, as witness accounts often do. They conflicted with Lockhart's official line as published in his books in varying details, one might be off in the sequence of events, another might have had him wearing a different outfit, and so on — nothing too odd there — but none of those inconsistencies conflicted. If two witnesses reported him wearing a different outfit than the one in the official account, it was always the same outfit. If two witnesses gave alternate timelines that conflicted with the official account, they were always consistent with each other.

The errors in the accounts were not random.

Frank had to admit, it wasn't much to show for the his time, and there were plenty of potential innocent explanations, but it was enough to warrant a bit of travel. Best to talk with those witnesses in person and see what he could find out, and, more importantly, what spell traces he could pick up.

He might not think much of the job or the client, but he was an honest professional, damn it! He would bloody well put in his due diligence before reporting his conclusions. The hard-bitten man sighed and ground out his cigarette before standing up.

It seemed he had some travel preparations to make.

"You find what you were looking for?" came a crotchety old voice from the doorway.

The owner of the room had come by to check up on him.

"I just might have," Frank acknowledged, nodding to the old man. "I've got to go check, and that means some international travel on the continent, but it's the best lead I've got."

"Going traveling, huh?" He was met with a shrewd stare from eyes clouded with age. "You'll be off for another round of insurance, then?"

Frank nodded reluctantly, regretting all over again the one time he had gotten drunk enough to share some of his closely-guarded personal life with his elderly… well, the old man was probably the closest thing Frank had to a friend after his old life had torn itself apart.

"Yeah," he sighed gustily. "I can't afford to lose track of her... not again."

The old man's face screwed up in thought as he obviously restrained himself from saying something before letting out a gruff sigh instead. "Well, be off with you then, lad."

"Later, old man," Frank said his farewell. "I'll see you when I see you."

With that, the private eye made his way to the fireplace and vanished in a flash of green fire.

The old man remained staring at the fire for a few moments after it returned to normal before turning away.

"Good luck to you, lad," he muttered under his breath as he shuffled back to his precious boxes. "God knows you need it."

4.1.3 Distasteful means

Appearing in a flash of green fire before the public floo in the dive bar below his office, Frank regained his bearings with the ease of long practice and immediately made his way out into the near-perpetual gloom of Knockturn Alley. He had important business to attend to before he could continue with the Lockhart case.

Spending time away from his main base of operations had always been a risky endeavor for Frank. He didn't have a staff, never could afford one, and his work often required frequent, personal attention ranging from tracking down a timely lead or tending to surveillance wards.

As he walked down the hazy alley, he casually slipped a potion phial out of an inner pocket and knocked it back.

Despite the massive price tag on the Lockhart project, it wasn't his only ongoing case, far from it.

In the final analysis, it wasn't even his most important one.

That dubious honor belonged to a stalled case he'd been working on for what seemed like an eternity now, a tracking and rescue job... not his usual fare to be sure, particularly the latter half, but it'd been a special case. He'd managed the tracking bit, but the rescue had proven to be beyond his capabilities at the time.

His target… well, the poor bird had been forced into prostitution by the time he'd tracked her down, and there was too much magic involved for him to extract her successfully. Between contract bindings, layered compulsions, routine obliviations, outright mental programming… it was a bloody mess! The physical security was a tough nut to crack, too. True, it was hardly insurmountable, but that hardly mattered. Pulling her out physically without dealing with the magical component would have seen them both dead anyway through any one of a dozen different magical means.

Nonetheless, Frank had refused to give up, determined to see this particular job through to the end and free that much-abused girl from her own personal hell. His eyes hardened as a multi-story building, looking more like a run-down apartment building than a place of business, emerged out of the gloom ahead It's brightly-painted red door stood out from the rest of the dingy gray alley and served as advertisement enough for the wares sold within.

Without a means of extraction, Frank had been reduced to keeping tabs on his target until he could put together a plan to get her out. However, keeping track of her had proven to be a challenge in and of itself. The magics layered onto the luckless girl included several which strongly repelled any attempt to mark the merchandise, as it were. They were not specifically intended to prevent tracking charms — rather, they were placed as insurance against rowdy johns accidentally damaging the goods — but they worked admirably for that purpose, too.

Despite the difficulty, he'd managed for some time using the straightforward, if laborious, means of keeping a constant watch on the surrounding area, an area which he could bespell as he pleased. Keeping so many detection charms going simultaneously for so long had been a nerve-wracking, if surprisingly educational experience, but he'd managed well enough... until one day when he'd left the immediate area on another job.

During the time he had been away, her captors had moved his target without warning... sold her to a new establishment, as it had turned out. Despite the distance, his monitoring charms had alerted him, but his target had been long-gone by the time he'd been able to follow up on the alert. It had taken months of frantic effort and a series of lucky breaks that bordered on divine intervention for the private investigator to track her down again.

Afterwards, Frank had been unwilling to trust that he'd be so lucky a second time, and he had taken steps to ensure he wouldn't lose her again. He had needed a marker, something to track her no matter where she went, and it needed to be something that would stick to her despite the spells preventing such things. It had taken time, effort, and all the ingenuity he could muster, but eventually, he'd managed to develop a means...

...a very distasteful means.

Frank shook his head in a futile attempt to shake off the feeling of self-loathing as he approached the brightly enameled door of the brothel currently serving as his target's latest prison. In the final analysis, though, as distasteful as he found his solution to be, but it was nonetheless the least unpleasant of a slew of horrible alternatives.

The potion he'd downed earlier had been the first component. Originally a commercially available product which caused certain bodily fluids to develop the taste and consistency — though thankfully not the appearance — of chocolate syrup, Frank had called in a favor from a potioneer of his acquaintance to have it modified. The end result caused those same fluids to harden over time, setting into a tough, sticky mass — the sort of thing you'd have to really scrub at for a while to remove from whatever it stuck to. Combined with a tracking charm cast on himself just before delivery, it made for a durable, nearly undetectable tag that would last for weeks before the tag broke down and the magic faded.

As for the delivery mechanism… well, that was straightforward enough; his target had been forced into prostitution, after all.

God, he hated himself, sometimes.

Frank paused a few yards away from the door, once again fishing a fine golden chain out of his collar and this time opening the delicate golden locket hanging there to reveal a wizarding photograph depicting a happy couple, his younger self happily embracing a radiantly smiling blonde woman. The hard-bitten man seemed to draw strength from the picture, his face hardening with iron resolve, then he snapped the locket shut and tucked the chain back into his shirt.

Frank could only hope that after he managed to get her back, she would forgive him.

Pasting a more neutral expression on his face — a smile was beyond his means at the moment — his wand flickered, casting the long-term tracker with a well-practiced movement, before vanishing back into his hidden wrist holster as he stepped up the last few feet to the door. The establishment's alert-ward ensured it was opened before he had the chance to knock.

"Ah, welcome once again, customer," the brothel madame, a worn-looking older woman with a deeply cynical air about her, greeted him familiarly as he entered, her businesslike manner not quite managing to mask an undercurrent of contempt from his practiced ear. "I assume you will be wanting your usual?"

Frank nodded tightly, unwilling to speak.

"Are you certain you do not wish to sample any of our other merchandise?" the madame asked as she turned to lead him deeper into the establishment. "We have some fresh stock, very beautiful, well-trained, young, and quite eager to please."

He shook his head in a firm negative, scoffing internally at the idea of any woman here being eager to please. This was a fantasy brothel, after all; the women enslaved here were programmed to act out whatever scenario they were told to act out. The magic in place effectively turned them into puppets made out of living meat — they would act as eager or recalcitrant as they were instructed to act, but there was no eagerness or enthusiasm in them even if they could emulate it well.

Their minds were too thoroughly suppressed to feel such things.

"Ah, perhaps another time, then," the old woman said, sounding unsurprised. The usual fee exchanged hands, and she stepped over to the desk and tapped something Frank couldn't see.

"Lizzie will be along in a moment, customer," the madame told him.

Within half a minute, his target arrived.

The woman was well-groomed and made-up, looking healthy, standing straight, and to all appearances eager to show him a good time, an illusion which held firm until you met her eyes. She was beautiful, to be sure — magic ensured that — but it was the beauty of a still painting, not that of a living, breathing woman. Face painted with an artificial smile, she looked at Frank without emotion, her eyes glassy and dead. There was nary a hint of recognition nor even the slightest familiarity.

"Lizzie, show your customer to room fourteen, and make yourself available for his needs," the madame told Frank's target, who nodded mechanically in acknowledgement of the order. "He has paid for three hours."

Frank followed his target deeper into the building, keeping his eyes on her swaying blonde hair, until they reached the room and entered it, and his target turned to face him.

"I am at your disposal, sir," she said in a neutral voice. "What is your wish?"

As he gazed deep into the glassy eyes of the blonde woman before him, a poor, unfortunate victim who had been horribly ill-treated over the course of years, Frank tried to convince himself that he was just doing what he had to do. It was the only way forward, a necessary part of the business of rescuing the girl. Without that tag he might lose her completely, and then even if he did find the means to free her, she'd still be stuck in this living hell until it managed to snuff the guttering light of her soul completely.

He knew it wasn't real; she was programmed to carry out his requests. Anything that passed between him and his target, here and now, was fake, baseless… not to mention, utterly wrong and reprehensible.

"I'd like…" Frank's voice broke, and he swallowed before trying again in a gruff tone. "I'd like a newlywed scenario. We've just been married and are now on our honeymoon."

So, why couldn't he help himself?

With the command given, the ill-fated woman's mental programming took over. Simulated emotion filled the previously lifeless doll with life. Dead eyes turned animated, and that unnatural, wooden smile melted off his target's face…

…only to be replaced by the very same radiantly smiling face in the locket at his neck.

As she leapt to embrace him, he could only hope that, once he had finally managed to rescue her from this hellhole, Betty would forgive him.

Helpless to resist that radiant smile, an equally brilliant one of his own welled up in response alongside bitter tears of self-loathing, and Frank stepped forward into the welcoming arms of his beloved fiancée.

Heaven knew, he'd never be able to forgive himself.

4.1.4 Etiquette and protocol

"Hi, Mr. Slackhammer!" the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts greeted his friend and business associate as he arrived at the dapper goblin's office door.

"Ah, Mr. Potter! It is good to see you this fine morning," Slackhammer greeted his visitor. "Come in, do!"

As the young dragon in human form made his way past the increasingly well-stocked gun rack and ammunition locker over to his usual chair, the goblin continued with the usual ritual of hospitality. "Would you care for something to drink?" Which his guest answered as he was wont to do.

"Now on to the meat of today's business," Slackhammer began as his aide left to retrieve his guest's requested goblin tea. "Your letter requested advice on obtaining a syllabus for the Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT so as to better prepare your friend Abigail for her attempt later this spring. Is that correct?"

"That's right," Harry nodded.

The dapper goblin continued, "Further, you proposed the means of meeting with the current head of the Wizarding Examination Authority to make the request personally, reasoning that they might be more willing to help if you met with them personally rather than using an intermediary."

The young dragon nodded again, "Yeah, that's what I was thinking; I just didn't know who I needed to talk to so I figured I should ask."

"Quite right," Slackhammer nodded, "and I agree that you have hit upon an excellent way forward. You're proposed method should work quite admirably, and I will be happy to assist in the planning."

The goblin paused for a moment before continuing, "For the sake of full disclosure, however, I do feel obligated to point out that this course of action, while admirable, is technically unnecessary. Such syllabi are available from the Examination Authority upon written request."

"Oh!" Harry exclaimed, before continuing rather sheepishly. "I didn't know that. I'm sorry for wasting your time, then, Mr. Slackhammer. Um, who do I need to contact to request one?"

The goblin waved off his young partner's apology. "Think nothing of it, Mr. Potter; I would not have expected you to know. As with most genuinely useful things available from the wizards' Ministry, that fact is not widely publicized — it might, in fact, be more accurate to say it is quite well-hidden. Before you rush off to send that request, however, I ask that you hear me out. I was not simply humoring you when I judged your initial idea a good one, and I suggest that you consider going through with it regardless of its lack of necessity."

"Oh?" the young dragon locked his currently human-shaped head curiously. "Why?"

"It occurs to me, Mr. Potter," the goblin executive explained, "that our future plans will, most assuredly, involve some not-inconsiderable amount of political and social maneuvering. I am, of course, pleased to offer my expertise to the cause; however, there will come a time when my expertise will not suffice."

The goblin gentleman sighed, "If nothing else, there are sure to be some among those we treat with who will be unwilling to deal with me on account of my race. In those future situations, either you or Master Snape will be required to step into the breach, and given our mutual business partner's… antisocial tendencies, I believe it would be best for us all if you are well-prepared to step in. I foresee only benefit from taking the opportunity this affords us to allow you to learn how such things are done."

"That makes sense," Harry acknowledged thoughtfully. "Shouldn't I practice with someone first, though? In case I screw up, I mean."

"I do not believe that to be necessary in this particular case," Slackhammer averred.

Harry narrowed his eyes curiously.

"The current head of the Examination Authority, one Griselda Marchbanks, is an old hand at wizarding politics and high society. She has held the position for an exceedingly long time and is widely known to have a soft spot for the young and curious," the dapper goblin elaborated. "She would almost have to have one in order to spend the better part of two and a half centuries overseeing the education of wizarding children. As such, I believe she is more likely to meet any errors on your part with understanding and gentle instruction rather than offense — so long as you maintain your usual earnest disposition, of course. The combination of an innocuous request and a friendly audience seems to me to be an ideal opportunity for low-risk practice."

The young dragon, who had been nodding along with the dapper goblin's reasoning, frowned uncertainly for a moment before coming to a decision. "That makes sense. So, how do we go about setting this up?" Then his tone turned less decisive, "Um, and can you give me some advice on what to do?"

Slackhammer chuckled. "I have already taken the liberty of having Mr. Steelhammer write out an example script for you with the appropriate elements to remember clearly marked; though I do ask that you remember to use your own judgment in the real event. You are supposed to be taking your first steps along the road to becoming a statesman, after all, not an actor. You cannot rely on a script. As for instruction, well that is why I requested that you come here to meet with me personally, rather than explaining via the post."

"Oh! Thank you, Mr. Slackhammer," the young dragon said with a relieved sigh.

"You are most welcome, Mr. Potter," the dapper goblin acknowledged gracefully. "Was there anything else you wished to discuss before we begin your instruction?"

"Um…" the young Potter's face screwed up in concentration for a moment as he considered the question. "Oh, yeah! There's a couple things. One was that I wanted to thank you for doing such a good job on hiring for Hog's Haulage. I think they're all going to work out right nice! I hear from Mr. Wardale that they're expecting to be able to bang out a prototype for a new locomotive in the next couple of months. He was saying most of the magical stuff seems to be on the steam and mechanical side of things, while Mr. Porta's stuff was mostly about the firebox and efficient combustion, so they don't really interfere with each other very much. It sounds like it's gonna be pretty awesome!"

"You are once again most welcome, Mr. Potter," Slackhammer repeated. "And the other thing?"

"It's kinda related, actually," the young dragon began. "I was talking with a couple of my new engineers, and I had an idea, but the details were outside their field of expertise. I was wondering if I could meet with somebody from the engineering corps to talk it over with them and see if it was worth pursuing, preferably someone who works in the foundry."

"I believe that could be arranged without much difficulty, Mr. Potter," the Vice-Chairman allowed. "We are always eager to explore new opportunities. Mr. Steelhammer!" Slackhammer's aide stepped into the office promptly. "Please contact the foundry to see which of their engineers might be available for a consultation with Mr. Potter in a few hours." The smartly dressed goblin saluted and left immediately to carry out the task.

The dapper goblin turned back to his guest. "Very well, Mr. Potter, if there is nothing else, we should get on with the instruction. Now, in terms of preparation, I would wish to point out that appearances and formalities often account for a great deal more among wizards than they rightly should — certainly more than they do among more sensible persons like ourselves — and, as you will be dealing with someone long steeped in wizarding traditions, you will be well-served to dress appropriately for the occasion and pay attention to the proper forms. In fact, that is a good rule of thumb to follow in general; be sure to keep it in mind."

Pausing to take in his young business partner's attentive demeanor, the goblin continued, "For this meeting, I would suggest something similar to my current garb," he gestured to his neatly-pressed collared shirt, waistcoat, and, after standing to ensure they were visible, his woolen trousers. "For a wizard, I would suggest eschewing the tail-coat and stovepipe hat."

"Really?" Harry gasped, crestfallen. "But those are the best parts!"

Slackhammer smiled, "I tend to agree, Mr. Potter, but I am afraid the wizarding world is rather woefully behind the times. Instead I would suggest a single-breasted coat in either three-quarter length or full. If you acquire one without the usual wizarding frills and frippery it will serve equally well for most non-magical meetings. Be sure to match the material of your trousers, and the effect will be close enough to pass for a very conservative wizarding robe. The waistcoat can be somewhat more personalized. Oh, yes, and be sure to stick to dark, neutral colors if you wish to be able to reuse the same clothing in a non-magical setting."

"Okay," the young dragon nodded, his expression making it obvious he was carefully committing the advice to memory. "What else?"

"Aside from remembering to be polite, the major item to remember in this sort of situation is the regard gift," the dapper goblin said. "It is considered polite to bring something for your host when visiting to commemorate your meeting. The custom is an old one, dating back at least as far as the hospitality rules in ancient Greece."

"A gift, huh?" Harry said speculatively. "Hey, I've got more…"

"I do not believe another slab of basilisk meat would make for an appropriate regard gift, Mr. Potter," Slackhammer interrupted. "While I very much appreciate your recent gift, and I am certain Sergeant Major Hooktalon does as well, a food item, even an exotic one, is not the sort of gift you should be looking for, not at this stratum of society in any case. For an upper-class visit, the regard gift should be something unusual or unique rather than useful, and it should not be consumable."

"Well, what would you suggest, then?" Harry asked, puzzled.

"Hmm, perhaps a further explanation is in order," the goblin mused. "The custom among the ancients was for the traveler to provide a carving or sculpture which would then be broken upon leaving, one piece left with the host and one taken with the traveler. Thus, when the two met again, the pieces could be fitted back together to provide proof of the earlier visit. As travels could often take years in the ancient world, it served as a useful memory aid. The details have changed over the millennia, yet the intent remains. The gift should be sufficiently unique to bring the visit back to the forefront of the memory... a keepsake, as it were."

The young dragon frowned thoughtfully as the considered that. "I guess I could give her some of my gold coins. They're doubloons, so you don't see many of those nowadays."

"I would also advise avoiding anything of obvious monetary value Mr. Potter," Slackhammer interjected. "In this case particularly, when you are visiting to make a request, such might be interpreted as an attempt at bribery."

"Well, what should I give her, then?" Harry asked exasperatedly.

"I would suggest bending your not-inconsiderable intellect to the problem," the Vice Director suggested. "It will be a good exercise."

The young Potter nodded reluctantly. "What else do I need to know then?"

"Perhaps we should begin with the usual greetings," Slackhammer began, leaning forward with steepled fingers. "The relative social status between yourself and Madame Marchbanks indicates…"

The young dragon's prodigious memory would be put to the test over the next several hours.

Manners were hard.

4.1.5 Hindsight is…

As it turned out, the same foundry-goblin who had helped tend to Harry during his indisposition back in spring happened to be among those available by the time the young dragon finished his long meeting with Vice Director Slackhammer. So, after several hours discussing the finer points of upper-class wizarding etiquette, Harry found himself meeting with Foundry-Specialist Flame-Eye once again, this time under much better circumstances.

"Glad to see you up and about, Mr. Potter," the foundry-goblin greeted his visitor in a hastily arranged conference room deep in the bowels of Gringotts. "What brings you to see us today?"

"Hi there!" the currently human-shaped dragon greeted his goblin acquaintance brightly. "Um, well, I was talking to Mr. Wardale — he's one of my steam engineers — a few days ago about making parts for the new locomotive they're working on, right? Anyway, he got to telling me how early steam engines were really loose-fitting and wasted lots of steam at leaking seals and such, but he and Mr. Porta started precisely machining their parts so they fit together well, and that helped make everything more efficient."

At Flame-Eye's understanding nod, Harry continued, "So, that made lots of sense to me, and I asked why they didn't just do that from the start, and he said it was 'cause machining like that is expensive and hard-to-do, so they didn't think it was worth it, but then I thought about stuff like them plastic forks we were using at the picnic. Those are really precise, right, easily good enough for pistons and stuff, and they're dirt cheap, even though the plastic resin they're made of is more expensive to get than steel." Flame-Eye nodded intently as his visitor paused to take a breath. "So, I was wondering why we didn't just make the parts like the forks are made so everything got cheaper?"

"I see," the foundry-goblin said. "Well, you see, Mr. Potter, the molds used for those forks are made out of steel, and being made out of the same material, they cannot remain solid at the temperatures required to cast steel."

"Right, that's about what Mr. Wardale said," Harry nodded. "But I was thinking, what if we used something else other than steel for the molds?"

"We do cast steel routinely using that approach," the goblin offered. "However, the selection of materials that can withstand the required temperatures is severely limited. We normally use a few different mixtures of sand which can take the heat long enough to be useful, but no sand-casting method will give a surface finish good enough for a precision piston fit right out of the mold — not reliably, anyway."

"That's what Mr. Wardale was telling me," the dragon nodded, "but I was thinking, we've got that stuff from my guts Mr. Snape figured out how to make. Wouldn't that work for making proper molds?"

The foundry specialist's beady black eyes opened wide in startlement. "That might just work. It can certainly take the heat, and from what I've seen with our crucibles and tuyeres, molten steel just beads up and rolls off it," he said thoughtfully. "I… how did we not think of that? We cast steel all the time, and it's so obvious in hindsight." He fell silent for a moment as he considered the question. "I suppose we've just been automatically dismissing the idea as soon as it came up for so long that it never occurred to us the situation had changed."

"So, you think it's a good idea?" Harry confirmed.

"A very good one," Flame-Eye confirmed, "and potentially a very profitable one as well. Foundry work like that, particularly the precise stuff like injection molding, is finicky work, though. With thermal expansion, degassing, crystal growth, and all the other things to consider, it takes a lot of trial and error to work out the details."

The foundry-gob sighed and ran a taloned hand over his scalp as he considered the situation. "We'll need to shuffle some work around to free up the machining resources to start experimenting; injection molds are notoriously difficult to machine properly, and Logistics has been overbooked for a couple years now trying to keep up with our arms upgrades."

"Um, I've got something that might help," Harry offered. "Maybe we can use it, instead?"

"Oh?" the goblin asked, curious. "What do you have?"

And so, the young dragon told his collaborator about just what sort of machining capability he had acquired.

4.1.6 Reflections

As the portkey completed its transit and Harry smoothly landed on the lip of the Lair, he reached up with a still-human finger to dig at his ear even as he walked toward the Lair-proper. With any luck, the ringing might stop soon.

Flame-Eye had been quite impressed with the machining capability Harry had managed to acquire for himself; in fact, one might even say the foundry-gob was a mite jealous. He had immediately suggested a number of additional acquisitions for the dragon's budding machine shop as well, ranging in complexity from a high-quality surface plate and set of Jo blocks all the way up to a selection of manual machines, including both a mill and a lathe.

Harry had already made all the relevant purchases through Gringotts' own purchasing agent by the time he finished his talk with Flame-Eye. The new acquisitions totaled less than he'd spent on tooling alone for the behemoth already installed in the Lair, so the young dragon hadn't been terribly fussed about the cost.

According to the foundry-gob, manual machines were often — counterintuitive as it might seem — more convenient for certain tasks that their computerized counterparts. The reasoning had been easy enough to understand when Flame-Eye had explained; if you needed to mill something square or turn a simple cylinder, well, it was much easier to do it in a manual lathe or mill than it was to model it in software, set up the automated machine, and then proceed do all the work to position and prepare the work piece that you would have had to do for the manual machine anyway. It was best to use the right tool for the right job.

Speaking of which…

When the conversation had turned to Harry's reasons for purchasing his impressive CNC machine in the first place, his answer had offended Flame-Eye's tender sensibilities...

"Engraving! You don't use a beautiful machine like that to do a bloody, fucking engraving, boy! That's like using gold leaf to wipe your ass!"

...which had prompted a rather impressive dressing down from the irate goblin for relegating a "heartstoppingly beautiful piece of precision engineering" to the role of "the most horribly over-specced pen-plotter of all time".

After a Snape-worthy tirade on the critical importance of proper respect for equipment and proper allocation of resources which had left the dragon's ears ringing, the foundry-gob had concluded with a promise to send another goblin of his acquaintance to drum a "proper understanding of and appreciation for machining and fabrication" into Harry so that his "beautiful piece of poetry-in-motion of a machine" could be put to proper use. Harry had gathered he was supposed to expect a visiting tutor in about a week and that Flame-Eye would be bring a few of his compatriots to help with prototype design, but he hadn't really caught much detail before he left in a bit of a hurry.

Sergeant-Major Hooktalon now had some company on the young dragon's mental list of people not to annoy.
 
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Section 4.2 - Introductions
4.2 Introductions

4.2.1 Returns

The Granger family had spent the few days between Boxing Day and the end of Christmas vacation much as they had the previous year, flitting around the isle in a whirlwind attempt to visit the entire extended family before Hermione had to return to school. The attempt had met with a surprising amount of success, given that prior to the previous year, it had occupied the entirety of the Christmas break.

For some, like Sharon's side of the family which had mostly settled in and around Sheffield, visiting everyone was a simple prospect, but Tony's side had proven a tad more adventurous in their habits, spreading out to the four winds and making for a great deal more travel time.

They had known beforehand that the one uncle who had recently been stationed in Aberdeen for his new job would really push the schedule to the breaking point, which had led Hermione decide to return to the Lair directly rather than returning home with her parents. The bushy-haired girl had been eager to spend time with her long-absent parents, but there was a distinct difference between spending time with them and staring at the back of their heads for ten hours, and the choice had saved her a day-long car ride back to Crawley immediately followed by a day-long train ride right back after only a few hours' sleep.

To that end, Hermione had arranged for Harry to meet her outside a public library in Aberdeen, one of nearly three dozen such locations across the breadth of Scotland he had rattled off a list when she had asked about meeting up. He would bring along his usual self-charging return portkey and take her back to the Lair. She had been hesitant to ask why he was familiar with the location, given the unasked-for commentary on how generous the locals tended to be when feeding pigeons.

Some things even witches were not meant to know.

Now, a day before the Hogwarts Express was due to return the majority of her fellow students to the shores of the Black Lake, Hermione found herself already ensconced in her favorite chair — one of the leather-upholstered ones on the library mezzanine — with her potions book in her lap and a notebook at her side. She had finished reading ahead for potions some fifteen minutes previous, and she now simply sat and allowed herself a moment to rest before she reviewed it again. After her misstep with Professor Snape during the previous term, the bushy-haired bookworm would leave nothing to chance.

In the meantime, however, she was free to simply sit and take in the sights.

Sights such as her often dragon-shaped friend's most recent project, which seemed to involve sculpting a steel copy of a stripped branch cut from one of the local bushes. He seemed to be making a good go of it, though his methods were… unorthodox, to say the least. Hermione watched as Harry heated a portion of his partially finished sculpture with an acetylene torch only shudder as he grabbed the now-glowing metal with his bare hands and sculpted it like modeling clay.

Magic was weird.

When the small boy pinched off a bit of excess material only to absently pop the still-red-hot metal into his mouth and eat it with every sign of enjoyment, she had to turn away. Why couldn't he act like a normal boy and just gross her out by eating library paste or something? At least that would make some kind of sense!

She shook her head in an attempt to dismiss the thought, setting her bushy mane swaying. Best to get back to her studies, she supposed. Even after a year and a half in the magical world, she could only take so much absurdity before needing to take a break.

Much as she loved her friend, Harry Potter made her brain hurt far too often.

4.2.2 Odd requests

The Head of the Wizarding Examination Authority, Madame Griselda Marchbanks, cocked a snowy eyebrow curiously. Before her on the blotter on her writing desk lay a handwritten letter she had just finished reading. While neatly written, the handwriting was obviously that of a schoolboy, a judgement reinforced by the word choice in the text itself, yet the missive was a formal request for audience.

That seemed a rather odd juxtaposition to the elderly witch.

It was often the case among witches, particularly witches who had given birth, that their magic found itself well-used to being directed inward, disproportionately reinforcing their bodies and allowing them to live several decades longer than a similarly powerful wizard. Griselda Marchbanks was both a strong witch and a mother of six, which made her spry condition at the respectable age of two hundred and sixty-eight years only moderately remarkable; though she was likely approaching the end. In the recent decades, she had begun to feel the creeping onset of her mortality as her magic grew more and more strained by keeping her functional.

Of that long life, she had happily spent nearly two and a half centuries in education in one capacity or another. Despite that wealth of experience, the elderly witch could not recall a single time she had received such a letter. Not once!

She had certainly received letters from children before; her numerous grandchildren, admittedly with varying numbers of 'greats' prepended, had ensured that. She had received formal requests for audience before; her station in society made that a normal fact of life. Never had she seen the two combined, receiving a formal request for audience from a child.

It made the letter sitting before her an interesting one, for the novelty if nothing else. That the unusual letter had come from the Boy-Who-Lived was simply another piece of the puzzle. The elderly witch frowned thoughtfully at the parchment before her for a few more moments before shrugging as she came to a decision.

It was a slow time of year, she thought as she reached for a quill and blank parchment. There would be no harm in humoring the boy.

For that matter, even if it turned out to be a pointless meeting, it might be a worthwhile simply for the opportunity to take the measure of the Boy-Who-Lived. He would likely be a prominent figure in the upcoming years, and it would be useful knowledge to have, one way or another.

4.2.3 Livid

"Inconceivable!"

With the winter break over, Tom had returned to Hogwarts, and with his return to campus, he had finally been able to arrange to slip away on his own without arousing suspicion. In an out-of-the-way corner of the labyrinthine castle, he was at last hidden enough to safely vent his spleen over the maddening events of the end of term feast. After the better part of a month during which he was forced by various circumstances to stew in silence, that spleen was in dire need of ventilation.

"That unutterable bastard murdered Charlotte!" Tom hissed, his dainty hands clenched in impotent white-knuckled rage. "How?"

It was a good question, to be honest. Basilisks had their vulnerabilities; Tom knew that as well as anyone. Charlotte was well over a thousand years old, and there was precious little she could not best physically or magically, but her primary weakness — a cock's crow — was both easily obtained and well-known. It was the reason Tom had insisted his old friend operate in secret at first until he had managed to ensure there were none of the pesky birds on the castle grounds.

Potter, though, had not even bothered to use that weakness — hell, he hadn't even known Charlotte was a basilisk! Potter had killed her by main strength, judging from the brutal injury done to the hapless girl. The miniature fiend had… had… Tom's thoughts trailed off into an incoherent sea of rage as he spat out a string of blistering curses sufficient to turn even the saltiest of old sailors green with envy.

Though, admittedly, his sweet soprano robbed the delivery of a certain gravitas.

"That monster!" he spat as his tirade of profanity ran its course. How could anyone kill poor sweet little Charlotte? She hadn't even done anything yet!

Tom hardly thought two measly petrifications counted in the grand scheme of things, and he didn't believe that cockamamie story about her raiding Potter's pantry for a moment. What kind of pantry did the boy have that Charlotte would even fit in it? Even if she had, stealing a little food hardly rated execution! Then that miniature green-eyed murderer just waltzed into the great hall dragging Charlotte's broken corpse behind him like… like some kind of bloody trophy!

Petite knuckles creaked as Tom teared up at the memory.

How dare he!

Worse yet, he was planning to eat the poor girl! He probably already had by now. As soon as he had dared after the end of term feast, Tom had gone to examine the clearing behind the Gamekeeper's hut where the butchery had taken place, and it had been a scene of horror. Blood everywhere, bones separated and stacked in neat piles, Charlotte's skin stretched out to dry over a makeshift frame of freshly cut branches, a neatly arranged pile of processed potions ingredients off to one side, and not an ounce of flesh in evidence.

Seeing what little remained of his oldest friend was heartbreaking.

But that heartbreak did not last, rapidly subliming into anger. Tom was good at anger. The boy who murdered Charlotte might have evaded him to this point, but now he was back at Hogwarts, and he had all the opportunity in the world. It was just a matter of time.

Potter would pay.

Tom chuckled adorably.

Potter would pay dearly.

4.2.4 Arts and crafts

In the glowing heart of the Rayburn, the fire crackled and popped as Harry added more wood, warming the Lair as the winter wind howled outside. His human damsel had retreated into the stacks of the library, pursuing at length some minor point she had come across in her classwork. He wasn't sure what it was, since she hadn't asked him about it, but he certainly didn't remember anything particularly remarkable from his classes.

For her part, Suze busied herself with patiently and methodically carving a bow from a carefully-chosen well-seasoned branch; it was her frequent pauses to warm her fingers that had prompted Harry get up from his work to stoke the fire. Aside from the cold, her latest attempt seemed to be going well to Harry's unpracticed eye, but by the displeased frown on her face, Suze seemed to have found something objectionable about it.

Harry shrugged; Suze knew more than about bows than he probably ever would, so he was sure she knew what she was doing. Best to leave her to it.

Currently in his diminutive human form to take advantage of its highly dexterous hands, the dragon of Hogwarts made his way back to his usual workbench. He had been doing some very finicky work as part of the regard gift he was making for his upcoming meeting with Griselda Marchbanks... well, as part of the latest iteration of the design, anyway. Making the thing had turned into a bit of an adventure.

Without any outside direction on what to give the woman, Harry had been forced to come up with a plan himself, and that plan had seen several revisions. His initial idea had proven impractical, but he'd taken parts of it to try something else… which also hadn't worked, but which had in turn inspired another iteration, which showed some promise. However, promising or not, it required some very simple but extremely repetitive rune work, which had led him to his current task.

Returning to his seat and picking up his chosen tool, a fine needle-file, the currently human-shaped dragon set to work once again, filing a minutely detailed negative of a runic scheme into the narrow end of a piece of steel drill rod. After he was done, a bit of time with the torch and a quench in his fuel oil drum would give him a hard punch suitable for transferring the runic scheme to the surface of the work proper.

The hardening quench also gave his fuel oil a delightful smoky aftertaste, which was a bonus in the young dragon's book.

In any event, Harry hoped this iteration would turn out well; the meeting was just a few days away.

4.2.5 Suspicious characters

"Thank you for your attention today," Gilderoy Lockhart told his class with a broad smile. As half the class sighed dreamily, he continued, "Remember your reading for our next class! We will be covering my adventures in combating the undead, so you will need to be familiar with the first three chapters of Gadding with Ghouls."

When the class gave a general murmur of acknowledgement, the blond dandy dismissed them, and his students began the noisy process of packing up to leave for their next class.

Hogwarts had been back in session for a week, and true to his resolution during the winter break, Gilderoy Lockhart had been on full alert. So far, nothing of interest had caught his attention, just the normal business of teaching and learning, but he kept a casual, if unusually attentive, eye on the children, regardless. Today, however, something had changed.

It seemed that his careful vigilance might already have paid off.

In the back of the class, one of his students, a sixth-year boy, had just passed a note to another of his fellows while trying to be sly about it. Being a teenager, he was naturally not very good at subtlety, and Lockhart's practiced eye had focused on the attempt like a hawk sighting a rabbit.

Now, there was nothing inherently suspect about teenagers passing notes, but context was important. Class had already ended, and passing notes outside of class time was not forbidden. For that matter, it wasn't even frowned-upon. It begged the question of why on earth would one of his students be trying to pass a clandestine note now? There was no need to hide it so assiduously.

When the recipient exaggeratedly glanced about to ensure no one was looking his way before surreptitiously opening the note below the level of his desk to read it, Gilderoy found his interest firmly piqued.

There was something suspicious going on, and given the circumstances, he wasn't going to give it the benefit of the doubt. It might well turn out to be something innocuous, some teenage foible that would prove embarrassing at the worst, but with the person behind the basilisk attacks still on the loose… well, it would bear further investigation.

As the former obliviator kept an unobtrusive watch, much more skillfully than his students' mediocre efforts — his suspicions were all-but confirmed when his student took the time to vanish the note entirely while on his way out.

How irritating.

With the classroom now empty, Lockhart felt it safe to indulge in a thoughtful frown. That vanishing charm had eliminated his most direct means of investigation. It was possible to counter a vanishing charm, but doing so required one of two things: utterly monstrous amounts of power skillfully applied immediately, before the magical traces had a chance to dissipate; or a combination of prior knowledge, preparation, and skillful timing.

Gilderoy entertained no delusions about his own skills, and it was already too late to ask the Headmaster to turn his talents to the issue. Though to be honest, the famous author would have been reluctant to do so in the first place; asking for help wouldn't play nearly as well in his future detective story. He was, however, much more confident in his perfect timing, and he could certainly prepare to take advantage the next time his students tried a similar tack.

He nodded decisively before pasting on his usual winsome smile as he heard the first students of his next class approaching the door. That would be the path to pursue. Gilderoy didn't know whether this particular conspiracy was related to the unknown behind the basilisk, but there was only one way to find out.

Now it was a waiting game.

4.2.6 An impromptu defense

Small.

The scheduled time for the formal audience had come; her guest had arrived in the manor's main receiving hall; and as was her custom, Griselda Marchbanks had employed the viewing mirror hanging on the wall of her parlor to make her first evaluation of her new guest. 'Small' was the first adjective that had sprung to mind on seeing the boy. Despite being well into his second year at Hogwarts, the Boy-Who-Lived looked the part of a boy three years his junior.

Were it not for the faded traces of that notorious scar on his brow, Griselda would have suspected someone was trying to play a trick on her.

The last of the Potters stood in the manor's entry hall fidgeting slightly as he waited as patiently as a young boy could be expected to wait for her elf to announce that she was ready to receive him. He wore formal robes of a somewhat unusual but still quite acceptable cut; though the elderly witch had to wonder at the reserved color palette and simple lines. The boy was far too young to be so stiff, in her considered opinion; youth was the time to live a little with some bright color and loud patterns.

She would probably suggest something in purple, perhaps with orange accents? It would set off his eyes nicely…

No, the matron of the Marchbanks family shook her head to clear such fanciful notions. While he certainly looked the part of the adorable little boy, her visitor was the Head of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter. He was not one of her grandchildren; though properly the comparison would have had a few 'greats' involved, considering his age. Receiving a guest of such station required a certain level of sobriety; now was not the time to be playing dress-up, no matter how much her grandmotherly fingers itched at the thought.

Aside from his conservative wardrobe, the diminutive Potter carried a small parcel which Griselda strongly suspected to contain his regard gift for her. It was an old custom which was all too often neglected in the rush of modern society, and it was nice to see one of the youngsters paying some regard to the old traditions, even if the choice to wrap the gift was a tad unusual.

The elderly witch nodded approvingly. So far, all signs pointed to her visitor being a fine, upstanding young gentleman. Initial appraisal made; a quick word sent her elf to show the young man to her parlor.

Now she would see if he gave the same impression in person.

When the boy walked through the door and came into view, the answer was immediately clear.

No, no he most certainly did not.

Griselda swallowed reflexively as she attempted to put her thoughts in order. Aside from the addition of a warm and enthusiastically cheerful smile, neither the boy's appearance nor his demeanor had changed. The young Head of the Potter family still gave all indications of being a fine, upstanding young gentleman as he stepped into her parlor.

No… the change was in that general impression.

The elderly witch had been in the business of teaching wizards for significantly longer than most of the population of wizarding Britain had been alive, and she had been Head of the Examination Authority since the time of Queen Victoria. She knew how to evaluate wizards, and the skills she had developed for that purpose over the years had become near-instinctive after so long. She was well-accustomed to seeing past both modesty and braggadocio to get to the heart of things.

It appeared that she had not, however, been able to see past the layer of separation imposed by the viewing mirror. In person, the physically small boy now seemed to fill the room entirely, leaving her almost surprised that she was looking down to meet his eyes.

'Small' was not the word, not by any stretch of the imagination.

The young child had an overwhelming presence to him which the viewing mirror had simply been unable to convey. Griselda was no shrinking violet; she was a strong witch, but she paled in comparison to the likes of that. In all her years, she had felt that sort of presence only a handful of times, and never had it been associated with someone so young.

Albus Dumbledore had given such an impression, that feeling of standing far too close to a giant, but he had only done so during the height of his NEWT examinations when she had managed to persuade him to truly throw his all into things. When he had, he had done things with a wand that she had never seen before, things she had never even imagined were possible. Another lad by the name of Riddle had had a similar feel to him back in the forties, and his performance had been quite nearly as remarkable.

Albus had gone on to become the de facto ruler of wizarding Europe, even if he seemed rather reluctant to throw his weight around, and though Griselda hadn't heard much of Mr. Riddle, she strongly suspected he had gone on to join the Unspeakables, given the unusual knack he had shown for resurrecting obscure magics thought long lost and the fact that he seemed to have dropped out of circulation after graduating.

The key point, though, was that both of those men had been NEWT students, wizards on the verge of adulthood and deliberately pushing themselves to the limits of their ability. They were not prepubescent children simply standing around running through the motions of a formal greeting — not like Mr. Potter was.

It begged the question of exactly what this wizard would go on to become.

Then Madame Marchbanks blinked as she realized her visitor had reached the end of his portion of the greeting and was now awkwardly scrubbing at the shaggy hair on the back of his head as he waited for her response.

It seemed she had lost herself in thought while in front of her guest, how embarrassing!

"Be welcome to my home, Harry of House Potter," the elderly witch completed the ritual greeting. She gestured to the couch across from her own favorite chair, "And please, feel free to sit down."

"Thanks!" the young boy favored her with a brilliant smile before bouncing over to plop down on the couch in the somewhat-rougher-than-strictly-necessary manner of young boys everywhere.

"I see that you are still holding your parcel, Mr. Potter," Griselda said leadingly after a few moments of silence, prompting her visitor to continue with the forms when he seemed to have forgotten it was his turn in the proceedings.

"Oh, yeah!" the young Potter said, looking at the package in his hands as if he had forgotten it was there. His face screwed up in exaggerated concentration as he continued, "Um, Madame Marchbanks, in recognition of our meeting, I would like to offer you this token of my regard." He then reached forward to set the wrapped offering down on the low table between them. "May our meeting be fruitful and our dealings just."

"Um, did I get that right? I've been practicing."

Griselda smiled kindly as she reached forward to take the offered gift from the table. "Quite acceptable, if a tad stilted, young man," she assured him. "I take it you learned from the goblins?"

"Yeah, Mr. Slackhammer taught me," Harry affirmed absently before his eyes opened wide in realization. He asked, in an astonished voice, "How did you know?"

"The 'may our meeting be fruitful and our dealings just' phrasing is one that tends to be used almost exclusively by goblins, in my experience," the witch explained. "Wizards tend to use a great deal more variety in the benediction clause. It tends to be much less businesslike."

"Oh. Um, it was ok for me to use, though, right?" her visitor asked, sounding concerned that he might have messed up.

The Marchbanks matriarch nodded graciously even as she worked at the knot of twine her guest had used to secure the wrapping of the gift. "It was certainly acceptable, Mr. Potter, simply unusual. You have done quite well so far; though, for future reference," she stated as she reached for her wand to cut the wrapping open, "you needn't wrap your regard gift. It tends to make things more awkward than they strictly need to be."

"Oh, sorry! I guess I just assumed after all the gifts at Christmas time," Harry apologized sheepishly before offering, "Would you like some help?"

"No, thank you," she declined, "I've just about…" Then the wrapping fell away, and she was struck dumb as the room was bathed in an eerily beautiful light.

The gift her young visitor had seen fit to bestow on her appeared to be a sculpture of a small tree — similar to those highly cultivated dwarf trees from the Orient, bonsai, she believed they were called — wrought of burnished steel, inlaid with fine gold wires running the length of the trunk and branches, and set in an exquisitely carved and polished wooden base. In place of leaves, the piece sported tiny puffs of fog which glowed gently in an ever-shifting array of colors. The miniature clouds swayed gently in place, presumably with the air currents in the room, separating from their anchor points on the steel branches from time to time to waft away and dissipate in ethereal swirls of fading color.

"Magnificent," Griselda breathed, finally managing to find her voice after nearly a solid minute of awestruck observation. Turning to her guest, who was looking mightily pleased with her reaction, she asked, "Wherever did you find this?"

"I made it," the young Potter said proudly before hurrying to qualify, "Well, Suze made the wood base — she did a real nice job, didn't she? — but I did the steel bits and all the rune-work."

"Rune work?" How had she missed that? The wizarding educator turned back to the marvelous piece of art and gave it a closer examination, soon identifying numerous tiny yet intricately detailed runic inscriptions at the base of each of the colored clouds. She could just make out a hint of gold inlaid into the deepest parts of the markings.

"I see," Griselda mused, examining the fascinating piece in detail. That level of detail and precision… it was the sort of work she saw in masters' theses, and this was coming from a twelve-year-old? It practically begged for further investigation, and the long-term educator found it all too easy to fall back on her habits. "This is a remarkable piece, young man. Might I ask what went into making it?"

"Um, well, I guess it kinda started with Mr. Slackhammer," the boy began. "He told me about the regard gift thing, so I thought about it, and the first thing I thought of was some of the meat from that big snake I killed back at the end of term. It's pretty tasty, and everyone likes to eat, right? But then he said it shouldn't be something you use and then it's not around anymore, 'cause it's supposed to commemorate the visit, so it needs to stick around, and food doesn't do that."

"Solid advice," the elderly witch nodded appreciatively.

The boy nodded in return before continuing, "Well, then I thought of some of my gold coins. They're pretty old, so that's kinda memorable, but Mr. Slackhammer said it probably shouldn't be something like money, 'cause even though I don't mean it like that, people might think it was a bribe, and since I'm here to ask you for something, that'd look bad."

"Also good advice," Griselda approved. "It is always a good idea to mind appearances — saves time and effort in the long run."

"So, then I was kinda stumped for a bit, until I was reading about something else, and I ran across a mention of holography," Harry continued. "When I did, I got thinking, you're supposed to be really big on school and stuff, so maybe you might like a hologram of all the students coming back to campus after break, so I started looking into making one of them, right?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Potter," the elderly witch interjected politely, puzzled, "but I am afraid I am unfamiliar with the term 'hologram'. To what does it refer?"

"Oh, um, well, a hologram is like a picture," her visitor explained, smoothly switching mental gears to provide the requested explanation, "but instead of being flat, it shows a full three-dimensional image, so you can walk around and see it from different sides and stuff. Um, anyway, I thought I could use that process with the film you use for magical pictures to make a moving hologram, 'cause that'd be really neat! Real memorable, like Mr. Slackhammer said the regard gift is supposed to be, since I don't think anyone's done that before."

"No, I do not believe anyone has," Griselda agreed, familiar with the concept of such a display, if not the methodology proposed. "Omnioculars provide a similar effect, as I recall; however, your description of a hologram seems quite a different undertaking. Though more to the point, it also seems a rather different undertaking than this remarkable tree, Mr. Potter."

"Yeah, I know," the boy nodded. "I was getting to that; you see, it turned out I ran into a bunch of problems with it. First thing was the lighting, and it turned out to be really hard to do."

"The lighting?" she prompted, curious. "I'd think lighting would be fairly simple to accomplish, allowing for magic."

Harry grimaced. "Well, the thing is, holograms work based off interference patterns in the reflected light — the film gets exposed to light reflected off the target, then you develop the film and you can shine the same kind of light through the film to make the image visible. The thing is, though, you've gotta use the exact same kind of light — exactly the same color, and it's gotta be single-phase."

"Phase?" Color was straightforward enough, but phase was a property of light she was unfamiliar with.

"Yeah, um…" Harry began, smoothly shifting conversational gears once again. "Well, light acts kinda like a wave a lot of the time — except for those times when it doesn't — and the phase is associated with those times when it does. You see, when you've got a couple of different waves…"

Sensing that she had tripped on a conversational rabbit hole, Griselda quickly withdrew her question, "Never mind, Mr. Potter. I am certain I can look that up on my own time. Please return to your explanation. I believe you were talking about the need for special lighting."

"Oh, yeah, sorry," her young guest apologized, sheepishly scrubbing at the back of his head. "I've been trying not to, but sometimes I still blather on when I get excited about something."

"It is no trouble, Mr. Potter," Griselda assured him kindly. "As an educator, I am always happy to hear such enthusiasm from the youth; however, we only have so much time scheduled for this meeting. If you could return to your explanation?"

"Right! Um, I'll try to remember to send you the title of a good book on modern optics after I get back home, if you want," Harry offered before getting back to his explanation. "Anyway, for a hologram, you need a coherent light source, which means it's all one color and all in the same phase. Usually, people get that by making a neat kind of lamp called a laser, which basically pumps a bunch of energy into some stuff to make it glow, except you pick it so it that it doesn't glow right away. Then you can set up some mirrors so that when the first bit glows, it'll bounce the light back and forth and trigger the rest to glow too, and all the triggered glow will be coherent."

He took a deep breath before continuing, "Anyway, I decided to use runes to make one of them that ran off magic, but it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Turns out, it's easy to push energy into stuff using magic, but it's really hard to keep the stuff your pumping magic into in an excited state so it can do the self-stimulating thing. I think the magic makes the energy transitions easier or something so the usual metastable states aren't metastable anymore even though that doesn't quite fit what you see. Basically, it usually just ends up glowing. Which is really neat, don't get me wrong; but it's not a coherent light source, so it won't work for a hologram."

Griselda had encountered so many unfamiliar concepts in the past few minutes that this meeting was starting to feel more like sitting as a guest for a thesis defense rather than the simple audience she had expected. Though, to be honest, the long-time educator was finding the boy's description of the process of its creation almost as fascinating as the sculpture itself by this point.

"Anyway, after I figured out that one, I also figured out the magic film stuff doesn't hold anywhere close to the amount of detail you need for a hologram, either, and by then I realized I didn't have near enough time to get the hologram idea working for our meeting," the young Potter sighed disappointedly before continuing. "So, then I thought about what else I could try, and I had that neat glowy rune thing I'd just made when I was trying to make a laser, and I thought, 'Christmas trees are really neat looking, and they need neat glowy things, maybe I could use the runes to make one of those!', but then I remembered the gift was supposed to last a long time, so I couldn't use a real tree, 'cause it'd die eventually, and then I thought about making one, and I've got loads of steel around the Lair…"

The Lair, huh? Griselda, listening closely to her guest's rambling explanation, chuckled inwardly at his term for what she supposed was his home. It was exactly the sort of name she would expect a pre-teen boy to come up with if given free rein to choose. In fact, thinking back on it, the elderly witch could have sworn one of her grandsons had named a treehouse precisely that.

"…and then I figured out that all those little needle-leaf thingies are really, really annoying to try to make outta steel, so I decided to make a simpler sort of tree, and I went out to find a neat-looking branch, and I squished some steel into about the same shape as it was. I was gonna make it bigger, but I realized I was kinda running out of time, so I figured it'd have to do, and then I put the runes on, and then Suze offered to carve a base for it, and there you go!" he gestured to the stunning, ethereal tree sculpture.

The Head of the Wizarding Examination authority knew it wasn't the main focus of the meeting, but she couldn't quite resist inquiring further. It was all too easy to fall into the role of a mastery committee member after so very many years in the business, and unlike the discussion of lasers and holograms, runes were something she knew well enough to comment on.

"How on earth did you carve so many runes so quickly? In iron no less!" Griselda asked. Having reviewed many runes projects before, she would have expected him to have spent months on just that portion of the sculpture based on the usual way of such things. This sounded like he'd managed to throw the entire thing together in the course of a week or two — including all the missteps. "And for that matter, how did you make iron work as a rune substrate at all? It generally resists magic flow, as I recall."

"Um, well, I figured, since it was a really simple set, I'd just make a punch with the rune-set on it," Harry explained. "You cut the inverted form of the runes into a piece of tool steel, harden it, and then you can apply the whole thing with a tap from a hammer!"

"I see," she nodded. She had heard of many attempts to speed up the application of runes, and that seemed reasonable — in fact, she vaguely recalled several papers written by others who had tried a similar embossing approach — but this was the first time she had heard of one being successful. It certainly fit the novelty criterion for a mastery, not to mention managing to work with the material involved. Speaking of which, "And the iron?"

Harry smiled proudly as he explained, "You know, the only bits of the thing that strictly have to move magic are the runes, so I just put some gold leaf between the punch and the steel. It basically inlaid the runes with gold, and it's dead easy to do!"

"That is quite impressive, Mr. Potter," the long-time examiner said appreciatively, and it was impressive, to be sure. A cheap and simple way to apply runes without compromising their effectiveness? That was the sort of breakthrough that turned heads! It was also the sort of thing for which advanced degrees were awarded. "Did you run into any problems along the way?"

"Well, there were a couple," the last Potter admitted. "For one, the lights were really dim at first, but I figured it was 'cause of the steel keeping them from absorbing much magic, so I tried adding the gold wire inlays as a sort of receiving antenna, right?" He gestured to the delicate lines of gold running along the length of the steel branches, which Griselda only then noticed intersected with each of the runic clusters she had examined earlier. "I figured they'd conduct more magic into the runes, and I think they did, since everything got a lot brighter, though it still flickers a lot — I think it's the amount of magic in the room that causes that bit. Before I added the wires, though, you could only just barely see the lights in the dark."

"After that," he continued, "the only other problem is the runes are producing all different colors now. I designed the runic system to light up red, just straight red, and even with air, rather than the single gas I was planning to use, it ought to come out to one uniform color since air is really well-mixed. It shouldn't be changing all the time."

"Do you have any ideas on what might be causing it?" she asked. So far, her guest had shown remarkable academic versatility and admirable curiosity, but Griselda felt the need to see how he would respond to new challenges.

"I think it might be 'cause of the differences in depth with the punch and the thickness of the gold leaf — maybe something to do with how the gold stuck to the iron, too. The runes are pretty sensitive to size. I've got some ideas, but it'd take a while to check."

"Understandable," she nodded at the response. It was a workable set of hypotheses. "And what do you make of the drifting mists?"

"Oh, that's actually what the runes were designed to do!" the young Potter answered brightly. "They're supposed to pump energy into a volume of 'stuff' in front of them, and here the 'stuff' is just air, and then that makes the air glow. Most of the time, it fades really fast — that's the big problem for making it into a laser, right? — so the air doesn't move much before it stops glowing, and the glowy cloud bit stays put, but every once in a while, you get states that take longer to decay. That's what I'd been aiming for originally, since you need it for the laser thing, and it was all supposed to be that way, but it didn't work that way all the time — when that happens, the air glows for a while even as it travels away from the runes, just a lot dimmer, since it's the same amount of energy released over a longer period. The color variation's a lot harder to explain."

"A fascinating account, Mr. Potter," the matriarch of the Marchbanks family complimented her guest, who practically preened under the praise, "and an eminently memorable regard gift, as well. Though, loath as I am to stifle your creativity in the future, I feel the need to point out that such gifts need not be quite so remarkably unique in the future. You needn't develop entirely new magic simply to commemorate a visit."

"So, I messed up?" the boy seemed to deflate.

"Not precisely," Griselda hurried to reassure him. "You simply overdid things. During a particularly busy season, someone of your stature might engage in multiple visits such as this in a single day; there simply would not be enough time to do as much as you have done for this. In the future, a small piece of sculpture — even another iteration of this tree — an interesting painting, perhaps even a poem would be more than sufficient."

"Oh, okay!" and just like that, the young Potter was back to his normal cheer.

"That said, I strongly encourage you to continue such pursuits as this in the future," she said, gesturing to the tree. "The description you have given of your creative process, written up properly, would easily serve as the backbone of a mastery project in runes. I would be most remiss were I not to encourage such talent."

"Really?" her guest asked.

"Such experimentation is the soul of academic inquiry," Griselda assured him, "and I firmly encourage you to pursue it whenever possible."

"Okay!" the young man said with a firm nod, a thoughtful look already on his face. "I'll do that."

"See that you do," she nodded in return before looking up at the timepiece on the wall.

Oh, dear!

"Alas, it seems that my curiosity has eaten up most of our meeting time, Mr. Potter," the elderly witch said apologetically, "so I fear we may have to rush through what was supposed to be the meat of our discussion here. Your letter mentioned a request?"

"Oh, yeah! Sorry, I almost forgot," Harry apologized in turn. "Um, anyway, Mr. Slackhammer told me you're the head of the Wizarding Examination Authority, so you oversee the NEWTs and stuff, right?"

"That is correct, Mr. Potter," she confirmed.

"Well, my friend, Abigail, she's in her seventh year, and she's been really worried about not learning what she needs to in Defense, since Mr. Lockhart doesn't seem to be teaching much."

"How so?" Griselda asked intently, her attention immediately captured at the implication that one of those responsible for teaching the youth of wizarding Britain was not living up to his responsibilities.

"Well, as near as we can tell, he's teaching the same stuff to all seven years' classes, and since her other classes are really big on reviewing for the exams, she figures he's probably not teaching everything he should," the young Potter explained. "Anyway, I've been helping her study, but I figure it'd be real helpful to get a copy of what she's supposed to know for the test — like different topics and stuff she's supposed to be able to do for it. Umm, what's the word?"

"A syllabus, you mean?" Griselda offered.

"Yeah, that's it!"

"That is easily provided," she offered. "I will have my staff send you one immediately after our meeting."

"Thanks, Madame Marchbanks!"

"Mr. Potter," she began, "might I ask your opinion of Mr. Lockhart's instruction?"

The boy frowned thoughtfully as he considered the question. "Well, he's got all those books and stuff about things he's supposed to have done, so I guess he's probably pretty good at Defense, but the classes never seem to teach much. I figure he's probably just not very good at teaching. Mostly I study on my own, anyway, so I never really paid much attention after I figured that out."

"I see," she said. "Well, I thank you for your insight, Mr. Potter. And I thank you for your wonderful gift as well!" she gestured to the tree still softly glowing on her table. "I look forward to seeing how you grow in the future."

"Thanks for meeting with me, Madame Marchbanks!" her guest replied before catching himself. "Ah, and 'I wish you peace and prosperity until we meet again'."

"Until then," Griselda nodded in acknowledgement of the traditional goblin take on the wizarding farewell.

With that, her elf appeared to show Mr. Potter back to the travel room where the wards were configured to allow magical travel.

4.2.7 Good intentions

Griselda Marchbanks settled back in her chair as her boisterous young visitor disappeared through her parlor door, her eyes returning to the hypnotically beautiful spectacle of the steel tree she had been gifted. It truly was a remarkable piece of work.

Oh, the fit and finish left quite a bit to be desired. Now that she looked more closely, it was easy enough to see tool marks and fingerprints marring the surface finish. The gold inlays were sloppily done and uneven, and, now that she knew the runes had been made with a punch, it was easy to pick out stray indentations where he'd had the tool misaligned with the uneven surface of the branch. The piece, while beautiful when viewed from a distance, was certainly no masterwork of fabrication.

The design of the runic system, the ingenuity displayed, and the deep understanding of the concepts involved, however... those were what made it a masterwork of rune-craft.

From the moment she had felt the boy's presence in person, the elderly witch had suspected that Harry Potter would go on to do great things, to become one of those great wizards in the same vein as Dumbledore.

After her conversation with him, she was certain.

Dumbledore had been a scholar, prone to pulling out the most arcane and involved bits of magical knowledge and executing them to perfection, and Riddle had been remarkable in his penchant for bringing half-forgotten magics back to life and reawakening dead legends, but it seemed the young Potter leaned towards making entirely new wonders out of whole cloth.

Quite frankly, of the three, she rather preferred the young Potter's creative take on things. While curating knowledge and preserving the past were noble pursuits to be sure, Griselda had always leaned towards building towards a greater future rather than resting on the laurels of the past. It was why she had spent her entire adult life in education, tending to those who would build that future.

She smiled and indulged in a quiet chuckle. It seemed the world was in for interesting times during her twilight years, if Mr. Potter was any indication of things to come. Then her expression sobered.

As she rose to walk to her writing desk, Griselda considered what else she had learned in her recent conversation, beyond the impromptu pseudo-master's defense. After jotting down a quick note instructing her secretary to send a copy of the NEWT syllabus to Harry Potter as he had requested, the Head of the Wizarding Examination Authority turned her thoughts to the troubling business with the Hogwarts Defense professor.

Gilderoy Lockhart had seemed a stunningly qualified instructor when he had applied for the job, but according to Mr. Potter's testimony, and that of at least one seventh-year student as relayed by Mr. Potter, that assessment of the man's qualifications may have been made in error. She sighed.

Unfortunately, such conflicts were not uncommon. The ability to learn and the ability to teach were not always coincident. All too often, a spectacularly talented individual proved to be an abysmal teacher for any number of reasons. If Mr. Potter's account was accurate, it seemed that Mr. Lockhart might well be one of those unfortunates.

What was she to do about it?

Griselda frowned thoughtfully, closing her eyes as she considered the situation. It was much too far into the school year to consider terminating the famous author's contract; there would be no time to arrange a effective replacement. Not to mention, until test results came back, there would be no quantifiable way justify his removal, and it would be imprudent to embarrass such an influential figure without ironclad proof. If the widely-popular hero decided to take offense, then he might well raise enough of a stink to fatally damage any recruitment efforts. Few would want to replace the man if it meant being hounded by his shrill fan base.

That said, it would not do to let the current state of things stand unchanged, either, she thought with a sigh. Not if the children's education was suffering as much as her guest had implied.

Perhaps she could arrange something more discreet.

Griselda frowned in thought. She had been around for a very long time, and she had contacts in almost every wizarding walk of life, including a more than a few former aurors. In fact, come to think of it, several of those were former or current instructors as well.

Perhaps she could prevail upon one or two to step out of retirement for a time and provide some subtle assistance to the beleaguered Defense professor... just a bit of advice on topics to cover and teaching methods?

Griselda smiled, pleased at the thought. Yes, that seemed to be the way to go, she thought with a decisive nod.

Now, who to approach?

4.2.8 Inadequate facilities

"Hi there!"

It had been barely two weeks since his discussion with Foundry Specialist Flame-Eye, and an otherwise unremarkable weekend found Hogwarts' resident dragon cheerfully greeting a serious-looking goblin who had shown up on the lip of his Lair.

"Hello, Mr. Potter, I am Machinist Stoutknife, from the Logistics Corps," the goblin introduced himself. "Foundry Specialist Flame-Eye arranged for me to tutor you in my craft."

"Oh, yeah, I've been expecting you! Thanks for coming so quickly," Harry thanked the goblin. "Come on in, and I'll show you to the workshop." The dragon turned, gingerly avoiding his comparatively diminutive visitor in the process, and walked deeper into the Lair. "If you'll come this way?"

As the mismatched pair made their way deeper into the steadily growing cave system that was Harry's Lair, Stoutknife spoke, "Flame-Eye mentioned that you have certain machining facilities that you wished to devote to the project you had discussed. In addition to tutoring you, he has asked me to evaluate their suitability."

Harry nodded his great scaly head. "That's right. He had mentioned that your resources are pretty tight right now with all the upgrades, so I volunteered this one, since it's my project as much as yours. It's a big CNC lathe and mill combination I got to do some precision engraving on a rune project I was working on." He paused apprehensively for a moment at the reminder, "Um, Flame-Eye's not still angry at me for that, is he?"

"No, Mr. Potter, while I can understand the Foundry Specialist's frustration, I believe he has recovered his equilibrium," the machinist replied. "Nor do I believe he was truly as angry as you seem to believe. The machine is yours to use as you see fit, and while engraving is an underutilization of the machine you have described, it is still within its design parameters."

"Then why did he seem so angry?" Harry asked as they approached the well-lit opening to his workshop.

Stoutknife was silent for a moment as he attempted to formulate his response. "Perhaps the best explanation I can give is that, as you mentioned, resources have long been quite scarce among the Brethren, thus proper allocation is critically important."

"Okay…" the dragon prompted as they rounded the corner and came in sight of the machine in question.

Stoutknife was silent for a long moment as he rounded the corner and caught sight of the machine in question. "I can understand his frustration indeed," the goblin breathed before continuing in a louder voice. "A machine such as this is capable of tasks much more demanding than engraving. For your purposes, you had nothing else for it to do, so it was not a waste from your perspective. From Flame-Eye's perspective, or mine for that matter, we are used to always having more work than the machinery can handle, so the idea of tying up such a machine doing things that a much lesser machine could handle seems almost criminally wasteful."

"Sorry about that, then," the young dragon seemed to shrink in on himself. "I didn't mean to mess up that badly."

"Fear not, Mr. Potter," the machinist assured him, "I will be pleased to instruct you on how best to utilize your equipment in the shop alongside the other techniques. Now," he clapped his clawed hands together briskly, "Let us begin! Why don't we fire up this beauty and get started?"

"Right!" Harry agreed enthusiastically. "Just got to go start up my welder!"

With that, the last Potter whirled his massive bulk with terrifying swiftness and set off back down the hall from whence they had come, leaving Stoutknife to look after him, puzzled.

Soon, the quiet of the Lair was broken by the loud chattering growl of a diesel engine, and his host reappeared.

"There, now we'll have enough power to run the CNC!"

The goblin in the room frowned. "Am I to understand that you are running this setup off a diesel welder?"

Harry nodded. "It's got a supplementary power takeoff so it can serve as a generator, too."

"I see," Stoutknife said, rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. "That was the one next to the entrance?"

Harry nodded.

"That will not provide anywhere near enough power to actually push this equipment through its paces," the machinist judged. "Nor will it let you run any of your manual machinery while the CNC is working. There simply isn't enough power."

His host cocked a scaly eyebrow curiously, "Really? I got it working fine before."

"For engraving, possibly," Stoutknife allowed. "I assume the workpiece was light?"

The dragon nodded.

"Anything large enough to take full advantage of this machine will be a much greater draw on the power system," he explained. "Deep cuts to make injection molds will be particularly draining. Not to mention a full machine shop will have many machines running at once, both automated and manual. This setup will not work as you wish it to."

"Well, what should we do?" Harry asked, concerned.

"You will either need to arrange for more power at this facility, or we will need to move the equipment elsewhere, Mr. Potter," the machinist explained.

"Well, I kinda don't want to move this stuff too far from the Lair. How much power do we need?" the dragon asked, looking around speculatively. "If I can figure out how to tie it in properly, I could get another of the welder generators."

Stoutknife shook his head. "You would need at least a dozen, or a substantial tie into the electrical grid."

"Huh," Harry grunted, a thoughtful frown on his massive face.

As his host gave the situation some thought, Stoutknife occupied himself with examining the facilities the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts had managed to assemble. It was a fair spread. There was, of course, the behemoth CNC that dominated the room, and there was the collection of ancillary equipment that was in many cases still halfway wrapped in its packing material; presumably the recent order Flame-Eye had mentioned. However, Stoutknife was pleasantly surprised to see a fair collection of well used hand tools as well.

The machinist picked up a small needle file, brushing off the steel filings as he did so before picking up another piece that had been next to it on the bench. It was a cylindrical tool steel blank, filed into shape and then hardened in the shop, judging by the discoloration near the filed end. The boy had made a custom marking die, decent work, too. He looked at a few of the work pieces nearby, including a number of scraps of artfully shaped steel, looking like bare branches or possibly antlers, some even inlaid with gold foil or wire.

Flame-Eye had given no indication the boy was interested in the more artistic side of the craft, but it would be some time before the shop would really be ready for proper use; perhaps this would be something to teach in the meantime. His musings were interrupted by the dragon in the room.

"Um, I think I'm going to need to check with Mr. Slackhammer on what my options are for the workshop," Harry said. "Is there anything we can work on in the meantime? I mean, the equipment will sort of work, right?"

"It will work well enough to teach, yes," Stoutknife agreed. "Though we will not be able to properly demonstrate. We could also unpack and set up one of the manual machines, though that would likely occupy this lesson in full. However, looking at some of your other work," he gestured to the bench next to him. "Perhaps there is something more I could teach you in the meantime."

The young dragon, who had begun to frown at the delay, perked up curiously at the suggestion. "What did you have in mind, Mr. Stoutknife?"

"I see you have been doing some rather intricate decorative metalwork here using hand tools," the goblin began. "How would you like to further those skills?"

"You mean my rune carving?" Harry asked. "I guess that was pretty neat; what would we be making next?"

"Such skills have any number of applications, but I had thought to instruct you in one of my own hobbies, one which brings together a wide variety of skills."

A scaly brow rose in question.

"How would you like to learn to make jewelry, Mr. Potter?"

4.2.9 Snowy landscapes

The forested slopes of the Italian Alps, drenched in bright late-morning sunlight glinting off the white blanket of winter snow, spread out before him as Frank sipped at his morning coffee. He had just finished canvassing the small magical village of Ghesio, near what the non-magical world recognized as the Swiss border, and the private eye was catching some breakfast before he moved on. To that end, he'd stopped by the only business even loosely resembling a restaurant in the entire town, the town bakery, which in addition to baking the bread that fed the entire population, sported two café tables by the front window.

He had to admit, the food was good, but it paled in comparison to the view.

A small hamlet of perhaps twenty buildings built of the native grey gneiss and perched on a steep hillside, Ghesio was considered an uninhabited and unremarkable ruin on the non-magical side of things. Even on the wizarding side of things it was about as remote and basic as towns got, one of those remote retreats where people moved to when they wanted to get away from it all.

Aside from the usual concealment wards, the buildings were almost entirely non-magical in construction; the population was small enough that the inhabitants hadn't bothered with an expanded space to hide the town. It was easier to simply hide behind a basic illusion and aversion wards despite being only a few hundred yards of steep alpine ridge away from the closest part of the Italian road system. The remote location — on the magical side of things, anyway — was accessible only through a single common floo connection. Ghesio was about as close as the magical world got to the hinterlands, short of living as a completely isolated hermit, anyway.

In hindsight, Frank wished he'd moved here with Betty right after school. Between the single approach by magical transportation and the small population in which strangers stood out like a sore thumb, her kidnapping likely never would have taken place, and they'd probably have been happily working on their second child by now.

It would have been more than worth the hassle of growing his own food and dealing with the local wildlife... which brought him to the reason for his visit.

The tiny village boasted only two claims to fame: the wonderful alpine scenery and the fact that it served as the setting for Gilderoy Lockhart's Holidays with Hags. The book recounted the tale of a hag which had taken up residence in the surrounding woods and lured off several of the village children, eating them before it had finally been dispatched, purportedly by Lockhart.

The existence of the man-eating spirit that normally masqueraded as an exceptionally ugly woman had been easy enough for Frank to verify; the monster had left more than enough evidence behind. Several of the locals had been willing to tell the story of the event, and one had even led him to view the burned-out ruins of the rude hut the hag had built out in the woods. The grand tour had concluded with a solemn visit to the empty graves of the lost children.

It was a tragic story which warranted retelling on its own merits, but the tour had also brought him in contact with every local witness to the story; close enough contact that he could get in a good feel for the situation, which was rather critical for Frank's investigation.

Mental magics were a wooly sort of field, highly subjective and more of an artistic performance than well-documented procedure. Detection methods were no different, tending to rely heavily on the caster's subjective interpretation, and according to the books Frank had learned from, every caster did things differently. As such, the entire field tended to sit rather poorly with the private investigator. That sort of irreducible subjectivity made pinning down a solid chain of evidence an absolute nightmare.

Still, as with most of the skills he had developed over the years, this one too had been necessary to learn for the job. Without the spells, he'd never have had an inkling of the extent of Betty's mental shackles, and that failing would have seen both him and Betty dead years ago in an ill-advised rescue attempt. Now, those same skills had proven their worth once more.

If Frank were to describe the returns from his diagnostic spells, he would say it was like running a finger over a smooth surface and feeling for seams, places where something had been changed and then put back in not quite the right place. A normal mind which had not been subjected to any sort of mental manipulation was like a plate-glass window, smooth and unbroken.

These witnesses were more like a cracked tile, two different glass-smooth surfaces almost but not quite perfectly aligned, the minute difference in elevation invisible but clearly felt by the fingertips. The changes were small, localized, and almost perfectly blended into the surroundings.

They were a far cry from the utter mess that had been made of Betty's mind, which felt more like chunks of broken concrete bound together with baling wire.

Frank was far from an expert. He had no way to determine the true story of what had transpired here from the traces he sensed, and his abilities with mental magics began and ended with detecting the evidence of their use. However, he could confirm that they had been used here, and he could confirm that magics leaving almost identical traces had been used on witnesses at every other location appearing in Lockhart's novels.

Additionally, he could confidently hypothesize that whoever had been responsible for tampering with these witnesses had been orders of magnitude more skilled than the butchers who had worked over his fiancée... which fit rather well with the Lockhart hypothesis, given his public history with the obliviators.

That said, the evidence was circumstantial at best.

Frank had no way to know what those magics were or who had cast them. It might have been Lockhart using memory charms to conceal some wrongdoing of his, but it could just as well have been him casting cheering charms to help the community get back on its feet. For that matter, it might not have been Lockhart at all. Mental charms were hardly unusual in the magical world; though the consistency across all the locations was a strong argument against that hypothesis.

Of course, given what he'd started with, even circumstantial evidence was more than he'd really expected, and the situation revealed was one dubious enough that his employer ought to be pleased. Consistent signs of mental manipulation at the site of every one of his exploits seemed decidedly suspicious to Frank, but it was far from strong enough to hold up in court. At least, it was far from strong enough to hold up in a court that hadn't decided the verdict beforehand. Those were still a distinct danger in wizarding Britain, if a much less common one than they were even ten years ago.

The results were less than satisfying to his professional pride, but Frank had to admit, it was probably the best he could hope to get.

Finishing off his coffee and taking one last lingering look at the glorious view, Frank stood, leaving a few coins to pay for his meal on the table, the owners were still busy with their morning baking. He then set out for the local floo connection, a covered firepit in the central piazza barely twenty yards from where he had been eating. On the way, he waved back absently to a few of the friendly locals he'd met over the past few days.

He had a report to write and an anonymous tip to forward to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Frank nodded to himself as he picked his way across the snow-covered stone of the town square. The evidence wasn't enough on its own, but if there was something fishy going on, Frank figured it might be a useful lead for the official investigator-types. And…

Green fire flashed signaling the first leg of his trip back to London, and a few moments later Frank sighed as he came to a stop at the next town.

...and as much as he disliked the circumstances, a DMLE investigation into Lockhart would fit well with his client's intentions.

At least he'd earned his dirty money this time... and it had brought him about ten steps closer to his endgame with Betty's situation.

That made it an occasion well worth a celebratory coffee, in Frank's estimation.
 
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DEPRECATED: Section 3.17 - A friend in need
This chapter has been heavily edited, see the new version here.
3.17.0 A friend in need

Given a direct order from the head of their institution, the clerks at the Wizarding Examination Authority had moved with unusual haste for a government organization, and Harry had received the requested syllabus within two days of his visit with Madame Marchbanks. He had shared it with his older friend as soon as he could afterwards, and after a surprised Abigail had given her thoughtful green-eyed friend the tightest hug she could manage in enthusiastic thanks for his efforts, she had immediately gone through the document in detail.

It had been an enlightening read.

As it turned out, their earlier review sessions had already covered most of the academic topics that might show up on the exam; it seemed she and Harry had cast a much wider net than the examination committee had when choosing topics to cover, which was rather reassuring to the concerned seventh-year. That was of secondary importance, however; the true revelation had been the weight placed on practical spell-casting.

It seemed that the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests were aptly named. While the theoretical portion of the exam was required to pass, the difference between an Acceptable and an Outstanding on the NEWTs lay entirely in the practical. In fact, truly outstanding scores on the practical could even be used to compensate for subpar performance on the written.

New knowledge in hand, Abigail, being the shrewd girl that she was, immediately concluded that her study time was best spent on practical spellcasting. In her typical practically-minded and realistic manner, she also concluded that she was unlikely to be able to learn some obscure or novel magic in time to impress the examiners during her NEWTs — it was simply too far outside her normal milieu.

Abigail was neither a puissant researcher nor a brilliant inventor; they were not her fields of expertise. She excelled at an earthy sort of pragmatism, and as a result, she knew that her best bet to tackle the practical portions of the NEWTs was simply to practice — practice until she could perform the standard curriculum to perfection.

Which, in turn, led to the pair's current circumstances.

Harry currently stood in the Lair's shooting range, taking a short break from his own practice — his control and accuracy remained perennial works-in-progress, and he had been doubly pleased to be able to keep Abigail company while doing something useful at the same time. In the next lane over, his older friend was working on her casting endurance.

Much like most other human activities, the more a wizard worked his magic, the stronger it got; though, there were, admittedly, limits. An average wizard, for instance, might improve to be head and shoulders above his fellows through hard work, but he would never challenge the likes of Dumbledore through exercise alone. That said, it was a thoroughly practical and universally applicable approach to self-improvement, and it was one well-suited to Abigail's purposes, so long as she was willing to put in the hard work.

Because hard work it most assuredly was.

To be sure, magic was always hard work, in one way or another, but endurance casting made that hard work more conventionally apparent than most. The exercise consisted of casting a spell requiring moderate magical draw — for her current session Abigail had chosen a silently-cast stunning spell — repeatedly until the caster just shy of exhaustion, maintaining proper form and control all the while. The caster would then take a short rest to recover before doing it all over again.

In effect, it was rather like wind sprints for magic use, and as might be expected, it had similar physiological consequences. As the caster's hard-working metabolism struggled to kick out enough energy to support the heavy activity, he faced consequences included elevated body temperature, both from the high metabolic activity and waste energy from imperfect casting, heavy breathing to supply the caster's body with enough oxygen to keep up, and exhaustion.

In practical terms, it meant a lot of exertion, sweat, and heavy breathing.

Needless to say, it was not the sort of activity to which the normal Hogwarts winter uniform — a heavy woolen ensemble layered for warmth and modesty and topped with a full-length woolen cloak — was well-suited. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Abigail had dealt with the mismatch in a thoroughly practical manner, stripping off her outer robe, cardigan, and Slytherin tie in an attempt to stay cool, and unbuttoning the neck of her blouse ease her breathing. It was a sensible choice which was quite effective and comfortable, allowing her to go through her exercise routine without risking heat stroke in the middle of a Scottish winter.

However, it was also a choice which had left her sweating profusely and panting heavily while wearing only a thin white blouse, her pleated gray Hogwarts uniform skirt, and a pair of black thigh-high stockings — woolen, in deference to the Scottish winter weather.

A healthy young woman in her late teens wearing a soaked, nearly-transparent-in-places white blouse and a damp — and therefore more figure-hugging than usual — pleated skirt cut a rather striking figure. Her exposed skin glistening with perspiration under the artificial lamps of the range and the thoroughly intriguing shifting of certain portions of her anatomy caused by her heavy breathing and oftentimes energetic arm movements only exacerbated the situation.

In short, Abigail's current state made for a sight that many of her male classmates would have given their eye-teeth to witness.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, they weren't present; only her good friend, Harry, was.

For his part, Harry was avidly watching his older friend as she went about her exercise routine, finding the sight weirdly cool for reasons he didn't rightly understand. It was much the same situation as his ongoing admiration for the sight of his centaur damsel at full not-gallop — he knew he liked what he was seeing, but he didn't know precisely why it was so appealing. The young dragon simply wasn't mature enough yet to understand such interests.

Not yet, anyway.

Of course, that would not always be the case. Despite the mismatch in species, Harry was growing up in a human society, his fellow students were all humans and many of his friends and role models were human. Of those few non-humans he interacted with regularly, centaurs followed a mostly human aesthetic for beauty, and goblins… well, from a visual perspective, goblins were mostly asexual — their sexual displays mostly took place chemically — and therefore didn't figure much into the young dragon's nascent sensibilities. Harry's aesthetic impulses were therefore developing along the path normal for a human adolescent.

Mostly, normal, anyway.

It was and would remain true that no human woman, no matter how beautiful, would ever be able to really capture the young dragon's attention by appearance alone — to figuratively grab him by the glands and give him a hard shake — the way she could a male of her own species, and Abigail, while fit and quite attractive, was no rare beauty. Nevertheless, between the Harry's gradually developing aesthetic appreciation for the human female form and the emotional intimacy springing from their friendship, the seventh-year girl would have been able to pull off a fair approximation of the feat — had the young dragon been at the appropriate point in his development.

The fact remained, though, that Harry was not mature enough that the appealing sight of his older friend in her current state could command his undivided attention. Thus, though he watched his friend and her workout with interest and a broad smile on his currently human face, his interest remained innocent, his smile reflected only the simple joy of being with his friend, and his state of mind remained clear enough to keep other thoughts in his head.

Perhaps closest to mind was a topic which had played a surprisingly prominent role in his recent meeting with Madame Marchbanks — his haphazard inquiries into the nature and behavior of magic. While the conversation at the meeting had focused heavily on his work with runes to create that neat-looking but otherwise useless tree thing, the elderly witch had not restricted her recommendation to that topic alone. Rather, she had promoted the spirit of inquiry in general, and Harry had collected a long list of things he was curious about — a list that was forever getting longer, at that.

Perhaps he ought to pursue some of them, as well?

"Good work, Abigail!" the currently human-shaped young dragon congratulated his friend warmly as she finished her set, prompting a beautiful, if very tired, smile from the young woman in return, before he stepped up for his next set of target practice.

Now that he had put some more work in practicing his own stunning charm, Harry no longer had to concentrate quite as hard to cast successfully, allowing him to continue his earlier train of thought even as a withering hail of brilliant rods of burning red light flew downrange.

It was about as precise as a hailstorm, as well. As he had mentioned, accuracy remained a work-in-progress.

There was the stamped-rune method he'd come up with to refine, of course; that'd be a good place to start, but there was also the magic-pumped laser he was originally trying to make for the holographic projector he had originally wanted to make. The young dragon frowned thoughtfully as he considered that. Based on how much trouble he'd had so far, that sounded like it might be a long slog of a project.

It might be better to save it for later.

Then there was his magic-to-electricity idea that'd hit a snare a few months back; he was still trying to come up with a new lead on that. The young dragon shrugged at the thought, accidentally throwing off his aim even more than usual on the next casting. He didn't have anything right now, but it was something to keep in mind. There was also that question he'd thought of right before he'd had to leave when he talked to Donald all those months ago; that was still hanging in the back of his head alongside half a dozen other odds and ends.

Things were really starting to pile up, to be honest.

Harry nodded to himself as he surveyed the devastating aftermath of his target practice. He probably ought to start up something to keep track of it all, maybe some research notebooks? Those seemed to work for Hermione pretty well. The human-shaped dragon stepped back to take another break as the splintered remains of the enchanted targets slowly began to pull themselves back together — their wooden forms rather less resilient to the amount of magic he could throw downrange than an equivalently-sized magical person.

For now, though, Harry thought with a sigh, he really ought to seek out some tips on how to cast more accurately. Sure, he'd hit the targets eventually, but most of his magic had still expended itself on the increasingly pockmarked stone wall at the end of the range — another unacceptable performance.

Who was the best person to ask, though?

Harry frowned in thought, the expression going unnoticed by Abigail, who was slumped over in a chair against the wall, her eyes closed and still trying to catch her breath. Much as he respected the man's talents, Harry's usual go-to, Mr. Snape, was probably not the best choice. Spell accuracy really wasn't in the potions master's purview — from his stories, Mr. Snape tended to rely more on subterfuge to get close enough that he couldn't really miss. Harry's other go-to, the goblins, were really good at accuracy, but as the young dragon had learned to his own embarrassment at the dueling club, accuracy with firearms and accuracy with wands were entirely different animals, so the goblins were right out.

That left the other professors to consider.

Mr. Dumbledore was probably a good choice since he was pretty good at pretty much everything, but he was really busy most of the time, so that might be a problem — the elderly wizard could barely find time to oversee Harry's alchemy lessons every month or so. The young, currently human-shaped dragon tapped his chin thoughtfully as he considered the rest of the staff. To be honest, Mr. Flitwick was probably the best choice, now that he thought about it. The half-goblin was a really good duelist, so he'd know all about spell accuracy and speed, and he was a really good teacher, so he'd know how to teach it, unlike Professor Lockhart.

Plus, there was another magic-related question like Madame Marchbanks had been talking about that he'd been meaning to look into ever since that duel with the annoying blond kid. Since it was a question about a charm, the resident Charms master would probably be the best choice to answer it, too.

Harry nodded decisively. That'd be the way to go then.

Suddenly realizing that the room had been unusually quiet for some minutes now, the young dragon turned to Abigail and saw that his friend appeared to have fallen asleep, leaning back in her chair. She must have been more tired than he thought.

"Abigail?" he called quietly, attempting to wake her, only to be answered by a loud, decidedly unladylike snore.

"Huh," Harry frowned before gently nudging her shoulder. His only response was a sleepy grumble and a slight shift.

Well, she had been working hard, so he supposed she had earned a nap, the young dragon thought — though that chair looked really uncomfortable.

He frowned in consideration for a moment before nodding decisively. Best to do something about it.

Harry bent to pick up the sleeping young woman as gently as he could manage and carried her out of the practice range and down the hall to one of the couches in the main room of the Lair and setting her gently down on the cushions to finish off her nap comfortably. The young dragon tucked her in with a blanket and stoked the fire in the Rayburn when he noticed she was already starting to shiver in her sleep as the occasional winter breeze swept in through the cliffside entrance — now much closer than it had been in the target range — to lick at her sweat-dampened skin.

Looking down at the peaceful face of his sleeping friend, he absently brushed a stray lock of damp chestnut hair away from where it had stuck to her forehead. Since it was pretty obvious Abigail was going to be out of it for quite some time, Harry considered what to do with himself before nodding firmly as he came to a decision. Making a slight detour to pick up a blank notebook, he then sat in one of the nearby chairs from which he could keep an eye on his tired friend and settled in to keep her company until she woke up, using the opportunity to write down some of his plans for future research projects in the notebook.

The notebook would be about half-full by the time he finished for the day.

Later in the evening when the young dragon looked back on the day, he concluded that it was time well-spent. Neither he nor Abigail had gotten as much done as they had hoped, but Harry did learn that looking after his exhausted friend was a surprisingly rewarding way to spend the afternoon.

Abigail's beaming smile when she had awakened and realized what he had done had been even more so.

3.17.1 Unfair comparisons

Sitting in her favorite chair on the Lair's library mezzanine, Hermione sat back from her reading for a moment to stretch. She could still hear the muted sounds of spellfire echoing down the tunnel from the shooting range where Harry was yet again working on his practical casting skills alongside Abigail. They had been doing that a great deal recently at Abigail's behest, ever since the often dragon-shaped boy had managed to acquire a copy of the NEWT syllabus and the seventh-year girl had given it a thorough read.

However, Abigail hadn't been the only one to read that syllabus. Hermione smiled as she looked down at the arcane tome laid out on the table before her and at the half-full notebook of handwritten notes that lay open beside it. Hermione had taken advantage of Harry's forward thinking as well and had seized the opportunity to learn what she would be up against in the wizarding world's version of standardized testing.

After all, it was never too early to start preparing, not in Hermione's considered opinion.

It was true that she would also have to sit the OWLs as well, long before the NEWTs came into the picture, but the bushy-haired girl figured that if she prepared properly for the NEWTs, then the OWLs ought to be easy enough to pass. Classes usually built up to harder things over time, so she figured that made sense.

Hermione's reading of the syllabus Harry had so thoughtfully obtained led her to the same conclusion Abigail had drawn, namely that practical skills were the name of the game for the NEWTs, and the bushy-haired girl had initially decided to go along with the older girl's plan. It made good sense, and Hermione figured it would be nice to spend more time with her friends.

Unfortunately, that initial plan had quickly hit a rather severe snag.

Abigail had chosen to work on perfecting her ability to use the standard spell curriculum, a choice which involved a great deal of thoroughly exhausting practice, and as a normal witch in her second-year of schooling, Hermione simply could not keep up with the harsh pace her friends set. Her body and magic simply were not developed enough to handle the strain, and she knew of no way to rush that sort of thing along.

Of course, the bushy-haired girl couldn't find it within herself to blame her friends for not slowing down to keep from leaving her behind. Abigail was on a tight schedule for the approaching exams, and quite frankly the bookish second-year would never forgive herself if she was responsible for holding her friends back from being all they could be. She knew it wasn't their fault.

Though, that knowledge did nothing to make her feel better about the situation.

Being outperformed by Harry was nothing new for the girl, and by this point, she was already well-used to it. Harry was the boy who was so absurdly overpowered that he spent most of his time as a massive super-dragon. Hermione couldn't find it within herself to feel bad about coming in second-best to that — it would be like feeling inadequate about being shorter than a mountain, it simply wasn't a meaningful comparison.

Third-best was a different matter.

Unlike the walking amalgamation of condensed absurdity that was Harry Potter, Abigail was an ostensibly normal witch like Hermione herself. The bushy-haired girl didn't have an excuse ready for why she couldn't keep pace — not one that she could convince herself with, anyway. Intellectually, the just barely teenaged girl knew that her older friend had five full years of magical training and physical development on her, and thus she couldn't reasonably be expected to keep up with that kind of disadvantage.

Viscerally, though, the bushy-haired girl knew that excuse was just that, an excuse.

As far as Hermione was concerned, magic was an intellectual pursuit, and, in her mind, she was supposed to be able to keep up with people years ahead of her in that sort of thing — just like she always had before. Hermione knew she wasn't the pretty girl, not with her hair and teeth; she knew she wasn't the athletic girl, as she'd always preferred reading to sports; and she certainly knew she would never be the popular girl, because that just wasn't going to happen; but she'd be damned before she gave up on being the smart girl!

That was her thing, damn it!

So, after her first discouraging practice — which had seen the bushy-haired girl collapse into a chair at the practice range after a single endurance set, unable to do more than watch as her friends continued to set an exhausting pace for nearly another hour — Hermione had decided to rethink her strategy and search for another path, one better suited to her own strengths. It was a search which had led to her retreat to the library.

The change was a practical decision on her part, a strategic choice to focus on maximal return on her investment.

It certainly had nothing at all to do with a desire to retreat because the bushy-haired thirteen-year-old girl felt more than a little dismay in the face of her significantly older friend's impressive performance and well-developed… ah, talents.

Not one thing to do with that.

Honest.

In any case, rather than following in Abigail's footsteps and banking on the examination committee being impressed by her sheer competence with the standard spells, Hermione had decided to pursue variety. Oh, she would still keep up with her morning target practice with Harry — he would insist on that, and since Abigail wasn't there in the mornings for the younger girl to compare herself to, Hermione didn't have any really compelling reason to kick up a fuss. For the rest, though, she would learn as many spells as she could, so that, come time for her NEWT practicals, she could overwhelm the examiners with her spectacular versatility.

It had seemed a decent choice — Hermione was not blessed with spectacular magical power as Harry was, nor was she particularly enamored of the idea of putting as much sweat into things as Abigail seemed to prefer. Rather, she was a smart girl with a prodigious memory who loved to read, and those were traits that fitted her chosen course perfectly.

And, if that course led to her spending a great deal of time researching obscure magics among her beloved, comforting, and ever reassuring books, rather than working hard, sweating, and putting herself in a position to be compared unfavorably to a girl five years her senior, then so much the better.

At the moment, Hermione was working through the first-year curriculum, spell by spell, and looking up any and every equivalent she could find within the wealth of written references Harry had managed to accumulate. Along the way, she had learned twenty-seven distinct divination spells designed to help search through written material within a specified spatial volume, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Using those, she had managed to locate four-hundred and fifty-seven distinct spells designed to perform roughly the same function as the basic light spell — the first one they had learned during the previous year.

Not bad for a week's worth of work.

So far, Hermione had successfully learned eighty-five of them, and she fully intended to learn them all. They were low-impact, easy to cast spells, but, at the end of the day, the bushy-haired girl figured sheer variety had to count for something. After this, she would move on to the basic levitation charm, then to other basic utility charms, and so on and so forth, so that, by the time NEWTs rolled around in five and a half more years, her repertoire would be second to none.

Bending back to her work, the budding young witch smiled at the prospect. She was going to learn a tremendous amount of magic; she was certain she would enjoy the process thoroughly; and the end results would definitely be more impressive than Abigail's excellent grasp of the basics.

In the face of that, what did it matter if her older friend was prettier than she was? She was fine with that, the bushy-haired girl thought with a scowl.

Honest.

3.17.2 Welcome correspondence

The morning meal was unremarkable as were most meals during the school year, essentially any that was not specifically labeled a feast. Scheduling was loose; the house elves made breakfast available for nearly two hours, ending fifteen minutes before the first of the day's classes, and students cycled through the Great Hall on their own schedule over the course of the allotted time.

The breakfast hour was also the time scheduled for owl-post delivery. Nearly three centuries previous, a covered temporary roost had been built into one of the dormers on the roof of the Great Hall for that purpose; with two entrances allowing passage from the outside into the interior of the building, owls burdened with post could perch, sheltered from the weather, and wait for their targeted recipient to show up for the meal. It was a great improvement over the previous system, which allowed post owls to deliver post at any time and anywhere on campus. The reduction in mess and disruption was deemed well worth the not-inconsiderable cost of remodeling an enchanted ceiling.

Even with the additional cost of remodeling, it was much easier to enchant the Great Hall to prevent the owls from casting and defecating everywhere than it would have been to attempt to enchant the entire school in the same manner.

So it was that a certain Ravenclaw student had just loaded down his plate with a third plateful of bacon and eggs — which as a young wizard, meant he was only about a quarter of the way through his meal — when a rather disreputable-looking owl delivered an extraordinarily thick envelope addressed in a cramped hand. It was a piece of correspondence the teenager had been simultaneously anticipating and dreading in equal measure — depending on what was said in the enclosed document, he would either be vindicated or condemned.

A certain scheme of his devising had gotten the sixth-year into a bit of a pickle.

When he had come up with the idea to hire a private investigator to look into his Defense professor's background, it had seemed like such a good plan. The price had been steep, to be sure, but the payoff had seemed huge, so he'd been able to scrounge up the fee by passing the hat among his fellow schoolmates — if only just, as it had turned out — with only a bit of fast talking.

And, in that fast talking lay the trouble.

He had been, perhaps, a tad… enthusiastic in his rhetoric when describing what benefits his fellow conspirators could expect to receive from their investment — both in the certainty of the return and the timing — and his compatriots had rather quickly grown impatient with waiting.

A few weeks previous, they had managed to coerce him into a clandestine meeting to report on the plan's progress, and his fellows had been dissatisfied to say the least. He had managed to convince them to hold off and wait until the investigator got back to them, but it had been a long few weeks since — what with the dirty looks and low-key hostility he had faced since. The report he now held was the key to ending that tense state of affairs — hence the anticipation.

Of course, depending on what the report had to say, the subsequent state of affairs might not be an improvement — hence the dread.

As the sixth-year opened the envelope, revealing a brief cover-letter and a second envelope inside, and began to read, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't the best of news for his purposes; however, it should be enough for him to work with. It would take some more fast talking, but he could use this to get his co-conspirators off his back — hopefully without getting cursed in the process.

He'd have to put the word out to get everyone together for another meeting.

3.17.3 Through the grapevine

"Once again, I thank you all for your attention," Lockhart addressed his class as the session ended. "I feel I should remind you that your projects will be due at the end of next week!"

Lockhart had assigned the class project in yet another effort to spark the interest of Mr. Potter. The student was to take one of the scenarios described in his books and come up with his own take on how to handle things. The blond dandy had thought it a prime opportunity to spark a conversation — what better source to consult for such a project than Lockhart himself.

Unfortunately, this gambit had been no more successful than the previous ones, as the pint-sized powerhouse had simply nodded agreeably and then gone on to complete the entire project in time to turn it in at the next class. Now Gilderoy was stuck grading an entire school's worth of essays with nothing to show for it.

A very disheartening outcome, if he did say so himself.

Despite his disappointment at the lack of progress on his primary goal, the secondary one remained, and the blond dandy still kept a sharp eye out for suspicious behavior, and as the students were shuffling about preparing to leave once more, that vigilance paid off once more.

It was another note, passed between the same two boys as the last. The teenagers' actions were just as suspect as they had been several weeks previous — the sequence of events was nearly identical, in fact. This time, however, Gilderoy Lockhart was ready when the second boy went for his wand to vanish the scrap of parchment.

Had he been Dumbledore, he might have used some arcane twist of magic to reverse the partially-completed vanishing charm and reconstitute the paper in his hand.

However, Gilderoy was not Dumbledore, and he used a rather more prosaic, but no less effective, approach. Given his prior knowledge of the coming situation, he had prepared by keeping a similarly-sized slip of blank parchment at hand, and as the vanishing spell was cast, the former obliviator countered with a humble switching spell, moving the note to his hand and leaving a blank slip of parchment in its place to dissipate into its component molecules and spread irretrievably over several square miles of the local landscape.

Neither teenager noticed the substitution.

As soon as the room emptied, Lockhart casually opened the note to give it a read.

It seemed that the children would be holding a meeting.

How intriguing! Gilderoy cocked a golden eyebrow. Perhaps he should drop in?

3.17.4 Anonymous reporting

"Madam Bones?"

In the bustling offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Head of the Department, Amelia Bones paused at the sound of her secretary's voice. She was on her way to a meeting regarding recent developments in an old case, and she was tempted to dismiss the interruption, but the serious woman rarely interrupted her without good cause.

"What is it, Beverly?"

"You have received an interesting piece of mail, ma'am," her secretary replied. "It seems to be a rather thorough report loosely implicating one Gilderoy Lockhart in what could be a rather extensive case of fraud."

"Gilderoy Lockhart…" Amelia frowned, searching her memory, "the author?"

"Yes, ma'am. The report details findings of consistent traces of mental manipulation on an impressive number of witnesses across the locations of all his books," the woman summarized. "It also includes a rather insightful cross-referenced analysis of nearly a decade worth of news reports and the inconsistencies included therein. Very solid work."

"Really?" That did sound like impressive detective work — always good to keep an eye on upcoming talent. "Who was responsible for the report? I don't recall assigning such an investigation." Normally celebrity investigations were the sort of thing she kept a close eye on, if for no other reason than to avoid being blindsided by the press.

"That's the thing, Madam Bones," Beverly replied, "it's an anonymous tip. The cover letter said it was a report the author had put together at the behest of a client, and he thought the results were suspicious enough he ought to forward them to us. It said he didn't know if it was something we were already investigating, but he figured it couldn't hurt to let us know."

"Damn!" Much as she appreciated the help, Amelia hated finding out about new cases. It always meant the world was a little worse than she'd hoped. "Is the case strong enough to open an investigation of our own?"

"I doubt it, but I am not the one to determine that, ma'am," her secretary averred.

"Of course, of course," Amelia sighed at her oversight. "Send it off to Investigations with a note asking how they think we ought to handle it. In the meantime, I've a meeting to get to."

"Of course, Madam Bones," Beverly said, already reaching for a blank sheet of parchment to write the requested note.

With a final nod, the busy Head of the DMLE was on her way.

3.17.5 A conversation with Flitwick

It was late in the afternoon, and Hogwarts' resident dragon walked purposefully through the halls towards a locality he didn't often visit. The Ravenclaw dormitories were nearby, but Harry didn't actually know any of the Ravens very well, instead his current destination was Mr. Flitwick's office. He had some questions, and he rather hoped the diminutive half-goblin professor would be able to answer them for him.

Arriving at the charms master's office, the young dragon in human guise knocked gently, "Um… Professor, are you there?"

"Come in!" the diminutive teacher welcomed him gladly. "Come in, take a seat. What brings you here, Mr. Potter? You don't call on me very often, my young friend."

"Well, it's a couple things really," Harry began. "Um, first, you remember how much trouble I had actually hitting anything back during that dueling club thingy?"

"Indeed, I do, Mr. Potter," the half-goblin said with a nod.

"Well, I've been trying to practice and get better," the young dragon told his professor, "but it's real slow going, and I was hoping you had some tips on how to do better."

"I see," Flitwick said. "Firstly, I must congratulate you on your commitment to self-improvement, Mr. Potter. Such is always a worthy goal! Aside from that, however, I can only advise that you keep practicing; it really is the only way to improve, I am afraid. Everyone is bad at aiming a wand when they first start, do not be discouraged."

"Oh," Harry said, sounding quite crestfallen. "There's no tips or anything then?"

The diminutive professor considered the question for a moment more. "I suppose you might try reducing your wand movements to a minimum, keep the necessary gestures as small as you can make them. The lion's share of inaccuracy with a wand comes from the wand movements themselves, after all. Oh, and start with piercing charms, they are an excellent way to practice getting your timing down — that final horizontal sweep is tricky to aim properly, and if you can get that right, other charms will be much simpler by comparison."

"Thanks, I'll try that, then!" the young Potter sounded much reassured by the advice.

"I am glad to have helped, Mr. Potter," Flitwick said with a smile. "And might I inquire as to your other question?"

"Oh, right!" the currently human-shaped dragon acknowledged. "I had some questions about a charm I saw at the dueling club. It called snakes…"

"Ah, serpensortia, I am familiar with the charm." Flitwick said. "It summons one or more snakes which will then follow the caster's commands — not terribly useful in real combat because commanding the snakes requires concentration from the caster, but good showmanship for the stage."

"Well, I was wondering — does it conjure a snake or pull it from somewhere else?" Harry asked.

"I… I'm not entirely certain," the small man frowned. "I was under the impression that it was a conjuration, but I don't know if anyone has asked that question before," Flitwick replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, the summoned snakes knew parseltongue, and I'm pretty sure that annoying blond kid doesn't know how to speak it," Harry explained. "I thought conjurations could only do what the conjurer told them to do, and this one couldn't tell it how to speak parseltongue. If it were pulled from somewhere else, though, when I killed it I'd have thought it would have left a body, and it didn't. So, I'm not sure which one it was."

"That is an intriguing question — a question to which I cannot say I know the answer," the diminutive charms professor said thoughtfully before his tone turned excited. "And when we find a new question we can't answer, there's only one thing to be done — we will have to find out!"

"How do we do that?" the young dragon asked. It sounded similar to Madame Marchbanks' ideas, but he wasn't sure how to proceed on this one, having less of an idea of how the snake summoning charm worked than he did of how runic systems did.

"We must devise an experiment! That is, we will attempt to create a scenario from the results of which we can draw a conclusion with certainty regarding the nature of the charm," Flitwick explained enthusiastically. "Our current observations are inconclusive, because they could support either option. Our experiment should be designed such that the results will eliminate the confusion."

"So, we want to design something so we can tell for sure whether the snake was conjured or summoned?" Harry confirmed.

"That is one way to go about it," the half-goblin nodded enthusiastically.

"So how would we do that?"

"Why don't you work out an experimental design and then bring it back to me?" the small teacher proposed. "Then we will go over it. I will help you refine it, and then once we have a good one, you will carry it out. It will be a good exercise for you; the ability to learn by experimentation is an important skill in life."

"Okay!"

3.17.6 A teacher's musings

As the charms professor watched Harry Potter leave his office, the diminutive man practically vibrated with glee, his expression full of a burning zeal which would have sent his lazier students running for the hills had they beheld it.

The young dragon was only a second-year, and he was already producing research ideas like this one! Filius Flitwick saw the potential for greatness in that boy — and for his own career as one of that boy's mentors.

The question the dragon had posed so innocently was Mastery-level work in the field, his reasoning had been solid, and he immediately grasped the concept of testing through experimentation — a mindset that was depressingly rare in the magical world. Properly executed — and Filius would see to it that it was properly executed, no matter how hard he had to ride his young student to ensure it — that research proposal could see the boy through to a charms mastery before he sat his OWLs! The half-goblin would not allow such talent to languish in mediocrity.

Not only that, but Flitwick was looking forward to seeing what the work would produce — success or failure, it was sure to be fascinating.

The half-goblin chuckled, thinking back on that conversation with Severus, several years previous, in which Filius had made a teasing comment regarding the potions master's uncharacteristic enthusiasm regarding the young dragon's bio-alchemy. At the time, his disagreeable colleague had issued a challenge to wait and see how enthusiastic he was when the boy revolutionized Flitwick's own field, and Flitwick had to admit, it was an exhilarating experience even now.

And after seeing how Severus had fared over the intervening years…

Well, he suspected he was in for interesting times to come.

3.17.7 Clandestine excuses

"That's everyone here," a sixth-year Gryffindor boy said in a firm voice that rang sharply in the dusty normally-abandoned classroom as he shot a hard look at a similarly-aged Ravenclaw. "Now I think it's time you come clean about just what's going on with our project."

"Yeah! What did you do with our money? We gave you all that so we could get rid of Lockhart and the girls would go back to paying attention to us, but he's still here, and the girls are still all a-flutter about the blond pillock!" another boy piped up angrily, only to be followed by a cacophony of similar demands from the rest of the room. There were perhaps two dozen boys in attendance, hailing from every House but Slytherin. The age cohorts were not quite so evenly represented, as not a single boy there was younger than a fourteen.

"As you all know, I hired a private investigator from Knockturn over the winter break to investigate Professor Lockhart's background," the Ravenclaw sixth-year so addressed replied to the crowd.

"Yeah, yeah, we know! You told us that last time," came an annoyed call. "Why did you call this meeting, if that's all you have to say?"

"I'm getting to it!" the Ravenclaw growled defensively. "Anyway, the investigator got back to me, and he found something! He suspects Lockhart used mind magic on people to cover something up!"

"That's it?" the first Gryffindor said incredulously. "You wasted all our money on that?"

"It was not wasted," the Ravenclaw protested, sounding a little nervous in the face of an increasingly hostile room. "He thought it was important enough to forward a copy of this to Law Enforcement!" He brandished a small stack of parchment as if it were a talisman to fend off the ire of his fellows.

"Let me see that," an older Hufflepuff growled, stepping up to rip the parchment out of his hands. His fellows crowded around to see for themselves as he read it. "I guess that's something, at least," he acknowledged grudgingly after a few minutes. His compatriots nodded in reluctant agreement with the assessment.

"Do you mind if I take a look at that?" came a question from someone sitting quietly at a desk near the door.

"Huh? Oh, sure," the Hufflepuff said agreeably, absently handing the report off. "Now, what else do we need to do with this? I don't want to waste our investment."

"Yeah, that looked really suspicious," a younger Ravenclaw piped up. "Maybe we should tell the Headmaster?"

"No!" the Ravenclaw who had hatched the scheme interrupted vociferously. "We just need to wait for the DMLE to do its thing. I don't even want to think about how the staff would react to this. It'd be one thing if we had something solid, but just suspicions? Not happening!"

When one of his fellow sixth-years gave him a narrow-eyed look of suspicion, he hurriedly elaborated. "We hired a private eye to dig into the past of one of our teachers looking for something to get him fired. How do you think Snape would react to that?"

There was a round of reluctant nodding. Snape would make their lives unutterably miserable for that if he found out, if for no other reason than preemptive revenge for the possibility that they might do it to him in the future. To be honest, they couldn't even really blame him for that.

Merlin knew they'd thought about it.

"Just let it run its course, it'll work out," the Ravenclaw assured his fellows. "And don't tell any of the staff, especially not Lockhart."

"It had better work out," the seventh-year Hufflepuff from earlier warned him darkly, "or it'll be on your head."

The murmur from around the room affirming that sentiment was not reassuring to the sixth-year Ravenclaw who had arranged it all.

As the last of his co-conspirators filed out of the room, the sixth-year Raven let out an explosive sigh. "It had better turn out, or my seventh year is going to be mightily unpleasant."

"Do you really think they'll hold that much of a grudge?" the person sitting near the door asked curiously.

The sixth-year scoffed. "At the price we paid? You bet your arse they will!"

"I see," blond hair bobbed as he nodded agreeably. "Well, I suppose you'll just need to hope for the best then. Best of luck to you!"

"Thanks," the sixth-year said. "Um, can you pass me the…"

"Oh, certainly!" he handed the investigative report back to the teenager. "There you go. Have a nice day!"

The Ravenclaw nodded distractedly as he ambled out of the room.

"Goodbye, Professor."

3.17.8 Unpleasant ruminations

This was a troubling development, Gilderoy Lockhart thought as he sat under his concealment charm.

An advanced variant of the common notice-me-not charm, his current choice induced a strong sense of 'there's nothing out of place here' in anyone caught within the area it affected. It was a commonly used tool in the obliviator's collection and a particular favorite of Lockhart's. It did not prevent others from noticing the caster — a common property of other methods which made navigating crowds quite difficult — rather it made the caster seem completely unremarkable.

As he listened to the retreating steps of his student echoing in the deserted hallway, Gilderoy mused on the implications of what he had just learned. When he had first caught wind of this clandestine gathering, he hadn't known what to expect, but he had never anticipated finding this.

To think, two dozen of his students had banded together in the interest of getting him fired, not because of his actions, not because they thought he was a poor teacher, but because the girls they were interested in apparently had crushes on him rather than the boys their age. Lockhart scoffed at the very idea; he certainly hadn't done anything to encourage them! For that matter, they could have just waited a few months and the problem would have fixed itself — impatient brats.

And the price they had paid! The blond dandy couldn't help whistling at the memory of the price he'd seen quoted on that cover letter. His students had put that much together? For this? He didn't know whether to be impressed at their dedication or appalled.

Had he been that much of a horn-dog at that age?

Blond locks swayed as the young professor shook his head to dismiss that line of speculation. Whether he had been or not, he certainly had never hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on one of his professors. That was definitely a new one in his experience, and it presented its own set of new challenges to go with it.

Lockhart knew that the case against him, as presented in the report he had read, was far from air-tight. There were far too many gaps and alternate explanations for it to carry water in court. Despite that, the former obliviator couldn't help admiring the unnamed private eye's work. The man had managed to make something out of one of Gilderoy's own cover-ups, and he had some idea of just how difficult that sort of thing was.

The inconsistencies the man had latched onto were ones the former obliviator had left deliberately. A perfectly uniform story screamed of manipulation to an experienced investigator — witness accounts were always a little bit spotty — but for the still-unnamed private eye to have taken those deliberately-spread crumbs and put together as much of the story as he had was a remarkable feat.

It was something Lockhart would never have thought possible.

And it prompted the blond former obliviator to reconsider other potential outcomes that he had deemed impossible. The evidence presented wasn't enough for a conviction, but it was probably enough to spark some interest. What if someone at the DMLE could use that to dig up more evidence he hadn't considered? Gilderoy was still confident in his skills, but what if that confidence was misplaced?

That could get very messy, very quickly.

The blond man frowned. He had considered many times the possibility that his lies might be found out — that the elaborate house of cards might come tumbling down — and he had thought through the measures he would have to take should he be discovered. They were measures he did not like.

Not at all.

His dislike of those measures was, in fact, the main reason that he had gone for the attempt to become Harry Potter's mentor rather than running the risk of discovery by attempting to take credit for any other, more prominent, heroic incidents. The life of a fugitive was not one that Gilderoy Lockhart wanted to live, but the life of a prisoner was even less appealing. With this development, both possibilities seemed all too real.

The footsteps of his students had long-since faded from his hearing, and the former obliviator abruptly stood up, absently dispelling his concealment charm as he walked toward the door. He would have to make some preparations just in case, he mused as he left the classroom. If the worst happened, having a few things in place beforehand would be invaluable — they might be the difference between freedom and captivity, or possibly between life and death.

Given the nature of Azkaban, Gilderoy wasn't entirely sure which was the more terrifying dichotomy.

Hopefully, his initial instinct was correct, and his cover-up was good enough to withstand scrutiny. If that was the case, his preparations would be a waste of time, but he could live with a bit of wasted time.

If his fears proved prophetic, on the other hand? He grimaced at the thought as he exited the long-unused classroom ad turned down the hallway for the trip back to his office.

For now, Gilderoy would quietly put some preparations in place while keeping an eye out for trouble — it could just blow over with no further issue, after all — but if the DMLE did manage to find something substantial, they'd send aurors. His eyes narrowed speculatively at the thought — given the location of the potential arrest, they might try to disguise the arrest, both to avoid panic among the children and maintain control of the Ministry's public image.

Yes, that was how he would have played it, were he in their position. Lockhart nodded as he considered the idea, running through the scenario in his head.

A Ministry official, probably from the education department, would come with a quiet request for a meeting — played off as some bureaucratic nothing in front of the children — accompanied by a few plainclothes aurors for the arrest. Aurors rather than normal law enforcement would be overkill, to be sure, but they'd want to take him quietly, and that meant overwhelming force to make sure he couldn't kick up a fuss. With him in custody, they'd have time to set the propaganda machine running to cover the Ministry's collective arse well before the trial. It would let them mitigate the impact of the scandal of arresting a teacher they'd presumably vetted before hiring.

The blond dandy's expression hardened as he considered his options. At least he didn't have to worry about being disappeared rather than tried, cold comfort that it was. He was facing the Ministry, not the oligarchs; they'd come for him with officers rather than assassins — Dumbledore's reforms had guaranteed that much, at least. Imprisonment would still mean Azkaban, though, and the spectral guards employed there were in many ways a worse fate than death. In all honesty, the assassins might well have been a less frightening prospect.

As he opened the door to his office and made his way to the attached apartment suite, Gilderoy shook his head, dismissing the thought. If it happened, he would just have to ensure he was ready to strike first — without hesitation — he'd only have one, narrow, window of opportunity.

He'd have to make it count.
 
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Section 4.3 - New situations
This is the second version of Section 3.17. It has changed substantially from the originally published one which is still available on the extras threadmark collection at the original post.
4.3 New situations

4.3.1 Postal Reprieve

The morning meal in the Great Hall was unremarkable that day, essentially indistinguishable from most of the other meals during the school year; that is any meal that was not specifically labeled a feast. Scheduling was loose; the house elves made breakfast available for nearly two hours, ending fifteen minutes before the first of the day's classes, and students cycled through the Great Hall on their own schedule over the course of the allotted time.

It was also the time scheduled for the delivery of owl-post.

Nearly three centuries previous, a covered temporary roost had been built into one of the dormers on the roof of the Great Hall for that purpose. With two entrances allowing passage from the outside into the interior of the building, owls burdened with post could perch, sheltered from the weather, and wait for their targeted recipient to show up for the meal. It was a great improvement over the previous system, which allowed post owls to deliver post anytime and anywhere on campus. The reduction in mess and disruption was deemed well worth the not-inconsiderable cost of remodeling an enchanted ceiling. Even with the additional cost of remodeling, it was still much cheaper to enchant the Great Hall to prevent the owls from casting and defecating everywhere than it would have been to do the same for the entire school.

So it was that, as a certain Ravenclaw student loaded down his plate with a third plateful of bacon and eggs, a rather disreputable-looking owl delivered an extraordinarily thick envelope addressed in a cramped hand. It was a piece of correspondence the teenager had been simultaneously longing for and dreading in equal measure. A certain scheme of his had gotten the sixth-year boy into a bit of a pickle, and the contents of that envelope would see him either vindicated or condemned.

When he had come up with the idea to hire someone to investigate his Defense professor's background, it had seemed like such a good plan. The price had been steep, sure, but the payoff had seemed huge, so he'd managed to scrounge up the required fee — if only just, as it had turned out — by passing the hat among his fellow schoolmates. It had taken only a bit of fast talking.

And, in that fast talking lay the trouble.

The sixth-year had been, perhaps, a tad… overenthusiastic in his rhetoric when describing the benefits his fellow conspirators could expect from their investment. In short, he had both undersold the risk of failure and the time to maturity, and his compatriots had grown impatient with waiting in short order.

A few weeks previous, his fellows had managed to coerce him into a clandestine meeting to report on the plan's progress, and his fellows had been left... dissatisfied. He had managed to convince them to hold off until the investigator got back to them, but it had been a close-run thing. The weeks since had been long and uncomfortable weeks, what with all the dirty looks and low-key hostility. The report he now held was the key to ending that tense state of affairs.

Of course, depending on what the report had to say, the subsequent state of affairs might not be an improvement.

The sixth-year Ravenclaw opened the envelope, revealing a brief cover-letter and a second envelope inside, and began to read. After a few moments, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't the best of news; however, it should be enough to work with. He could work with this well enough to get his co-conspirators off his back, hopefully without getting it cursed in the process.

He'd have to put the word out to set another meeting.

4.3.2 Welcome correspondence

As the quiet drama played out at the Ravenclaw table, another owl had made a delivery to the Hufflepuff table, specifically to one Harry Potter. The delivery was a tad unusual, as owl-post went. Rather than the normal procedure of calmly alighting on the table and offering a leg, the owl in question had taken one short look at the intended recipient before dropping the letter from as near to the ceiling as it could manage and zipping back to the exit.

Despite the owl's obvious concern, the young dragon accepted the unorthodox delivery with aplomb, simply reaching up to remove the envelope from its resting place in the shaggy mop he called hair before opening the envelope and eagerly scanning the title of the enclosed correspondence.

Harry smiled in satisfaction before carefully returning the packet to the envelope and turning back to his breakfast. While it was a welcome bit of correspondence, it would need to wait for later in the day to be put to its proper use.

He hadn't gone to the trouble of getting it for his own benefit, after all.

4.3.3 Anonymous reporting

"Madam Bones?"

In the bustling offices of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Department Head, Amelia Bones, paused at the sound of her secretary's voice. She was on her way to a meeting regarding recent developments in an old case and was tempted to dismiss the interruption, but the woman rarely interrupted her without good cause.

"What is it, Beverly?"

"You have received an interesting piece of mail, ma'am," her secretary replied. "It seems to be a rather thorough report loosely implicating one Gilderoy Lockhart in what could be a rather extensive case of fraud."

"Gilderoy Lockhart…" Amelia frowned, searching her memory, "the author?"

"Yes, ma'am. The report details findings of consistent traces of mental manipulation on an impressive number of witnesses across the locations of all his books," the woman summarized. "It also includes a rather insightful cross-referenced analysis of nearly a decade worth of news reports and the inconsistencies included therein. Very solid work."

"Really?" That did sound like impressive detective work, Amelia nodded thoughtfully. Best to find out who was responsible, it always good to keep an eye on upcoming talent. "Who was responsible for the report? I don't recall assigning such an investigation."

Normally celebrity investigations were the sort of thing she kept a close eye on, if for no other reason than to avoid being blindsided by the press.

"That's the thing, Madam Bones," Beverly replied, "it's an anonymous tip. The cover letter said it was a report the author had put together at the behest of a client, and he thought the results were suspicious enough he ought to forward them to us. It said he didn't know if it was something we were already investigating, but he figured it couldn't hurt to let us know."

"Damn," she sighed, deflating slightly. Much as she appreciated the help, Amelia hated finding out about new cases. It always meant the world was just that little bit worse than she'd hoped it was. "Is the case strong enough to open an investigation of our own?"

"I doubt it, but I am not the one to determine that, ma'am," her secretary averred.

"Of course, of course," Amelia sighed at her oversight. "Send it off to Investigations with a note asking how they think we ought to handle it. In the meantime, I've a meeting to get to."

"Of course, Madam Bones," Beverly said, already reaching for a blank sheet of parchment to write the requested note.

With a final nod, the busy Department Head was on her way.

4.3.4 New information

"Hey, Abigail!" Harry greeted his friend brightly as he approached their usual table in the Hogwarts library. "I've got something for you!" He brandished a thick envelope emphatically.

"Hi, Harry!" the older girl returned the greeting warmly. "So, what is it that you have there?"

"Well, I met with Madame Marchbanks the day before yesterday," the young dragon explained, "and I asked her for a syllabus for the NEWTs so we could study properly, and it just came in today, so I made sure to bring it by as soon as I could to show you!"

"So that's what you've been working on!" Abigail smiled, stepping over to give him a tight hug. "That was very thoughtful of you, Harry. Thank you!"

Harry positively beamed as his friend released her hug and returned to her usual place at the table. He took his own seat and opened the envelope before placing its contents between them.

"Go ahead and give it a read," he told his older friend.

Their private corner of the library fell silent as Abigail complied, carefully reading through the provided syllabus for the NEWT exams that had been weighing on her mind for the past few months. Her good friend looked on, still smiling broadly. So engrossed was she that she was quite startled by the arrival of someone else at their usual table.

"Hi, Hermione!" the bright voice of the currently human-shaped dragon piped up.

"Hello, Harry, Abigail," the bushy-haired girl nodded to each of her friends in turn, sparing a curious look at the packet of parchment arrayed in front of Abigail as she set her own excessive stack of books down on the library table. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, the younger girl couldn't help herself.

"What are you reading?" Hermione asked her older friend. "You looked like you were pretty deep into it, and it doesn't look like a schoolbook."

"Harry was thoughtful enough to get a syllabus for the NEWT exams for me," the seventh-year girl said absently as she turned back to her reading. "It's good to finally get a handle on what the tests will cover so I can review properly and just get on with it rather than worrying all the time."

"Really?" Hermione breathed as her brown eyes widened in surprise. "I didn't know you could get those!"

"I went and asked Madame Marchbanks," the resident dragon chimed in. "She's in charge of the Examination Authority, and she's really nice! I just explained the situation, and she had somebody send me the syllabus."

"Oh, she sounds nice," the bushy-haired girl said distractedly, her eyes locked intently on the rough stack of parchment sitting before Abigail. "Um… Abigail?"

"Hmm?" the older girl prompted without looking up from her reading.

"Do you think I could read that too?" Hermione asked tentatively.

Without looking up from her reading, the Abigail wordlessly pushed the portion of the document she had already read across the table to the younger girl.

From his place at the table, Harry settled in for the long run as he quietly watched his two friends greedily devour the syllabus he had procured, a broad smile still pasted on his face.

The visit with Madame Marchbanks had definitely been worth the effort.

4.3.5 Heard it through the grapevine

"Once again, I thank you all for your attention," Lockhart addressed his class as the session ended. "I feel I should remind you that your projects will be due at the end of next week!"

Lockhart had assigned the project in yet another effort to spark Mr. Potter's interest. The assignment was to take one of the scenarios described in his books and come up with his own take on how to handle things. The blond dandy had thought it a prime opportunity to spark a conversation — what better source to consult for such a project than Lockhart himself?

Unfortunately, this gambit had proven no more successful than its predecessors. The pint-sized powerhouse had simply nodded agreeably and then gone on to complete the entire project in time to turn it in at the next class, two weeks before the due date. Now Gilderoy was stuck grading an entire school's worth of essays with nothing to show for it.

A very disheartening outcome if he did say so himself.

Despite his disappointment at the lack of progress on his primary goal, his secondary goal remained, and the blond dandy maintained his vigilance for suspicious behavior. Today, as the students were shuffling about preparing to leave once more, that vigilance paid off.

The circumstances were the same. The same two boys passed another note, a nearly identical sequence of events, in fact. This time, however, Gilderoy Lockhart was ready when the second boy went for his wand to vanish the scrap of parchment.

A wizard of Dumbledore's caliber might have used some arcane twist of magic to reverse the partially completed vanishing charm and reconstitute the paper in his hand.

Gilderoy was not such a wizard.

Instead, he used a rather more prosaic, but no less effective, approach. Given his prior knowledge, he had prepared a similarly-sized slip of blank parchment ahead of time, and as the vanishing spell was cast, the former obliviator countered with a humble switching spell, moving the note to his hand and leaving a blank slip of parchment to take its place, dissipating into its component molecules and spreading irretrievably over several square miles of the local landscape.

Neither of the students noticed.

As soon as the room emptied, Lockhart casually opened the note and gave it a read.

It seemed that the children would be holding a meeting.... how intriguing.

Gilderoy cocked a speculative golden eyebrow.

Perhaps he should drop in?

4.3.6 Practical considerations

It was early evening by the time Abigail and Hermione finished with their perusal of the NEWT syllabus, and they were just reassembling the packet with a rustle of parchment after one final read-through, when the resident dragon looked up from his own personal reading.

"So, what did you figure out?" Harry asked. Of the three, he was the only one who had yet to read the syllabus, so he was still in the dark.

"Well, it looks like we'll need to shift our focus to practical casting," Abigail began, reaching up to massage her temples as she leaned back in her chair. "The syllabus was pretty clear that the practicals were the most important thing by far."

"So we wasted all that time with the book reviews?" the young dragon asked, crestfallen.

"Not wasted, exactly," his older friend clarified. "The theoretical portion is required for a passing mark, and our reviews covered enough for that... more than enough, in fact."

As it had turned out, not only had their earlier review sessions already covered all of the academic topics that might show up on the exam; it seemed she and Harry had cast a much wider net when choosing topics to cover than had the examination committee.

"It's just that the difference between an Acceptable and an Outstanding on the overall exam is entirely based on our performance on the practical portions," Abibgail continued. "In fact, truly outstanding scores on the practical can even be used to compensate for subpar performance on the written."

"I'm really glad I found out about it early," Hermione interjected in a cheerful tone. "Imagine how hard it would be to change gears if I'd only found out about that in seventh year!"

Abigail briefly shot her younger compatriot a dirty look at that gauche reminder of her own unenviable situation before shaking and returning to her explanation. "In any case, now that we know how heavily the practical skills are weighted, it only makes sense to focus heavily on practical spell casting for the time we have left."

Harry nodded agreeably.

"Now, we figure there are a few different options to take to really impress the examiners," Abigail continued, "but the best way I can think of, given the short time available and my own talents, is to practice the basics until I'm as good at them as I can get. I'm not likely to be able to learn some obscure or novel magic in time for the exams," she shook her head dismissively. "It's just not something I'm good at. Hard work and practice, though, those I can do."

The young dragon frowned thoughtfully as he processed his older friend's reasoning before slowly nodding. "That makes sense."

"I decided I'd pitch in too and get an early start!" Hermione volunteered cheerfully. "It's never too early!"

"So, what are we going to do, then?" Harry asked brightly as everyone stood up from the table and began gathering their effects. "And how can I help?"

4.3.7 Home, home on the range

It seemed that the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests were aptly named, Harry thought as he watched Abigail run through her latest set of exercises. At least, they would be if the effort his older friend was putting into her preparations was any indication.

After leaving the Hogwarts library, Harry and his friends had relocated to the Lair, specifically to the shooting range, which was ideally suited to the girls' choice of study methods.

Abigail currently occupied one of the lanes Harry had built for spell practice, where she was repeatedly and silently casting stunning spells at the targets downrange. As the regular flashes of red light illuminated the area, Harry thought back on his friend's explanation of her plan.

"The more you work your magic, the stronger it gets," Abigail had explained patiently as they had walked through the halls of Hogwarts on their way to the gate. "And it's not just a matter of improving skill... I mean, that's important too, and I'll be doing more than enough of that over the next few months," she had paused for a moment, grimacing at the thought, "but it's also a real improvement in the body's ability to generate and deliver magic. That means that the more I work my magic, the better my casting can be. I hadn't really gotten into this sort of thing before, but in hindsight, I probably should have been at it for years."

That had led directly to a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of various magical exercises, including Abigail's current choice: an endurance routine which called for casting a spell repeatedly until the caster was just shy of magical exhaustion, followed by a short recovery time, after which, it would start all over again.

In overall effect, it was rather like wind sprints, but for magical rather than physical prowess.

His friend had gone on to say that if a wizard or a witch was willing to put in the effort — as Abigail obviously was, the young dragon thought with a proud smile — he could improve himself greatly through such exercise. An average wizard might rise to be head and shoulders above his fellows through hard work; though there were practical limitations — for instance, such an average wizard would never challenge the likes of Dumbledore through exercise alone, not within a normal wizarding lifespan. It was a thoroughly practical and almost universally applicable approach to self-improvement, one well-suited to the current situation.

For this first practice session, Abigail had chosen a silently-cast stunner for two reasons. For one, the stunner was a common spell that she had thought would be an excellent specimen to polish up for the NEWTS, so the additional practice would be welcome. Second, it was a moderately draining spell, making it an excellent choice for the endurance exercises: strenuous enough to make for short sets, but not so arduous that she might risk true magical exhaustion, which could put her in a hospital bed for days.

And, speaking of short sets, it seemed the older girl had just reached the end of her endurance for this one, since she had holstered her wand and turned away from the range.

"Good work, Abigail!" the young dragon congratulated his friend brightly, prompting a tired but genuine smile from the winded girl as she walked over to the cheap folding chairs Harry had pulled together for them to use. He turned to his other companion, "Hermione, you're up next, right?"

The bushy-haired girl so addressed nodded in acknowledgement before groaning at the effort of rising from her own chair and getting back to work.

The group had been running through the exercise in shifts, since its structure — short, intense activity followed by a slightly longer resting period — was well-suited to such a schedule. For the first few rounds, Suze had even joined in on the fun, using her rifle to get in her customary range time for the day while enjoying the company, though she had finished her routine and returned to her woodworking practice nearly half an hour previous.

As Harry settled in to watch his human damsel, he was distracted by the rustling of fabric at his side. Turning his head towards the noise, he caught sight of Abigail in the process of removing her outer robe. The currently human-shaped young dragon pauseed for a moment to take in the oddly fascinating sight of the older girl's blouse riding up, exposing her midriff as it did so.

As she tugged her blouse back into place and set about folding her robe, Harry cocked his head curiously at his own reaction. He still wasn't sure why that sort of thing seemed so weirdly cool, but he eventually filed it away under the same mental heading as he did his memories of Suze at full not-gallop. He was sure he'd figure it out eventually.

While he had been lost in thought, Abigail had finished folding her robe and was now in the process of removing her Slytherin tie and undoing the top few buttons of her blouse. This seemed a bit unusual to the young dragon, who frowned contemplatively as the thought sparked a memory. He was fairly certain Mrs. McGonagall had said something about situations like this when he had first carried Hermione off... something about him not being in the same room when such things were going on lest he invade a girl's privacy, if he recalled.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked the older girl curiously.

It'd probably be best to make sure she remembered he was there, just in case.

"Trying to cool off," she said absently as she conjured a hair-tie and pulled her thick, sweat-dampened brown hair up and off her neck into a high ponytail. "Magic is hard work, you know."

Harry nodded at that, eyes glued to the movements induced by that change in posture, barely concealed by the thin, almost transparent material of her sweat-dampened white blouse before quickly shifting to the newly revealed curve of her neck as soon as those movements died down. He frowned thoughtfully.

That was another one for the weirdly cool file, he supposed.

"What are you doing?" came the voice of Hermione, sounding just short of shrill.

Harry dragged his eyes away from the pleasant scenery and turned to face his human damsel who was shooting a look at Abigail that might have been a glare were she not utterly exhausted from her exercises.

"Oh, hey Hermione! You're done already?" He frowned in concern. "Are you okay?"

Narrowing her eyes at the older girl in the room one last time, Hermione turned to face the young dragon.

"Yes, I'm fine," she snapped. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, you finished really early," Harry said defensively. "Abigail went more than twice as long on her last set, and I wanted to make sure you were okay! You didn't hurt yourself or anything, right?"

The bushy-haired girl sniffed at that and turned away.

"Don't worry about it, Harry," Abigail interjected. "Hermione's younger than I am, so she doesn't have the reserves to go for so long. She'll get there eventually. Now, get on with your own set; you're up next."

"Right!" Harry nodded emphatically, shelving the issue and turning to the range for his own exercise, which, while functionally similar to the endurance exercises the girls were doing in that he was casting large numbers of stunning spells downrange, was actually intended to improve his aim rather than his magical endurance.

Harry's endurance was already exceptional after all, but his control and accuracy remained perennial works-in-progress.

4.3.8 Low-key

"To answer your question," Abigail addressed Hermione conversationally as their mutual friend launched a withering storm of brilliant rods of burning red light downrange, "I was trying to cool off. This is hot work, you know, especially under multiple layers of wool."

"I suppose that makes sense," the bushy-haired girl allowed, grimacing at the thought of her own rather swampy condition under her woolen robes. "It certainly is hard work."

To be sure, Hermione knew magic was always hard work, in one way or another. That had been stressed enough in her classes, even in first year; though that hard work could be expended in any number of ways. For most routine wanded casting, the lion's share of the work went in during the spell-creation and wand-making phases, with the final caster supplying simply a bit of direction and a relatively tiny portion of energy to fuel those two highly optimized machines.

Endurance casting, on the other hand, made that hard work more immediately apparent than most, intended as it was to serve as a form of magical exercise. It strained the caster by design, much as physical exercise did for more mundane pursuits, and as a close analog of physical exercise, she supposed it stood to reason that endurance casting would have similar physiological consequences.

The caster's metabolism would struggle to kick out enough energy to support the heavy magical activity, and with that struggle would come the usual sorts of side-effects: elevated body temperature, both from the high metabolic activity and waste heat from imperfect casting; heavy breathing to supply enough oxygen to keep up; and eventually, exhaustion. In practical terms, it meant a lot of exertion, sweat, and heavy breathing, which the bushy-haired girl had to admit, were not the sort of things the normal Hogwarts winter uniform, a heavy woolen ensemble layered for warmth and modesty and topped with a full-length woolen cloak, was well-suited to accommodating.

Hermione sighed in exasperation, sneaking a sidelong glance at her friend while the older girl was fully absorbed by the admittedly formidable spectacle of Harry's furious barrage of spell-fire.

She probably shouldn't have been surprised that the thoroughly practical Abigail had dealt with the mismatch in a thoroughly practical manner, stripping off her outer robe, cardigan, and Slytherin tie in an attempt to stay cool, and unbuttoning the neck of her blouse to ease her breathing. It was a sensible choice, effective and comfortable, and Hermione could sympathize with her older friend. After all, she was no less uncomfortable; the only difference between her outfit and Abigail's was the color of the trim. For that reason, if nothing else, Hermione would have liked to follow suit, and she would have if not for one, not-so-minor complaint.

Why did Abigail have to look so bloody good like that? The bushy-haired girl thought with a scowl.

The change in outfit was a sensible choice, to be sure, but it was also a choice which had transformed Abigail from a much beloved, friendly figure into a rather intimidating one in the eyes of the just barely teenaged — and rather homely, in her own considered opinion — Hermione.

The healthy seventeen-year-old's exposed skin sported a healthy flush and glistened with a sheen of perspiration under the artificial lamps of the range. Her chest heaved and shifted as she breathed heavily while wearing only a soaked and nearly-transparent-in-places white blouse, a damp — and therefore more figure-hugging than usual — pleated gray Hogwarts uniform skirt, and a pair of black thigh-high stockings — woolen, in deference to the Scottish winter.

Hermione knew full well that she would never be able to make that ensemble look anywhere near as good as Abigail did. For that matter, she'd look utterly ridiculous if she tried, especially with Abigail right there to compare against.

So, as Harry finished up his own turn and Abigail once again stepped up to the line, the bushy-haired girl clutched her uncomfortably hot — yet comfortingly concealing — woolen robe closer to her chest and hunched in on herself defensively.

It was even worse when the older girl was moving around!

The older girl's heavy breathing and energetic arm movements combined to set certain portions of her anatomy — portions that were much more generous in their development than Hermione's own — moving in ways that she knew most boys would zero in on in a heartbeat.

Harry certainly noticed, and, just as certainly, Hermione noticed him noticing.

The bushy-haired girl scowled at the situation in general. It was thoroughly distressing, and the fact that Abigail was objectively better at the exercise simply added insult to injury!

Hermione's distress grew quickly as Harry spent the next few minutes avidly watching their mutual friend as she went through her exercise routine, until the bushy-haired girl finally reached her breaking point and quietly made her excuses to leave.

She had no desire to be compared unfavorably to the Abigail — especially not by Harry, of all people — and she refused to put herself in a position where she would be.

Now, if only it didn't feel like she was running away.

4.3.9 Taking care

Harry cocked his head in confusion as his human damsel walked out of the range and down the tunnel on her way to her private suite.

That had been awfully sudden.

The bushy-haired girl had claimed that she was too tired to keep up anymore, so she was going to bed. On the one hand, Harry supposed that had made sense; Hermione had been having more and more trouble keeping up with Abigail over the past few sets, after all. On the other hand, though she hadn't really seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep or anything.

He frowned thoughtfully as he reviewed his memory of recent events. To be honest, Hermione had seemed kind of agitated at the end there rather than tired.

The young dragon gave it a few moments' thought before shrugging it off and returning to the oddly riveting sight of Abigail bouncing through the remainder of her exercise routine.

Hermione was a smart girl, and if she said she was just tired, then he'd take her at her word. Though, speaking of being tired, it seemed Abigail had reached the end of her rope once again.

"Good work, Abigail!" the currently human-shaped young dragon congratulated his friend warmly, prompting a beautiful, if very tired, smile from the young woman in return... a smile which quickly shifted to a concerned frown.

"Where'd Hermione go?" the seventh-year girl asked her friend.

"She left a couple minutes ago," Harry answered. "Said she was too tired to do another set."

That prompted an exhausted nod of acknowledgement from the young woman who then slumped down in her chair as Harry stepped up gamely for yet another turn, sending a veritable hail of brilliantly glowing red bolts of magic racing downrange. Now that he had put some more work into his stunning charm, Harry no longer had to concentrate quite so hard on casting successfully as he had to during that embarrassing duel during the previous term, which allowed his mind to wander somewhat even as he practiced.

Closest to mind was a topic which had played a surprisingly prominent role in his recent meeting with Madame Marchbanks, his continuing haphazard inquiries into the nature and behavior of magic. While the meeting had focused heavily on his work with runes to create that neat-looking but otherwise useless tree thing, the elderly witch had not restricted her recommendation to that topic alone. Rather, she had promoted the spirit of inquiry in general, and Harry had collected a long and forever-growing list of things he was curious about.

Perhaps he ought to pursue some of them, as well?

There was that stamped-rune method he'd come up with that needed refining. That'd be a good place to start, but there was also the magic-pumped laser for which he had originally developed it... as well as the holographic projector he had originally set out to make, of course. The young dragon frowned thoughtfully as he considered that. Based on how much trouble he'd had so far, that promised to be a long slog of a project.

It might be better to save that one for later.

There was his magic-to-electricity idea that'd hit a snare a few months back. He was still trying to come up with a new lead on that. The young dragon unconsciously shrugged at the thought, accidentally throwing off his aim even more than usual on the next casting. He didn't have anything right now, but it was something to keep in mind. There was also that question that'd come to mind at the conclusion of his talk with Donald all those months ago which was still hanging in the back of his head alongside half a dozen other odds and ends.

Things were really starting to pile up in there, to be honest.

Harry nodded to himself as he surveyed the devastating aftermath of his target practice. He probably ought to start up something to keep track of it all... maybe some notebooks? Those seemed to work pretty well for Hermione. The human-shaped dragon stepped back to take another break as the splintered remains of the enchanted targets slowly began to pull themselves back together, their wooden forms rather less resilient to the amount of magic he could throw downrange than an equivalently-sized magical person.

For now, though, Harry thought with a sigh, he really ought to seek out some advice on how to cast more accurately. Sure, he'd hit the targets eventually, but most of his magic had still expended itself on the increasingly pockmarked stone wall at the end of the range... another unacceptable performance.

Who was the best person to ask, though?

Harry frowned thoughtfully, the expression going unnoticed by Abigail, who had slumped over in her chair against the wall, eyes closed and still slowly catching her breath.

Much as he respected the man's talents, Harry's usual go-to, Mr. Snape, was probably not the best choice. In his stories, Mr. Snape seemed to rely on subterfuge to get close enough that he couldn't really miss; spell accuracy wasn't strictly speaking in the potions master's purview.

On the other hand, Harry's other go-to, the goblins, didn't really fit either. They were really good at shooting stuff accurately, but as the young dragon had learned recently much to his own embarrassment, accuracy with firearms and accuracy with wands were two entirely different animals.

Harry supposed that left the other professors to consider.

Mr. Dumbledore would probably be able to help. The elderly wizard was pretty good at pretty much everything, but he was really busy most of the time, so that might be a problem. He could barely find time to oversee Harry's alchemy lessons every month or so; trying to schedule something else would likely be a nightmare.

Harry tapped his currently human-shaped chin thoughtfully as he ran through the rest of his friends, assessing each in turn.

To be honest, Mr. Flitwick was probably the best choice, now that he thought about it. The young dragon nodded. The half-goblin was a really good duelist, so he'd know all about spell accuracy and speed, and he was a really good teacher, so he'd probably know how to teach it too, unlike Professor Lockhart.

Plus, there was another one of those magic-related questions — the kind Madame Marchbanks had been talking about — that he'd been meaning to look into ever since that duel with the annoying blond kid. Since it was a question about a charm, the resident Charms master would probably be the best choice to answer it, too.

Harry nodded decisively. That'd be the way to go then.

His train of thought completed; the young dragon turned his attention back to his surroundings only to realize that the room had been unusually quiet for the past several minutes. He turned to Abigail and found her asleep, draped over her chair in an undignified sprawl.

The young dragon-in-human-form cocked a brow in surprise. She must have been more tired than he'd thought.

"Abigail?" he called quietly, attempting to wake her gently, only to be answered by a loud, decidedly unladylike snore.

"Huh," Harry frowned before gently nudging her shoulder. His only response was a slight shift and a sleepy grumble.

Well, she had been working hard, so he supposed she had earned a nap, the young dragon thought; though that chair looked really uncomfortable.

He considered the situation for a moment before nodding decisively.

Bending to pick up the sleeping girl as gently as he could manage, Harry carried her out of the practice range and down the hall, gently depositing her on one of the couches in the main room of the Lair and tucking her in with a blanket to stave off the winter chill. Straightening, the young dragon surveyed the situation and nodded in satisfaction; now, she'd be able to finish her nap comfortably.

"Well, that's sorted," he murmured even as he absently reached down to brush a stray lock of Abigail's chestnut hair away from her sleeping face. It was pretty obvious his friend was going to be out of it for a while.

"Now, what should I do?"

Looking about at the chaotic mess that comprised the living quarters of the Lair for inspiration, it didn't take long for him to catch sight of a pile of blank notepads still half-contained within their plastic packaging — extras left over from his attempt to get some work done during his multi-weekend stakeout at the end of the previous term — which reminded him of his earlier idea to make a research notebook.

That'd do nicely!

Picking up one of the notepads and a spare pen, he settled down in one of the nearby chairs after a quick stop to stoke the fire in the Rayburn; he'd noticed Abigail shivering in her sleep as the winter wind picked up and occasionally managed to find its way in through the Lair entrance to lick at her still sweat-damp skin. Then he got down to the business of recording some of his plans for future research projects while keeping watch over his sleeping friend.

The notepad would be more than half-full by the time he set it aside for the day.

Later in the evening when the young dragon looked back on the day, he concluded that it was time well-spent. Neither he nor Abigail had gotten as much done as they had hoped, but Harry did learn that looking after his exhausted friend for the afternoon had been surprisingly rewarding.

Abigail's beaming smile when she had awakened and realized what he had done had been even more so.

4.3.10 On the nature of conjuration

Late afternoon saw Hogwarts' resident dragon walked purposefully through the halls of a portion of the castle he didn't often visit. The Ravenclaw dormitories were nearby, but Harry didn't actually know any of the Ravens very well. Of the current crop, he was perhaps most familiar with Luna Lovegood, of whom he was rather unfond, and Su Li, who had proven to be a friendly and capable lab partner in potions since the beginning of the current term.

Neither had given him cause to visit the Ravenclaw tower so far, and that state of affairs had not changed. Instead, Harry's current destination was Mr. Flitwick's office. Harry had some questions, and he rather hoped the diminutive half-goblin professor would be able to answer them for him.

Arriving at the charms master's office, the young dragon in human guise knocked gently, "Um… Professor, are you there?"

"Come in!" the diminutive teacher welcomed him gladly. "Come in, take a seat. What brings you here, Mr. Potter? You do not call on me very often, my young friend."

"Well, it's a couple things really," Harry began. "Um, first, you remember how much trouble I had actually hitting anything back during that dueling club thingy?"

"Indeed, I do, Mr. Potter," the half-goblin said with a nod.

"Well, I've been trying to practice and get better," the young dragon told his professor, "but it's real slow going, and I was hoping you had some tips on how to do better."

"I see," Flitwick said. "Firstly, I must congratulate you on your commitment to self-improvement, Mr. Potter. Such is always a worthy goal! Unfortunately, I can only advise that you keep practicing; it really is the only way to improve, I am afraid. Do not be discouraged, everyone is bad at aiming a wand when they first start."

"Oh," Harry said, sounding quite crestfallen. "There's no tips or anything then?"

"I suppose you might try reducing your wand movements to a minimum," the diminutive professor said after a moment's consideration. "Keep the necessary gestures as small as you can make them. The lion's share of inaccuracy with a wand comes from the wand movements themselves, after all. Oh, and start with piercing charms, they are an excellent way to practice your timing. That final horizontal sweep is tricky to aim properly, and if you can get that right, other charms will be much simpler by comparison."

"Thanks, I'll try that, then!" the young Potter sounded much reassured.

"I am glad to have helped, Mr. Potter," Flitwick said with a smile. "And might I inquire as to your other question?"

"Oh, right!" the currently human-shaped dragon acknowledged. "I had some questions about a charm I saw at the dueling club. It called snakes…"

"Ah, serpensortia, I am familiar with the charm." Flitwick said. "It summons one or more snakes which will then follow the caster's commands. Not terribly useful in real combat because commanding the snakes requires concentration from the caster, but good showmanship for the stage."

"Well, I was wondering; does it conjure a snake or pull it from somewhere else?" Harry asked.

"I… I must admit that I am not entirely certain," the small man frowned. "As far as I know that family of spells was always assumed to be a branch of conjuration; though I don't know if anyone has had cause to ask that particular question before," Flitwick replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, the summoned snakes spoke parseltongue, and I'm pretty sure that annoying blond kid doesn't know how to speak it," Harry explained. "I thought conjurations could only do what the conjurer told them to do, and this one couldn't tell it how to speak parseltongue. If it were pulled from somewhere else though, I'd have thought it would have left a body when I killed it, and it didn't. So, I'm not sure which one it was."

"That is an intriguing bit of evidence, Mr. Potter, evidence which calls into question the accepted assumptions about that family of charms, as you have so ably pointed out," Flitwick said thoughtfully as he processed the new information. "I can see why the situation wasn't encountered before. No competent caster world ever consider using that charm against a parselmouth if they didn't also share the gift; it would be a terrible tactical decision. Yet that is the only situation that would call the accepted theories into question."

"Hmm," The diminutive charms professor trailed off for a moment as he paused in consideration before he continued, his voice swelling with excitement. "I do believe you have hit upon some new ground, Mr. Potter, new and unexplored territory! There's only one thing to be done," the half-goblin paused dramatically.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"We will have to find out!"

"How do we do that?"

"We must devise an experiment!" Flitwick explained enthusiastically. "That is, we will attempt to create a scenario from the outcome of which we can draw a certain conclusion regarding the nature of the charm. Our current observations are inconclusive because they could support either option; thus, our experiment should be designed such that the results will eliminate the confusion."

"So, we want to design something so we can tell for sure whether the snake was conjured or summoned?" Harry confirmed.

"That is one way to go about it," the half-goblin nodded enthusiastically.

"So how would we do that?"

"Why don't you work out an experimental design and then bring it back to me?" the small teacher proposed. "Then we will go over it. I will help you refine it, and once we have a good one, you will carry it out. It will be a good exercise for you; the ability to learn through experimentation is an important skill in life."

"Okay!"

4.3.11 A teacher's musings

The charms master practically vibrated with glee as Harry Potter left his office. The diminutive man's expression was filled with a burning zeal which would have sent his lazier students running for the hills had they beheld it. His young student was only halfway through his second year, yet he was already producing research ideas like this one! To be sure, it was an idea the young dragon had stumbled upon rather than sought out, but he had been observant enough to see something was off about the situation and, more importantly, was curious enough to ask about it!

Filius knew perfectly well that that spark of curiosity, more than anything else, was the mark of a great magical researcher. Far too many wizards, upon seeing something strange or unexpected were all too willing to simply dismiss it as 'magic' and inquire no further. He had even immediately grasped the concept of testing through experimentation — another concept that was depressingly rare in the magical world.

That essential curiosity, when taken in combination with the young dragon's raw intelligence, literally inhuman magical endurance, and dogged determination, made the boy's potential for greatness hard to miss. Only slightly less obvious was the potential for his own career as one of that boy's mentors.

As for the specific question the dragon had posed, it was the sort of thing that was practically made for a mastery. It was a new approach to a topic the field was already reasonably familiar with, the topic met the novelty requirements while remaining prosaic enough not to be dismissed out of hand by the more… staid members of the profession. All told, it was an excellent choice for an upcoming young researcher's debut.

Properly executed — and Filius would ensure it was properly executed, by hook or by crook — such an investigation could see the boy through to a charms mastery before he sat his OWLs! He could be the mentor of the youngest charms master in recorded history! Even aside from the potential for academic advancement, Flitwick was looking forward to seeing what the work would produce — success or failure, it was sure to be fascinating.

The half-goblin chuckled, thinking back on that conversation with Severus, several years previous. Filius had made a teasing comment regarding the man's uncharacteristic enthusiasm regarding the young dragon's bio-alchemy. At the time, his disagreeable colleague had issued a challenge to wait and see how enthusiastic he was when the boy revolutionized Flitwick's own field.

Admittedly, the situation wasn't yet to that point, but it was an exhilarating experience even now, in its admittedly humble beginnings. Though, Flitwick had to admit, at least some of that was simply his normal enthusiasm bleeding through. He was an educator at heart, and teaching was what got him up in the morning. Yet after seeing how Severus had fared over the intervening years… well, the master of charms suspected he was in for interesting times to come. The half-goblin bared his slightly sharpened teeth in a vicious-looking smile at the thought.

They promised to be interesting times, and he was looking forward to every minute.

4.3.12 Unfair comparisons

Late afternoon at the Lair found Hermione sitting in her favorite chair on the library mezzanine, taking a moment to sit back from her reading and stretch. It had been a productive afternoon so far, despite the muted sounds of spell-fire that still echoed down the tunnel from the shooting range.

Harry was yet again working on his practical casting skills alongside Abigail. Those sessions had been a frequent occurrence over the past week; though ever since that first evening, Hermione had begged off on joining in. That first taste had been all Hermione needed to decide that Abigail's study plan wasn't to her liking.

However, that wasn't to say the studious girl had given up on her early preparations for the NEWTs. Hermione smiled as she looked down at the arcane tome on the table before her and at the half-full notebook of handwritten notes that lay open beside it. She had simply chosen to take a different tack, one more suited to her own talents.

After all, it was never too early to start preparing, not in Hermione's books. And while it was true that she would also have to sit the OWLs long before the NEWTs came into the picture, if she prepared properly for the NEWTs, then the OWLs ought to be simple enough. Classes usually built up to harder things over time, so she figured that was a safe bet, so prepare she would... if in her own way.

Despite her choice to go her own way, Hermione fully supported the conclusion Abigail had drawn, namely that practical skills were the name of the game for the NEWTs. It was the reason she had initially joined in for that first practice session; Hermione sighed. It had made good sense at the time, and she had thought it would be nice to spend more time with her friends.

The bushy-haired girl scowled as she thought back on that first session. It had made sense, before the harsh reality of the situation had kicked in.

Abigail had chosen to work on perfecting her ability to use the standard spell curriculum, a choice which involved a great deal of thoroughly exhausting practice. Hermione had agreed with her choice; for that matter, she still did. It was the right choice for Abigail's situation. The older girl was already halfway through her seventh year, and there was simply no time to take any other, more leisurely, approach, not with any expectation of success.

However, the right choice for Abigail had quickly proven itself entirely unsuitable for Hermione.

The bushy-haired girl scowled. As a normal witch in her second year of schooling, Hermione simply could not keep up with the harsh pace the older girl had set. Her body and magic were not developed enough to handle the strain, and she knew of no way to rush that sort of thing along, no matter how much she might wish otherwise. She'd quickly been left behind.

Of course, the bushy-haired girl couldn't find it within herself to blame her friends for not slowing down to let her keep pace, not that she had given them a chance to offer. Abigail was on a tight schedule for the approaching exams, and quite frankly the bookish second-year student would never forgive herself if she was responsible for holding her friends back from being all they could be. She knew it wasn't their fault she couldn't keep up.

Hermione sighed ruefully. That knowledge did nothing to make her feel better about the situation.

Being outperformed by Harry was nothing new for the bushy-haired girl; by this point, she was already well-used to it. Harry was so absurdly overpowered that he spent most of his time as a massive super-dragon because he couldn't manage to contain himself into a human shape. Hermione couldn't find it within herself to feel bad about coming in second-best to that. It would be like feeling inadequate about being shorter than a mountain; it simply wasn't a meaningful comparison.

Third-best was an altogether different matter.

Unlike the walking amalgamation of condensed absurdity that was Harry Potter, Abigail was an ostensibly normal witch, just like Hermione herself. The bushy-haired girl didn't have a ready excuse for why she couldn't keep pace... not one that she could convince herself with, anyway. It was true that her older friend had five full years of magical training and physical development on the just barely teenaged girl, and thus she couldn't reasonably be expected to keep up with that kind of disadvantage. Hermione knew that, and it was almost convincing enough... almost, but not quite.

And in this case, that "not quite" meant that the bushy-haired girl also knew that excuse was just that: an excuse.

As far as Hermione was concerned, magic was an intellectual pursuit; it was something to be studied. To her mind, that meant she was supposed to be able to keep up with people years ahead of her, just like she always had before. Hermione knew she wasn't the pretty girl, not with her hair and teeth; she knew she wasn't the athletic girl, as she'd always preferred reading to sports; and she certainly knew she would never be the popular girl, because that just wasn't going to happen; but she'd be damned before she gave up on being the smart girl!

That was her thing, and no one was going to take it away from her!

So, after that first discouraging practice, Hermione had retreated to her room to rethink her strategy and search out another path, one better suited to her own strengths. It was a search which had led to her current situation, holed up in the library, safe with her books.

It was a practical decision on her part, a strategic choice to aimed at getting maximal return on her investment.

It certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with a desire to escape the simmering feelings of inadequacy stemming from her significantly older friend's impressive performance and well-developed… ah, talents.

It had not one thing to do with that.

Honest.

In any case, rather than following in Abigail's footsteps and banking on her sheer competence with the standard spells to impress the examination committee, Hermione had decided to take a rather different tack.

Variety.

Oh, she had kept up some of her earlier routine. Her morning target practice with Harry had continued mostly unchanged, both because he had insisted and because she enjoyed spending time with her friend. The only difference was a recent switch from stunners to piercing spells for some reason he hadn't bothered to share. It had been an odd change, but Hermione hadn't been terribly bothered by it. Accuracy practice was accuracy practice, as far as she could tell, and since Abigail wasn't there in the mornings for the younger girl to compare herself to, Hermione didn't have any compelling reason to kick up a fuss.

For the rest, though, she would dedicate her time to learning as many spells as she could, so that when the time came for her NEWT practicals, she would overwhelm the examiners with her spectacular versatility.

It had seemed a decent choice. Hermione was not blessed with spectacular magical power as Harry was, nor was she particularly enamored of the idea of putting as much sweat into things as Abigail seemed to prefer. Rather, she was a smart girl with a prodigious memory who loved to read, and those were traits that fitted her chosen course perfectly.

And, if that course led to her spending a great deal of time researching obscure magics among her beloved, comforting, and ever reassuring books, rather than working hard, sweating, and putting herself in a position to stack up unfavorably against a girl five years her senior, then so much the better.

At the moment, Hermione was working her way through the first-year curriculum, spell by spell, looking up any and every equivalent she could find within the wealth of written references Harry had managed to accumulate. Along the way, she had learned twenty-seven distinct divination spells designed to help search through written material within a specified spatial volume, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Using those, she had managed to locate four-hundred and fifty-seven distinct spells designed to perform roughly the same function as the basic light spell, the first one they had learned during the previous year.

Not bad for a week's worth of work.

So far, Hermione had successfully learned to cast eighty-five of them, and she fully intended to master them all. They were low-impact, easy to cast spells, but, at the end of the day, the bushy-haired girl figured the sheer breadth of her repertoire would have to count for something. After this, she would move on to the basic levitation charm, then to other basic utility charms, and so on and so forth, so that, by the time NEWTs rolled around in five and a half more years, her range would be second to none.

Bending back to her work, the budding young witch smiled at the prospect. She was going to learn a tremendous amount of magic; she was certain she would enjoy the process thoroughly; and the end results would definitely be more impressive than Abigail's excellent grasp of the basics.

In the face of that, what did it matter if her older friend was prettier than she was? the bushy-haired girl thought with a scowl. She was fine with that.

Honest.

4.3.13 Clandestine

"That's everyone," a sixth-year Gryffindor boy said, his firm voice ringing sharply in the dusty, normally abandoned classroom. He shot a hard look at a similarly aged boy in the blue and bronze trim of Ravenclaw. "Now I think it's time you come clean about just what's going on with our project."

"Yeah! What did you do with our money?" another boy piped up angrily. "We gave you all that so we could get rid of Lockhart and the girls would go back to paying attention to us, but he's still here, and the girls are still all a-flutter about the blond pillock!"

A cacophony of similar demands arose from the rest of the room. There were perhaps two dozen boys in attendance, hailing from every House but Slytherin. The age cohorts were not quite so evenly represented, as not a single boy there was younger than a fourteen.

"As you all know, I hired a private investigator from Knockturn over the winter break to investigate Professor Lockhart's background," the sixth year Ravenclaw addressed the inquisition.

"Yeah, yeah, we know! You told us that last time," came an annoyed demand. "Why did you call this meeting, if that's all you have to say?"

"I'm getting to it!" the Ravenclaw growled defensively. "Anyway, the investigator got back to me, and he found something! He suspects Lockhart used mind magic on people to cover something up!"

The room went silent for a beat.

"That's it?" the first Gryffindor said incredulously. "You wasted all our money on that?"

"It was not wasted," the Ravenclaw protested, sounding a little nervous in the face of an increasingly hostile crowd. "He thought it was important enough to forward a copy of this to Law Enforcement!"

He brandished a small stack of parchment as if it were a talisman to fend off the ire of his fellows.

"Let me see that," an older Hufflepuff growled, stepping up to rip the parchment out of his hands. His fellows crowded around to see for themselves as he read it. The room fell silent again for a few minutes, broken only by the rustle of parchment.

"I guess that's something, at least," he acknowledged grudgingly, his compatriots nodded in reluctant agreement.

"Do you mind if I take a look at that?" came a question from someone sitting quietly at a desk near the door.

"Huh? Oh, sure," the Hufflepuff said agreeably, absently handing the report off. "Now, what else do we need to do? I don't want my investment to go to waste."

"Yeah, that looked really suspicious," a younger Ravenclaw piped up. "Maybe we should tell the Headmaster?"

"No!" the Ravenclaw who had hatched the scheme interrupted vociferously. "We just need to wait for the DMLE to do its thing. I don't even want to think about how the staff would react to this. It'd be one thing if we had something solid, but just suspicions? Not happening!"

When one of his year-mates gave him a narrow-eyed look of suspicion, he hurriedly elaborated. "We hired a private eye to dig into the past of one of our teachers looking for something to get him fired. How do you think Snape would react to that?"

There was a round of reluctant nodding. Snape would make their lives unutterably miserable for that if he found out, if for no other reason than preemptive revenge for the possibility that they might do it to him in the future. To be honest, they couldn't even really blame him.

Merlin knew they'd thought about doing it often enough.

"Just let it run its course, it'll work out," the Ravenclaw assured his fellows. "And don't tell any of the staff, especially not Lockhart."

"It had better work out," the seventh year Hufflepuff warned him darkly, "or it'll be on your head."

The affirmative murmur throughout the room was not reassuring to the sixth year Ravenclaw who had arranged it all, and he sat quietly until the last of his co-conspirators filed out of the room, before letting out an explosive sigh.

"It had better turn out, or my seventh year is going to be mightily unpleasant."

"Do you really think they'll hold that much of a grudge?" the person sitting near the door asked curiously.

"At the price we paid?" the sixth year scoffed. "You bet your arse they will!"

"I see," blond hair bobbed as the person nodded agreeably. "Well, I suppose you'll just need to hope for the best then. Best of luck to you!"

"Thanks," the sixth year said. "Um, can you pass me the…"

"Oh, certainly!" he handed the investigative report back to the teenager. "There you go. Have a nice day!"

The Ravenclaw nodded distractedly as he ambled out of the room.

"You too, Professor."

4.3.14 Ruminations

It was a troubling development, Gilderoy Lockhart thought, still under his concealment charm.

An advanced variant of the common notice-me-not charm, his current choice induced a strong sense of 'there's nothing out of place here' in anyone caught within the area it affected. It was a common tool in the obliviator's toolbox, and it was a particular favorite of Lockhart's. It did not prevent others from noticing the caster, a common property of other methods which made navigating crowds quite difficult. Rather, it made the caster seem completely unremarkable.

As he listened to the retreating steps of his student echoing in the deserted hallway, Gilderoy mused on the implications of what he had just learned. He hadn't known what to expect going in, but he had never anticipated finding this.

To think, two dozen of his students had banded together in the interest of getting him fired, not because of his actions, not because they thought he was a poor teacher, but rather because the girls they were interested in apparently had crushes on him rather than the boys their age! Lockhart scoffed at the very idea. He certainly hadn't done anything to encourage that sort of thing; they were children, for crying out loud, and his students besides!

The very idea...

Gilderoy shook his head in disgust. And the price they had paid! The blond dandy couldn't help whistling at the memory of the price quoted on that cover letter. His students had pulled that much together? For this? He didn't know whether to be impressed or appalled.

Had he been that much of a horn-dog at that age?

Blond locks swayed as the young professor dismissed that line of speculation. Whether he had been or not, he certainly had never hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on one of his professors. That was a new one in his experience. The real irony was that they could have just waited a few months and the problem would have fixed itself! Now there were going to be all sorts of problems to deal with.

Impatient brats.

Lockhart knew that the case against him, as presented in the report he had read, was far from airtight. There were too many gaps and alternate explanations for it to carry weight in court. Despite that, the former obliviator couldn't help but admire the unnamed private eye's work. The man had managed to make something out of one of Gilderoy's own cover-ups, and he had some idea of just how difficult that sort of thing was.

The inconsistencies the man had latched onto were ones the former obliviator had left deliberately. To an experienced investigator, a perfectly uniform story screamed of manipulation: witness accounts were always a little bit spotty, and perfect agreement meant that they had rehearsed the story. Still, for the as-yet-unnamed private eye to have taken those deliberately spread crumbs and put together as much of the story as he had was a remarkable feat.

The man had accomplished something Lockhart would never have thought possible, and he didn't know whether he wanted to shake the man's hand in congratulations for his remarkable feat or punch him in the face for all the trouble that feat might cause him.

Speaking of trouble, the blond former obliviator now had to reconsider other potential outcomes that he had previously deemed impossible. The evidence presented wasn't enough for a conviction, but it was probably enough to spark official interest. What if someone at the DMLE could dig up more evidence he hadn't considered? Gilderoy was confident in his skills, but what if that confidence was misplaced?

That eventuality could get very messy, very quickly.

The blond man frowned. He had considered many times the possibility that his lies might be found out, that the elaborate house of cards might come tumbling down. In doing so, he had thought through the measures he would have to take should he be discovered. They were measures he did not like.

Not at all.

His dislike of those measures was, in fact, the main reason behind his attempt to become Harry Potter's mentor rather than staying his previous course and running the risk of discovery by attempting to take credit for any other, more prominent, heroic incidents. The life of a fugitive was not a life that Gilderoy Lockhart wanted to live, but the life of a prisoner appealed to him even less. Now, both possibilities seemed all too real.

The footsteps of his students had long-since faded, and the former obliviator abruptly stood up, absently dispelling his concealment charm as he walked toward the door. He would have to make some preparations, he mused as he left the classroom. If the worst happened, having a few things in place beforehand would be invaluable; they might be the difference between freedom and captivity, or possibly between life and death.

Given the nature of Azkaban, the frigid, demon-infested hellhole that wizarding Britain used as a prison, Gilderoy wasn't entirely sure which was the more terrifying prospect.

For now, Gilderoy would quietly prepare while laying low. It could just blow over with no further issue, after all. If so, the only cost would be a bit of time.

A bit of wasted time he could live with. Azkaban he could not.

What to do in that case?

If the DMLE did manage to find something substantial, they'd send aurors. His eyes narrowed as he ran the scenario in his head. Given the location, they'd likely try to disguise it as something else... something innocuous, both to avoid panic among the children and maintain control of the Ministry's public image. Lockhart nodded as he rouded the corner and entered the main stairwell.

Yes, that was how he would have played it, were he in their position.

A Ministry official, probably from Education, would quietly request a meeting played off as some bureaucratic nothing in front of the children. When the time came, he would come accompanied by a few plainclothes aurors to make the arrest. Aurors rather than normal law enforcement would be overkill, to be sure, but they'd want to take him quietly, and that meant overwhelming force to make sure he couldn't kick up a fuss. With him in custody and safely sequestered, the Ministry would have time to set the propaganda machine running to cover the its collective arse well before the trial. It would let them mitigate the impact of the scandal that would come from arresting a teacher they'd presumably vetted before hiring.

The blond dandy's expression hardened as he considered his options. At least he didn't have to worry about being disappeared rather than tried, cold comfort that it was. He was facing the Ministry, not the oligarchs; they'd come for him with officers rather than assassins. Dumbledore's reforms had guaranteed that much, at least. Imprisonment would still mean Azkaban, though, and he shuddered at the thought of being locked in that place. In all honesty, the assassins might well be the kinder option. They were certainly the less frightening one.

At least assassins had the basic decency kill you, rather than give you to the dementors.

As he opened the door to his office and made his way to the attached apartment suite, Gilderoy shivered before deliberately shaking his head and pasting on his usual smile, attempting to dismiss the horrifying train of thought. If worse came to worst, he would just have to ensure he was ready to strike first, without hesitation. He'd only have one narrow window of opportunity.

He'd have to make it count.
 
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Section 4.4 - Conclusion of the hunt
4.4 Conclusion of the hunt

4.4.1 Living Vasili's Dream

It was an uncharacteristically sunny morning on the streets of London, not that anyone could tell deep within the halls of Gringotts, the subterranean nature of which left conditions inside nearly constant no matter the outside weather. Severus Snape walked through the now-familiar halls on the way to his business partner's office with purpose in his step. Along the way, he garnered subtle nods of acknowledgement from the guards, a common enough sight by now not to warrant further challenge beyond the one he had already gone through in the lobby.

"Aha! Master Snape come in! Come in, do," Crackjaw Slackhammer greeted his grumpier than usual acquaintance in his customary manner as the man appeared at his office door in a billowing cloud of dark robes. The potions master grunted a wordless acknowledgement and took his usual seat.

"Your communication indicated a certain interest in establishing contact with the Confederacy quite uncommonly quickly," the dapper goblin continued. "We at Gringotts do have some history of dealings with our neighbors across the Atlantic, so we may be able to be of assistance. Might I inquire as to your motives? Our approach will likely depend on your goals."

The potions master nodded and answered with a question of his own. "Has my colleague kept you apprised of our efforts with the nexus project?"

"Master Flitwick has done so, indeed," Slackhammer confirmed, taking his usual beverage from the tray his aide had brought unbidden. "Though I must admit I had been under the impression that there was much to be done in that vein on this side of the Atlantic before you would require travel abroad. This seems an oddly hasty scheduling choice."

"If only we had been so lucky," Snape sighed, pausing to take a sip of his tea. He had forgone his customary whiskey on account of the morning hour. "Unfortunately, our itinerary has been set by my colleague, Sybil Trelawney, who was quite insistent that the next site must be one located within the Confederacy's territory. I had hoped for at least two or three years to prepare but needs must."

International travel in the wizarding world was a hit-or-miss proposition. Unlike the non-magical world, in which diplomatic relations within the international community were generally sufficient to make such travel only moderately risky — downright safe, in many cases — diplomatic relations within the international magical community were… unreliable, to use an almost unreasonably charitable term.

'Nonexistent' would be a much more generally accurate assessment.

In the magical world, the traveler was directly and solely responsible for his own wellbeing while traveling, not only in obtaining the usual food and lodging, but also in navigating the various pitfalls of the foreign societies and governments he encountered along the way. As a rule there were no embassies or treaties to smooth over misunderstandings or serve as a safe haven, so international travel in the magical world was generally a major undertaking for the traveler, normally involving months or even years of preparation, much of which was spent cultivating local contacts via correspondence and third-party introduction to serve as a safety net and rudimentary intelligence network to help avoid any local unpleasantness.

A few months of preparation for a first visit to a new polity was a very tight schedule, indeed.

"I see," the dapper goblin nodded, stroking his pointed chin thoughtfully as he considered the issue. He was familiar with the name Trelawney. When a seeress set a deadline, it was generally best not to quibble about inconvenience; the alternative was usually much worse. "I am given to understand that such activities are rather noticeable?"

"To say the least," the potions master confirmed. "Our last attempt at Stonehenge was well contained, but the event at Avebury was apparent to anyone with functioning magical senses. Given Sybil's insistence, I rather expect this one to have more in common with Avebury than with Stonehenge."

Slackhammer nodded, acknowledging the point. "In that case, I would suggest approaching the Grand Council directly and presenting your case openly. If you are going to cause such a kerfuffle within their territory, it would be best to explain beforehand."

"So, a formal approach is preferable to secrecy, then?" the dark man asked.

"For the Confederacy, certainly," Slackhammer confirmed. "They tend to be reasonable when approached properly, yet quite deadly when riled. A stealthy approach would likely trigger a preemptively lethal response, given their ongoing conflict with their southern neighbors."

"In that case, would Gringotts be willing to provide us with an introduction?" Severus requested. "You mentioned already-established ties."

"We do have some such ties, mostly based in mutually profitable trade, though we have also recently opened up something of a joint humanitarian venture. Gringotts would certainly be willing to provide an introduction in aid of your eminently necessary cause," the goblin affirmed. "Where is the artifact located? It would be best to curry support for your efforts among the tribes closest to the area in question beforehand. My own contacts are mostly centered around the Great Lakes, where we have been resettling the unfortunates Mr. Potter's railroad has been helpfully shipping partway to Glasgow, but various of my colleagues do business all across the continent."

"I believe it to be near the Pacific coast, in the muggle provice of British Columbia," the sallow-faced man said, retrieving a map from his pocket with the appropriate location marked in red.

Slackhammer examined the chart and nodded agreeably. "The Salish, then... I know just the gob to approach." He turned back to his guest with a serious look, "Master Snape, have you considered the logistics of this venture?"

"How so?" the potions master asked.

"I am given to understand that Mr. Potter's presence is critical to dealing with these devices," the dapper goblin stated. "Am I correct in that understanding?"

"You are," Snape confirmed.

"Have you worked out a method to convey him to your final destination?" Slackhammer asked.

"My tentative plan was to book passage on a non-magical aircraft to cross the ocean and then secure local ground transportation to take us to our destination," the dour man explained.

"And how did you plan to feed Mr. Potter along the way?" the goblin asked delicately.

"I had intended to work with you to arrange a location and supply dump near our final destination. He would then be able to eat upon our arrival." Snape said, before revising his statement on seeing the dapper goblin wince. "I take it that is unfeasible?"

"I believe you are underestimating the distances involved, Master Snape," Slackhammer explained. "A meeting with the Great Council will take place at the Great Longhouse, located on the southern shore of Lake Erie, thus, you will be flying into Erie, Pennsylvania. It will be easy enough to arrange to feed Mr. Potter during your time with the Great Council, but you will be traveling overland nearly three thousand miles. Using the methods available, essentially the non-magical highway system, that means nearly three days of continuous travel. Assuming you stop to sleep, that will stretch the time to the better part of a week."

The potions master scowled at Slackhammer's assessment. "I do not look forward to attempting to power them, but would it be possible to secure portkeys for the domestic portion of the travel?"

"Quite impossible, I am afraid," the dapper goblin immediately denied. "All forms of magical travel are heavily restricted within the Confederacy due to their ongoing hostilities with the Aztec Empire to the south, portkeys included. In fact, their entire territory is warded against all forms of magical teleportation."

"How did they manage that?" Snape raised a dark eyebrow in surprise. "An effective ward over such a massive territory would be a monumental undertaking."

"Not quite so much as one might think, in fact," the goblin explained. "The tribes were quite clever in their approach. Rather than using the traditional warding methods which block magical teleportation, they simply warded in such a way as to actively disrupt it. One is not prevented from apparating or portkeying within Confederacy territory, the wards simply disrupt the process sufficiently to ensure that any such attempts are messily fatal. The warders tell me that it is much more energy efficient."

"That is rather irritatingly inconvenient," the sallow-faced man scowled, trying to imagine a magical world where even the basic convenience of apparation was impossible. "What lunacy possessed them to do such a thing?"

"The lunacy of their neighbors to the south," Slackhammer replied dryly. "The Aztecs have ever been wont to raid their neighbors for sacrifices, both to supply their twisted religion and as fodder for their magical endeavors. The only thing keeping them out of Confederate territory is the assiduous application of force of arms. I understand the tribes consider being limited to non-magical transportation methods a small price to pay for keeping the bloodthirsty cannibals the Aztecs call priests and their unnervingly effective blood mages at arm's length."

"Fair enough," the dark man allowed before venturing, "Perhaps a second flight to cover the distance quickly?"

"Non-magical air travel is restricted just as heavily, for much the same reasons," the goblin countered. "You will fly into Erie International not only due to its proximity to the Great Longhouse, but also because it is the only destination at which the detection of magical persons aboard a plane will not automatically prompt the locals to dispatch a kill squad to greet you on the tarmac. After the Pueblo incident, that rule is ironclad."

Severus raised a questioning eyebrow.

"In 1986, Aztec intelligence managed to acquire scheduling information for one such exception early enough to take advantage," Slackhammer shook his head sadly as he explained, "They arranged to charter a private flight to the same airport at the same time in order to slip a war party through the temporary gap in security. Once they stole past the security cordons, the Aztecs proceeded to slaughter over seven hundred men, women, and children before Confederate war mages were able to hunt them down and exterminate the lot."

"I see. I had not realized tensions were so high," the sallow-faced man frowned, showing no further reaction to the tale of wanton slaughter. "Perhaps if we were to rely on Mr. Potter himself for transportation? If we stuck to night flights at high altitude and avoided cities…"

"You would run afoul of the nonmagical military in that case," Slackhammer interjected. "The nations involved pay very close attention to their air traffic, and Mr. Potter's size and metallic composition mean that he will show on their detection grids like a beacon."

Snape scowled. "Would concealment spells eliminate the problem?"

"Not the standard ones," the dapper goblin shook his head, "though that might be a useful avenue for Mr. Potter to research in the future. I imagine it would simplify travel arrangements immensely."

"I shall have to suggest it to him, then," the potions master said, "though that does little to help our current conundrum."

Snape fell silent for a time, the ticking on Slackhammer's mechanical office clock loud in the comparative quiet, before admitting defeat. "I must admit that I am at a loss on how to proceed. What would you suggest?"

"I would suggest that you carry your supplies with you, Master Snape," Slackhammer suggested.

"You are suggesting that we carry enough to feed that wretched lizard for the entire trip?" Severus confirmed, wide eyed. "I have seen the vehicles normally arranged to deliver his usual supplies; are you suggesting that we arrange to hire a convoy?"

"On the contrary," the dapper goblin clarified, "I am suggesting a single vehicle fitted with expanded cargo compartments. The vehicle will already be manned by magical persons, so you are not quite so limited in that regard as bulk freight systems would be."

"That is true, but the required expansion coefficient to fit that much material into an automobile would be enormous! And that is without even considering the required expansion for passenger space and normal luggage," the dark man countered. "Even for a group containing wizards of my colleagues' quality, supporting the strain would leave us lucky to cover fifty miles per day! Covering three thousand miles would take months."

"That is true for a standard automobile," Slackhammer acknowledged easily. "However, should you lease or purchase a significantly larger vehicle, the ratio would be more manageable."

"What sort of vehicle would you suggest?" the potions master asked. "I suppose one of those articulated lorries might work, but if I recall, they require a particular sort of license to drive legally, presumably because they are quite difficult to drive."

"That is an accurate assessment, to the best of my knowledge," Slackhammer confirmed, "however, I had a different sort of vehicle in mind. I know of one clan among the Sioux nation which specializes in magically adapted recreational vehicles, and I am certain that one of their larger models could be loaded with enough supplies to keep Mr. Potter fed along the way while also serving as transportation and housing for your entire party."

"A recreational vehicle?" Snape queried. "I do not believe I have encountered the term before."

"Such vehicles are also known as motor-homes," the goblin clarified. "One of the larger models is essentially a mid-sized flat on wheels."

The potions master narrowed his eyes in consideration, running through the expansion coefficients and power estimations in his head, before nodding slowly as he found that they came to a workable conclusion.

"That sounds promising; how shall we proceed?"

4.4.2 Deliberations

As the potions master and his goblin business partner set about the serious task of planning the dour man's first major road-trip, another meeting was taking place on the other side of the world in a fortified manor home overlooking the sprawling cityscape of Kowloon from its perch on the western slope of the eponymous Kowloon Peak.

Shafts of late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the square windows set in the gently curved outer wall of a sitting room as a pair of young girls dressed in simple light gray garb — a traditional ruqun, with a long-sleeved wrap-around blouse of a lightweight fabric tucked into a similarly structured skirt and tied with a contrasting black-dyed sash — cleared the intricately carved wooden table which had been set with a light evening meal. The girls, perhaps twelve years of age, were sufficiently similar in appearance to pass as identical twins even under close inspection.

If the inspector had recently visited Hogwarts and met the second year Ravenclaw students, he would have recognized the look immediately… and revised his estimate to say they were identical triplets.

Four much older women sat around the table on intricately carved dark wooden chairs as they waited for the remains of their meal to be cleared. Their gray hair was pinned up into ornate buns with colorful lacquered needles and wearing much more elaborate variants of the same traditional ruqun, each dominated by a different vibrant color in sharp contrast to the light gray of the servant girls. When the girls had finished and left the sitting room with only a deferent bow to their elders to mark their departure, the most richly dressed of the old women, her garments done up in a vivid marigold color and accented with turquoise trim and jewelry spoke.

"We have received our agent's report from the school of the English barbarians. She awaits further orders," she began, snapping her fingers imperiously.

The snap signaled another pair of young women to enter the room carrying trays holding a familiar set of dossiers which had graced the table in the Ravenclaw common room a number of weeks before. These girls were slightly older than the previous pair, perhaps in their late teenaged years, and were dressed in a rich vermilion rather than gray, yet they were still similar enough in physical appearance to pass for twins. They were also similar enough to the earlier girls to pass easily as sisters. As the red-clad girls carefully transferred the paperwork onto the recently cleared table, the old woman continued speaking.

"You have had the chance to review the relevant materials for each of your areas of responsibility, and I have been informed that the clan laboratory has returned its analysis of the accompanying genetic samples," the marigold-clad chief matriarch began. "What have you concluded?"

"Nothing presents a clear advantage," one of her colleagues, done up in the pale green of celadon, concluded. "My technicians have identified no new heritable magical talents among the samples. Even the one that had the talent for plants," she gestured to a dossier topped with the picture of a somewhat doughy-looking boy with muddy blond hair, "proved to be a dead end. His botanical talents are a personal idiosyncracy, not a genetic one."

"What of the missing sample?" the third old woman, dressed in a bold orange, asked, indicating another packet featuring a face topped with shaggy black hair and set with vividly green eyes that almost seemed to glow even through the photographic medium. "Our agent reported some rather impressive feats, feats that would seem to indicate good prospects."

"It would be a risky gamble at best," the celadon woman shook her head. "That sort of towering magical strength is almost always a freak occurrence; it never breeds true."

"And the physical strength?" orange challenged.

"Almost certainly a result of the subject's magic acting subconsciously," celadon countered with a dismissive wave. "That sort of secondary effect is well documented."

"And the linguistic talent?" the orange-clad woman countered.

"That is a possibility," the woman in celadon allowed, "though our technicians suspect it to also be a secondary magical effect. There are no hints of such linguistic talents in the subject's family history, so I would judge it a gamble on very long odds."

"Are we then left with choosing one of the targets simply to provide additional genetic variation for the line?" the orange woman huffed irritably. "That seems a terrible waste of our investment!"

That prompted sounds of annoyed agreement from all around the table.

"If we simply seek to add genetic variation and robustness, then we hardly need to spend one of our agents on the task. Just look to the failures," the woman continued, gesturing to the two teenaged girls in red who, after delivering the documents, had retreated to stand diffidently by the wall. "Nearly half have genetics good enough for our purposes if we seek simple genetic variation. Our agents were made for greater things!"

"I had intended to recommend withdrawing our agent from her current assignment and send her to new hunting grounds entirely," the celadon elder interjected, interrupting her orange counterpart's swelling tirade. "A stay among the Malagasy, perhaps? I have my suspicions about the high average magical strength among that population, given its pervasiveness."

"It is almost certainly an environmental factor," the chief matriarch interrupted with a sharp gesture of her marigold-clad arm. "Environmental factors drive much of the expression of magical strength, as you well know. That is why I ensure every main clan member is conceived and born in the birthing chambers under the mountain where we can artificially elevate magic levels."

"I had considered that, but I felt the chance to be worth the…" the green-clad elder attempted to justify herself only to be interrupted again.

"Consider the consequences of failure in each case," the marigold-clad woman commanded. "If you are wrong, as you most likely are, then we will be left with the same choice we have now, only it will be among the dark-skinned Malagasy barbarians rather than among the light-skinned European barbarians."

"Yes, that is the case," celadon allowed. "How is that worse than our current situation?"

"The clan histories tell us that it will take at least seven generations to breed the line back to acceptable standards of beauty subsequent to such a coupling," the marigold-clad elder explained, gesturing to the nearly identical porcelain features of one of the red-clad teenaged girls standing impassively against the wall. "A European match would take barely three."

"I see," the green-clad woman nodded, "but could we not simply move on once more to a new location?"

"I remind you that our agent does not have an infinite shelf life," the fourth old woman, dressed in a rich purple, spoke for the first time. "She will be reaching the end of her childbearing years within four decades. Even with her ideal genetics and the clan magics weighting the process in our favor, conception is still a roll of the dice. She will need to carry at least a dozen pregnancies to term to be comfortably assured of picking up whatever desirable genetics she finds, and that means she must start by age thirty at the latest, preferably by twenty to account for potential complications. Moving to a new location and reestablishing her cover even once would push that deadline."

"So, we are stuck with the current hand?" the orange-clad, elder verified, gesturing to the dossiers still spread on the table between them.

"Yes," the purple-clad woman confirmed.

"In that case, our chances of a favorable outcome are maximized by sending her after the missing sample, are they not?" the woman in orange suggested, gesturing again to the photograph of the green-eyed boy on the table. "At best, we acquire the magical and physical strength he has shown as well as the linguistic talent our agent described. At worst, we would accomplish the secondary goal of acquiring additional genetic diversity with no additional benefit. The other options can only accomplish the secondary goal."

"No matter how long the odds," she pointed towards the green-eyed picture one more, "that is the most profitable gamble available. It is obvious."

"True," the celadon-clad elder acknowledged. "Even long odds on something are better than sure odds on nothing."

"There is another issue to consider," the marigold-clad woman who had initiated the discussion broke in once more. "That is the one most likely to yield beneficial results, but how are we to get him to go along with things?"

"He is a man, or he will be with a few years to mature," the purple-clad woman waved her hand dismissively. "Men are easy to control; our agent will be up to the task, and in the event that she proves insufficient, we have additional resources."

She gestured with a purple-clad arm to the pair of vermillion-clad girls standing diffidently by against the wall.

"True, as far as it goes," the marigold woman nodded, "and that would be our ideal course of action, were the target not also entangled in politics. He is the Head of a prominent clan, its last member, as well."

"Careless of them," celadon sniffed. "Very irresponsible to allow things to be pared down so far."

"Quite," the elder in marigold acknowledged, "yet the target is nonetheless quite prominent in that part of the world. Should he to disappear, or even should the line of succession be imperiled, there may well be trouble."

"Bah, the English are no threat to us here!" orange scoffed. "They could not cooperate enough to launch a campaign across their English Channel, much less across the globe..."

"Be that as it may," the matriarch interrupted her subordinate's growing tirade, "he also seems to be quite valuable to the goblin nation."

"Suddenly, I see the appeal of going with a lower value target," the woman dressed in orange immediately changed her tune. "The goblins are an entirely different story. Still, it seems a shame to waste our agent on such a thing. Perhaps she could pursue a genuine marriage?"

"And how would we benefit from that?" the celadon-clad woman demanded. "We are not a matchmaking service! We need control of the children if we are to further the development of the line."

"Perhaps a second or third child," the orange-clad woman offered weakly.

"Unlikely," the woman in celadon scoffed. "And there is also the risk posed by the target himself. The same strength that potentially makes him valuable to us also makes him dangerous to cross. Consider what he might be able to accomplish if driven by enough rage and desperation."

All four elders fell silent at that mental image. If the boy was anything like the other examples of such wizards in recent history, then he could likely bring the Clan to its collective knees with the proper motivation.

"There are ways, other options we have used in the past," the purple-clad woman offered carefully, "and we can explore them if need be. For now, we need simply decide which target to pursue. The specifics can come later."

As her three compatriots began arguing the various merits of each position, the chief matriarch, in her marigold finery, rose from her chair and walked over to the outer window overlooking the city below to consider the issue.

The green-eyed boy clearly represented the best choice, but the risks were high, both of failure and of complications. The other choices represented a clear and certain loss of the effort put into producing their agent, but at least they didn't come with much risk of complications. Which was the best choice for the Clan?

Nonmagical genetics were complicated enough without including magic in the mix, but magic added entirely new layers of complexity. Many magical traits were incompatible with each other, or even with certain seemingly innocuous combinations of non-magical traits. Arranging to reliably incorporate magical traits from a single donor was thus quite an undertaking, and the Clan had developed a specialized line whose genetics were tailored specifically for that purpose. That line had been groomed for centuries to produce girls optimized for the capture of new magical genetics which would then be incorporated into the Clan's ruling family over generations.

A fully realized agent like Su Li who had precisely the right genetics to almost guarantee success was a rare specimen, the sort that came along once every few generations. The matriarch detested the idea of wasting such a valuable asset, yet the choices seemed poor either way.

The safe bet, which would be a near-complete waste of an agent, or the risky one that might succeed at long odds yet carried with it the very real danger of retaliation should their efforts be ill-received. It was a difficult decision to make.

If only there was something to tip the balance, some assured payoff that would make the risky course more palatable.

She sighed, tired, jaded eyes flickering as they scanned over the cityscape below illuminated brilliantly by the setting sun, until the sight of one neighborhood in particular sparked an insight, a reminder of one of the particulars of the Clan's eugenics program that often went overlooked. Just a few miles away stood the densely packed warren of tenement houses and human filth known as Kowloon Walled City. Run by a Triad loosely allied with the Clan, it was also home to several of the Clan's more successful... business ventures.

While the most obvious results of the Clan's ongoing breeding program were the successful attempts such as their agents, they were not the only valuable product the Clan's efforts produced. The breeding program which had produced Su Li and her ilk were highly selective. Combining the ideals of appearance, personality, intelligence, magical ability, and thaumogenic susceptibility into a single individual was no small task, and as with any highly selective process, successes were rare.

The corollary of that, of course, was that failures were common, and while the failures of this process were not useful for the originally intended purpose, they were not without value. It was that value which made those... establishments very profitable, indeed, and it was a good reminder that there were more angles to consider than simply magical traits alone.

Even as her compatriots continued to argue, the marigold-clad matriarch turned back to the table and her gaze locked onto one of the dossiers lying there for a moment before gesturing imperiously to one of the red-clad girls still standing quietly by the wall. As the young woman approached, the other old women fell silent, looking on curiously.

A quick flick of her marigold-clad wrist had the matriarch's wand in hand, and another practiced twitch cast a glamour on the docile girl she had called over.

Reaching out with a suddenly empty hand, the elderly woman firmly grasped the younger woman's chin and turned her head this way and that, examining the overall effect the girl's now intensely green eyes had on her appearance before nodding slowly in approval.

Yes… yes, that would do nicely.

"Ah! I'd not considered that," her celadon-clad peer chimed in, catching on to her line of thought. She quickly consulted the dossier. "The target's mother had the same eyes, according to records, so that is almost certainly heritable."

The matriarch smiled as she looked into the alluring, currently emerald eyes of the vermillion-clad girl before her.

It was decided.

4.4.3 Be very, very quiet

On the other side of the world, a very much larger green eye blinked as it peered over the shoulder of a perplexed centaur.

The previous day, one of the centaur patrols had come across a situation they had no precedent for dealing with, and so, they brought word of it back to their leader and dumped the situation in his hands, as they were trained to do. Unfortunately for Bane, the leader in question, he hadn't known what to make of the situation either.

In the normal course of things for a centaur clan, that would have meant ignoring the situation until it either went away or made itself impossible to ignore and forced them into doing something, probably something poorly thought out and ineffective. Yet in a convenient turn of events, the course of things was not normal for the Black Woods Clan. The clan was in firmly allied with the Great Wyrm, and that opened up a second option for the befuddled clan heir.

And so, Bane had taken a leaf from his own days as a lowly scout and dumped the mess in the Great Wyrm's metaphorical lap, which led to the current situation.

Bane had guided the Great Wyrm carefully to a vantage point where even the massive dragon could take a look at the anomaly from within the cover of the forest, and then the centaur had gingerly drawn aside the last layer of shrubbery to reveal the scene that had left him and his scouts so puzzled.

"Is that a car?" the dragon asked, barely managing to keep his voice down to some semblance of a whisper. "What's it doing here?"

"It looks the part, indeed, Great One," Bane nodded affirmatively, keeping a weather eye on the dirty, mangled-looking vehicle. It might have been blue at one point, but it was now covered with so much dirt that it was hard to tell. "Yet while it seems quite similar in form to the devices that have brought several of your esteemed visitors to these woods, it does not behave in the same fashion."

"What do you mean?" Harry frowned as he took a closer look. "It doesn't seem to be doing anything other than sit there right now."

"Aye, it is quiet at present, but watch the change when it catches sight of us," Bane instructed the Great Wyrm. Then, putting words to action, he stepped forward, deliberately rustling the leaf litter and snapping a half-buried branch.

The change was as immediate as it was startling. The clearly much-abused vehicle roared to life, its few still-intact lamps flaring brightly as it spun in place to face the sound, an occurrence that revealed another, more pressing maintenance issue for the poor vehicle. Its left front wheel splayed out at an odd angle, the axle obviously having broken at some point. The other front wheel had managed to hook itself over a tree stump, which allowed the rear drive wheels to pivot the car, yet it obviously wouldn't be moving anywhere else any time soon.

"I don't see a driver in there, and I don't smell one either," the young dragon observed after a quick sniff. "Do you?"

"Nay, Great One, and that is the oddest thing about this whole business! I was under the impression that such devices were not alive, yet that thing," the centaur pointed to the broken-down vehicle pulling off a good impression of a wolf caught in a hunter's trap, "behaves as if it were a wounded animal!"

Following his guide's example, Harry stepped forward into view, and as his scaly bulk was revealed to the oddly animated car, the thing's horn let out one, somehow startled-sounding beep and then went absolutely still. Where before it had seemed a wounded wolf caught in a trap, now it seemed a terrified rabbit on the verge of panicking itself to death.

"Huh, you're right," the young dragon marveled. "It really does act like an animal! They always do that when they see me."

Bane merely nodded, and Harry turned back to looking at the obviously terrified vehicle in curiosity for a few moments as the silence stretched on awkwardly.

"Um, so now that we've established that," Harry began uncertainly. "What did you want me to do about it? I mean it doesn't seem to be bothering anyone over here, really."

"If it acts as an animal, then I expect we should treat it as one," Bane offered, more confident now that authority had agreed with him, and he had a proper frame of reference to judge his course of action. "And right now, it is a wounded animal in great pain and unable to move. I am given to understand that you consume its kind regularly?"

"Yeah," the young dragon nodded his great head in acknowledgement. "I do, but I've never seen one that acted like this before." He frowned in thought, "I wonder why it's doing that?"

"When encountering a prey animal in such a situation, there is only one moral response," the centaur opined.

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"There is no reason to prolong its suffering," the experienced hunter explained. "You should kill it quickly to put it out of its misery, then eat it so it does not die in vain, just as if it were a deer in a similar situation."

"Really?" Harry raised a scaly eye ridge. "What if it belongs to somebody?"

"Then they should be grateful that you ended its torment kindly," Bane nodded firmly. "Just be quick about it."

"Well, okay," Harry said dubiously, picking his way carefully over to the now-trembling vehicle.

"You know, I wonder if this is an animation charm or something? It's so lifelike!" the young dragon mused as he peered in the windows in a final check to make certain no one was inside the odd car. "Hey! Maybe it's something like Donald, only you know, an animal rather than a person? I wonder if he might know?"

"Just finish it off already, Great One," the centaur said with some exasperation. "Can you not see how terrified the poor thing is?"

Harry could see that indeed, and so, feeling a tad sheepish, he did so, ending the unfortunate situation with a single, massive bite and a cacophonous crunching of steel and glass. Two additional bites and a bit of chewing removed the evidence of the whole sordid affair.

As he ambled back over towards his centaur damsel's father, the young dragon frowned as a thought occurred to him.

"Hey, Mr. Bane?"

"What is it, Great One?"

"If that was so obviously the right thing to do, how come you waited to get me rather than taking care of it right away yourself?"

4.4.4 Good intentions

The brightly-lit Receiving Hall of the Ministry of Magic, an offshoot of the underground facility's main lobby set up as the only room in the facility which allowed magical transportation in or out, flashed with green light as one of the massive fireplaces that lined the hall flared up briefly, heralding the arrival of Griselda Marchbanks. The elderly woman straightened up from her arrival with a satisfied smile, gave a polite nod to the bored-looking attendant, and set out for her office.

She was freshly arrived from her latest discreet attempt at tracking down a couple of willing assistants to help out at Hogwarts, an attempt which had just borne fruit. It had taken longer than she had hoped, with many false-starts along the way, but she had finally managed to round up a couple of old friends to help out at Hogwarts. Both had retired from the auror corps in recent years. One had previously worked as a trainer and had retired to open a woodworking shop of all things, while the other had been a rank-and-file member of the corps and now worked part time as a private self-defense teacher.

Both were skilled teachers, and both were currently reviewing copies of the required syllabus for the Defense program. By the end of the week Griselda figured that they ought to be well prepared for the task, which ought to be just in time for the actual meeting with Lockhart. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to straighten the man out well enough to salvage the children's education.

"Madame," her secretary greeted her as she entered the department offices of the Examination Authority. "Did everything go well?"

"Quite well," the elderly witch confirmed with a satisfied nod. "Both of my acquaintances are available to join me for a visit to Hogwarts later this week. Have you learned when Mr. Lockhart will be free for a meeting?"

There was no need to interrupt classes and make a big, embarrassing mess of things. That sort of thing would serve no one.

"Yes," her secretary confirmed, flipping back through a small notebook and examining her earlier notes, "he should be free… ah!" The woman looked up at her supervisor, "Which day did you say you planned to visit?"

"My contacts were available Friday afternoon," Griselda informed her.

"Friday," she confirmed, turning back to her notebook. "Per the schedule Minerva forwarded us at the beginning of the term, he is available… all day?" The secretary's eyes widened, and her jaw went a little slack. "Wow! I wonder how he managed that?"

"Perhaps I can ask him for you during the meeting," the elderly Head of the Wizarding Examination Authority said wryly. Her secretary snapped back to attention at the change. "In any event, since he ought to be free, I believe we will aim for four o'clock on Friday," Griselda said with a nod. "That should give him plenty of time to wrap up his business for the day before we interrupt."

"Shall I floo ahead to confirm a visit?" the secretary asked.

The elderly witch considered the idea for a moment before shaking her head in the negative. "No, Albus will likely be taking his lunch now, I will call personally closer to the time. Thank you for your assistance."

"Of course, Madame," the woman said with a nod before turning back to her papers.

Griselda walked on to enter her personal office and sighed with relief as she sat in the comfortable chair at her desk. It had been a long time coming, but she had arranged everything, now all that remained was the actual visit.

Hopefully, the famous author would be open to well-intentioned advice. If he proved to be the difficult sort, the visit might end up rather unpleasant.

She supposed she'd find out on Friday afternoon.

4.4.5 Until proven guilty

Several floors away in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones looked up from her seemingly bottomless inbox at the sound of a knock on her office door.

"Enter," she commanded, setting her work aside for a moment.

"Madame Bones," her secretary, Beverly, greeted her as the woman opened her door. "I have a report from Investigations regarding the anonymous Lockhart tip we received a while ago."

"Hmm," Amelia frowned for a moment as she tried to call to mind the tip in question. "Ah! Yes, I remember now. And what is their recommendation?"

"The Office recommends against pursuing the matter," she summarized even as she handed the report to her boss. "They do not believe they can win such a case with the evidence available."

"That is disappointing," the Director said, cracking open the report folder to peruse the executive summary. "What was missing?"

"Clear proof of motive," Beverly explained. "The evidence in the report looks damning at first glance, but it is all circumstantial. Our people can think of at least five different defenses, ranging from one that could argue the whole thing down to a very minor case of tax fraud all the way through ones that could explain the whole thing away and leave Lockhart looking like a folk hero, based on some of the things they found in a preliminary check into his financial records. With what we have now, at best we'd get him on a hundred galleon fine for misreported income; at worst, we'd look like the villains of the piece, and daft ones at that." Beverly shook her head, "Prosecution's a losing proposition at the moment. We need firmer evidence."

"I see," Amelia acknowledged, and indeed she did see as she read the summary of the findings for herself. The report cited records of repeated payments to persons at the sites of his exploits that could be spun as either charitable assistance for those he had already saved once, or possibly as royalty payments for the publishing rights to a story.

"Those payments would muddy the waters in any case we could bring," Amelia sighed, exasperated. "Even if we could prove he obliviated the people involved, it would be hard to prove they hadn't agreed to it beforehand, not when they're getting paid handsomely under the table."

She closed the folder and set it aside for later filing, instructing her secretary, "Let the relevant people know to be on the lookout for anything new in the case, but aside from that, we'll let this one go for now. We've got more important things to deal with."

As Beverly nodded and left, Amelia looked over at a book she kept in a prominent place on her side table. In it were listed four hundred and sixty-three of those more important things, names of people she suspected to have been captured and sold into slavery. And those were only the ones she had been able to link to names. There were thousands more for which she didn't even have that much.

Any one of those took precedence over what appeared to be a case of fraud at worst, especially one they couldn't prove.

4.4.6 On the nature of folk

Nearly a week had passed since Harry had encountered the odd automobile in the woods, and the young dragon had finally managed to arrange a meeting to discuss the questions the encounter had raised. Thus, just after lunch on Friday, Harry found himself walking once more down a seldom-used hallway that he had visited only once before, on his way to visit the only piece of haberdashery he counted as a friend.

"Welcome, Mr. Potter!" the Hat's distinctive voice greeted him warmly as soon as the currently human-shaped dragon opened the door to the Hat's warded parlor.

"Hi, Mr. Donald!" Harry returned the greeting in kind.

"It seems your sense of timing has improved; it has only been half a year since your last visit, rather than more than a full one," Donald said with dry humor. "What brings you to see me today?"

"Well, Bane showed me this thing in the woods last weekend…" Harry began, only for the Hat to interrupt.

"Take a moment to put me on, Mr. Potter," Donald said in a long-suffering tone. "It will save us both a great deal of hassle."

"Right," the young dragon said sheepishly, quickly following the Hat's suggestion. "Sorry, I always forget we can do that."

"Hmm, I see," the Sorting Hat hummed to itself, now no longer audible outside Harry's head. "I believe I am up to speed on things once again. Proceed."

"Right. So anyway," Harry began, "you know the thing with the car that was acting like it was alive?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"Well, I was wondering why it was acting like it was, since as far as I know automobiles aren't supposed to do that," he explained, "and then I remembered hats aren't supposed to act like you do, either, and that seemed a little similar, so I thought you might be able to explain what was going on with that."

"Am I truly so similar to a base animal in your eyes, Mr. Potter?" the Hat asked in a mock-offended tone. "I had no idea you thought so little of me."

"No!" the young dragon hurried to explain, missing the teasing undertone. "I was just thinking that since you were a Hat that acted alive, and it was an automobile that…" he trailed off as the Hat's warm laughter filled his head.

"Not to worry, Mr. Potter," Donald reassured him, "I was simply having a spot of fun. As it happens, while I am uncertain of the precise origins of the vehicle you encountered, I can hazard a guess as to the broad strokes of how it came about."

"How do you think it happened?" Harry asked eagerly, his momentary worry immediately forgotten with the Hat's reassurance.

"It has to do with the nature of magic," the sentient headgear began. "At its most basic form, magic adheres to purpose. That is to say, free magic — magic that is not already bound to a purpose — will tend to enhance whatever purpose it finds nearby. I believe you were instructed in this during your basic charms curriculum?"

"Yep," Harry said with an affirmative nod, causing Donald to sway on his perch. "I remember that lesson."

"One important consequence of that tendency arises in very long-running or very powerful spells," the Hat continued after his conversation partner stilled. "Despite being constructed of magic, a spell itself has a purpose, and free magic will tend to try to enhance it just as it would any other. This has several consequences. For one, it means that enchantments will gain strength over time, for better or for worse…"

"You must be really strong after all this time then, right, Mr. Donald?" Harry interjected. "I mean, you've been around Hogwarts for like a thousand years now, right? And there's lots of free magic around here."

"After a fashion, I suppose," the Hat allowed. "Though I should point out that the supposed 'strength' of my enchantments would only come into play should they be able to directly contest something, which they cannot by their nature. The magics of which I am composed simply record and process information before regurgitating an answer. The only thing they could contest would be a direct attack on the spells themselves, an attempt to disenchant me or corrupt my purpose as it were. Though, that leads into the second consequence of such enhancements."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"Assuming it is durable enough to survive, the more magic a spell is exposed to, the more idiosyncrasies it will collect," the Hat explained. "Essentially, it means that the older a spell is, and thus the more magic it is exposed to, the more lifelike it will act, regardless of its actual purpose. It is commonly referred to as the tendency of magic to beget life."

"Why?"

"The technical term for it is — silly as it sounds — teleological fuzz," Donald chuckled. "Can you guess what it means?"

"Well, 'telos' means 'purpose' in Greek, so it's probably something about that," the young dragon frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure what to make of the 'fuzz' bit; how would that fit together with 'purpose' anyway?"

"Think of 'fuzz' in this context as little extraneous bits that stick out from the main body," the Hat prompted. "As if you had dropped a piece of candy on the ground and it picked up various debris."

Harry's currently human-shaped eyes widened, "You mean it's little bits of 'purpose' that got stuck onto the main one? How would that even happen? I mean, it's not like there are 'purposes' lying all over everywhere, are there?"

"Actually, there are, after a fashion," Donald corrected. "The world is full of such, and life is the principal source of most of them. What is a living creature, after all, if not a collection of various bits and bobs bound together in a common purpose?"

The young dragon nodded slowly as he processed the idea. "I suppose that makes sense," he allowed, "but why would any of those affect a spell, especially one that is durable enough to last for a long time? Wouldn't that kind of thing have to be made to resist external influence?"

"They are, in fact," the Hat gave the odd mental impression of nodding, even as it remained motionless on Harry's head. "Yet no such measures are perfect, so while they might delay things, they will never completely stop the process."

Harry hummed for a moment before nodding in acknowledgement of the point and asking, "So, how does this teleological fuzz thing work, then? I mean, I know you explained it as little bits of purpose sticking to a spell, but… well, it's not like it's real, material stuff. As far as I know, you can't go out and grab a handful of 'purpose', so how does it stick to anything, even magic? I mean, if it were the same stuff as magic, I guess that'd work, but I can see magic, and I don't think I've ever seen something like that."

"A good question," Donald approved, "and one that requires a spot of explanation. I said before that free magic enhances whatever purpose it happens to find nearby, but I specified that only free magic did so, magic already bound to another purpose does not. This applies even to magic that is physically separated from what it had been doing…" the Hat trailed off leadingly.

"So, it carries its purpose along with it?" Harry mused, connecting the dots his friend had laid out. "Then the teleological fuzz thing is just picking up bits of magic that have other purposes attached?"

"Partially, though the full explanation is a tad more involved," Donald congratulated him. "In addition to bound magic being acquired from the environment, there are also the issues of misaligned magic being bound into the spell at casting and free magic entangled in the spell gaining purpose from the nearby environment."

"I thought the magic in the spell wasn't free magic?" Harry ventured.

"In a perfectly-cast spell, that would theoretically be the case," the Hat allowed, "but I sincerely doubt that any spell has ever been perfectly cast in the history of existence. All real spell casting involves imperfections. If the caster's focus wanders slightly off target, then some of the magic in the spell will be bound to some other, often near-random purpose. Additionally, if the structure of the spell leaves any gaps during its formation, then environmental magic will be entrained within the spell structure. That will enhance the function of the spell, true — spell crafters routinely leave such gaps specifically for that purpose — but it will also enhance those random bits that were bound in at the casting."

"And all that is before the environmental debris is considered," the Hat gave that odd mental impression of nodding once more. "The little bits of bound magic that bring their own purposes are one thing, but free environmental magic will enhance those, and that effect accumulates over time."

The young dragon nodded thoughtfully at the additional information, setting his conversational partner flopping about in the process, which didn't seem to bother the Hat in the slightest.

"Uh huh, so it's sort of like a fuzzy shell of magic builds up around it over time, and that's the bit that acts like it's alive," he ventured.

"Essentially, yes," Donald confirmed, "with the caveats about imperfect casting I mentioned earlier. Those give the 'shell', as you have termed it, some degree of access to the internal workings of the magical structure as well."

"Right," the young dragon acknowledged the clarification. "Um, Donald?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Where do those little bits of purposeful magic come from, anyway?"

The Hat gave the odd mental impression of a frown, "They come from purposes nearby, in large part, those associated with life; I explained that to you earlier."

"Yeah, I got that," Harry acknowledged, "but you also said that free magic enhances any purpose it encounters, and if you're taking free magic to start with, and it interacts with something to pick up a purpose, wouldn't it just stick there and enhance that? I mean, I guess if you had a magical creature providing the purpose, and it expelled the magic then that'd be one thing, but most life isn't magical, and I gathered from what you were saying that it was more widespread than that."

"Ah! I see the difficulty," Donald did his mental nod again. "You see, the thing is, to one extent or another, all life is magical."

"Really?" the young dragon frowned. "But I've seen lots of stuff that's not glowy or anything. I mean the deer I eat seem pretty not-magical, same with the porpoises in the sound, and the heather on the moors, and most of the trees, and…"

"Yes... well, that was perhaps a poor choice of words," the Hat interrupted. "Allow me to clarify."

"All life is magical in that all life produces magic. They vary in how much they use and how they use it, but everything makes it. What you know as non-magical life uses very little of what it makes — nothing beyond the tiny amount required to trigger voluntary actions — but it has magic flowing through it in significantly larger quantity than is necessary for that task," the magical haberdashery explained. "That excess is released to the environment, a small proportion colored with the purposes that make the lifeform that produced it work. On the other hand, most of what you know as magical life uses more magic than it produces internally, collecting from the environment to make up the deficit."

"Well, I guess that makes sense," Harry said slowly, obviously thinking hard about something. "Um, Mr. Donald?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"When you talked about voluntary actions, you reminded me of something I wanted to ask about last time I visited," he began. "You know last time how you talked about choices and stuff? You know, how people have to choose between doing good and doing bad?"

"Yes, I do," the Hat allowed. "What of it?"

"Back then, when you first started talking about people and choices, you said you couldn't speak with authority on the subject since you lacked personal experience," the young dragon said carefully. "What did you mean by that? Can't you choose to do things?"

The Hat fell silent for a long moment.

"Donald?"

"That… that is a difficult topic to properly address, Mr. Potter," the Sorting Hat began, "but the simplest answer is: no, I cannot."

"Why not?" Harry asked, troubled. "I mean, you talk and stuff, so you're a person, right? And you said people can choose what they do. I mean, you chose to tell me about all that stuff I asked about just a few minutes ago, right, and last time, too? So, what do you mean, you can't choose to do things?"

"You have made an erroneous assumption, Mr. Potter," Donald countered. "Do you know what it is?"

The young dragon frowned in concentration as he thought about it before shaking his head in the negative.

"I am not a person, Mr. Potter," the Hat informed him gently. "I am a magical construct, in the same vein as the spells you are learning to cast in your classes."

"But the spells we're learning can't hold a conversation," Harry objected, sounding rather troubled, "and you can, so how can you say you're just like them?"

"I'll have you know, Mr. Potter, that I am a great deal more advanced than your current curriculum! 'Just like them', indeed!" Donald harrumphed before settling back into his explanation. "That being said, as we have just discussed, particularly old constructs often begin to spontaneously exhibit lifelike features, including intelligence in a variety of cases. That tendency grows more pronounced as their complexity increases, due to the greater likelihood of random errors being introduced during their creation."

"I am both about as old and about as complex as they come, so it should come as no surprise that I do a passing fair job of imitating life," the Hat chuckled, "and that is setting aside the fact that I was actually designed to do so from the beginning! I am far from unique in that regard; the castle houses many such constructs. Much of the castle portraiture, for instance, is nearly as conversationally competent as I am, as are the castle ghosts. Advanced magical constructs can be fully capable of thought and reason; we simply cannot choose our actions. We lack agency."

"But what do you mean by that?" Harry demanded, distressed by the Hat's answer. "I mean, your whole job is choosing what House to sort kids into! Isn't that choosing what to do?"

"No, Mr. Potter, that is Sorting, not choosing," Donald replied, picking up on the main thrust of the young dragon's misconception. "I am a magical construct designed to offer students of this school guidance, a tool whose function includes placing students in the appropriate House. While the Sorting may appear to be a free choice to the outside observer, it is, in truth, a deterministic process. I read information from the student's mind and combine it with information about the state of the school as I know it. I then process that information through the lens of the collective wisdom imprinted on me during my manufacture, producing the appropriate result... with a bit of conversational window dressing nowadays, I must admit that I am much chattier now than I was back in the days of the Founders."

The Hat chuckled, "Conversational aptitude aside though, I can no more choose where to Sort students than the strainer in your potions kit can choose whether to allow something to pass through it."

Harry was silent for a moment as he processed that. "But what about our conversations? I mean, you couldn't have been pre-made with all those responses, right? That'd be way too complicated!"

"That is true, but again, I was imprinted with the wisdom of my makers and given enough intelligence to use that properly. When I participate in a conversation, I respond as the imprint dictates I should; that is, I emulate the responses of a real person but am not, myself, a person. Magical portraiture does the same thing, as do ghosts."

"That's really confusing," Harry remarked, sounding remarkably perturbed about the whole thing. "How do you tell the difference? I mean, I could see it with Professor Binns, but I never would have guessed you weren't really a person."

"It can be difficult, it is true. I know of no simple and widely applicable test which will reveal such a thing, but it is nonetheless critically important. Personhood... the soul is a strange and wonderful thing, Mr. Potter," Donald explained, "and, unlike intelligence and reason, a soul is something I will never have. I am a tool, a valuable tool, a spectacularly well-crafted tool, but still a tool, nonetheless. You and those like you… even the least of you is something infinitely greater."

"The soul is beyond magic," the Hat declared softly. "Its influence is subtle and hard to measure, yet its importance cannot be overstated."

The shared mental space fell into an uneasy sort of silence again as Harry wrestled with the Hat's recent revelations, a silence that stretched for some time until the time came for the young dragon to leave.

Even then, his wrestling match was far from over.

4.4.7 Staging

"Hello and welcome to the Three Broomsticks," came the call from the blonde woman tending bar in response to the green flash from the pub's floo terminus. "I'll be with you in just a moment, as soon as I finish this order."

"Hello to you as well, Rosmerta," the newly arrived Griselda Marchbanks greeted the blonde warmly. "Take your time."

Rosmerta finished topping up the tankard she was filling, slid it down the polished wooden surface of the bar to the customer who had ordered it, and looked up, green eyes wide with pleased surprise.

"Gran? Fancy seeing you here!"

"Is it so surprising that I would take the time to visit my great-grandaughter, hmm?" the matriarch of the Marchbanks family asked the much younger woman teasingly. "You should know by now that I always have time for family."

"Of course, of course," Rosmerta smiled. "And you're welcome to visit, any time. I was just a bit surprised at the timing. Aren't you usually working at this hour?"

"I am at that," Griselda answered her great-grandaughter. "Which works well, because I am actually here for a business meeting, touching base with a couple of my colleagues before we head up to the school for a bit of a sensitive conversation."

"Ah, well, if it's sensitive business then I'll ask no more, though you were getting my hopes up that you'd visited just for little old me," the younger woman laughed. "I suppose if you started visiting all of us grandchildren individually, you'd never have time to do anything else!"

She waved her great-grandmother towards a table hosting two men chatting over a late lunch in the far corner of the pub, right against the timber-and-plaster wall and not far from the large but unenchanted fireplace dominating the far end of the room. "I expect you're the colleague those two were waiting for. If your business at the school is done before the dinner hour is over, come by and we'll talk. It's been too long since the last time you visited for a chat!"

"That sounds quite lovely, Rosie," the elderly woman agreed. "I'll be sure to stop by; I've set things up with Albus for half-past four, and I don't anticipate it lasting more than an hour or two. Even if things run late, I'll be sure to send a note to let you know."

"I'll be looking forward to it, then!" the pub's proprietor acknowledged with a smile.

And with that, the Head of the Wizarding Examination Authority made her way over to the table housing her two colleagues in order to go over their plan of attack for the upcoming conversation with Gilderoy Lockhart — planning out what to say and how to say it. If the famous author turned out to be as touchy as she feared he might be, then it would be best to have all their ducks in a row beforehand.

4.4.8 Stalking

The cloudy Friday afternoon seemed much like any other to Tom as he once more doggedly stalked the castle halls in a so-far fruitless search of his prey. Nonetheless, he held out hope that this seemingly unremarkable day would prove to be different from the others, that today would be the day of retribution against Harry Potter.

Tom had been diligent in his pursuit of vengeance, taking frequent strolls through the castle whenever his schedule permitted, but the search had so far proven futile. Between the differences in class schedule and Potter's infuriating tendency to spend most of his time off campus, the murderous fiend had remained elusive for weeks on end.

No, that wasn't quite accurate, Tom grimaced at the thought. Rather than elusive, it would be more accurate to call Potter slippery. Finding the foul miscreant was easy enough. It was arranging an encounter without witnesses in the crowded school that had proven so difficult; thus, Tom had yet to find the proper opportunity to make his displeasure known.

Despite the challenge, he had remained steadfast in his pursuit, and the present moment found him prowling along the main hallway leading to the library. Well, Tom scowled yet again, to be perfectly accurate it was more of a scurry than a good, satisfying prowl — damned legs — but he contented himself with imagining that it was the thought that counted.

In any event, he was on the hunt... no matter how silly he was certain he looked.

And then the sight before him chased any consideration of appearances right out of his head.

The green-eyed villain appeared right in front of him, coming from a part of the castle Tom had never known him to visit before. It was an odd change of routine, as Tom didn't know of anything down that hallway that was worth visiting, but he was hardly going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was a fortuitous change in routine for Tom's purposes, because if Potter was going to return to his usual schedule and visit the library — and from what Tom could see of his current path, he was — then the most direct route would be taking the miniature murderer through exactly the sort of secluded location in which Tom had been hoping to catch up with him.

Potter's comeuppance was at hand!

The hallway was crowded at the moment, but most were wearing Slytherin or Gryffindor colors, so they'd be removing themselves from the scene soon, either to classes or to their common rooms. Tom dismissed the crowd as irrelevant and followed his quarry as casually as he could manage. As expected, the hallways cleared rapidly as Tom's prey moved closer to the library, the other students off to their various undertakings in other portions of the castle. If he recalled the school layout correctly, then the hallway ahead would soon… yes!

The pursuit turned a corner into a portion of the hallway which jogged about twenty feet to one side for a few dozen yards, cutting off any sight lines from the other parts of the castle, and Tom knew the moment of truth had arrived.

A half-dozen hurried steps closed the distance, and a wand came out smoothly to point at the messy-haired butcher's unsuspecting back. Tom paused for a moment of concentration, dredging up as much magic as he could to match the seething wrath that filled his heart, and then spoke the dread incantation in a high, clear soprano.

"Avada kedavra!"

A rush of green light issued forth and streaked towards his target's back, leaving in its wake a wave of unbearable exhaustion.

Blast it! Tom thought desperately as he sagged to his knees, feeling the unmistakable onset of magical exhaustion.

He had forgotten his situation and underestimated his current form's magical shortcomings just as he had its physical ones. There was no way he would avoid detection if he fell unconscious at the scene! He stumbled forward just a single step before his body gave out and his too-short legs collapsed under him, leaving his slender body to slump bonelessly to the floor.

Damn!

At least he'd gotten the bastard, Tom thought as he slipped into unconsciousness.

Charlotte was avenged!

4.4.9 Dark deliberations

Fresh from his heavy conversation with Donald, Harry found himself lost in thought as he walked towards the library, traversing a passage he didn't often have the occasion to use. He had been left with much to think about.

The young dragon knew it was irrational, but finding out that his friend, Donald, wasn't, rightly speaking, an actual person — not just not a people-shaped person, but actually not a person at all — had left him more than a little out of sorts.

He frowned unhappily as he turned slightly to follow the curve of the hallway as it jogged slightly to the side, following the outer wall of the castle.

When the talking hat had told him the truth of its nature, it had felt like a punch to the gut; one of his basic assumptions about the world had proven false. Worse yet, it was almost as if he'd lost a friend.

Shaggy black hair whipped about as Harry violently shook the thought from his head.

"That's not really right either!" he muttered darkly as he walked. "It's not like…"

Precisely what it wasn't like would go unsaid for the moment as Harry was rudely interrupted by a girlish voice behind him saying decidedly unfriendly things.

"Avada kedavra!"

Shaken roughly from his musings, the currently human-shaped dragon was already turning to face the voice behind him when the lethal spell struck, having the same effect it usually did on him. He finished the turn, already shrugging off the increasingly routine stinging sensation of the killing curse, only to find a vaguely familiar redheaded girl already in the process of collapsing to the stone floor in a dead faint.

Harry frowned, puzzled.

Who was she again?

Then the insensate girl's head lolled to the side affording Harry a good look at her face.

Oh.

"Huh," Harry raised an eyebrow at the sight, puzzled. "I thought the whole Weasley thing was settled already."

Maybe their little sister hadn't gotten the memo?

He considered that for a few moments before shrugging it off as irrelevant for for the moment. Whatever her reasons, the youngest Weasley had just tried to kill him. She didn't do a very good job of it, but it was still a murder attempt, and murder attempts were something he generally wanted to discourage, so he really ought to do something about that. Unfortunately, the current situation presented the young dragon with a bit of a conundrum.

Harry frowned as he considered what to do with the girl splayed out on the floor.

On the one hand, he'd already established a precedent for dealing with this sort of thing back by killing that guy who'd said he was that Voldemort-guy. Harry figured people who tried to kill him had set a pretty firm example of why people ought not do that sort of thing. Thus it followed that if he did the same to this one, he'd reinforce the message and show he meant business when he said he didn't like that sort of thing.

Consistency was important, after all; though, admittedly eating the guy had backfired something fierce. He figured he probably shouldn't do that again if he could help it. Who knew what sort of magical silliness this one might be carrying on her?

Harry really didn't want to get sick again; getting knocked out for weeks on end hadn't been any fun at all.

Of course, eating someone was hardly the only option he could take if he wanted to kill them. Humans were pretty fragile after all; that was why he had to be so careful around everybody. The problem was Mr. Dumbledore had asked him not to kill any of his fellow students if he could help it all the way back at the beginning of his first year.

The currently human-shaped dragon frowned thoughtfully as he looked down at his would-be murderer. The petite redhead passed out on the floor in front of him was, in fact, a student; she was wearing the uniform and everything! As far as arguments against killing her went, that was a pretty good one, since Mr. Dumbledore had asked nicely. The elderly wizard was generally a pretty good friend, and Harry didn't want to disappoint him.

Plus, it wasn't like he had to kill her; she was hardly a threat now that she was passed out on the floor.

All that aside, Harry most certainly did not want to set a precedent where people might think it was okay to try to kill him, either. That struck him as a spectacularly bad policy decision. Sure, no one had found a way of killing him that worked yet, but if he kept letting people try without consequence, eventually someone was bound to get lucky.

The young dragon frowned thoughfully, scratching at his currently human-shaped chin.

Killing everyone who tried to kill him set a clear policy to discourage such attempts in the future: "try to kill me, and I'll kill you right back". It was hard to misunderstand that! If he let this one go on account of Mr. Dumbledore's request, that message would get all muddled. "Try to kill me, and I might or might not kill you, pending circumstances" wasn't nearly as unambiguous, and this was a message he wanted to be very clear on.

So, what was he supposed to do?

"Right," Harry nodded decisively as he reached a conclusion after a solid minute of consideration.

The currently human-shaped dragon bent down and reached out towards the fragile-looking redhead, his lethally strong hand slipping towards the join between her small shoulder and her delicate neck.

This would only take a moment.

4.4.10 Untimely arrivals

The quiet of the cloudy Friday afternoon was interrupted by a trio of rapid-fire cracks as three figures popped into existence on the grassy lawn of the Hogwarts portkey arrival point. Griselda Marchbanks and her two companions had finished their discussions at the Three Broomsticks shortly before she had arranged to meet with the Headmaster, and they had apparated to the receiving point.

They were waiting less than three minutes before the rather disreputable-looking castle caretaker, Argus Filch, stumped over to the arrival point to greet Hogwarts' visitors.

"Madame Marchbanks?" the perpetually dour man asked as he drew close enough to see who had come to call. "The Headmaster told me to expect the three of you. Come this way, and I'll contact him to come and get you through the wards."

As the scruffy man turned and unceremoniously headed back to the door, Griselda and her companions followed quietly before stopping at the door.

"You three wait here while I head back to the office," Argus instructed curtly before stumping off to disappear into the relatively dark hallway.

"He's just as unpleasant as he was when I was in school," the younger of Griselda's compatriots commented, drawing little more than an amused snort from his colleages before the disgruntled man returned.

"I've sent an elf to inform the Headmaster," the castle caretaker informed the visitors. "He ought to be down before too much longer."

With that, the man settled in to wait, seemingly content to ignore his visitors entirely.

"I understand Mr. Lockhart has finished his classes for the day," Griselda ventured after about half a minute of awkward silence.

"According to the schedule he has," Argus confirmed. The bitter man turned an eye to the old woman. "You three are here to see him?"

Griselda nodded.

Filch looked speculatively at the two men flanking her, noting their demeanor and the competent air about them, despite having been retired from the corps for several years. "There some trouble afoot?"

He looked almost eager at the prospect.

"I'm afraid not," Griselda denied, deftly ignoring the terribly disappointed expression that stole across the caretaker's wizened face at the lost opportunity for schadenfreude. "We are simply here for a discussion with the man."

"Too bad, that," Filch muttered.

Madame Marchbanks settled in to wait in silence alongside her companions.

There wasn't much to say to that.

4.4.11 Somebody else's problem

"Is Mr. Dumbledore in there?" an impatiently bouncing Harry Potter asked the gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the Headmaster's suite. "I've got something I need him to deal with, and I'm in a bit of a hurry."

The youngest Weasley bounced along with him, her long red hair swaying with the motion. It had taken a bit of work to get the limp girl to stay in place over his shoulder — she was both relatively fragile and rather awkwardly floppy at the moment — but he had eventually managed it with a bit of careful juggling which had left the small girl unceremoniously slung over Harry's shoulder like a bag of coal. After that, it had been easy to carry the girl's barely noticeable weight to the Headmaster's office.

If Mr. Dumbledore wanted to make everything so confusing with his 'don't kill any students' condition, then Mr. Dumbledore could deal with the aftermath. Harry nodded; it was a good solution in his book, and as soon as the gargoyle got its stone head together and opened up, he'd act on it, dropping the inconvenient girl off and getting back to his friends.

He could always deal with the redhead later if it turned out he'd made a mistake by not killing her, but he figured it was pretty hard to un-kill somebody if it turned out to be a poor choice... best not to rush into that sort of thing unless he had to.

4.4.12 Recurrent problems

"Oh, bloody hell," Albus Dumbledore cursed uncharacteristically as he looked down at the limp bag of trouble the resident dragon had dropped off in his office chair.

He had been putting some effort into preparing for a visit from Griselda Marchbanks, mostly attempting to guess why she had asked him to set up a discreet meeting with his Defense professor rather than simply contacting the man herself, when Mr. Potter had barged into his office a scant few minutes ago. The young dragon had carried the unconscious form of one Ginevra Weasley slung over a shoulder and had dumped the girl in the chair in front of his desk, making the rather outlandish claim that the youngest Weasley had cast a killing curse at him in the hallway before passing out. Unfortunately for the currently unconscious girl, it was a claim the elderly wizard had been able to corroborate with a quick check of the first-year girl's wand.

Story relayed, the then-human-shaped dragon had promptly left, loudly stating his intention to spend the remainder of his afternoon with Miss Abercrombie and his damsels as he had originally planned, and washed his hands of the proceedings entirely.

Albus took a moment to envy the young dragon's ability to just drop the problem in someone else's lap and go do something else. It had been a depressingly long time since the elderly wizard was last able to do the same.

A wave of his wand dispatched a message to Poppy to come take a look at the small girl laid out in one of his chairs. No matter the reason for the girl's actions, she would need a full checkup. Casting something as taxing as the killing curse was not a simple endeavor for a developing witch, and they would need to ensure the girl was not permanently damaged by the strain.

While he waited for Poppy to arrive, Albus busied himself with examining the young Weasley's personal effects in hopes that he would find some indication of what had possessed her to do such a foolish thing.

When his exploration of the girl's school bag turned up a diary bearing the name, Tom Marvolo Riddle, and practically dripping with magic, the elderly wizard had to wonder whether his turn of phrase had been rather more literal than he had originally intended.

"Albus, where is the patient?" Poppy asked breathlessly from the door to the stairwell.

"Poppy, your patient is unconscious in the chair in front of my desk, one Ginevra Weasley." As the Healer made her way over to the indicated chair, he added, "Mr. Potter brought her here after she attempted to kill him in the hallway outside the Library using a killing curse."

Poppy's gaze hardened even as she got to work with admirable professionalism, "So, magical exhaustion, then?"

"At least," Albus agreed absently, wand flickering all the while as he alternated between casting containment charms and increasingly obscure diagnostics on the suspicious diary. "Poppy?"

"Yes, Albus?"

"I recommend you check for signs of possession as well," the elderly man suggested in a tone that said it was anything but a suggestion.

"Possession?" the Healer questioned in a sinking voice. "Again?"

"Indeed," Albus confirmed, scowling at the name embossed on the leather cover of the diary. "Someone seems to be making an unfortunate habit of the practice."

The sighed as he recalled what he had been doing before the resident dragon had decided to trample all over his afternoon plans. Everything his diagnostics had told him so far pointed to this situation quite rapidly becoming quite tedious; though depending on what he found, it also might afford him with a rather welcome intelligence windfall.

Taking advantage of that windfall would be even more tedious, requiring both competent assistance and a great deal of preparation, which — the old wizard paused to take in the crowded surroundings of his office suite — would both necessitate a change in venue.

Pausing for a moment from its near-constant flickering over the increasingly sinister-seeming diary, his wand stabbed out in another direction, conjuring a messenger patronus with what almost any other wizard would consider to be shocking ease. A quick word had the patronus winging its way to Hagrid with a request for the man to allow the visitors entrance; Griselda certainly knew the school well enough to get around on her own once she was marked as authorized.

Albus hated to renege on a promise, but he was sure Griselda would understand. It was for his students, after all.

4.4.13 A big birdie told me

At the entrance to the school, Griselda and her two compatriots waited with slowly fading aplomb as they waited for a response from the Headmaster. Nearby, their host's aplomb faded much more quickly.

"Daft old man must have gotten caught up in his lemon drops again," Argus Filch mumbled to himself. "I've half a mind to…"

Whatever Argus had half a mind to do remained unrevealed as all four individuals looked up in slight alarm on hearing, and to some extent feeling, heavy but still quite rapid footsteps coming from outside the castle. The source of the disturbance was revealed shortly when Rubeus Hagrid passed through the outer gate into the castle's gatehouse bailey at a deceptively slow-looking lope which nonetheless ate up distance alarmingly quickly.

"Ah there yeh are!" the hairy mountain of a man greeted the three visitors as he drew near. "Sorry 'bout the delay, 'spect yeh're getting' a mite worried 'bout 'ow long 't were takin'. Mr. Dumbledore — good man, Dumbledore — 'e sent me ter tell yeh somethin' unexpected 's come up, an' 'e's got ter deal with tha'. 'E wanted me ter give yeh summat ter get yeh through tha wards, so 'ere yeh go."

With that, the massive man fished a trio of small wooden coins out of one of his voluminous pockets, each of which which he tapped with a massive key drawn from under his jerkin, where it hung on an impressively sturdy chain. He then handed one coin to each of the visitors.

"Those are temporary ward tags, good 'til mornin'. I 'spect yeh'll already know tha', but yeh got ter make sure, yeh do," Hagrid explained with an admonishing shake of a massive finger. "They'll get yeh through tha wards an' keep yeh safe, so don' lose 'em!"

All three of his visitors nodded immediately, familiar with the concept. They would certainly be careful; the Hogwarts wards were famed for a reason, and even on peacetime footing, running afoul of them was an unpleasant prospect.

"Righ'," the massive man said with a nod, "then I'll leave yeh to it. Yeh know where yeh're goin' right?" At the guests' nods, he nodded in turn. "Good, now I got ter go. Sorry 'bout tha rush!"

And with that, Hagrid left as swiftly as he had come, going on into the castle proper accompanied by a great clamor of thumping footsteps to mark his passage.

Somewhat bemused by the circumstances, the three visitors wordlessly set out for the wing they all remembered as housing the Defense classroom. It would have been nice to have the Headmaster along to lend the weight of his authority to the discussion, but it shouldn't be necessary, not so long as Lockhart was reasonable.

4.4.14 Sinking feeling

Gilderoy had just finished with his work for the day. It was not classwork to be sure, but despite the nominal four-day weekend, he had learned that the job gave him plenty to fill his hours. In any event, he was preparing to retire to the attached apartment suite when he heard a knock on the door. He frowned, wondering who was coming to visit at this hour. It certainly wouldn't be a student; his office hours had ended nearly half an hour ago.

After a momentary pause for speculation, he gave up the effort as pointless when he could just answer the door and find out. Pasting on his usual well-practiced smile, Gilderoy rose to answer the door.

The sight that greeted him when he opened it was chilling.

A severe-looking elderly woman that Gilderoy vaguely recognized from his own NEWTs stood outside his door with a stern expression on her face. She was flanked by two men in escort positions behind and to the side of her, quite obviously there as bodyguards.

It was a group consisting of an Education Department official and two plainclothes aurors, and it was precisely the opposite of what Lockhart had been hoping to see. The Ministry had sent a snatch team.

Well, shit.
 
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Section 4.5 - Grasping at opportunities
4.5 Grasping at opportunities

4.5.1 Seize the day

When Hagrid had relayed the Headmaster's urgent request, Snape had reacted quickly, taking only enough time to ensure his potions would keep safely until he could get back to them. Albus did not make such requests lightly, and the requested meeting location had rendered the potions master somewhat apprehensive. Hazard Laboratory 3 was hardly the most convenient venue, and Albus would not have picked it on a whim.

Putting the final touches on his currently active workstations, the sallow-faced man swept out of his personal laboratory and headed down the corridor towards the dark, half-hidden stairwell which led to the subbasement levels below the dungeons. The school's magical hazard laboratories were located there for practical reasons, and those reasons did not include convenience of access. It was one of the reasons the extensive facility was seldom used.

Which would explain why the dark man found his fellow Heads milling about aimlessly outside the door to the facility when he arrived.

"And what is this?" Snape demanded of his colleagues. "The summons was quite clear in its urgency."

"Ah, well, you see," Filius began sheepishly, "none of us actually know where to find Hazard Laboratory 3, other than that it is in there somewhere." The diminutive man gestured to the door.

"None of you?" a dark eyebrow rose skeptically on Snape's sallow face. "My employment package included a schematic of the facility, and I can imagine yours did as well…"

"Ah, Severus, that may be the case," Sprout interjected sheepishly. "But I'm afraid you are the youngest of us, and it has been a number of decades since any of us reviewed our employment documentation. Would you happen to be willing to guide us?"

"Come," the potions master replied tersely, opening the nondescript door on the landward side of Subbasement Level 3 and striding confidently into the narrow stone hallway beyond. Unlike his colleagues, whose research tended to be rather tame as magical research went, his more volatile potions research required the security of the research facility from time to time.

The others followed quickly, forced into single file behind their guide as they made their way through the winding tunnel hewn out of solid bedrock. The waving patterns of the native schist seen under the illumination of a lighting charm adding a dizzying element to the already confusing trip as their guide led them unhesitatingly through a bewildering series of intersecting tunnels, choosing directions seemingly at random.

"This is like a maze," Sprout commented at yet another turn. "Why did the founders make everything so confusing?"

"It is a maze," came Snape's terse reply. "These rooms are intended for hazardous magical experimentation, so they are built to keep any potentially unpleasant results of such contained until they can be dealt with."

"True," Flitwick spoke up in agreement. "I am familiar with the general design, if not the specifics of how to navigate the maze — which is why I counseled that we avoid entering without a guide. The hallway twists to prevent any clear line of sight from within a room to the outside, the walls, floor and ceiling are at least a solid dozen yards of living bedrock to help contain explosions or odd magical effects, and the corridors are narrow and intentionally similar-looking to make them more difficult to navigate for any accidentally summoned extradimensional monstrosities." The half-goblin shook his head in admiration, "These are some of the finest facilities for basic magical research in the whole of Europe."

"Indeed, they are," Minerva agreed. "Though it makes me somewhat nervous that Albus has called us so urgently to a place specifically designed to contain the results of poking what ought not be poked."

As the stern Scotswoman finished her statement, the barely meter-wide corridor suddenly widened more than twenty-fold into the cavernous expanse of Hazard Laboratory 3. She and her three colleagues were temporarily rendered mute by the scene before them. Laid out neatly in the gleaming silver of a runesmith's grease pencil, runes and connecting markings covered the majority of the expansive stone floor. A slightly closer examination by the practiced eyes of the Hogwarts senior faculty soon made it clear that the markings formed two separate arrays.

At the center of one array lay an unconscious redheaded girl, a first-year wearing Gryffindor red and gold, currently being tended by the school Healer. At the center of the other lay a slim leather-bound book with a name embossed in gold leaf on the cover. Its unassuming appearance was at odds with the sight of the premier wizard of Europe, grease-pencil in silver-smudged hand, busily elaborating and expanding on the already byzantine inscriptions surrounding it.

Even more than the troubling choice of venue and the impressive runework, it was the Headmaster's choice to prioritize of a book over his apparently injured student that made for an ominous tableau, indeed.

"As should be obvious from our surroundings, this is not a typical meeting," Albus Dumbledore addressed his four subordinates without preamble... without even looking up from what he was doing, in fact. He continued scribbling away the entire time. "I am afraid we have a great deal of urgent business to discuss."

"What has happened to Miss Weasley?" Minerva McGonagall demanded.

"I am treating her for magical exhaustion," Poppy volunteered from the girl's side.

"How did she manage that?" the girl's Head of House asked incredulously. "Nothing in the lesson plans called for heavy casting…" The Scotswoman frowned thoughtfully as another thing occurred to her. "For that matter, why is she being treated here instead of the infirmary?"

"She cast a killing curse at Mr. Potter this afternoon," Albus declared simply, "and the girl is being treated here because I strongly suspect she did so under the influence of possession."

That pair of revelations drove Minerva back into shocked silence.

"Suspected possession, an inverted containment array around the girl, and…" Flitwick trailed off as his eyes lingered intently on the runic array on which the Headmaster was still working. "I know your current project has something to do with containment, though you've added a great deal to it with which I am unfamiliar, Albus. The book was made into a conduit then, a remote targeting aid allowing someone to bypass the wards?"

"Well-reasoned, but not quite accurate, Filius," Albus grunted as he straightened from his crouch and carefully picked his way over to the other side of the array, robes hiked up to avoid smudging his earlier work. "It is not a conduit; rather it is a container."

"A container capable of possessing someone?" Filius asked incredulously. "Are you certain? I could see a self-contained compulsion enchantment, but a construct capable of even temporarily overriding a sapient mind on its own seems rather far-fetched. I've never heard of such a thing without the direct intervention of an active spellcaster."

"It is not a construct, is it?" Snape interjected, dark eyes narrow with suspicion as he stared at the diary at the center of the array.

"Regretfully, it is not," the elderly wizard confirmed absently, still busily working at his runes.

"A phylactery then?" Severus asked calmly, though his whiter-than-normal complexion and even thinner than usual lips belied his calm demeanor.

"No, I'm afraid it is nothing quite so… innocent," Albus denied with a wince.

Filius, who had already begun fingering his wand at the mention of the word 'phylactery', now clutched it in a white-knuckled grasp and sported a downright murderous expression. "Someone has created a horcrux?"

"As near as I have been able to determine," the Headmaster confirmed with a sigh, looking up as he finally completed the last of the runes.

"I'm afraid I am unfamiliar with the term, horcrux," Sprout said, breaking her own uneasy silence for the first time. "Certainly, I've read enough of the old tales to know what a phylactery is, but what is a horcrux, and how is it different?"

"Where a phylactery stores the entirety of a wizard's soul in a container," Filius explained, "a horcrux splits a soul between the original body and an external container."

The Hufflepuff Head frowned in puzzlement. "How is that worse than a phylactery?"

"From the perspective of the Brethren, the difference lies in the creation," the half-goblin answered. "Creating a phylactery involves the caster horribly mutilating himself, ripping out his own soul. It is unquestionably evil, a horrific perversion and a crime against everything good and decent in the world, yet it is a crime perpetrated upon the caster's own self. The creation of a horcrux is not nearly so self-contained, with the ritualistic murder of an innocent comprising perhaps the least objectionable part of it."

Sprout paled, looking a bit green around the gills. "Why on earth would anyone do such a thing?" she breathed.

"As you are undoubtedly aware from those old tales you mentioned, Pomona," Albus reentered the conversation, "phylacteries have their own disadvantages, vulnerability to control chief among them. The phylactery contains the soul of the wizard who made it, the seat of their will. Consequently, should anyone else come to physically possess the phylactery, it is a simple matter to utterly enslave the one who made it... completely and quite permanently."

"Yes, I remember that from the children's tales," the herbology professor allowed. "This horcrux is different, then?"

"Rather than storing the soul in an external object, the horcrux ritual creates an anchor for it," the elderly wizard continued his explanation as he once more reviewed the runes he had written earlier. "One might say that it 'splits' the soul between multiple physical containers simultaneously. Thus, in order to achieve the same level of control over a wizard who has made horcruxes, every horcrux must be gathered, a task rendered all the more difficult by the fact that the caster makes himself into a horcrux through the initial ritual."

"So, with the horcrux method, controlling the wizard requires not only acquiring their soul anchors, but also capturing the wizard himself anyway," Pomona summarized. "I can see where that would be an advantage, but... to split one's soul? What would possess someone to think that was a good idea?" The witch frowned as another thought occurred to her. "For that matter, how is such a thing even possible?"

"I would presume it has something to do with the vile actions prescribed by the rituals," Flitwick ventured tentatively. "Perhaps actions of sufficient depravity damage the soul of the one performing them?"

"It is not truly…" Albus paused, closing his eyes and bowing his head in consideration. "Perhaps my earlier words were ill-chosen," the elderly wizard allowed. "Creating a horcrux does not truly divide a soul into distinct pieces, rather it stretches it and pins the stretched bit to a new object. Even as blackened as the practitioner's soul becomes, it remains integral, a distinction which makes a great deal of sense if you consider the application. An anchor is useless if you cut it loose from its ship, after all."

All four Heads nodded at that comparison, and the Headmaster continued. "As for the vile actions you mentioned, Filius, those arose out of the development of the ritual."

The half-goblin perked up with interest, "You know its origins?"

Albus nodded, elaborating, "As you are all aware, a spell is a structure of magic which produces a particular result; however, while we have developed general means of shaping magic into arbitrarily chosen structures, as of yet we have developed no general means of predicting which magical structure would result in a given effect. All such mappings have so far been developed by observation, repeated instances of 'try this and see what happens'."

The elderly wizard sighed. "For this reason, developing spells from first principles is an exceedingly difficult task; we are painting in the dark, as it were. Most 'new' spells are, in fact, incremental alterations or clever combinations of previously existing ones eventually tracing back through their developmental history to some useful accident. Dark magic is no different; in fact, it often borrows from existing magic even more blatantly than usual, given the general dearth of patience among its more avid practitioners."

As his audience listened raptly, Albus chuckled mirthlessly. "In the case of the development of horcruxes, Herpo the Foul combined two spell lines in the sort of inelegant hack job that typifies most of the uglier forms of dark magic. The first was the line which developed the phylactery, a series of spells used to bind souls to physical objects as if they were real bodies. It was originally refined during research into making improved magical prosthetics, oddly enough. The second was an ancient and only very rarely used form of magical marriage rite."

"What sort of marriage rite requires that sort of depravity, Albus?" Filius demanded, horrified.

"The marriage rite requires no such thing, Filius," the Headmaster was quick to clarify. "Rather, that was introduced as a means of desecrating and breaking the nascent bond formed by the marriage. You see, the marriage ceremony in question exchanges a portion of the souls of the two participants — again not by severing, but by stretching out — effectively making each into a horcrux for the other."

The elderly wizard's expression darkened. "Rather than attempting to isolate and reverse-engineer this soul-stretching magic, the horcrux ritual takes the lazy approach, simply using the marriage ritual almost unchanged to stretch out the soul of the practitioner. The nascent marriage bond is then severed before it can truly settle into place, with the phylactery spells used to anchor the stretched-out bit of the caster's soul to a previously-prepared object."

"That… makes a disturbing amount of sense," the half-goblin said, looking rather sick to his stomach. "So, all the perverse symbolism, the mocking pantomime of hospitality leading up to deliberate betrayal and murder… all of it is intended to break a soul-deep bond quickly and irrevocably. I take it the innocent sacrifice is the would-be spouse?"

"Indeed, Filius," Dumbledore confirmed.

The room fell silent for a time, only Poppy bustling about in the background, skillfully tending to her patient. Each of the professors seemed to be handling the information differently. Filius looked to be caught between contemplation and nausea, as was Pomona, though she looked to be slipping further toward contemplation as time went on.

Minerva's attention focused on Poppy's actions and her patient, perhaps unsurprisingly as the first-year girl was one of her students, and the volatile Scotswoman took her duties towards her students seriously. Meanwhile, Albus busied himself with an exhaustive review of the runes he had recently finished writing, periodically making a small correction here and there as he progressed through the design.

Snape, on the other hand, had looked thoughtful for short time before his dark eyes had widened in realization. His expression had then flickered rapidly through a variety of emotions before ultimately settling on coldly murderous. The sallow-faced man briefly opened his mouth to speak before apparently thinking better of it.

So it was that Pomona was the first to break the silence.

"It strikes me that the marriage ritual you mentioned seems to have a great many advantages," she spoke up. "If your spouse serves as an anchor, then wouldn't you always be able to revive so long as both of you don't die at the same time? You would never have widows or widowers! If the ritual itself is not distasteful, and you implied that it is not, then whyever did it fall out of use?"

"Hmm?" the elderly wizard looked up from his task. "Oh, it is simply that entwining souls in such a way has a long list of deleterious side effects which greatly outweigh the benefits."

"What could be so terrible as to outweigh effective immortality?" the herbology professor asked incredulously.

"According to the accounts, it varies between individuals," Albus said simply. "The most immediate issue was generally one of communication. Surprising though it might seem given the oft-cited need for communication in a marriage, there are some things better left unsaid. A soul-deep bond often exposes surface thoughts to the other participant, meaning it is difficult to leave anything at all unsaid. It takes a special sort of person to forge a successful relationship in the face of that level of tactlessness. When added to the fact that there can never be any reprieve, temporary or otherwise, no way to step back from the situation or gain perspective... well, it is a rare couple that can take the stress and make things work anyway."

"Oh, dear!" Sprout exclaimed in understanding before frowning. "I can see why it fell out of favor."

"Quite so," the white-bearded old man agreed. "According to the surviving records, the typical marriage using the rite consisted of several months of delirious joy followed by a rapid collapse into abject misery, normally terminating in murder-suicide."

He sighed with a sad shake of his head. "Among those few hardy souls that managed to endure the strain for long enough, there were additional complications that showed up over time, chiefly related to the blurring of identities and the long-term consequences of any significant disparity in magical power between spouses. As I recall, the longest lasting such union, at least the longest on record, lasted some fifteen years before the participants died."

Finally reaching the end of her patience with the ongoing discussion of what to her seemed irrelevant minutiae, Minerva interrupted.

"That is all well and good, Albus," the irritable Scotswoman interjected, "but why have you called us down here? More importantly, why is Miss Weasley being treated here, rather than the infirmary? Surely your 'urgent business' was not simply an excuse to give a lecture on obscure magics?"

"Of course, Minerva!" Albus exclaimed sheepishly. "I'm afraid I have let myself be caught up in scholarly pursuits when we should be focused on the practical, my apologies. Yes, the hazard laboratories are an unusual choice of venue; however, the acquisition of the horcrux responsible for Miss Weasley's affliction has afforded us an unexpected opportunity... an opportunity I am loath to waste."

All four of the Heads perked up at their superior's businesslike tone as they waited for him to finish his explanation.

"While control of the perpetrator is off the table for the reasons discussed earlier, we do have access to the one responsible — admittedly limited access, to be sure, but access all the same — and he is currently in a vulnerable state." The elderly wizard gestured to the book lying innocently in the focal point of his runic system. "I believe we should take this opportunity to… question him."

"Question him?" Filius asked. "And the runes?"

"Question him vigorously," Albus clarified.

"What do you need us to do?"

4.5.2 The unforgiving minute

A long heartbeat passed as Gilderoy Lockhart froze in place, petrified by the tableau framed by his open door. Dreadful visions ran through his head as everything he had built in his life tumbled down around his ears. This was it; his worst nightmare had arrived, and he was to be thrown unceremoniously into Azkaban.

Yet, though the sight might be dreadful, it was not unexpected.

Gilderoy had not been idle, thus despite his terror, only the barest of moments passed before the former obliviator's mind kicked into high gear. The world seemed to slow around him, a perception aided in no small part by the massive dose of magically enhanced adrenaline that was already pouring into his bloodstream. He breathed in, the slight noise loud in his own ears as his wizarding body rapidly geared itself up for fight or flight, as needed. Through it all, his well-practiced smile remained in place by sheer force of habit as the blonde man ticked swiftly through his options.

The two aurors were the most immediate threat, Gilderoy decided, his eyes rapidly flicking to each in turn, taking in their appearances and equipment. The wizarding special operations soldiers outclassed him in combat in every conceivable way. He had seen their compatriots in action often enough to know that quite well.

That said, they were undercover, and thus without their usual enchanted and armored robes. So long as he struck first and decisively, he had a sliver of a chance at victory. Gilderoy blinked in momentary consideration before revising that to a very thin sliver, and then only if his strike was very decisive indeed. Aurors were well-trained in cooperative combat, and two working together would bury him easily if given the slightest chance. He would have to take steps to separate them.

That said, he could hardly afford to ignore the witch, either. Blue eyes turned to his third opponent just as he began to release that first breath. She was vaguely familiar which meant that she had probably been involved in his exams back in school, if he had to hazard a guess. Unfortunately, he didn't recognize her well enough for positive identification.

Despite that, he could see enough to know to be cautious. Gilderoy's eyes tightened ever so slightly. The woman was old, and magicals only got to be that old if they were powerful. She might not be a practiced combatant — though that was by no means a safe assumption — but even if she wasn't, that didn't mean she could be safely dismissed as harmless.

Two highly trained opponents and a third unknown would pose a stiff challenge for nearly any wizard, even ones skilled in combat, and Gilderoy entertained no delusions about being one of those wizards. However, he did have one meager advantage.

Surprise.

His opponents should have no reason to believe he was expecting them, so they would likely go along with anything that would aid them in setting their ambush, unless he tipped them off prematurely. That gave him something to work with. He assumed conscious control over his well-practiced smile and got to work.

"Hello," he greeted, his voice and posture carefully modulated despite his furious planning and still skyrocketing pulse. "I must admit, I cannot say I was expecting any visitors today, let alone official ones. What can I do for the Ministry this afternoon?"

Careful to avoid any change to his demeanor, the former obliviator rapidly ran through scenarios as fast as he could process them, which was quite fast indeed given that his brain was now soaked in what would have been lethal amounts of adrenaline for a nonmagical human.

"If you would be so kind as to spare us a moment of your time, Mr. Lockhart, we would like discuss some things that have come to our attention," the stern older witch said politely. "Perhaps half an hour?"

Despite the desperate situation, as one professional liar to another, Gilderoy couldn't help but admire her performance. Her calm voice betrayed not the slightest hint of the incipient violence he knew was to come. For all the tells she had, he would have thought they were here for a friendly cup of tea. It was almost as if she were actually telling the truth. It was quite the impressive feat, and it was also quite a troubling one.

He bumped his internal threat assessment of the old woman up accordingly. The sort of mental discipline necessary to compartmentalize her intentions in such a way translated quite well into magical ability. As far as covert snatch teams went, this one was top-notch. It was a good thing he had been forewarned.

"I suppose my afternoon schedule is flexible enough to indulge you," the blond man allowed in a friendly tone, finally settling on a course. "Do come in!"

He stepped aside and gestured to the few chairs arranged around a small round table to one side of the room.

His visitors entered readily, as he had expected them to. Normally, moving into the office would only benefit their cause. Getting past the door frame removed their target's only real opportunity for cover, coming to the table closed the range, and a closed door behind them would eliminate any chance that a passing student might notice the arrest.

As the group drew even with him on their way to the seating area, Gilderoy gestured to the second auror and handed him a golden opportunity to cement that last advantage. "Would you mind closing the door while I prepare some tea?"

As the man nodded agreeably and turned to the task, Gilderoy struck. Still at point blank range, he shot a stunning curse into the back of the first auror, dropping him immediately before repeating the action on the old witch who had just barely started to turn towards him when she lost consciousness and fell to the floor.

Whirling as fast as his adrenaline-flushed magical reflexes could carry him, the blond was still almost too slow, barely managing to catch the second auror with a third stunner as the man whirled about from where he had been closing the door, ready to go at the first hint of hostile magic behind him. With a thud, his third visitor was down and out. Wasting no time, a gesture from his wand closed the door the rest of the way, assuring at least a few minutes of privacy.

He then slumped against the corner of his desk, barely able to remain standing.

"Thank Merlin… for that… dueling club!" Gilderoy wheezed in between gasping desperately for air and exhausted trembling as he came down from his adrenaline high and his body struggled to pay back the energy debt it had incurred. Without it, or more precisely, without the practice he had put in since then in hopes of avoiding that nightmarish variant of the disarming charm Snape had described, he never would have managed to get those stunners off fast enough.

As he slowly caught his breath and his involuntary shaking stilled, Gilderoy took a moment to look down at his unconscious would-be captors. He shook his head regretfully. It was a shame that it had come to this. Then he sighed and set about his business.

There would be time enough for regrets later, but unless he did everything right in the next few hours…

He shuddered again, this time for reasons unrelated to his exertions.

Unless he did everything right, when that 'later' came, there would be time for nothing else.

4.5.3 Nascent concerns

For the fourth time in the last few minutes, Abigail looked up from her reading to the empty chair across the library table. It was the seat normally occupied by the boisterous dragon she happily called "friend".

Normally was the operative term, for at the moment, the seat remained stubbornly empty, just as it had been the last three times she had looked.

It was unlike Harry to be so late. Generally, it was a toss-up whether she or the young dragon would show up first, varying according to the day of the week and their respective schedules. Today was one when Harry ought to have been there before her, but even on those days when she arrived first, the gap was normally ten minutes at most. Today, he was nearly half an hour late, late enough that even Hermione had beaten him to the table, and that was no mean feat. The bushy-haired girl's schedule and habitual tendency to stay after her classes to ask questions conspired to make her the last to arrive as a rule.

The young dragon's continued absence had the older girl was growing rather concerned. The last time he'd been so late had been nearly a year previous, and that was when he had ended up unconscious for weeks on end. That had been a thoroughly unpleasant time, one which Abigail had precisely zero interest in revisiting, yet she was beginning to fear that her draconic friend had might have arranged for a reprise.

She was thus rather inordinately pleased to see her friend's face as he passed through the door into the library. The frown he wore was unusual, but it was far better than it could have been.

"Harry!" the older girl greeted her friend in a stage-whisper as soon as he got close enough; there was no need to borrow trouble from Madame Pince, no matter how relieved she was. "Where have you been?"

"I ran into something in the hallway that I had to deal with," the young dragon explained in a similarly low voice, nodding a friendly greeting to his human damsel who had looked up from her own reading to greet him. "I ended up taking it to Mr. Dumbledore."

"What happened?" Hermione asked curiously.

"It wasn't really anything all that important," Harry dismissed the question with an indifferent wave of his hand. "It just took a few minutes 'cause I had to go all the way to the Headmaster's office and argue with the gargoyle. I can tell you about it later if you want, but… um, if you don't mind, though," the dragon's currently human-shaped face took on a somewhat concerned frown, "there's something else I'd like to talk over with you two. I'm kinda confused on what to think about it."

"Of course, Harry," Abigail agreed immediately, carefully marking her place in her current book before closing it and focusing her attention on her draconic friend, her actions quickly echoed, if somewhat reluctantly when it came to putting down her book, by her bushy-haired compatriot. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Well, before I came here, I stopped by to talk about something with Donald," Harry began, "and he told me…"

And so, he explained.

4.5.4 Vigorous questioning

Dark eyes blinked at the sudden influx of light when the rune-covered stone floor of the dimly lit hazard laboratory before them suddenly dissolved into rough-hewn wooden planks illuminated by brilliant daylight. Fingertips that had just been touching the stone gave the planks an exploratory rub before their owner straightened from his hunched position and looked up.

"Hmm," Severus Snape hummed as he surveyed the surreal landscape, "that went more smoothly than I had anticipated."

He found himself kneeling upon a sturdy wooden platform, about fifty feet above an endless plane of dull gray stone that stretched as far as his eye could see to either side of him. In front, the sweeping vista was interrupted by a massive, pinkish-white cliff face which stretched all the way across his field of vision.

"Now what am I to make of this, I wonder?" the potions master mused.

Before they had begun Albus' aggressive interrogation scheme, the elderly wizard had taken the time to explain a little of what to expect.

"I have designed the runic system to accept energy and direction from the four of you," the Headmaster had said, gesturing to the side of the runic inscription between the book and Poppy's patient. "You will take your places there, and if the process proceeds as intended, the residual link to his victim will draw the contained soul in that direction. The runes should allow you to serve as an effective anvil. I will play the hammer."

He gestured again to the opposite side of the inscription. "Between the metaphysical leverage I've built into the runes and our combined strength, I believe I will be able to extract at least some useful information before rendering this portion of the perpetrator irretrievably catatonic."

Although he generally did not use such runic constructs in his field, his colleagues used them often enough for Snape to be familiar with the basic methodology. The runes needed for such things were already byzantine, and attempting to specify a precise user interface on top of that was asking for trouble. As a result, such constructs almost always used dynamically generated interfaces in which runes specified the basics in the broadest possible terms while depending on the user's own subconscious to fill in the specifics. This so-called adaptive interface methodology was far simpler to implement, if rather more confusing to operate, than the fully deterministic alternative.

As far as mental interfaces went, Snape supposed the endless plane of stone wasn't too bad; however, he was having some difficulty reconciling the scene with the Headmaster's hammer and anvil imagery. The implication had been that Snape and his colleagues were to serve as some form of restraint for the subject, but that begged the question…

Where was the subject?

It took another thirty seconds before the potions master's eyes widened as he managed to wrap his mind around the sheer scale involved and discern the true nature of the pinkish-white cliff face that lay before him.

His sallow face paled more than usual as he worked his suddenly dry mouth. Now that he had managed to wrap his mind around the perspective, it was obvious that that "cliff face" was the visible profile of a prone humanoid form, a form of utterly gargantuan proportions. Luckily, the titan slept and, he noted as he calmed enough to catalogue the rest of the scene, seemed to be bound quite firmly in place.

An extensive webwork of ropes — seemingly hair thin to Snape's eye, but given the distances involved probably as thick as his own waist — passed over and around the enormous figure. The hawsers frequently dropped down to loop through thousands of great iron rings, each one several times the size of a man and firmly anchored in the stone below.

He traced the convoluted path of the heavy ropes and eventually determined that the entire mess terminated within the wooden construction upon which he stood. Turning around to examine the construction more closely, he found a large capstan which had escaped his initial notice by virtue of being behind him.

"A winch, then? Well, that seems straightforward enough," the potions master mused. "Best make sure, though."

Setting his weight to the task, the Snape gripped one of the capstan's smooth wooden arms and gave it an experimental push. The massive wooden device turned readily, creaking and rumbling as it drove the attached winch, which in turn slowly took up the slack in the web of ropes. The small but insistent tug at his magic that accompanied the effort was all the confirmation he needed.

Snape straightened with a relieved sigh, now certain of his role, and leaned against the central hub of the capstan to wait for the signal to begin, whatever that signal would be. Given the grand scale employed so for, it would probably be difficult to miss.

Unfortunately, that left Snape at loose ends for however long it took his colleagues to prepare themselves, and that giving him time to reflect, a dangerous prospect given the ugly subject matter of the earlier discussion. Horcruxes were bad enough business on their own, but the context had called to mind something else, something that made the whole business strike alarmingly close to home for the dour potions master.

The Headmaster's description of the horcrux creation ritual had called to mind a long-standing mystery, one that had captured his attention immediately and persistently. It was a mystery that had never fallen far from his thoughts over the decade and change since it had occurred.

What had happened in Godric's Hollow on that fateful Halloween night?

For most, the Dark Lord's demise had been a happy accident, and the old adage about not looking a gift horse in the mouth held sway. Per the official account, Voldemort had broken into the Potter house at Godric's Hollow. He had then proceeded to kill first James Potter, then Lily, and then finally attempted to kill their son, somehow managing to die in the process.

Very neat, very simple, and, to anyone who had known the three people involved, patently absurd.

After being seduced into joining Voldemort's band of thugs, Severus had become unfortunately familiar with Voldemort's monstrous proclivities. The man was a sadist of the highest order, practically a demon in human skin, and he never missed an opportunity to impress that fact on his pet potions master, much to Severus' lingering horror.

Even now, after years of thinking on the matter, Snape could not divine Voldemort's motivation for doing so. Perhaps it had been an attempt at intimidation to keep Snape cowed and obedient. It could have been a form of gloating, forcing his recalcitrant subordinate to witness his depravity and grind Snape's metaphorical nose in the fact that he was powerless to stop it. He had once even considered the possibility that the Dark Lord had taken him along in a twisted parody of kindness: an attempt to share his twisted hobby with his subordinate as a sort of psychopathic overture of friendship.

Regardless of the man's reasoning, it did not change the fact that the potions master had found himself dragged along to several nearly identical situations in the past, and he knew just how the sick bastard behaved when he set out to murder an entire family. The Dark Lord would never squander such an opportunity for mayhem.

Snape's expression went wooden as he forced down the horrifying memories with an act of long practiced will.

Given his druthers, Voldemort would likely have kept both James and Lily alive long enough to force them to watch him torture their child to death in front of them before even starting on the couple. The Voldemort Snape had known might have chosen some warped variant on the theme — using magic to force one parent to murder the infant with his or her own hands or some other, ghastlier depravity — but never would he have taken the simple and forthright approach of methodically killing everyone in the house as he encountered them. It would never have occurred to him as a possible course of action; it simply wasn't in his nature.

What had changed?

Snape's first thought had been one of practicality, that somehow James Potter or Lily had posed a threat and were dispatched accordingly, but that explanation quickly ran aground on one unpleasant truth: neither James nor Lily presented anything even vaguely resembling a threat to the man.

The Dark Lord was a supremely powerful wizard, in the same league as Dumbledore. In short, he was the sort of monstrous creature so far beyond the average wizard as to be essentially untouchable in any contest of magical might. Snape would grudgingly admit, if only in the privacy of his own mind, that James Potter had been a strong wizard. At the end of the day, however, Potter had lived in the same realm as the potions master himself, and Snape couldn't hold a candle to Voldemort in a straight fight. The same went for Lily, even for both James and Lily acting in concert for that matter.

Over the years, Severus had considered the problem from every angle he could imagine, yet he had been unable to find a satisfactory explanation. No motive would account for Voldemort's behavior that night, and he had remained in the dark until just half an hour ago. When Albus had described the horcrux ritual, the fog had cleared, leaving behind a state of dreadful clarity.

The ritual required a sacrifice, and though he hadn't laid it out in as many words, Albus had described it as a perversion of a marriage ritual. Thus, it followed that the sacrifice in question almost certainly had to be available for marriage. Suddenly, the quick execution of James Potter made eminent sense.

Denying his twisted appetites to no further purpose was beyond the limits of that sadistic monster's self-control. Denying them for a ritual requirement, however?

Snape grimaced at the all too plausible thought.

The idea had all but confirmed itself when Severus had caught a glimpse of the name embossed on the cover of the diary in the midst of the flickering lightshow that accompanied the runic construct's activation.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

That name was all too familiar. It was the name of a man who had skillfully seduced a teenaged boy into joining a depraved political movement without fully understanding its goals and methods. It was the name of a man who had entrapped that boy and gloated over his predicament. It was the name of the man who had ruined Severus' life and driven him to despair. It was a name that had been revealed to him as a calculated gesture to inspire undeserved trust in a gullible teenager.

Snape looked up at the still quiescent behemoth lying prone before him with a murderous glower. As a result of the last, he was one of the precious few souls who could connect that name directly to the man's more widely known nom de guerre.

Voldemort.

It had been confirmation enough for Severus, and now with time to wait and his mind idle, he couldn't help but speculate. Filius had been so vehemently disgusted at the merest hint of the presence of a horcrux, citing the nature of its creation as the reason. What sort of things were involved in that ritual? What heinous requirements had earned the undying disgust of the goblin nation?

The knuckles of his already clenched hand whitened further.

Just what else had that monster done to Lily before she was ultimately murdered?

Could he handle knowing?

Could he handle not knowing?

The sudden flicker of shadow stirred him from his increasingly black musings, and he looked up. The flicker had heralded the arrival of a second giant on the endless plane of stone, this one wakeful, upright, and unreservedly terrifying. Its sheer scale was mind-boggling, and it carried an utterly colossal sledgehammer, handling it as easily as Snape might handle his stirring rod.

Albus Dumbledore had arrived on stage.

It seemed the interrogation was to begin, and the potions master turned to set his shoulder to the capstan in anticipation of his coming task. As the wood creaked into motion, so did his lips, twisting into a nasty sort of smile.

Judging from the heroically proportioned sledgehammer that whistled through the air as the mountainous avatar of the old wizard tested his swing, this promised to be a viscerally satisfying experience. Riddle had been responsible, directly or indirectly, for far too much pain in his life, and this seemed a prime opportunity for some well-deserved revenge. It was not as good as it would have been to swing the hammer himself, of course, but failing that, holding his erstwhile tormentor down while Albus worked him over would do.

It would do nicely.

Steeling himself for the coming effort, the potions master wondered what it said about him that his interface to the runes, an interface built from his own subconscious mind, promised to be so horrifically bloody. To be sure, forcibly extracting information from someone was an inherently violent process, there was no way around that truth, but he surely could have managed something less grisly… not that it would take much. Less grisly than "hammering a man to pieces with a sledgehammer" was an easy standard to meet.

Snape wasn't sure he wanted to know.

The gigantic figure of Dumbledore gave a ponderous nod, and Snape dropped his disquieting train of thought in favor of throwing his all into turning the capstan. The winch below creaked and groaned as the webwork of hawsers tightened, and after a few moments what little slack had been in the restraints was taken up and the ropes drew taut. Shortly thereafter, a loud thud echoed across the plane of stone as the wakeful behemoth kicked its imprisoned counterpart awake.

Tom hissed menacingly at the rough handling, a hiss that grew increasingly panicked as he began to realize his situation and struggled in a futile attempt to escape the ropes. The monstrous hammer rose high, and the bound titan's great voice rose in a desperate, inarticulate shout only to cut off abruptly as the hammer fell with a meaty thud and an accompanying tremor.

Then the air was shattered by a blaring cacophony which Snape could only understand as screaming by the context; the difference in scale distorted it beyond recognition. The din only got worse as Albus' giant figure wrenched his hammer free with a wet squelch and truly got down to his bloody business.

All the while, Severus Snape stood there, his illusory muscles and magic straining against the capstan in the effort to keep the first giant from escaping or fighting back effectively. It was a heroic struggle even with the immense metaphysical leverage provided by Albus' rune work.

All the while the potion master's full attention was focused on Dumbledore's work, watching and listening intently despite the exertion, never wavering as he played torturer's apprentice nor flinching as he was drenched by the occasional splatter of something that was most assuredly not blood.

All the while, his gleefully vicious smile never faltered.

4.5.5 Dismantling a life

Across the school and half a dozen floors up in the Defense Professor's suite, Gilderoy Lockhart scrambled to carry out his preplanned escape as quickly as he dared, struggling to choke down his rising panic lest he err in his haste. Speed was critical to his success, but he only had one chance, and it had to go perfectly.

Or else.

Manfully resisting the urge to break down and cry, Gilderoy instead paused to allow himself a bare moment to catch his breath and calm his nervous trembling, then turned to moving his recently stunned visitors into the chairs he had originally offered them.

There was no way to guess how long it would take the Ministry to send reinforcements. Gilderoy hoped for at least a few hours but assumed that he didn't have nearly so long. It was far better to be too early than too late, especially when the next group would come in combat-ready after the covert approach had failed. They'd sacrifice secrecy by doing so, but that was a relatively minor complication, as the former obliviator knew first-hand.

A minor charm, easy and familiar yet still miscast twice before he managed to get his hands to stop shaking, set his luggage to packing itself. A tiny fraction of the copious contents of his professorial suite rose and neatly arranged itself into a pair of perfectly mundane canvas duffle bags.

Those two duffels, pitifully small compared to the mid-sized flat that was his usual luggage, would have to do. He would be leaving everything else behind. Gilderoy couldn't afford the risk of dragging around his usual trunk, not when he might be forced to dodge pursuit via apparation. The un-expanded duffels were all he could afford to take.

While hardly an expert on the magics involved, Gilderoy was an experienced traveler and had a good visceral understanding of the basics. For reasons he felt best left to the magical theorists, magically warped spaces heartily disliked being moved, and they took that pique out on the traveler. The usual rule of thumb for magical luggage was five-fifteen-fifty. For every mile you walk with an expanded trunk, expect it feel like five; for every mile you portkey, expect it to drain you like fifteen; and for every mile you apparate, expect it to feel like fifty. That was the rule for mildly expanded trunks, the greater the expansion ratio, the harder it would be to move.

In his experience, Gilderoy's own deluxe, practically-a-luxury-flat-in-a-box luggage followed more of a ten-eighty-nope rule. He'd slept for nearly two days solid after taking the train to Hogwarts. Trying to apparate with the thing would be tantamount to suicide.

For the first time in his life, cargo space was at a premium. His bags contained only a few changes of disgustingly unremarkable clothes, less than half his usual collection of cosmetics, and a distressingly small stack of Gringotts bearer bonds which represented almost the entirety of his liquid assets. As an author, most his income was tied up in long-term deals: royalties from his books, contracts for future speaking engagements, and that sort of thing. As long as the money kept coming in, he was well off, and he had spent accordingly while living the high life. It was a habit he was now regretting acutely, since what he was about to do meant that he would never be able to collect another payment. Setting aside those now-inaccessible contracts, the contents of the professorial suite around him represented the sum total of all his worldly goods.

It was a fact that made his next actions rather more distressing for the blond than one might expect.

A second packing charm hit the room, this one moving all his other belongings into his usual heavily expanded trunk. A glorious panoply of pastel silks flew through the air only to pack itself neatly into the trunk alongside a seemingly interminable procession of oddments and mementos. His vast collection of self-portraiture closed out the magical parade, settling into the trunk in a large pile and leaving one of his favorites to smile winsomely up at him. In lieu of returning the smile in his usual custom, Lockhart sighed deeply and dragged the whole lot across the room towards the massive stone fireplace occupying the majority of one of the walls.

It was time to ensure that when he disappeared, he would stay disappeared.

Gilderoy was no scholar of obscure magics, but his observation skills when it came to people were second to none, as were his memory and attention to detail. He knew people; he watched; he listened; and he remembered. That was the very bedrock of his previous profession. It wasn't everything, but without that foundation, no obliviator could ever be more than mediocre.

During his career at the Ministry, Gilderoy had spent a great deal of time around his coworkers at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. As a result. he liked to think had a fair idea of how the various sub-organizations operated. He knew what to expect from the rank and file of the constabulary. He knew the usual procedures in the administrative offices. He knew the equipment and tactics of the aurors. And, more importantly, he knew the sorts of things that Investigations and Forensics could pull off if sufficiently motivated; the lab boys generally tended to be quite vocal about their methods when trying to impress the ladies in the pub after work.

Armed with that knowledge, Gilderoy was confident he knew how to avoid most of their methods. Unfortunately, just knowing how didn't mean that the process would be pleasant... nor that it would be without sacrifice.

He took a moment to stare down into the depths of the expanded trunk for a long lugubrious moment until he closed his eyes with a regretful sigh. The collection below him was the physical record of everything he had accomplished. It represented all the things he had enjoyed, all the memories of places he had been and people he had met, and it was all stacked up in the closest thing he had to a permanent home ever since he had left Hogwarts.

It was his life.

And therein lay the problem.

Every single one of those objects had been with him long enough to pose a massive security risk. They had been in his possession for years, in some cases decades, soaking up his magical signature all the while. Each and every item was a calling card... a calling card which, if recovered and used to guide a scrying ritual, would lead his pursuers right to him without fail, no matter how he tried to hide or how many obstacles he put in their way.

Each and every one was an express ticket to Azkaban if it left his possession, and since he couldn't risk taking the expanded trunk with him…

"Damn it all," Gilderoy muttered giving the rim of his trunk, his home, one final, apologetic pat before he straightened and flicked his suddenly very heavy wand back into his hand.

The flame conjuration spell was rather more impressive with his adult magical reserves than it had been when he had first learned the spell as an adolescent. A torrent of yellow-white spilled down into the trunk, setting everything afire, including his now no longer smiling portrait which was now frantically but fruitlessly attempting to blow out the tongues of flame licking at its frame.

"Damn it all," he muttered again. It was a sentiment that bore repeating.

As the fire spread, he stared into the flames hungrily consuming the record of his life, every physical trace of what made Gilderoy Lockhart stand out as Gilderoy Lockhart. The rapidly growing inferno held his rapt attention for nearly a minute until he finally managed to tear his eyes away from the strangely hypnotic sight.

Blinking away the afterimages of the flames and swallowing against an unpleasant tightness in his throat, Gilderoy turned away from the roaring fire. The deed was done, and a quick word to the castle elves before his departure would see the trunk left to burn itself out and the rest of the room thoroughly sanitized. His authority as a professor would be enough to see it done despite the unusual nature of the request.

Now he had other business to handle.

The former obliviator turned back to the slumped forms of his visitors, the immediate cause of his current less-than-ideal circumstances, anger in his eyes and a white-knuckled grip on his wand.

"Now, what to do with you three?"

4.5.6 Aftermath

Silence reigned in the cavernous expanse of Hazard Laboratory 3, disturbed only by the gentle rustling of Madame Pomfrey's robes as she doggedly attended to her patient despite the momentous events which had recently taken place on the other side of the room.

The runes which the Headmaster had so intricately and painstakingly laid out in the hours leading up to the interrogation had not fared well. The air above them shimmered slightly from the waste heat released by the tremendous magical flow which had passed through the array. The shimmering silver markings had blackened under the strain, and a few of the more densely written areas were actually burning with a low, smokey flame. It was the usual result for works done in runesmith's pencil; there was a reason it was only used for prototypes and one-offs.

The room's other occupants looked little better than the runes they had operated. Frazzled, trembling with exhaustion, and drenched in sweat, the senior staff of Hogwarts found themselves mutely staring at each other, still kneeling at their various posts as they tried to catch their collective breath and process the events to which they had just borne witness. Even for wizards such as the Hogwarts senior staff, that interrogation had been an ordeal.

At the center of it all, a thin curl of smoke rose lazily from the leather-bound diary which had caused so much trouble over the last several months. Its charred condition strongly implied that it was unlikely to cause any such troubles again.

Minerva McGonagall was the first to shake off her stupor and move, groaning as she attempted to shift from the kneeling position she had held for the better part of two hours, her stiff joints and sore muscles protesting the movement. After half a minute of trying, she managed to sit awkwardly, taking the pressure off her aching knees, and she turned to check on her much put-upon student.

"Poppy," the tired Scotswoman managed to croak out, "how fares Miss Weasley?"

"She is recovering nicely," the Healer replied, not looking up from her latest round of diagnostics. "The runic arrays seem to have done the trick of keeping her isolated from your side of things." She nodded satisfied at the result of one last diagnostic charm before looking up at her fellow staff member. "Was your venture as successful?"

"Yes, Poppy," Albus answered from his place on the other end of the runic array, having shaken off the worst of his own fatigue. "I believe it was. I was able to extract a significant quantity of information from the culprit before he was no longer able to withstand the strain." The elderly wizard gave a weak smile, "Unfortunately, it will take some detective work to provide anything of use, as I had expected. The process was rather messier than I had hoped. To get the fullest picture we are able, I am afraid we will need to compare notes, as it were."

"What do you mean, Albus?" Minerva asked tiredly.

"While I do not know the form the representation would have taken for each of you, I am sure you noticed a fair amount of... spillage from whatever image your minds chose to represent the soul bound to the diary," the Headmaster explained, grunting slightly as he prepared to stand up.

"Ugh, yes," Pomona acknowledged, finding her own voice. "I suppose 'spillage' is as good a term as any for that vile…" She trailed off with a disgusted grunt, unable to find the words to convey just how disgusting she had found the experience.

None of her fellows managed to find any either.

"Yes, quite," the long-bearded wizard agreed with a sour expression of his own. "That was the collected memory of the perpetrator, at least the portion available via the bound portion of the man's soul." Albus let out a pained groan as he regained his feet. "As the interrogator, I intercepted the greatest portion of it, but I'm afraid the process proved rather untidy."

That understatement prompted more than one tired snort from his colleagues even as Dumbledore continued, "I am afraid much of the information in Tom's memory is now lost to us; however, we may be able to recover some information by sharing the impressions we each managed to catch."

"That vile morass truly issued from Mr. Riddle, then?" Minerva asked tiredly with a sad shake of her head. "I saw the name on the diary, but I had hoped…" she trailed off with a sigh. "He was such a bright child; where did we go wrong? What caused him to fall so far?"

"Save your tears, Minerva," Snape interjected with a sneer. "The man was a monster. Evil to the core and quite skilled at hiding his true nature behind a façade of lies. The boy you knew as your student likely never existed in the first place, just another mask to hide his true nature."

"How can you say such a thing, Severus?" the Scotswoman demanded. "No man is born evil, and you were too young to know him when…"

"Whether Tom was always evil or whether he became so over time is a question for another time and another venue," Albus' voice cut through the nascent argument. "At present, and we must put together the insights we managed to glean while they are still fresh in our minds. Allowing the memories to fade will only make our purpose more difficult."

Having regained his subordinates' attention, the elderly wizard continued. "I had attempted to direct my interrogation efforts toward the question of how the diary came to be in Miss Weasley's possession when the horcrux imploded. What impressions did you gain in the final moments?"

The room fell silent once again for a moment as its occupants gathered their thoughts.

"Aside from the general sense of filth, I got the oddest impression of a scent," Pomona Spout began tentatively. "Honeysuckle, I believe, though I haven't the foggiest what that might signify."

Albus closed his eyes and nodded, trying to integrate the new information into the confusing mess he had uncovered himself.

"On my end, I got an impression of a conflict," Flitwick offered, "a minor one. It couldn't have been more than a fistfight... possibly even a simple argument; though I am afraid the impression was too fleeting for me to pick up on the participants."

"I see," Albus mused. "Flowers and fisticuffs, an odd combination. Was there anything else?"

"Lucius Malfoy," Snape sneered. "He was present and close enough to leave an impression. I would recognize the feel of that unctuous rat anywhere." He let out a regretful sigh, "I could not say whether he was involved or simply in the vicinity, however. I may have simply latched onto the familiar feeling, lending it more importance than it deserved."

"That is always a possibility in such impressions, and Mr. Malfoy is hardly such a recluse that his presence in public is unusual. All told, very little to go on," Albus' expression darkened, "and Lucius is… unlikely to be a forthcoming witness. I will have to see what can be done to investigate further."

His white beard swayed as he shook his head. "In the meantime, we have more pressing business, chiefly informing the Weasleys of this new development. Minerva," the Scotswoman looked up at her superior, "please contact Arthur with a request for his presence in the morning to discuss these events."

At her tired nod, he continued, "I suppose we are done here for the moment. Thank you all for your efforts in this venture. Sleep well! If I am to judge from my own condition, I am sure you are all quite exhausted from our activities."

He was right.

4.5.7 Old friends

Argus Filch sat in his office near the main gate of the castle eating his supper, well away from the chaos and noise of the Great Hall. The still-petrified form of his beloved Mrs. Norris kept him company from her perch on the end of his desk where he had propped her up in a nest of rolled-up towels to keep her from falling over.

It had been an irritating day as was all too common for the Hogwarts Caretaker.

The visitors had been an unusual addition, breaking up the usual tedium, but the delay had put a damper on any fleeting enjoyment the perpetually bitter man might have felt at the change in routine. And that was before considering the biting disappointment of being denied his dreams of a comeuppance for the arrogant blond pillock who had flounced about the school being generally irritating and getting in people's way since the previous September.

Without his cat, schadenfreude was all Argus had to live for.

Nothing for it, he supposed, shaking his grizzled head with a gusty sigh before taking another bite of his meal. The Headmaster had assured him that the potion to fix his beloved cat would be ready in just another month, so at least there was that to look forward to.

Filch's morose musings were interrupted by sound in the hallway, normally deserted at this time of day. He poked his head out into the hallway to take a look only to cock a ragged eyebrow at a thoroughly unexpected sight.

Four people were making their raucous way towards the main castle gate, laughing uproariously at something one of them had said. Normally, Filch would have found that irritating yet unremarkable; the castle did house a school full of teenagers after all, and they were maddeningly prone to such behavior. In this case however, the group consisted of the three visitors he had been forced to sit with earlier in the day and the professor they had come to visit rather than unruly teenaged hooligans.

Argus' eyes narrowed in suspicion. That conflicted with the solemn tone they had taken with him earlier. By their own assertion, they hadn't expected trouble, but he'd had cause to hope that there would be a stern talking-to involved at the very least. The laughter was unexpected, and it made the whole episode even more disappointing than he had thought it would be.

That would teach him not to get his hopes up!

The three visitors were laughing at some joke the blond ponce had made as the entire group made its way out the main door. The professor even carried a pair of sizeable bags under his arm for whatever reason. All told, it looked like a group of coworkers going out for a friendly drink.

Filch scowled as that idea percolated.

Those inconsiderate bastards!

If they were just inviting the blond popinjay to dinner, why didn't they call on the bloody floo and save him the trouble? The caretaker grumbled for a moment longer before turning back to his dinner and his petrified cat and dismissing the matter with a huff.

It wasn't any of his business anymore.

4.5.8 Evening musings

The sky above was mostly clear, and the glowing river of the Milky Way splashed its spectacular way across the heavens interrupted only by the looming silhouettes of the surrounding hills. Despite the early morning hour, the scene found itself reflected in a pair of massive eyes as they gazed up in awe.

It was a beautiful sight, Harry thought, and a welcome distraction.

Once again in his native form, the young dragon had bedded down on the lip of the Lair, taking advantage of the springtime weather to spend the night under the starts. Suze slept snugly tucked into his side to ward off the mild chill of the nighttime breeze, having fallen asleep quite quickly. Harry was pleased that she was comfortable, but he still had far too many questions dancing through his head to be able to follow her into slumber.

Harry had had a couple of very heavy conversations that day, after all, one of which had forced upon him a truly paradigm shifting revelation. That stuff was hard to wrap your head around!

Oh, and there had been that murder attempt, too, he supposed; that probably counted for something.

To the Harry's way of thinking, his conversation with Donald was very much the pressing issue of the day. The idea that someone who had been his friend had never really been a person at all was much more distressing for Harry than some ineffectual murder attempt from a little girl. The latter was easily dealt with, while the implications of the former were much less so.

Was Donald really his friend? Could someone who wasn't a person be a friend? If he wasn't a friend, then what was he? Did that revelation mean he'd lost a friend? What should he think about that? If the Hat wasn't actually a friend, then had Harry been treating him properly? He certainly wouldn't want someone who was his friend to treat him like he wasn't one, and it seemed to the young dragon that treating someone who wasn't a friend like they were one ought to be just as inappropriate, by symmetry if nothing else. It might even be downright rude, and Harry didn't want to be rude — especially not by accident!

It was a difficult situation, which had prompted the young dragon to initiate a second heavy conversation in asking Abigail and Hermione their opinions on the matter during their usual time in the library. That conversation had gone on for some time, but in the end, Harry felt the best advice he'd gotten out of it had come from Abigail, a bit of practical, if unsatisfying, wisdom on how to handle himself with the Hat, in the short term at least.

"Well, I can't say that I know what to tell you about that," his older friend had said. "I suspect you're going to have to figure things out for yourself on the whole soul question and what it means, but as for how to treat the Hat, I figure that's simple enough for now."

"What do you mean?" Harry had prompted.

"Well, the way I see it, what matters most is whether whatever you're doing works," Abigail had continued with a shrug. "I mean, that's sort of the whole point of manners in the first place; they're the grease that keeps society running as smoothly as it does. The Hat's obviously been fine with how you've been treating him so far. Whether or not he's a person, he's certainly articulate enough to let you know if you're behaving improperly. As long as he's okay with it and you're okay with it, then it seems to me that you ought to just keep on going as you have been."

It had been a thoroughly pragmatic solution, one that bought him time to figure things out, but the young dragon knew it was only a temporary fix. Harry would have to try to figure things out in more detail eventually. Having a soul was an important distinction — Donald had made that abundantly clear — so ignoring the distinction was right out. Abigail's solution was a good patch to keep him afloat in the meantime, but he'd have to give the whole situation a good think... probably a lot more than one.

What was the exact difference between a being with a soul, a person, and one without? How could you tell, and what did it mean? Where did a good imitation give way to actual substance?

As he looked up at the spectacular glowing river of the Milky Way arcing overhead, the young dragon had a sinking suspicion that he'd be searching for those answers for a very long time.

4.5.9 Familial concern

The pub long since closed for the evening, but Madam Rosmerta still stood vigil at the door to the Three Broomsticks. Her green eyes were narrow below her blonde hair and face was twisted in a worried scowl as she gazed out into the dark of the nighttime street, absently polishing a glass that had long since shone like new.

Her great grandmother had never contacted her, and as the shadows had lengthened and the sun had set, the proprietor of Hogsmeade's leading tavern had grown more and more worried. There was no way her grandmother's business could still be carrying on up at the castle, and even if it were, her gran would have let her know what was going on.

It wasn't like the woman to skip out on an appointment, particularly not one with family.

What had gone wrong?

As the clock back in the pub chimed with the arrival of the top of another hour, Rosmerta's expression firmed with resolve. Nodding smartly, she made her way to the back room to hunt down her great grandmother's secretary's floo address. The blonde hated to be a bother at this time of night, but she had to know if her gran had gotten back safely.

She had to know whether she ought to be to be annoyed or concerned.
 
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Section 4.6 - Consequences and following up
4.6 Consequences and following up

4.6.1 Dispatch

"We've got a request for a wellness check," the witch in charge of dispatch announced as soon as the sergeant on duty opened the door to the ready room, freshly arrived for his Saturday morning shift.

"Already?" he groaned, having expected the usual light shift on early Saturday morning. Most of the usual suspects were too hungover from Friday night to cause trouble before noon.

"It's a leftover," the dispatcher explained. "A woman called in concerned that her grandmother had missed an appointment for dinner."

"Any indication of foul play?" the beat officer asked.

"Nothing yet," came the reply.

"Then shouldn't we have begged off for a few days?" he asked curiously. "I thought policy was to wait three days for adults with no indication of foul play, something about being constables rather than nursemaids, as I recall."

The dispatch-witch nodded, "Night shift tried to do that, but the woman apparently called in help from someone with connections. We've been instructed to check into it immediately, lest we be shat on from a great height."

"Ah, understood," the sergeant nodded. He raised his voice, "Constable!"

"Yes, Sergeant?" on the other side of the room, the man in question snapped to attention.

"You're with me, we've got a wellness check to take care of, a VIP."

"Yes, sir!"

4.6.2 Unexpected visitors

"What can I do for you, Constable?" Griselda Marchbanks asked her unexpected guest after her elf had shown him and his companion in. "I must admit, I am somewhat concerned that law enforcement would feel the need to visit my home this early on a Saturday morning."

"Thank you for having us, Madam," the ranking visitor, a blue-clad sergeant spoke from where he stood next to his junior colleague. "Sorry to bother you, but your granddaughter, Rosmerta, called the Department after you didn't show up at the Three Broomsticks for dinner last night, and we were sent out to perform a wellness check."

"Rosie was expecting me for dinner?" Griselda asked with a puzzled frown. "I don't remember…" The elderly woman's eyes narrowed in distress, "She's my granddaughter! How could I have forgotten?"

The sergeant gave a concerned frown in his own turn. "Madam, if you don't mind, might I ask what you remember doing yesterday."

"Oh, not at all," came the distracted reply. "I had a meeting with Mr. Lockhart. It went quite well."

"I see, and what did you discuss?" he pressed gently.

"I…" she trailed off with a frown. "I'm embarrassed to admit that I can't quite recall," Griselda replied fuzzily, "but it went quite well."

The sergeant's concern deepened. "Do you happen to recall why you were visiting him?"

"Of course! It was…" she trailed off uncertainly. "We were going to… I… I'm afraid I cannot recall… there must have been something…"

"Ma'am," the sergeant cut in, gently rescuing the increasingly distraught woman from her spiraling confusion, "Based on your demeanor, I suspect you might have been obliviated. Would you consent to visit St. Mungo's for an evaluation?"

"Do you think that is what it is?" the old woman looked up, an odd mix of hope and fear on her face. "I cannot say that I like the idea of having been obliviated, but it honestly sounds preferable to the possibility of forgetting my grandchildren." She shook her head, wobbling slightly in place, "Could I trouble you for an escort there? I just feel so fuzzy."

"Of course, Madam," the sergeant stepped forward briskly. "Smith," he spoke to his colleague as he steadied the elderly witch with a hand on her elbow, "head to the floo and call ahead to let the Healers know we're coming while I escort Madam Marchbanks."

The receiving hall soon flashed with the yellow-green light of an active floo connection.

4.6.3 Another parental visit

Another seven months, and like clockwork, another early morning trip to Hogwarts, Arthur was beginning to fear that this was to become his new routine.

Unlike the last time when the twins had stolen the family car, this one had been entirely unexpected, lacking as it did any obvious clues. Minerva's floo call had come out of the blue. Ginny had seemed fine over the break, and she was not generally the type to stir up trouble... not serious trouble, anyway. For that matter, the tone of Minerva's message had been quite different than the previous two, less exasperation and more trepidation.

All of this had conspired to leave the Weasley patriarch more than a little apprehensive as he walked the increasingly familiar path to the main gates. The expression on Minerva's face when she met him at the gate did nothing to alleviate that apprehension.

"Minerva, what has happened with my daughter?" he asked as he drew abreast and she turned to escort him into the school. "Your message was light on details."

"I do apologize for that, Arthur. I am afraid I was quite exhausted when I sent that request last night," the Scotswoman began as they walked. "I suppose the first thing is to assure you that your daughter is safe, and Poppy assures me she is well on the road to recovery."

"I am certainly glad to hear that my little girl is safe and recovering," he said, "though, I am much less happy about the fact that she needs to recover in the first place. I presume we will be going to see her now?"

"Of course, Arthur, we shall go to the infirmary presently," she agreed, "though Albus has asked that you meet with him as well. We do not expect your daughter to regain consciousness for some time, so after you have taken a moment to look in on her, he will be available near Poppy's office."

"Minerva, what happened?" the worried father asked as they rounded a corner and began mounting a set of steps that had just ground into place.

"She ran afoul of an enchanted diary," the Deputy Headmistress explained without further preamble. "An anchor for a soul, if I understood Albus' explanation correctly. Your daughter was possessed by the spirit within, which has controlled her actions for several months."

Arthur had frozen at the top of the staircase as soon as the word 'possessed' passed Minerva's lips. Noticing this, she paused. "Arthur? Arthur, are you alright?"

The stairwell was silent for a moment before the shocked man managed to find his voice.

"Ginny was possessed?" he ground out woodenly, slowly gaining speed as he processed that fact. "Is she free of its influence? How long ago did this start? Why didn't we notice?"

"If we might continue?" the Scotswoman prompted, which got the Weasley patriarch moving again. "We have not managed to determine when Miss Weasley acquired the diary, nor do we know how long she has been possessed, but we believe it stretches at least as far back as Halloween."

"Since Halloween?" Arthur breathed as they rounded another corner in the oft-labyrinthine castle. "But she was back in the Burrow since then, with her family! How did we not notice? How do you know she was possessed then?"

"That was the first incident with the monster... a basilisk, as I am certain you saw in the papers after it was killed by Mr. Potter," at his affirmative nod, she continued. "We have since learned that the possessing spirit was responsible for awakening the thing. As for how you could not notice, I can only hope that the control was intermittent, as I noticed nothing of the sort, either. Nor did her brothers, for that matter."

As they pair paused outside the infirmary after knocking to announce themselves and await the Healer's permission to enter, Arthur reiterated his earlier question, "And is she free of it now?"

"Oh yes," the Scotswoman said with a fierce sort of smile. "My colleagues and I made sure of it."

As the school Healer granted permission to enter her domain, any further questions were forgotten for the next few minutes as the Weasley patriarch assured himself that his darling little girl was intact and on the road to recovery. Nearly a quarter hour of concerned parental hovering later, the man had calmed enough that Minerva felt comfortable resuming their earlier conversation.

"Arthur," she began, "if you can bring yourself to step out for a moment, Albus would like a word."

"What if she wakes while I'm gone?" the apprehensive father demanded.

"Mr. Weasley, I remind you that your daughter is recovering from magical exhaustion," Poppy broke in with an explanation. "As part of her treatment for that condition, I am deliberately keeping her asleep to minimize energy expenditures. I guarantee she will not be waking within the next hour."

With that, Arthur finally allowed himself to be shuffled off to a nearby conference room where he found himself before Albus Dumbledore.

"Arthur, come in and take a seat," the elderly wizard welcomed him. "We have much to discuss."

When everyone was properly settled, the conversation began in earnest.

"Before we get to anything else, I have to ask," Arthur began, morbidly curious. "This possession went on for months, at least one of which was at home with our family, and no one noticed anything amiss with our daughter's behavior. What finally gave it away? I mean, how did you finally figure it out so you could take steps?"

He left unsaid the obvious corollary: was it our fault? Did we miss something obvious?

"Ah, it actually seems to have been a rather fortuitous bit of happenstance," the Headmaster explained. "I am sure you recall that business with the basilisk Mr. Potter killed last term?"

When Arthur nodded immediately — and rather predictably, the incident had been plastered across every publication in wizarding Europe for nearly two months — Albus continued. "From what we have been able to determine, it seems that the spirit possessing young Ginevra was not only responsible for the creature's awakening and release but was also rather unusually fond of the beast. So much so, that it apparently took rather violent exception to Mr. Potter killing it."

"Early yesterday afternoon, it managed to track down Mr. Potter and use your daughter to attack him from behind with a killing curse," the elder wizard reported. "Afterward, Miss Weasley passed out, unable to handle the strain of casting such a curse, and Mr. Potter was good enough to drop her off in my office for me to deal with."

Arthur had sucked in a sharp gasp at the name of the curse. "A killing curse, you say?" He let out that breath with an explosive sigh. "Thank Merlin she missed the poor boy; that would have been a tragedy. Ginny would never have forgiven herself, even if she wasn't in control."

"Oh no, Mr. Weasley," Albus interjected with a mischievous twinkle in his eye despite the gravity of the subject matter. "She most certainly did not miss. The curse was fired from perhaps a foot away, cast properly according to the trace on her wand, and her aim was spot on."

"Bloody hell!" the Weasley patriarch exclaimed, demonstrating where his youngest son had picked up the habit. "She hit him?"

"Indeed, Mr. Weasley," the elderly wizard nodded, "and then he proceeded to carry her across the school and up four flights of stairs to my office to drop her in my chair."

He chuckled at Arthur's dumbfounded expression. "Needless to say, Mr. Potter is made of rather sterner stuff than the average wizard."

"Well, I'll be…" the Weasley patriarch marveled, "I guess the boy-who-lived thing wasn't a fluke after all."

"Perhaps not," Albus allowed, "perhaps not. Yet that is neither here nor there. We are here to discuss your daughter and how her recent unfortunate situation came to pass."

He leaned forward intently, "We know how young Ginevra's ordeal ended, yet its beginning remains an open question. We know the vector, a cursed diary, but we do not know how it came to be in your daughter's possession. Do you have anything for us to go on, Arthur?"

Staring down at the clenched hands resting in his lap, Arthur slowly shook his head in the negative. "I have been struggling to figure that out ever since Minerva first mentioned it, and for the life of me, I haven't the foggiest!"

Looking up from his lap, the concerned father turned a frustrated eye on the Headmaster, "Ginevra was at the Burrow for nearly the entire summer, and those few times she was away, both Molly and I were with her the entire time. I can't imagine when she'd have had the opportunity to encounter such a thing!"

After one last searching look, the elderly Headmaster slumped back in his chair. "It seems then, that we are back where we started," he said with an irritable sigh. "I had hoped you would be able to share some additional insight."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to wait and ask Ginny when she wakes up?" Arthur asked.

"Unfortunately, no it would not," Albus denied with a grimace. "Given the stresses involved and the length of time the possessing spirit had unrestricted access to her mind, I do not expect young Ginny to be able to tell us much of anything when she wakes."

"The only other option I can think of is to ask Molly," Arthur offered. "She might have seen something I didn't. Failing that, maybe the boys might know something."

The Headmaster nodded at the suggestion. "I suppose that I shall need to avail myself of your hospitality in the near future, then," the elder wizard agreed.

"You are always welcome at the Burrow, Albus," the younger man assured him. "Molly will be delighted to have guests."

He paused for a moment as a thought occurred to him. "On the topic of guests, might you be willing to bring Mr. Potter along? I'm certain Molly would agree with me that we owe him dearly for saving our little girl, doubly so for being such a good sport after she attacked him. Treating him to a good meal is the very least we could do."

The Headmaster smiled, "I see no issue with that, and I am certain Mr. Potter will quite appreciate the gesture. He is certainly not one to turn down food!"

Arthur chuckled. "I know how boys are at that age; why I remem…"

Arthur cut off mid-word when Poppy announced that her patient would be regaining consciousness shortly. Any further conversation would wait for a later date.

4.6.4 Further developments

"What have we learned?" the detective asked as he met with the sergeant whose preliminary report on the situation with Madam Marchbanks had prompted this sudden assignment from Investigations.

The two men stood outside the Spell Damage ward at St. Mungo's, where the sergeant had been acting as security ever since the preliminary Healer's report had come back with a strong indication of foul play.

"The Healers are now certain that Madam Marchbanks was obliviated," the sergeant began. "Fortunately, they believe her memories will be recoverable with the help of a specialist."

"I see," the detective nodded, jotting down notes as he spoke. Reversibility was a strong indication of skill in obliviation, which would be a helpful filter for determining the identity of the perpetrator. Unskilled casters tended to leave an unrecoverable mess. "Dispatch has contacted the victim's secretary to obtain her itinerary. She was scheduled to meet with two of our retired fellows and a Mr. Gilderoy Lockhart last night."

"You think it's one of ours, sir?" the sergeant asked, sounding a little ill at the thought. "They'd have the skill for it, and I wouldn't think Lockhart would, would he?" At the detective's curious look, the sergeant hurried to explain, "I mean, I don't know much about Lockhart aside from the fact that my sister is all in a tizzy whenever a new book of his comes out, but I don't recall her saying anything about him knowing that sort of thing, and obliviation's pretty tricky work."

"I'll not rule out one of ours having gone bad," the detective began, "not without further information, anyway, but Lockhart is certainly still on the suspect list. He doesn't noise it about much, but he retired from the Obliviators a number of years back. As far as I'm concerned, it might be either of our former aurors, Mr. Lockhart, or a third party that the victim hadn't been scheduled to meet with. We still don't have enough information to rule out that possibility."

"I see, sir," the sergeant agreed. "What do you need me to do?"

"You're on duty here; keep an eye on things until dispatch recalls you or sends relief," the detective told him. "Until we know more about the perpetrator and the motive, we need to keep protective custody on the good Madam. We've already got three teams out looking for our two aurors and Mr. Lockhart. Hopefully you won't be here too long."

"Understood," the sergeant saluted briskly. "Good luck, sir!"

4.6.5 Drunk and disorderly

"I want you all ready," the auror team captain told his subordinates as they prepared to enter the modest wards around an otherwise unremarkable magical residence. "We don't know the circumstances, and until we do, we need to be prepared for resistance. Our targets may have retired, but they are still two of ours. You all know what that means."

Indeed, they did, and it was for that reason that the entire team was in combat robes and fully kitted-out. The suspects in question were auror-trained, and even if they proved to be non-hostile, it was best to be armored up when surprising them. Armor would help to minimize the long-term consequences of any potential accidents or misunderstandings.

When the team reached the door, however, it became apparent that something unusual was afoot.

"Gah!" the point man grimaced as he tried the door, swinging it open easily as it was unlocked. "What a stench!"

With the front door unsealed, a horrible odor escaped the home, the sort of stink one might expect from a particularly rowdy bar that hadn't been properly cleaned for a week.

The point man looked back to his captain for confirmation before calling out. "Hello in there! This is law enforcement!"

The team waited tensely for a response for a few moments before the captain nodded to the point man again, indicating that he should enter. The door was unlocked after all, no need to force entry.

The man nudged the door open with his free hand, keeping his wand trained on the opening as he cautiously cleared the entry before his partner moved suddenly through the door as he covered it in a practiced entry maneuver.

"Clear!"

The rest of the team followed along as the stench got progressively worse. They proceeded through two more rooms before finding their quarry.

"What the hell is this, then?"

There, passed out in puddles of their own vomit and surrounded on all sides by a pile of empty bottles that had drifted nearly two feet high, were their two suspects. It was a far cry from the professionalism they tended to expect from their own, though it was far preferable to a shootout with good men gone bad.

The captain deliberated for a moment before nodding to one of his men, "Get them sobered up so we can ask them what's going on." It was a bit rude to cast uninvited, but he was sure the men would understand, they were former aurors themselves, so…

"Sir!" His subordinate looked up from his casting with a panicked look on his face. "The sobering charm isn't working! That means…"

The captain's eyes widened as he followed the man's train of thought.

"We need to get them to the Healers, now!"

4.6.6 Labor

Rivets groaned, steam hissed, tools clattered, steel rang, and men shouted as all worked together to bring new life into the world. Soon and for the first time, the train barn which had long served strictly as a maintenance facility for Hogs Haulage, would birth from its cavernous interior a brand-new locomotive rather than refurbish an existing one. The entire staff of perhaps two dozen engineers and technicians swarmed over Maintenance Bay 19 busily ensuring that everything about the new prototype would be in fine working order for the auspicious event.

"Seals on Number 3 check out!" one of the engineers called out from his position half-buried in the innards of the locomotive. "Get the equipment over to Number Five, then we can start getting the high-pressure section buttoned down."

There was a loud hiss of compressed air as the test rig was detached and the pressure bled off.

"Found the problem with the steam injection plate!" another voice called. "Built up some scale; I'll have it cleaned in a mo'."

Even in the final stretch, there was a lot of hard work involved in preparing a prototype locomotive for its grand debut as an integral whole.

Standing off to one side of the scrum, the senior engineering team, accompanied by a few clipboard-wielding administrative types, proudly oversaw the controlled chaos in the maintenance bay, occasionally shouting out reminders or answering questions.

"She's coming together beautifully," one commented, his native Scottish accent just barely in evidence. "It's amazing what those technicians have managed over the years with those piston seals. Bloody works of art, they are. As far as steam losses go, they're just as tight as the piston walls!"

"To be honest, David, I'm more impressed by their so-called 'imperturbable' enchantments," L. D. Porta, the second senior engineer replied with the Spanish lilt of his native Argentina. "I never thought I'd see an ideal thermal insulator outside of a textbook. It makes me look forward to the performance analysis from this test run. With the ACE project, we broke even with diesel on total cost of operation, and that was essentially using my combustion system and the same precision machining used for the diesel engines themselves. With these new updates to the mechanicals, we will be closing some of worst remaining inefficiencies."

"Ha!" the Scotsman laughed. "So much for steam being obsolete. We'll show 'em all!"

"Yes, yes," the Argentinian acknowledged with a chuckle. "Shall we see about contacting Mr. Potter to set a date for the prototype's shakedown run? I suspect the boy would enjoy it, and he deserves at least that much for giving us this chance."

A note was quickly taken, and a message sent.

4.6.7 A break in the case

"What do we know?" Amelia Bones demanded as she walked into Conference Room 7 at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, showing admirable professionalism despite it being early on a Monday morning.

"It started with a request from Madam Rosmerta for a wellness check on her grandmother Friday night after the woman failed to show up for a scheduled dinner," the investigating detective explained. "As there was no indication of foul play, the request was delayed until the next morning when some pressure to investigate came down from on high in the Ministry…"

"From whom?" the Director demanded immediately, wanting to know who was meddling with her department.

"We started looking as soon as it came through, and it seems the grandmother's secretary called in a few favors at Madam Rosmerta's request," the investigator relayed, shuffling through a docket of papers as he verified that there had been no new developments. "No apparent links elsewhere in the Ministry that we could see."

"Very well, continue," Bones prompted, mentally filing the issue away for later investigation.

"On Saturday morning, the sergeant on duty was dispatched to check up on the grandmother, Madam Marchbanks from Education, and found her safe in her home," the detective relayed. "The sergeant reports that she exhibited memory difficulties and distress, so he escorted her to St. Mungo's for a checkup where she was diagnosed with a recent obliviation, judged to be reversible, given enough effort."

"Hmm," Amelia gestured for her subordinate to continue as she digested the information.

"With the new evidence of foul play, I was assigned to the case, and we contacted the victim's secretary to learn more about her Friday itinerary," the detective explained. "She had been scheduled to meet with two former aurors for lunch — confirmed by Madam Rosmerta; the first part of the meeting took place in her pub — before going on to Hogwarts to meet with Mr. Gilderoy Lockhart."

"I see," the witch acknowledged. "What have you learned from them?"

"We dispatched three teams, two auror teams to approach our retirees at their listed addresses, and a standard team to Hogwarts for Lockhart." The investigator grimaced. "Our two retirees were found together in one of their homes, drunk to an almost unbelievable degree. The auror team that found them rushed the pair to St. Mungo's, where they were treated for alcohol poisoning…"

"Alcohol poisoning?" the Director demanded incredulously. "In a wizard?"

The detective nodded gravely, "Yes, ma'am, alcohol poisoning and some minor magical interaction issues from mixing different magical alcohols. Since a wizard has to work hard to get that drunk, the Healers were somewhat concerned. When they had managed to sober up one of our retirees enough for him to wake up, he went after the medicinal alcohol before he could be restrained. At that point, they checked for compulsions."

"I take it they came back positive?"

The investigator nodded. "Some of the strongest they had seen, laid over an obliviation as well."

"Same caster as the one on Marchbanks?" Amelia asked, trying to piece together the sequence of events.

"Unknown. They had to break the compulsion immediately before the man got back into the alcohol and killed himself, so there was no opportunity to record the signature." The detective shook his head ruefully. "Apparently, even two years off the force and soused to the point of insensibility, aurors are too much for the Healers to handle."

"We do train them well," Amelia smirked. "And the obliviation?"

"They've given us a firm 'probably'. Apparently, the earmarks match, but detailed investigation of magical signatures must be done at the right point in the reversal, or you risk corrupting the obliviated memories," the investigator explained. "The specialist they called in for Madam Marchbanks tells us it will take at least a few months before the obliviation can be reversed, with magical identification becoming a viable option about two-thirds of the way through the process."

The Director of Magical Law Enforcement nodded slowly as she considered the situation. "So, what is your preliminary assessment?"

"We have three instances of obliviation cast on three people known to have been in contact with a former Ministry Obliviator at the appropriate time," the detective laid out the circumstances. "Two of those were also subjected to a potentially lethal compulsion charm. That makes for three counts of assault and possibly two counts of attempted murder; though, given that pains taken to make all three obliviations reversible, it would not be hard for a defendant to argue those last two down to reckless endangerment."

"Given the circumstances, Mr. Gilderoy Lockhart is our primary suspect. He was present at the right time and is in possession of the appropriate skills," the detective continued. "That said, we cannot say with certainty that he was responsible with the information we have now. The only way to be certain is to bring in Mr. Lockhart and compare his magical signature to those we find on the obliviation, assuming he doesn't choose to confess, of course."

"How are things going on that front?"

"We are still looking for him. The original team sent to Hogwarts could only determine that he was no longer on campus and that his professorial suite was locked. At that point, we had to apply for a warrant to search his professorial suite, which we obtained. Now, we are waiting on the search team to complete…" the detective began, only to be interrupted by a loud knock on the conference room door.

"What is it?" Amelia called.

A young woman from Dispatch opened the door. "The Hogwarts team just reported in, they found Lockhart's office cleaned out completely!"

"We'll need to get a specialist team from Forensics there immediately," the detective decided. "We should be able to pick up enough residue to scry…"

"No, sir," the young woman interrupted. "The team said Lockhart cleaned it out completely. Everything Lockhart owned looks to have been set on fire in an expanded trunk on the hearth, and he apparently gave the house elves orders to sanitize the place as he left. The team is certain there'll be nothing for Forensics to use."

"We will still have to try," Amelia broke in, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. "It is our duty to see justice done. See to scheduling the specialists." As the young woman nodded and left to organize the team, the Director continued, "Where does that leave us regarding the man's guilt?"

"Almost certain," the detective admitted, "though the possibility of a third party kidnapping the man and muddying up the trail remains viable."

"Does that doubt change our course of action?" his commander asked.

"No," the investigator shook his head. "In either case the proper course of action is clear. The man must be found, either as a suspect or as a witness to the events. We'll need to put out an order to detain him as a person of interest."

"See it done."

4.6.8 Applied magic

The late morning sun smiled down of the rolling hills of rural Devonshire, illuminating a patchwork landscape of fields and pastures divided by dense hedgerows. The entire tableau was lush with springtime growth.

In the corner of one of those pastures, currently home to a small herd of cows lazily grazing, a mismatched pair of human figures suddenly appeared with a whoosh of displaced air, one an older man, the other a young boy. Before the sound had a chance to fade, the previously sedate cattle broke into a sprint for the far corner of the field.

Something was off with the new arrivals, and the cows wanted no part of it.

"I hate it when they do that," the smaller figure groused, looking wistfully after the fleeing animals. "I mean, I know why they do it, but…" he trailed off with a resigned sigh. Turning to his companion, he asked in a more upbeat tone, "So, where are we going?"

"The entrance is this way, Mr. Potter," AIbus Dumbledore gestured to the nearest hedgerow. "We have a fair walk ahead of us, so we had best get started. If you will follow me?"

The two set off briskly, quickly finding a narrow, partially overgrown path through the hedgerow and forging though.

"Um, Mr. Dumbledore," Harry began tentatively as they pushed aside yet another springy branch, "if we needed to be on the other side of the hedge, why didn't you just set the portkey to end over there?"

"That is because we do not need to go to the other side of the hedge, Mr. Potter," the older wizard chuckled as they entered a slightly wider section of the path. "Our destination is right here."

He pushed aside one last branch revealing an oak tree. Old and gnarled, the tree's trunk was wider than the height of a man. Closer inspection revealed it to be made of two different specimens which had entwined as they grew, merging into the single twisted giant that stood before them now.

"Hey, is that some kind of magic tree?" the last Potter asked curiously. "It's got some glowy bits to it."

"The tree is not itself magical, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore explained as he intently examined a series of lumps on the misshapen trunk. "It does, however, serve as the physical anchor for a rather substantial enchantment."

The currently human-shaped dragon cocked his head curiously. "What kind of enchantment?"

"A rather extensive space expansion charm," the elderly wizard replied. "In much the same way that the expanded space containing Diagon Alley is anchored in the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron, the one containing the wizarding hamlet of Ottery St.-Catchpole is anchored within the hollow center of this tree."

"Neat!" Harry exclaimed enthusiastically, then his green eyes widened appreciatively as his companion's wand found the right pattern, and the tree seemed to unwind, the two original trunks separating from each other and straightening to reveal an opening between them. Beyond lay a neatly paved path leading into a sunny meadow.

Albus set off as soon as the entrance opened, and his younger companion scrambled to follow.

"Wicked!" the young dragon exclaimed as he looked about, fascinated. "That's so cool looking! I never knew spatial expansion charms looked like that." He turned to his elder companion. "Hey Mr. Dumbledore, why doesn't Diagon Alley look like this? I mean, if it's the same sort of magic, shouldn't it look the same?"

"Well, Mr. Potter, I cannot say with certainty, as the methodology you utilize to see magical flows remains a mystery to us," Dumbledore qualified. "Yet were I to hazard a guess, I would venture that it is due to the relative quality of the enchantments."

The path led them across a small footbridge as he continued, "Diagon Alley was created by a team of the finest enchanters in all of Europe. It has stood for more than half a millennium without the need for major maintenance. These charms," he gestured to the meadow around them, "were cast by the residents of Ottery-St. Catchpole, and judging by the spell residue I can sense, they have been renewed at least twice in the last year alone. The tighter spell work in Diagon Alley might well be less visible to your eyes."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "I guess that makes sense…" his voice trailed off as he shot a suspicious look at the house they were approaching, a round stonework tower complete with ramparts and machicolations.

It looked a lot like the sort of place all the stories said knights liked to live.

"Hey Mr. Dumbledore," he asked nervously, gesturing to the house they were approaching, "is that where the Weasleys live?"

"No, that is the Lovegood home," Albus answered. "The Weasley home is farther down the lane."

"Good," Harry said emphatically, glad he wouldn't be going in there. He was feeling a bit on edge just being nearby. The thing looked like a knight ought to be bursting out the door with a lance any minute.

Wait, Lovegood? The young dragon finally registered the name and scowled at the suspicious tower. That guy. It figured he would be the one to have such a creepy house.

Harry shook his head and deliberately turned away. "Um, Mr. Dumbledore," he ventured, looking to change the subject, "I know you said the Weasleys invited me to lunch, but why did they do that?"

"Inviting you over for a meal is their way of thanking you, Mr. Potter," Albus explained as the path they were following turned gently to skirt a small hill.

"What for?" the last Potter asked.

He didn't remember having done anything in particular for the Weasleys recently.

"For saving their daughter from possession," the elderly wizard answered. "They love their daughter and were quite distressed about the whole business."

"Oh, that," the young dragon nodded. The Headmaster had explained that situation to him earlier. "Um, I didn't really do much on that, though. I mean, I basically just handed her off to you. You and the other professors did all the work of actually fixing her."

"And yet, we would not have known anything was amiss without your intervention," Albus countered.

"Fair enough," Harry allowed. "I'm really glad I decided to hold off on killing her until I checked with you. I wasn't sure if that was the right thing to do, you know."

"So you have said, repeatedly," the Headmaster agreed, sounding mildly aggrieved.

When Albus had asked, Harry had not been shy about explaining the thought process behind his handling of the situation. It had been the focus of a fair few discussions over recent days, during which Albus had fervently tried to convince Harry that his brutally simplistic strategy of deterrence was deeply flawed. Unfortunately, in the face of the dragon's stubbornness and straightforward logic, the greatest wizard in Britain had made little headway, eventually tabling his efforts for a future date.

"On a related note, I would strongly recommend you not mention that possibility while we are with the girl's family," Albus advised. "I believe, in this instance at least, that discretion is the better path."

"Okay, Mr. Dumbledore!" came the cheerful acknowledgement.

The advice had been given just in time as it turned out, because their path had just brought then within sight of that destination. Almost as soon as they cleared the hill, a cry came from down the lane which they quickly traced back to the figure of a man down the road. Arthur Weasley had seen them from afar and had come to greet his guests at the gate.

"Welcome to the Burrow! AIbus, Mr. Potter, it is very good of you to visit," the redheaded man greeted them as they arrived. "Come in, come in! Molly's waiting in the kitchen."

He opened the gate and the group of two wizards and a dragon made its way through the front garden towards the Burrow proper.

Harry looked about with wide-eyed interest as he entered the property. The front garden was lush and well-tended, which was nice, but the really interesting bit was the house itself. The materials, timber frame and wattle-and-daub, were hardly unusual. The assembly, on the other hand, was anything but.

The edifice had probably originated as a cozy cottage, and it had stayed within the confines of that original foundation even as additional rooms were tacked on top haphazardly at odd angles and orientations. The upper floors weren't even centered over the foundation, cantilevered out asymmetrically over the side yard. In short, the whole thing really ought to have toppled over long ago, yet it did not. Instead it was actively held up by copious amounts of magic, magic that was quite visible to the Weasleys' newest visitor.

The young dragon had never realized magic could be used for such things. Hogwarts didn't, not that he knew of, and Gringotts certainly didn't, both of those buildings tended to stick to proper-looking, physically supported architecture, even if they used materials that were passively reinforced with magic, like the enchanted stone of Hogwarts. He'd looked into magical building materials when he started looking into warding for his Lair, since it had been mentioned as a consideration during ward design. That research had turned out to be of particular interest to him since he'd dug the Lair out of what the books termed 'living bedrock', which was very tricky to ward properly, but it had also explained a lot about how magically enhanced building materials worked in practice. The enchantments used in enchanted stone and the like were nearly as stable as the materials they were cast on, lasting without substantial maintenance for millennia.

By contrast, the enchantments used on the Weasleys' house looked to be actively supporting the structure, and they were slowly leaking magic all the while, if the strong glow Harry was seeing in the walls was any indication. They'd probably have to be renewed all the time, which Harry figured had to be pretty inconvenient. Who would want to have to worry about their house collapsing if they forgot to renew the charms for the week? But inconvenience aside, they'd managed to do something pretty impressive nonetheless.

That cantilevered second floor, projecting out away from the foundation as it did, was something even enchanted materials couldn't handle, not until you got into some really expensive alchemically created stuff like orichalcum or mithril. The Weasleys had managed it with completely normal sticks and mud, and that was pretty cool to Harry's mind.

He continued looking about in fascination, examining the enchantments and construction from varying angles until he reached the kitchen. At that point he encountered Molly Weasley, and with her came much more pressing concerns.

Chiefly hugs.

As soon as she saw him, the plump, matronly woman had wasted no time in showering the currently human-looking youngster with grateful affection, both in thanks for helping her daughter and simply because the slightly built, too-young-looking boy looked like he could use a good hug.

For his part, Harry had been taken by surprise, too engrossed in the architectural spell work to see her coming. By the time he managed to sort himself out and figure out what was going on, the Weasley matriarch had already finished her greeting.

"…thank you ever so much for saving our little girl," he managed to decipher just in time for the hug to be released.

"Um, it wasn't really a problem, Mrs. Weasley," he begged off. "I mean, I didn't really do much."

"Nonsense, dear, you did plenty!" she insisted, absently smoothing his perpetually tousled hair. "Without you, we might never have found out what was wrong in time to fix it. Now, you take a seat at the table while I finish our lunch."

Harry made his way over to the table and found the two adult wizards making small talk. Nothing obviously interesting was going on, so the young dragon eagerly resumed his examination of his surroundings. To that point, Harry's exposure to wizarding architecture had been restricted to institutional or commercial spaces, not private homes. The closest he had come was his visit to Madam Marchbanks, and even that had been in the formal receiving area of a Noble House, practically an institution in its own right.

The Weasley family kitchen was most assuredly not an institutional space.

Harry found he rather liked it.

The kitchen was a place of simple furnishings and mouthwatering smells, a homely space. The dinner table was a sizable affair taking up nearly a third of the expanded interior of the kitchen. Even when seating three as it currently did, it seemed almost empty. Above the table, an odd clock-shaped device hung on the wall. Its for too numerous, oddly-moving hands and glowy bits hinted that it was probably meant to do something other than tell time.

The rest of the room held plenty to look at too: counters and cupboards, jars of dried and otherwise preserved food, shelves of dishes and linens, an old-fashioned ice box — the kind that was actually used real ice — and all the other bits one might expect in a well-appointed country kitchen back before the advent of widespread modern utilities. All the bits except one, that is, an exception which caught the young dragon's attention and prompted him to rise from the table and walk over to take a closer look.

"Mrs. Weasley," he asked as he came to a stop next to the modern-looking gas stove, "how did you guys get gas service inside an expanded space?"

The older witch turned to her young guest with a puzzled frown, steadily stirring all the while. "I beg your pardon?"

"For the stove, I mean," Harry explained, gesturing to the device in question. "It's got the little blue jets of flame from the burners and stuff, and that means it burns natural gas to produce heat just like the one I've got back at the Lair burns wood. And if you're using gas, you've got to get it here somehow, and that usually means a gas pipeline, and I'd think that'd be pretty hard get installed when you live in an expanded space."

Molly's puzzled frown had only deepened during her guest's explanation, and after a moment's thought she decided to pass the buck. "I'm afraid I am not the one to ask. Arthur was the one who installed the stove. You should ask him, dear."

With an agreeable nod, Harry returned to the table and did just that.

"The stove is enchanted," Arthur explained in response to his young guest's question. "It absorbs and stores ambient magic, then converts it to heat on demand. We see them all the time at work."

He shook his head in exasperation. "So many who choose to live in the muggle world think they can use them wherever they want just because they look like muggle stoves, but unless you have the right infrastructure they're a dead giveaway, just like you noticed this one, Harry. We end up confiscating one every few months for violation of the Statute of Secrecy."

"Shall I assume that is where you obtained the rather high-end model you have here, Arthur?" Dumbledore asked his host with an amused smirk.

"Ah… well," the redhead scratched at his chin uncomfortably, visibly scrabbling for an excuse for his minor larceny. "They were just going to be destroyed anyway, and I wanted to give Molly something nice for our anniversary, so…"

"So does it use a runic construct or persistent charms or what?" Harry asked, oblivious to the byplay. "And how does it do the storage?"

"Ah… I'm not entirely certain," Arthur admitted, sounding grateful for the interruption yet a tad embarrassed at his inability to answer. "I'm afraid I only know enough to identify one."

His young guest nodded understandingly. "Do you think I could take it apart to look at it myself?"

"I rather think that my wife would object to the idea of disassembling her stove, Mr. Potter," Arthur said hurriedly, eyes wide with horror at the idea, "especially before she finishes preparing lunch."

As the boy's face fell, Arthur racked his brain for another option. He owed the boy for his daughter's life, after all, and that was worth much more than any stove.

"As I recall, I do have a small portable model out in the shed," Arthur offered after a moment's consideration. "I got it for camping trips with the boys, but we hardly get any use out of it now. You could take that one apart for a look."

"That'd be great!" green eyes lit with excitement. "Can we go now?"

Directing an apologetic shrug to his other guest, Arthur escorted the excitable boy to the back door.

"So, Mr. Potter, might I ask why you are so interested in my stove?" Arthur Weasley asked his young guest as he opened the door to the back yard. "Kitchen appliances were hardly the sort of thing that captured my attention when I was your age."

"Well, it's more that I want to know how the stove is using magic to make heat," the currently human-shaped boy explained. "You see, I was working on this thing…"

Harry's voice was cut off by the closing door, and the kitchen suddenly seemed much emptier.

Albus watched them go with aplomb. He had things to discuss with Molly, and now was as good a time as any. He rose and made his way over to the stove where the woman was still hard at work.

"Madam Weasley, I must confess to an ulterior motive in accompanying Mr. Potter on this visit," he admitted. "Might I ask you a few questions?"

"Is this about that dreadful diary?" Molly asked, looking up from her cooking momentarily. At his nod, she flashed him a warm smile and turned back to the food. "Then of course you may ask, Headmaster, and feel free to call me Molly. There's no need to stand on formality while we're standing about the kitchen and I'm half-covered in flour!"

"Only if you will call me Albus, madam," he agreed with a chuckle. "As I explained to your husband, I am attempting to track down the origins of that 'dreadful diary', as you put it. Do you have any idea where she might have come by such a thing? Young Ginevra seems to have no memory of acquiring it, saying that as far as she could remember she had simply always had it, which we believe to be the result of mental manipulation by the possessing spirit."

Molly scowled down at her pot of stew, giving it a particularly hard stir. "I've been thinking about it since Arthur told me you would be coming, and I haven't been able to place anything…" she trailed off, a horrified expression stealing across her face. "Albus, you mentioned mental manipulation, and the spirit was here with us over Christmas break. Do you think… "

"That... is a possibility I had not considered," Albus acknowledged with a troubled frown, "a rather unpleasant one at that."

It was also a possibility which would make any evidence they could give suspect.

"No need to worry, Molly," the elderly wizard hurried to reassure his hostess when she seemed to fold in on herself. "The truth will tell eventually. It always does."

He would have to approach the problem from a different angle... a subtler and more covert option, something the possessing spirit might not have anticipated. In the meantime, there was much still to discuss.

"On a more pleasant note, that smells delicious," he gestured to the pot Molly was still stirring. "Might I inquire as to the menu?"

"Oh, of course!" the Weasley matriarch assured him, sounding quite pleased. "I had heard from the boys that young Harry is quite the eater, so I…"

The meal continued to take shape, and so too did the conversation, ranging from food to schooling to the weather and finally to gardening.

"Oh, yes the garden has been quite lovely this year," Molly gushed after her guest complimented her on her work in the area. "It was truly a treat last summer! Why take those vines over there," she gestured out the kitchen window to the shed into which her husband had disappeared with Harry nearly half an hour earlier. The small outbuilding was entirely covered in a shaggy green mass of climbing vines.

The elderly wizard peered obediently at the vines in question. Honeysuckle if he was not mistaken... the name stirred something in the back of his mind.

"Come late summer, that is practically a solid wall of flowers! And the smell!" Molly paused to take a deep breath, as if admiring a scent, "We put the laundry out to dry nearby, and it makes everything smell so wonderful!"

"Late summer, you say?" he asked, that niggling trace of a memory suddenly snapping into clarity. "Would that have been about the time school started?"

She shook her head, "No, the flowers start to die off a week or so before then. It would have been about the time we took the children shopping for their school supplies."

Her face twisted into a slight scowl, as if reminded of an unpleasant memory. Something that did not escape her guest's notice.

"Did something unpleasant happen then?" he asked, probing gently.

"That Lucius Malfoy," Molly growled, "picked a fist fight of all things with my Arthur outside Flourish and Blotts. I have no idea what he was trying to prove with that stunt."

"How dreadful!" he commiserated, his mind racing to put everything together.

It was dreadful behavior indeed, but more importantly it was uncharacteristic behavior. Lucius Malfoy was not one to get his own hands dirty; there had to have been something else afoot.

"Fortunately, nothing much came of it," his hostess continued, "but it was still quite unconscionably rude."

"Molly, you mentioned that this altercation took place outside the bookstore," Albus began, following up on a hunch. "Was this before or after you purchased the children's books?"

"After," she answered immediately, "why do you ask?"

A rather terrible suspicion had begun to coil in Albus' gut; however, sharing it with the Weasley matriarch at this time would benefit no one. She and her family would feel compelled to act on it, and they were in no position to do so effectively. Best to be discreet for now.

"Ah, nothing important," he averred while gently flexing his magic into the subtle probing pattern of a fully mastered legilimency spell. The imagery it returned solidified his suspicions into certainty. "So, a fistfight with Lucius Malfoy, hmm? I would imagine that went poorly for Lucius."

Molly shot him a suspicious glance, the finely tuned bullshit detector of the mother of the Weasley twins pinging something fierce. She knew he had been after something with that line of questioning, but after holding her visitor's eye for a long moment, she shrugged and turned back to her nearly completed lunch, willing to allow Albus his deceit.

"Would you go let Arthur and Harry know lunch is nearly ready, Albus?"

"Of course, Molly! I would be delighted."

4.6.9 Correspondence

Later that evening, Albus Dumbledore had returned to his office sat at his desk. Behind him, his usual collection of magical trinkets spun, puffed, clinked, or burbled merrily according to their usual custom. They stood in sharp contrast to their owner's limp posture as he stared listlessly at the draft of a letter on the blotter and thought dark thoughts. His brooding was eventually interrupted, as it so often was, by a warble from his phoenix companion.

"What is it, Fawkes?" the elderly wizard asked, looking up from the parchment that had so absorbed his attention.

A pointed trill answered him.

"I am not brooding!" he protested. Albus endured the skeptical gaze from the living embodiment of flame for all of a few seconds before his resolve broke. "Very well, I suppose I am brooding."

Fawkes tweeted an interrogative.

"Well, old friend, I have recently come across a bit of information regarding one of those ultimately responsible Miss Weasley's ordeal, and I am torn on how to respond," the Headmaster of Hogwarts explained to his avian companion. "On the one hand, much as I would like to act rather precipitously, I am bound by the law. The information I have is not sufficient to stand up to legal standards. On the other, I know the information is reliable, and I am also bound to protect the students at this school. I am torn on which imperative to follow."

He was answered by a dismissive chirp and an avian sort of shrug.

"What do you mean, 'why not do both?'" the old man demanded irritably. "Did you not listen? The two options are mutually incompatible. If I defend my student by killing the perpetrator, I run afoul of the law, and I would have to face the consequences of that. I've spent far too much of my life putting that law in place to undermine it myself by ignoring it! How on earth am I supposed to…"

He was interrupted by a complicated sequence of twittering which he only partially understood.

"What was that last bit?" Albus asked. "I wasn't quite able to follow."

Fawkes repeated the twittering exchange, and, when met with an expression of obvious incomprehension, the bird-shaped flame fell silent, considering how to explain more simply. Just as the phoenix was about to flame them both over to the Lair to ask the resident dragon to translate, the wizard in the room made a suggestion.

"Could you demonstrate, perhaps?" Dumbledore suggested.

The living flame fell silent for just a moment before giving another of those peculiar avian shrugs accompanied by an affirmative sounding chirp. It was fortunate that Albus and the phoenix were alone in the office because the ensuing display from the immortal embodiment of fire would have left lesser wizards near-catatonic.

Albus, of course, was not a lesser wizard, and his only reaction was to calmly and thoughtfully stroke his long, white beard as he considered his companion's eloquent suggestion. Eventually, he nodded.

With a bit of planning and theater, it would do.

Shortly thereafter, a Hogwarts owl winged off into the distance carrying a formal invitation.
 
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Section 4.7 - Industrial developments
4.7 Industrial developments

4.7.1 Idle chatter

"I still can't believe Lockhart skipped out on us," Abigail complained as she sat down to rest between sets. "I knew he was a bad teacher, but I never thought he was that bad."

It had been a week since Lockhart had disappeared and Defense classes were cancelled until further notice. The students had been instructed to study ahead on their own and encouraged to bring their questions on the topic to one of their other professors.

Naturally, most of the student body had taken this as permission to laze about and enjoy their newly expanded leisure time. Just as naturally, Abigail and Harry had taken advantage of their newly expanded leisure time to nearly double their shared study hours. The result had proven quite agreeable for the pair.

Harry grunted noncommittally as he continued his own exercise, an advanced variant on the setting-your-arms-on-fire one Mr. Flitwick had shown him what seemed like ages ago. Magical fire flickered into and out of existence on each of the young dragon's currently human fingers in quick succession as he said his own piece.

"I think I'm more surprised that Mr. Dumbledore hasn't found a replacement yet. It's been a whole week! You'd think he would have been able to get a substitute by now." He paused to scowl for a moment before continuing, "I mean it's one thing for my year, but you guys are going into your NEWTs in three weeks, right? That's not fair to you!"

"Don't worry about it, Harry," Abigail reassured him with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head. "It's not like we had a professor for the rest of the year, anyway. As far as I'm concerned this is an improvement over Lockhart's classes; at least now I can spend the time doing something productive."

With that, she returned to her own exercise. Today's fare was intended to improve speed and precision and involved juggling a pair of small balls using a rapid succession of individually cast levitation charms. She had yet to keep them in the air for more than forty-five seconds, but the charm was nigh-instinctive at this point, which was the true point of the exercise.

"Yeah, I guess," Harry allowed, then continued with an indignant grumble on his friend's behalf, "It's still not fair, though."

"No, it's not," the older girl agreed absently, the bulk of her attention on the task at hand, "but at the end of the day, not much in life is fair, and there's no profit in complaining about what can't be fixed. We just need to make the best of the hand we're dealt."

There wasn't much to say to that.

4.7.2 Pointed reminder

As Lucius Malfoy made his way into Hogwarts from the school's portkey receiving yard, he couldn't help but wonder what he was doing there. Well, that wasn't quite accurate; he knew that he was taking Albus Dumbledore up on his invitation for a business dinner. More properly, he was wondering why the invitation had been issued.

Albus Dumbledore did not generally run in the same social circles as Lucius, for a variety of obvious reasons.

Since the old man wasn't being sociable, there were only a few options, and none really fit. Lucius was on the school's board of governors, but the timing was wrong for that sort of business. It was too early for an end of year report, and there had been no hint of a funding shortfall. He'd heard that the Defense professor had run off, but the governors didn't deal with staffing issues; those were the Headmaster's bailiwick.

As he passed through the front gate, Lucius served the pathetic squib Dumbledore insisted on employing as the school Caretaker with a dismissive scoff. That was a worthless position if there ever was one, given the more than adequate population of house elves in the school. The Head of House Malfoy briefly considered the idea that his son might have gotten into some sort of trouble necessitating a parental visit but took only a moment to dismiss the idea out of hand. Draco's letters had said nothing of the sort, and the boy's godfather surely would have let him know if anything grossly untoward was in the works.

Had he not seen the news regarding the rather public demise of his master's basilisk before the holidays, he might have guessed that the meeting had something to do with that situation. He had been instructed to prepare for just such a thing, in fact — his assigned role in the Master's overall plan would have begun at that time — but the Potter Heir's victory had put a stop to that, more's the pity.

Lucius' speculation came to an unsatisfying end as he arrived at the private solar Dumbledore had indicated in his missive. He supposed he would just have to wait and see what the old wizard had to say.

"I bid you welcome, Lucius Malfoy," Albus Dumbledore intoned formally when Lucius opened the door. "Come and partake of my hospitality."

"I thank you for the invitation and accept your offer of hospitality," he replied, reflexively matching the formal tone.

The Malfoy patriarch frowned slightly even as he walked over to the small dining table and took the proffered seat. It seemed an odd choice for the elderly wizard. Had he been one of Lucius' colleagues, Lucius would have assumed that it was an attempt to put him at ease; invoking formal hospitality was a solid assurance that there would be no subterfuge or assassination attempts during the visit, but this was Dumbledore. The idea that he would resort to such tactics was laughable.

His host had to have another angle, but for the life of him Lucius had no idea what it could be.

Lucius' first revelation regarding the old man's motivations was delivered along with the main course.

It was decidedly unpleasant.

"I see the menu is rather heavy on meat this evening," Lucius idly remarked, taking in the appearance of the offered meal. The newly-arrived plate featured a massively proportioned slab of the substance, accompanied by a — the Malfoy Head gave a discerning sniff — red wine-based pan sauce. The cuts were much too large for any accompanying side dishes to fit alongside them, so they had been plated separately. "If you were seeking to impress me, you would have been better off with a more varied selection, rather than sheer quantity."

"No, Lucius," Albus countered while busying himself with the process of portioning the hefty steak into bite-sized pieces, "I am certain it will make precisely the impression I intend."

That statement seemed odd, which stirred enough caution that Lucius paused long enough to watch his host take the first bite. When the elderly wizard chewed and swallowed with quite apparent gusto. Lucius felt safe to turn back to his own plate, following the example of his host and cutting off an experimental portion. Despite coming from what had to have been an utterly massive creature — not nearly as unusual in the magical world as it would have been in the nonmagical one — the meat was cooked to perfection, moist and tender enough to practically fall apart at the first hint of pressure.

Lucius' first bite revealed that the flavors and seasoning were quite passable, though by no means spectacular. It was a good, solid meal, yet not the sort of thing to leave any lasting impression.

Just what had his host had meant then?

Blond eyebrows furrowed as he considered Dumbledore's statement. In his experience, that sort of line could mean several different things. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man whose surname loosely translated as 'bad faith', his first thought had been poison, but he had been just as quick to dismiss the idea. This was Dumbledore, after all; the old man didn't play the same sorts of games.

That left the spectacle of the meal as the means to leave an impression, a method Lucius had used himself to good effect in the past. However, that possibility didn't fit with the current situation; such things required a more dramatic approach. A decent meal in a modest private dining room did not fit the bill.

Perhaps the menu involved some exotic animal?

A blond eyebrow arched in consideration. It was a possibility that had merit. The unusual size of the cut of meat was a good indicator of that; a muscle with a cross-section at least the size of a dinner plate implied some significant heft, after all.

The cooking method also fit the possibility well. Braising was generally used to soften cuts which had been quite active in life, things like ox-cheek or a shoulder cut. Given that and the size, Lucius concluded that the animal involved had probably been a large predator, which fit the theme quite well. At one time, he had served lion to a group of his business associates; the meat had been passable at best, but the romance of the situation more than made up for its culinary failings.

That had to be it, and it would be best to give his host the excuse to brag; it would take forever to get to the point otherwise.

"Might I ask what sort of meat we are dining on this evening?"

"Basilisk," the elderly wizard replied calmly.

"Basilisk?" Lucius choked and froze, his fork hovering stock still inches above his plate.

That meant...

"Indeed, Lucius," the old man confirmed pleasantly. "You see, recently, a hideously evil artifact was smuggled into the school by some foul reprobate," Dumbledore's gimlet gaze momentarily pinned the younger wizard in place before he went on in a positively genial tone, "where it forced one of my students into releasing an ancient monster from its ages-long slumber."

The bearded wizard sighed dramatically, "Fortunately, the beast ran afoul of one of our younger students who dispatched it handily before it could cause any lasting harm. Mr. Potter was kind enough to gift me with a portion of the meat, and it now graces our table."

"I see," the blond Malfoy croaked, swallowing reflexively as he attempted to moisten his suddenly dry mouth. "And have you managed to capture the culprit?"

"Alas, we have not," the greatest wizard in Britain sighed. "I have my suspicions... nothing that would hold up in court, you understand, but I do feel quite close to a solution."

"I wish you a speedy and fruitful investigation, of course," Lucius managed to bite out. "Anything to ensure the safety of the students."

"Indeed, while it has not turned up the name of the one responsible for this incident, the investigation has borne all sorts of interesting fruit." The elder wizard paused for a moment, timing his words carefully to coincide with his guest's next bite. "For example, did you know that your old acquaintance, Voldemort, had a bit of a history with that particular basilisk?"

Lucius froze again in mid-bite.

"Yes, yes… it seems he considered the beast as a beloved friend, if you can fathom it! I had no idea the man was even capable of such!"

As the Malfoy Head paled, the old man twisted the knife.

"Just imagine how much it would gall him to see you eating that steak. Why, it was probably his only true friend in the whole world!" He paused for a moment to allow the implications to sink in, "A fitting revenge for all that 'mind control' he saddled you with in the last war, I suppose. Wouldn't you agree, Lucius?"

The old man smirked behind his glass as he sipped at his drink, "A good thing for you that he is dead, I'd imagine. Why, if he were to ever return, he would undoubtedly read this incident from your mind, and I suspect you'd not be long for this life! Dreadfully limited sense of humor on that boy."

Face now paper white and stomach twisting itself in knots, Lucius finally regained enough of his senses to reach for his napkin, but before he could spit out his most recent bite of the Dark Lord's pet basilisk, he froze as his host spoke once more.

"Are you absolutely certain you want to do that, Lucius?" Albus Dumbledore, the defeater of Grindlewald and the strongest wizard west of the Urals spoke in a dangerously calm voice. "Refusing the meal would mean refusing my hospitality, something that could be taken as a personal insult, were I so inclined. That is just the sort of insult that might precipitate a duel, I would imagine."

Lucius Malfoy slowly finished chewing and forced himself to swallow. The tone left no doubt whether he would be so inclined.

"Excellent choice, old boy," Dumbledore congratulated him in a deceptively friendly tone. His presence swelled leaving the younger wizard barely able to breathe. "Though, I must admit, my life would have been much simpler had you given me the excuse. Alas, it seems I must do this the long way. Now, listen closely."

"You have put me in something of an uncomfortable position with this latest stunt, Lucius," Dumbledore stated in a conversational tone. "You planted that artifact on Miss Weasley, and I am now torn between two conflicting imperatives."

"You have no proof…" Lucius croaked out before a surge in his host's already oppressive magic silenced him.

"I have no proof that would be acceptable in court," he clarified. "I have more than enough proof to know what you did, Lucius. Unfortunately, I am bound by the law; without properly court-admissible evidence, I cannot legally punish you, frustrating as that is. You have taken advantage of that distinction many times over the years."

Lucius managed to muster the will for a smirk, if a rather anemic one.

"I know all too well that you and your peers see that unwillingness to circumvent the law as a weakness, a sign that I am too soft to make difficult decisions," Dumbledore declared. "You and your peers are wrong. You have no vision, no understanding! Those laws are my laws: I wrote them; I promoted them; and in the end, I personally forced them onto your ilk and the rest of magical society."

"I did that because they are good laws, laws that will help shape a good society and guide us into a better future," the elder wizard continued passionately, leaning forward in his chair. "But if those laws are to have any weight beyond that inherent in the whims of a powerful wizard, then they must be applied fairly and equally!"

He slapped a hand down next to his plate to emphasize the point.

"A nation can only be a nation of laws if those laws apply to everyone, especially to those who might otherwise have enough power to ignore them with impunity! If I do not follow those laws, no one will. Who would follow a rule that even the rule's creator flouted?"

He shook his head as he leaned back, white beard swaying with the movement.

"I have trusted that the rule of law would win out in the end on its own merits... that eventually you and those like you would be caught out and punished, lending weight to those laws by proving that they have teeth." He sighed, "No political transition has ever been bloodless, and I have been resigned to accepting delay as the lesser evil in the process of building a better future."

Despite the intimidating aura, Lucius' smirk broadened ever so slightly. It seemed the old man was working himself up to let him go again. He opened his mouth to taunt the old man only for the words to freeze on his lips.

"I am, however, also bound by my oaths as the Headmaster of Hogwarts," the old man's eyes narrowed dangerously, his hard gaze pinning Lucius to his chair. "And in your blind idiocy you have managed to put those two oaths into conflict! You have threatened one of my students while she was at my school, a child that I am oathbound to protect."

Lucius' smirk vanished, and the younger man's expression blanked in shock as everything he thought he knew of the man before him was turned on its ear.

"I have brought you here to remind you that actions have consequences," the great wizard enunciated slowly and clearly. "No lasting damage was inflicted by your recent bout of stupidity, Lucius, so I am within bounds of proper behavior to leave you alive. Nevertheless, I have brought you here to give you this warning: should I learn that another of my students has come to harm in a way that I can trace back to you, in school or out, whether the evidence is court-admissible or not, I will bury you."

Lucius' brow furrowed in confusion.

"You wonder why I brought up the conflicting objectives if I am just going to threaten you anyway?" Dumbledore asked, correctly interpreting his guest's expression... or perhaps reading his mind, both were distinctly possible. "You see, there is one possible way to reconcile that conflict, a course of action that will satisfy both oaths."

The elderly wizard, still calmly seated on the other side of the table, seemed to swell to giant proportions, looming menacingly over his guest despite not having moved at all. Lucius froze, stock still and unable to muster even the will to speak, much less move.

An idle gesture levitated the helpless man's wand from where it had been concealed in his sleeve, casually ignoring the elaborate enchantments on the sheath intended to prevent such things. The wand settled gently on the table in front of its owner, pointed directly at Lucius' chest, and as the frozen man watched, horrified, the tip began glowing a menacing and all too familiar green.

Unspoken message of dominance and threat clearly conveyed, the elder wizard continued, "You see, Lucius," he said conversationally, "I am willing to betray neither the law nor my oaths, yet there is more than one way to be law-abiding."

Dumbledore's stifling aura, already enough to prevent Lucius from even attempting to speak, swelled steadily higher with each word he spoke. Lucius' breath caught in his throat.

"One can obey the law by avoiding those things proscribed by the law," the monstrous figure seated across from the Head of House Malfoy continued "This is the preferred method; it is the meaning that most imagine when they hear the term 'law-abiding'. Technically, however, there is another."

"One can also obey the law by willingly accepting the punishment it prescribes. You see, Lucius, I could refrain from killing you where you sit, or I could accept the punishment for killing you where you sit."

Lucius' breath petered out with a faint wheeze.

"The law cares not which."

Unable to breathe, Lucius' heart pounded in his ears, its rhythm faltering under the ever-increasing strain of simply existing near the thing sitting across the table.

"However, the latter option is one I find rather unappealing," the terrifying wizard admitted, "mostly, I am ashamed to say, due to the fact that following it to its necessary conclusion means that I would not live to see the new world I have worked so long to build."

Lucius' vision began to blur as his eyes teared up from being open for so long, yet he could not blink.

"Make no mistake, however, reluctant or not it is a path down which I am well prepared to walk. Plans have been made; contingencies arranged."

Lucius' world had contracted until there was nothing but the voice in his ears and the irregular heartbeat in his chest.

"Know, Lucius, that if you are the one to force me down that path, the one to force me to give up on seeing my life's work through to its conclusion, I will be quite wroth with you."

The monstrous presence swelled to a crescendo, and Lucius' heart stopped entirely.

"Should that event come to pass, Lucius, I will ensure that you will have ample opportunity to regret your actions before your end." There was a pause. "And rest assured you would be but the first. I would not sell my life so cheaply as to trade it for yours alone."

The presence held for a few moments longer before it faded, and Lucius' lungs suddenly filled as he took a painful, shuddering breath. His heart quickly hammered back into operation, and he collapsed face-first onto the table, narrowly missing his plate.

"Do clean your plate, Lucius, lest you give me an excuse to do something you will not live long enough to regret," the monster across the table reminded him.

As soon as he was able to lift his head, Lucius heeded that advice, lifting his fork in spasmodically trembling hands. He then ate the long-since cooled remainder of the basilisk steak, chewing each now-gelatinous bite methodically before cutting off another portion, his quaking hands causing the flatware to rattle against the porcelain.

He no longer cared what his Lord would think of him eating the beast because Lucius finally understood the nature of the creature sitting across from him.

Lord Voldemort had been a monster in human flesh, one that Lucius had gladly served out of a sense of shared purpose laced with a healthy portion of fear, but so was Albus Dumbledore, as the monster in question had so ably demonstrated. Dumbledore's goals were strange and his methods alien, but at the end of the day, when pushed far enough, it seemed the two were not so different, after all.

It was a lesson Lucius would remember for the rest of his days.

4.7.3 Prototypes and plans

"It's really busy today," Hermione marveled.

The bushy-haired girl walked through the streets of Hogsmeade between her sometimes dragon-shaped friend and her fellow damsel; Abigail had taken to walking on Harry's other side. The pedestrian traffic was unusually heavy, and the town was abuzz with excitement.

"I know!" Harry agreed. "People must be really excited about the trains."

"It's a really big change for the town," Abigail chimed in as they continued on their way to the railyard. "The railroad is the oldest industry in town, and while it's not strictly speaking the largest business, between the town's history and the Hogwarts Express, it's probably the highest profile. A new, in-house locomotive is the biggest piece of company news in the better part of a century, so it's not too surprising it's the talk of the town."

"Well, I'm glad people are happy about it because this is going to be the first of many," the young dragon nodded emphatically. "Especially if this works as well as the engineers expect."

"Oh?" Abigail prompted.

"Yeah," Harry nodded as they approached the last corner before they would be able to see the yards. "We've got some big plans if the numbers work out right, and they'll get even bigger if that law Mr. Rowland was talking about clears the nonmagical parliament."

"What law are you…" Abigail trailed off as they rounded the corner the yards came within sight. Her eyes widened. "Oh… oh, wow!"

If the streets of the town had been unusually busy, the scene in front of the yards was practically a riot. It seemed like the entire population had turned out for the debut, and there were still nearly two hours yet before the test run. The whole thing felt almost like a town fair, full of people in the often eye-searingly colorful robes typical of the British wizarding world. They milled about, laughing and engaged in animated conversation. Even a few food carts seemed to have sprung up spontaneously to feed the throng of visitors, sporting hastily magicked-up signage marking them as belonging to the various eateries about town.

After taking a moment to marvel at the lively crowd, Harry frowned thoughtfully.

"You know, I'm not sure exactly where we're supposed to be going," the currently human-shaped dragon admitted. "I figured we'd just find someone I knew, but I wasn't thinking the crowd would be so thick. Hey, Suze," he turned his head to look up at his centaur damsel. "Can you see anything?"

"Hmm," she scanned the front of the building from her superior vantage point above the crowd. "I do not… oh, I believe that is Mr. Rowland." Suze raised an arm in greeting to the man. "Ah, he has seen me, and he is motioning us forward."

Harry grinned, "Let's go then!"

The four managed to forge their way through the crowd remarkably quickly, aided by both Suze's physically imposing stature and Harry's unconscious presence, and they arrived at the steps to the main entrance of the offices without incident.

"Hello there, Mr. Potter!" Ross, an enthusiastic fellow in his early fifties, greeted his employer warmly, eyes bright with excitement and smile beaming his zeal to all and sundry. He served as the non-magical general manager of Harry's business development efforts. "And welcome to you girls as well! Come on in! There's so much to show you!"

"I'm looking forward to it, Mr. Rowland!" Harry agreed enthusiastically, falling into step with the much older man as they turned to enter the small office building which housed the administrative functions of the rail company. The girls followed along as well, content to listen attentively. "The reports the engineers have been sending look really good! If the efficiency numbers we get from the test are in line with expectations, then we're going to have more freight business than we can handle."

"Indeed, we will, my boy," Rowland beamed. "A thirty percent cost reduction! Thirty percent over diesel-electric!"

"Yeah, it's gonna be awesome!" the young human-shaped dragon nodded. "I got a few things I'm workin' on and suggestions for stuff they might want to look at that could boost that even more, but that'll come later. Even a ten-percent advantage on total cost of operations is more than enough to get our foot in the door in the non-magical bulk freight industry."

"True, true," the older man agreed. "For that matter, even five percent would have been enough to break in, but you need to think bigger, Mr. Potter!" He settled one hand on the boy's much smaller shoulders while gesturing grandly with the other. "Thirty percent won't just get our foot in the door; it will mean dominating the industry! I've been saying for years that steam is the way forward, and this just proves it! All we needed to do was put the design effort in using modern engineering and materials. Now it's all coming together!"

"And I will be quite happy with if things work out that way," Harry agreed, unusually sedate. "I've even got some major plans that are contingent on those numbers, Mr. Rowland, but we need to confirm them first."

As they passed through the back door of the office building bypassing the worst of the crowds, they exited into the yards themselves, a tangled nest of train tracks leading off to various train barns and other maintenance facilities. "Um, do you think we'll be able to check out the locomotive while they're starting it up?"

"I don't see why not, but let me go check," the older man took off at a quick jog towards a long brick building across the yard lined with arched doorways sized for train cars. When he had reached about fifty yards' distance, he turned to call back over his shoulder, "I'll be back in a moment!"

As the sound of the man's excited voice faded, Abigail turned to her friend, "Harry, what was all that about?"

"What do you mean, Abigail?" he asked, sounding puzzled.

"Why were you sounding so cautious about the performance of the new locomotive?" the older girl asked. "You are usually the most enthusiastic person in the room when something catches your interest, and everyone else has to hold you back a bit to get you to think things through. Do you really not believe the engineering team?"

"Oh! Yeah, well," the currently human-shaped dragon began, "it's not that I don't believe the engineering team, but this is a new application. I mean, since the stuff has all been tested individually, I'm not really expecting any surprises, but I've found its best to wait and see what you get before you go all in on new technology. I've had a couple projects now that should have worked but then went all weird on me."

He rubbed at the back of his head a little sheepishly. "I mean, according to the math, that magic-to-electricity rune system ought to have worked properly, but it went wrong, instead. For that matter, when I wanted to show you my CNC lathe before I'd tested it the first time, it failed." He sighed. "I just don't want to oversell anything before we know one way or another."

His older female friend reached over to wrap him in a one-armed hug. "Aw, don't worry too much, Harry. I'm sure it will turn out well!"

Harry nodded as the other two girls echoed Abigail's reassurance. "Yeah, it should, I think, but… well, I'm sure you noticed that Mr. Rowland is really enthusiastic about steam power, right?"

After noting another round of nods, the young dragon explained, "Well, Mr. Wardale — he's one of my senior engineers; we'll probably see him at the test, maybe earlier if they let us into the maintenance barn — anyway, he told me Mr. Rowland gets a little overenthusiastic sometimes. He's been promoting steam rail in the face of a bunch of people who were mostly dead set against the idea for about thirty years now, and he can get off on tangents sometimes. Mr. Wardale asked me to help 'keep him properly grounded and on-task' when I can."

Harry's much put-upon tone at the end prompted a giggle from his bushy-haired damsel.

"What's so funny about that?" the young dragon asked curiously.

"It's just… the idea of someone asking you of all people to keep someone 'grounded and on-task'…" Hermione managed to get out before collapsing into giggles again.

"Hey, I can keep on task when I want to," the young Potter protested. At the raised eyebrows from Suze and Abigail, he insisted, "I can too! I get all sorts of things done!"

"'All sorts of things' indeed, Harry," Suze agreed with a gentle smile. "I believe Hermione is referring to the tendency of your studies to branch off in all directions rather frequently. Just yesterday, you started the day deep in a book on runes; by lunch you were working on sympathetic magic; and then we had to drag you away from your work on those metal plates in the workroom. You do a great deal of work, but it is hardly coordinated."

"But those were coordinated!" Harry insisted. "I was looking at gold as a conductor for the runes, and then I thought about those shed scales I have, and then I thought about whether those might have some weird magical properties I might worry about, since they were part of me and all, and after I checked on that, I thought they might be useful for some stuff I was thinking about because of that, but you can't melt them if you want it to work, so I was making some dies to draw it out into wire and stuff, and then I was going to…"

"Regardless, she has a point that you hardly stayed to the original topic," Abigail interrupted. "And before you go off on another tangent, Mr. Rowland just came back outside."

That got the young dragon's attention, prompting him to look up and head for the man with renewed determination. "What did they say?" Harry called out as soon as the man got close enough to hear.

"It's safe for you and your ladies, as long as you stay with the executive team and don't get in the technicians' way," Rowland told them with a beaming smile. "Come on in!"

"Great!" the currently human-shaped dragon exclaimed, pleased.

With that, the whole group made their way into the maintenance barn. The interior was all a-bustle with activity, a swarm of engineers and technicians working away under the watchful eyes of the senior engineers... well, one of them anyway. Harry didn't see Mr. Porta in the group with the clipboards standing over in the area Mr. Rowland was leading them.

"Mr. Wardale!" Harry called a cheerful greeting to the engineer with an enthusiastic grin once they got close enough that he wouldn't have to yell too loudly.

"Welcome to the shop, Mr. Potter," David Wardale, a native Scot and an experienced steam engineer, greeted his employer. "And who are these young ladies?" he asked, gesturing to Harry's companions.

A round of introductions followed.

"Pleased to meet you all," the engineer nodded in response. "It's a big day today."

Harry gave an affirmative hum as he turned to look out over the preparatory work and the prototype locomotive itself.

The locomotive was a messy-looking behemoth a bit longer than Harry in his natural form and a great deal bulkier, if one discounted Harry's wings. Some parts were painted in the red, gold, and black livery of the Hogs Haulage company, but the prototype's coloration seemed haphazard, likely a result of some pre-painted parts from the company's collection of spares. The majority was bare metal of various types and finishes; it was all very steam engine-like... with one glaring exception in the form of a thick fuzzy blanket covering the combustion chamber and boiler.

"She's a bonnie lass, isn't she?" David commented, gazing proudly over the slowly rousing giant.

"Mr. Wardale?" Hermione spoke up, at his nod she continued. "What's that fuzzy white stuff on the locomotive? It looks kind of like wool, but you couldn't have that around the fire, could you?"

"That's rock wool, lass. It won't burn," the steam engineer explained. "It's there to keep the heat in and boiling water rather than heating up the outside air."

"Is it going to get something to cover the insulation eventually?" Harry asked with a concerned frown. "'Cause right now it looks kinda like a big mechanical sheep."

"She's a locomotive, not a statue, lad. Her beauty's in what she does, not what she looks like," the older man replied with a laugh and a reassuring pat on Harry's shoulder. "But don't you worry; she'll be getting a sheet-metal covering once we've put her through her paces. We just didn't want to be cutting it open and welding it shut all the time while we were working on things."

"Even without that, though, she's a beauty," he reiterated with a happy sigh, turning back to the controlled chaos going on below. "The most efficient steam locomotive... no, the most efficient locomotive in history! Brings a tear to your eye, even lookin' like she does now."

"That does sound pretty awesome," Harry agreed. Then he looked around the barn once more, frowning with concern. "Um, Mr. Wardale, if you don't mind me asking, where's Mr. Porta? I don't see him, and I'd kinda like to introduce everybody."

"He's in the cab overseeing the initial firing," David answered easily. "The combustion systems have always been his baby, and the steam injector under the grate's been touchy lately, so he wanted to be there to see it through."

"Oh, okay. Um, is that going to be a problem with the design?" the young dragon asked his engineer. "If it's going to go into production, we'll want to get that fixed if we can."

"No, it shouldn't be," the older man waved off the question. "Your magical technicians... and that still feels so strange to say, already found the problem. When the firebox is cold, there's a slight misalignment between the bits that handle the magic for keeping the part from corroding and the physical steam ports. They need to make a new part to fix it, and they will soon enough. We didn't want to delay the demonstration, though, and this one works well enough once everything gets up to temperature; you just have to baby it a bit to get it there."

"Oh, okay," Harry acknowledged.

The conversation trailed off for a time as everyone simply took in the bustling activity. Eventually, a thought occurred.

"Hey, why are you injecting steam below the grate, anyway?"

"You need that to reduce the temperature of the firebed," the steam engineer explained absently, the bulk of his attention on the preparations going on with the initial firing. "The gas producer combustion system needs a thick firebed to work properly, but that gets too hot, so you add the steam to cool it down."

"Gas producer?" Hermione chimed in, surprised. "I thought the locomotives burned coal?"

"That they do, lassie," David nodded. "Well, this one does, steam engines can run on just about anything that gets hot enough. Thing is, you can burn coal in a lot of different ways. This one passes a limited amount of air over the hot coal to decompose it into producer gas, and then burns that in the combustion chamber above the firebed."

"That seems complicated," Abigail spoke up. "I assume there's a reason to go to the trouble?"

"Indeed there is, and a very good reason at that," he confirmed. "Switching to a GPCS means we can reduce the amount of primary air coming up through the firebed. Less air means the air can move slower, and that means you're not throwing half your coal load up through the stack without burning it."

"Throwing coal up the stack?" Hermione prompted. "How does that work?"

"When this one gets going, you'll notice there's none of that billowing black smoke that you usually see coming out the top of the stack on a steam locomotive," the senior engineer explained patiently. "Instead, there'll just a little bit of blue smoke and steam. All that black stuff you usually see is unburned coal particulate just thrown out the top and wasted. With the gas-producer system we burn it properly in the combustion chamber so we can use the heat."

"Okay, that makes sense," Harry nodded. "It's sort of an in-situ coal gasification plant, then. I've read about those before. Why do you need to cool down the firebed, though?" That struck Harry as a little odd, given his own forays into thermodynamics. "Isn't a heat engine more efficient the hotter it burns, though? I'd think you'd want everything burning as hot as possible?"

"That's right," David agreed, turning to his young employer. "but there's a bit more to it. Good job on asking the question though, lad! I'm glad to see you've been putting in the research."

Harry smiled at the praise.

"There's a couple of reasons you don't want to maximize the temperature," Wardale continued. "One should be pretty obvious when you think about it. The firebox is made out of steel. Why do you think we ought not stoke a coal fire as hot as we can get it inside a steel firebox?"

Harry only had to think for a moment before it came to him, "Oh, yeah, a coal fire can get more than hot enough to melt that steel, can't it?" The currently human-shaped dragon frowned in thought for a moment before continuing, "But you kind of have to work to get a coal fire that hot, why would you need to work at keeping it cooler?"

"Long before the steel melts, the heat will accelerate corrosion," the older man explained. "You need to keep the temperature down to some extent if you don't want to be replacing the firebox after every firing."

"Oh, I guess I can see that," Harry agreed before making a tentative suggestion, "Um, if you didn't know, we've got some really good refractory material over at my other company, if you guys want to try that. The stuff's about as strong as mild steel, and it keeps its strength up to about a hundred degrees past the boiling point of iron, so it ought to be able to take anything a coal fire can throw at it."

"Another fine suggestion, Mr. Potter," David congratulated him. "We had looked into that briefly, but we decided the steel was cheaper and would do well enough. The thing is though, even accounting for corrosion we can get still afford to get the steel a lot hotter than we do now. The real limitation is clinker."

"What's that?" Harry asked.

"Remember, the coal we're burning isn't pure carbon; there's clay and other bits of rock in it too. That stuff doesn't burn, but it will melt if you get it too hot," the engineer explained. "When it does, it sticks to everything, and that makes the grate and firebox almost impossible to clear out for the next burn. We use the steam to keep the firebed cool enough that the clinker doesn't melt. It's a tradeoff between thermal efficiency and ease of maintenance."

"So, you said clay and rocks…" the younf dragon frowned thoughtfully. "So, the clinker's basically glass?"

"Mostly, and molten glass sticks to everything," the engineer affirmed. "That's why glass foundries run continuously for decades before they shut down for maintenance. They have to rip out the entire lining of the furnace and production line and replace it once the molten glass cools. They can't clean it out properly."

"It doesn't do that to our refractory," the currently human-shaped dragon countered.

"What do you mean?" David asked, eyes sharp with sudden interest.

"I mean molten glass just beads up and drips off," Harry explained. "Almost everything does; it's a big part of why it's been selling so well."

"Really now?" the senior engineer mused. "That level of chemical resistance? That'll be worth a good think on the next generation design."

"Not this one?"

"Unfortunately not," David shook his head. "We can't just drop it into the existing design and turn up the heat. We'll have to rework so much of the locomotive to handle the higher temperatures, the different flow rates, the higher pressures, the…"

He trailed off for a few moments as he considered the implications, long enough for Ross Rowland to return and interject himself back into the conversation.

"So, what have you boys been talking about over here?"

"Hmm?" David managed to pull himself back out of his thoughts enough to process the question. "Mr. Potter here just raised a very interesting possibility for the core of a third-gen steam engine using a new bit of technology. I was just thinking through what we'd need to change to take advantage."

"Wonderful! Glad to hear it," the excitable man gushed before calming somewhat. "Mr. Potter expressed some concerns over waiting to see how the efficiency numbers turn out. How certain are you that we'll see the thirty-percent advantage we were talking about in the estimates?"

"Ah, well, you should always be cautious until you see the working product. That's just good sense," the engineer explained, "but in this case, the numbers are pretty solid. We've tested all the subsystems separately, so this is an integration test more than a basic function test. I'd guess that thirty-percent number won't be off by more than five percent either way."

"Great!" Ross exclaimed.

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "So, at least twenty-five percent, then?" The young dragon fell silent for a moment, obviously thinking hard. "That'll be right on the edge. Maybe we could… um, Mr. Wardale?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Do you think there's anything we might be able to do for diesel-electric to bring it along a bit closer?" the young dragon asked. "I mean quick stuff that can be slapped in retroactively."

David raised a questioning eyebrow and waited for further explanation. Ross, on the other hand…

"Why would you want to do that?" the steam enthusiast demanded, sounding rather like someone had kicked his dog right in front of him. "We're just about to prove the supremacy of second-generation steam as the power technology of tomorrow, and you're already talking about switching back to diesel?"

"Oh, no, I'm not thinking about switching, Mr. Rowland," Harry assured him. "It's just… those improvements might be enough to make that hypothetical deal we were talking about work, even at only twenty-five percent."

"Which one are you…" Rowland asked, his face screwed up in thought, trying to place the reference.

"The one from last week, remember?" Harry clarified, and his manager's expression cleared. "Assuming the vote goes through, it might be an option; though, I'll have to talk with Mr. Slackhammer about the finances…"

"Oh, right!" Ross nodded. "Why not just build more of our new steam beauties, though?"

"Timing, Mr. Rowland," Harry reminded him. "That deal won't be available for long, and we can't make new locomotives fast enough. We'll need something to fill the gap."

"I'll see what we can manage," David volunteered with a curious expression. "I'm not sure what deal you're talking about, but frankly, we're going to need to look into the electrical options anyway." When Ross turned to him, nascent outrage on his face, he explained, "As much as I love the pure mechanical drives, Ross, we're going to need to switch to at least a partially electric power train so we don't pound the tracks all to hell in the high-speed applications, if nothing else."

"For that matter, we'll even need it for slow freight if we're going to take full advantage of Mr. Potter's refractory material." Wardale grimaced. "That kind of temperature differential is going to need multiple recovery stages with different working fluids in each. Trying to tie all those together mechanically…" the engineer trailed off with a dramatic shudder. "I like a good challenge as much as anyone, but there are limits."

"Well, I suppose I can see your point," Ross allowed, which was all he managed to say before the heavy whuff of exhausting steam snapped his attention back to the locomotive of the hour.

The entire group fell silent as they watched the first second-generation steam locomotive come to life before their eyes. True to Mr. Wardale's prediction, there was barely a wisp of blue smoke in evidence amongst the exhausted steam as the locomotive huffed its way around the Hogs Haulage test track, followed by the cheers of the excited townsfolk.

It was a short trip, a scant few miles around a closed track, but it bore out the engineers' predictions beautifully. In the coming decades that short jaunt would come to be remembered as the voyage that sparked the second golden age of rail.

4.7.4 Calculated response

Blonde eyebrows furrowed in concern as Narcissa watched her husband drop his silverware, the knife and fork clattering loudly as they struck the plate. His hands trembled as he stared down at the plate for a long moment until he finally seemed to register what had happened. Then he fumbled with those trembling hands in a clumsy attempt to retrieve the fallen utensils.

It was the fifth time during this meal alone.

"Lucius, are you unwell?"

Wild eyes locked with her own for a moment before they flitted away jerkily as if searching for threats. Still, despite his seeming inability to focus, it seemed to have been enough to capture Lucius' attention, at least enough to warrant an explanation.

"I can't call them off, Narcissa," he told her in a panicked voice. "We set it up to keep from being traced, but now I need to call off the job, and I don't have a way to do it!"

"Who are you talking about, Lucius?" she asked, visibly restraining herself from snapping impatiently. "Who do you need to call off?"

"The capture team I sent after Granger!" Lucius snapped, panic overriding his normally impeccable manners when dealing with his wife. "I met with Dumbledore yesterday. Now I need to call off the job, but I can't, and I don't know what to do, and... Oh Merlin, we're all going to die!"

"Granger?" Narcissa frowned as she tried to place the name. "Lucius, I am afraid I need you to refresh my memory…"

"She's the Weasley boy's girlfriend!" he reminded her sharply. "The one we decided to use as a catspaw to get at the brat." He shook his head before continuing in a mumble, "And she's a Hogwarts student, under Dumbledore's protection." He buried his face in his hands and whimpered, "What was I thinking?"

"Lucius," Narcissa ground out, limited patience now exhausted, "what do you mean about calling off that job? That is part of our vengeance for the assault on our son! How could you even consider backing out?"

"The girl is a Hogwarts student, Narcissa," Lucius insisted. "We need to back off, find another way. We can't risk it!"

"She was a Hogwarts student from the beginning, Lucius. Nothing has changed!" she snapped.

Then a thought occurred; he had mentioned his meeting with Dumbledore…

"Did Dumbledore do something to you yesterday, Lucius?"

Mental interference would fit with the change in behavior, Narcissa thought. If he had, she would bury the old goat!

"He knew, Narcissa," Lucius hissed. "He knew about the diary!"

She stiffened momentarily, then frowned. "Nonsense! If he knew, we would be before the Wizengamot; he wouldn't have called you to Hogwarts."

Back channel, under the table threats were not Albus Dumbledore's way.

"Narcissa, something has changed," her husband insisted. "Dumbledore delivered an ultimatum. If one more student under his protection comes to harm by my hand, he will kill me."

His wife scoffed. "He would never do such a thing!"

"Damnit, Narcissa! I know death threats!" Lucius insisted, slamming an angry fist down on the dining table hard enough to make his place setting jump. "He was not bluffing! If he can trace anything to me, I am a dead man! And if the subtext I caught was correct, he would follow it up by cutting a bloody swath through the wizarding world... our side of it." He was shouting now, "I know not what has changed, but that was not an idle threat!"

"Calm yourself, Lucius," Narcissa warned her husband in a hard tone. "This is Albus Dumbledore you speak of, not the Dark Lord…"

"And who did the Dark Lord fear, Narcissa? Who killed the previous Dark Lord in single combat at the height of his power?" Lucius demanded. "Albus bloody Dumbledore!" He shook his head in disbelief, "I have no idea how we managed to forget that, but he bloody damned well reminded me yesterday, and now I have no idea how to salvage things!"

Narcissa Malfoy scowled for a moment before closing her eyes in thought. When she opened them, she decided to take a different tack.

"Very well Lucius, if it is as dire a circumstance as you say, I will handle things."

Her husband's wide, panicked eyes filled with naked hope.

"You know how to handle this mess, Narcissa?"

"I keep track of your assets, Lucius," she reminded him. "Admittedly, I mostly do that to ensure that you do not go too far in our little games, but the same capability can be turned to other purposes. I will handle the situation before anything untoward happens."

The Head of House Malfoy seemed to collapse in on himself in relief.

"Now go to bed, Lucius," she told her husband in a kindly voice. "Leave everything to me."

With a mumbled thank you, Lucius scraped himself off the table and shuffled off to bed.

As he did so, Narcissa Malfoy nee Black, owner and CEO of Black Industries, sent for one of her factors. She needed information, and then she needed to speak with one of her special assets.

A few hours later she sat in her private solar, having met with her factor and refreshed her memory on the job in question. Soon, the door opened to reveal the "special asset" she had sent for, an almost painfully nondescript man who nonetheless managed to project an air of solid competence.

"What did you need, ma'am?" he asked without preamble.

"My husband has made a mess," Narcissa explained to her favorite cleaner, handing him a small slip of parchment. "See that it is cleaned up properly."

The man took the slip and read it carefully before nodding in understanding.

"When?" he asked laconically.

"At the appropriate time," she replied cryptically, smiling a cruel sort of smile.

The man's brow furrowed in momentary confusion before it relaxed as he caught her meaning.

"Understood, ma'am."

4.7.5 Homely deliberations

"What do you think of this one?" Harry asked.

The young dragon, currently in his human guise, stood before a steel worktable in his Lair with his damsels at his side. He was pointing to a red handwritten number five on the map spread out across the table. The map was a large topographical number which occupied the majority of the expansive table. Various locations on it were marked with numbers, the one Harry had indicated among them. Strewn haphazardly across the rest of the workbench and spilling onto the map in places, lay a collection of folders marked with corresponding numbers. Each was full of papers ranging from photographs and architectural drawings, to soil assessments and charts of groundwater depth. The folders were all marked with the green and gold logo of Gringotts Merchant Bank.

"I am unsure, Harry," Suze replied after a moment's consideration. "That site seems rather exposed."

After his first meeting with Machinist Stoutknife, in which the goblin had told Harry in no uncertain terms that his current workshop would be woefully inadequate for the work he intended to do, Harry had put a great deal of thought into how to proceed.

"Well, yeah, I guess," Harry nodded. "It's on the north slope, so it's visible from the lake and Hogsmeade, but it's not actually supposed to be a secret facility or anything, not on the magical side of things. We can handle the nonmagical side with charms just like Hogsmeade and the castle do. I was thinking that site would be easy to connect to the Hogsmeade spur line, so we'd have direct rail access."

He had given serious consideration to upgrading his power supply at the Lair, but in the end he had decided against it for two reasons. The first had been pointed out by Suze: generators were loud, and even the small one they had made it hard to think straight when it was running. Between the noise and the steady stream of goblin workers in and out, she thought it would make their home almost unlivable.

The second reason had come to Harry as he had considered his damsel's reasoning: that steady stream of people. Accommodating that many visitors would destroy any semblance of proper security and render his wonderfully knight-proof lair no longer knight-proof. That would defeat the whole point of having a proper knight-proof Lair in the first place!

"I understand that it is supposed to be a publicly known facility," the centaur maiden acknowledged, "but your nature as a dragon is not publicly known at this time, and you would not be able to visit in that form without being seen from the wand-wavers' town."

In the end, Harry had decided to move the nascent machining operation to an alternate facility, and the question had then become, which one?

A quick check with his contacts at Gringotts had presented him with a number of options in various cities and towns that were not too far away, but Harry had not been happy with the idea of moving the operation so far from the Lair and his immediate oversight. He was proud of that CNC, after all, and he didn't want to send his baby off hundreds of miles away to some workshop to be tended by strangers. What if it got lonely?

"Well, I could just make sure to visit in human form," the young dragon offered with a thoughtful frown.

"What if you need to carry something in?" Suze asked. "I remember the trouble you had with moving the equipment into the Lair in the first place."

"Huh…" Harry frowned thoughtfully at the map.

Eventually he had settled on building a new facility nearby, rather than purchasing an existing one. It would be separated from the Lair proper for security and access control, but close enough to be part of the same campus, at least close enough for those who could fly natively. It would be an annex of sorts, a place for working on collaborative projects that would not disrupt the security and privacy of his home.

"How about here?" Hermione said, pointing to another marked location a few hundred yards west of the first. "It's still close enough for the rail connection, right?"

"Yeah, but how's that one better?" Harry asked his bushy-haired damsel. "It's still overlooking the lake."

With the broad strokes of a plan in place, Harry had contacted Gringotts again, this time to contract their construction personnel. An agreement had been reached, funds had been transferred, and proposals had been drafted. He had received them just before his most recent meeting with Mr. Slackhammer.

Now he just had to pick one.

"It is," frizzy hair swayed as Hermione nodded. "But it's near this cut in the ridge, so you could make a second entrance on this side here," she pointed to another spot.

"Oh, that makes sense," the young dragon nodded with a thoughtful frown. "Hey, isn't that…" he looked closely at the map for a moment. "Yeah, that's right across from the Lair entrance, isn't it? Huh, I kinda wanted it to be out of sight from the Lair, though. You know, so I can come and go without people making a big deal of it."

"Well, you might just have to deal with that," the bushy-haired girl shrugged, "because I'm not sure where else you could put it."

He frowned thoughtfully, "Maybe we could go back to this one, and I could dig a tunnel to a second entrance here?" he indicated a spot on the other side of the ridge behind the Lair. "That'd keep most of the activity on the other side of the hill, but I'd still have a private access if I needed one."

"That seems like an awfully long tunnel," Hermione said doubtfully. "Isn't it really expensive to dig like that?"

"The goblins might be handling the design and finish work, but I'm handling the digging, and digging's easy," Harry waved a hand dismissively. "I'll write them back and see if they can rework the design, but if they don't have any objections, I think that'll be the way to go."

4.7.6 Financier

"Welcome once again, Mr. Potter," Vice Director Slackhammer greeted his youngest business partner when the currently human-shaped dragon arrived at his office door. "Come in, come in, do!"

"Hi there, Mr. Slackhammer!" Harry greeted warmly. "I heard you guys have been really busy lately, so thanks for taking the time to meet with me."

"We have been busy indeed," the rather rotund goblin acknowledged. "Yet we are busy with upgrades and renovations made possible by our exceedingly profitable venture with yourself and Mr. Snape. I would show very poor judgement indeed if I were to neglect the partnerships that made such ventures possible. Now then, what brings you to my office today, my young friend?"

Harry smiled. "Um, it's a few different things," he began. "First, before I forget, I wanted to thank you for your help in getting those facility proposals. We picked one of them, and the architectural team is working on finalizing the design now. I should be able to get digging soon."

"Capital!" Slackhammer enthused. "You are quite welcome, Mr. Potter! I look forward to seeing what comes out of that shop in the next few years. Specialist Flame-Eye was quite insistent that we not pass up the opportunity."

"I'll keep you posted," the human-seeming boy promised.

"Aside from that, Mr. Snape hasn't told me exactly what we're going to be doing yet," Harry said, "but he's hinted that we're going to be doing something that'll keep us out of touch for a month or so at the beginning of summer. I wanted to check in on the business stuff you guys are handling before then, and I've also come across a business opportunity that I wanted to get some advice on. I think it's a good opportunity, but it's pricey enough that I might need to take out a pretty big loan for starting capital."

The portly goblin gentleman straightened at that, leaning forward intently. He was interested enough that he didn't even give his usual acknowledgement to his aide when the goblin brought in their usual drinks.

"An opportunity of that magnitude, you say? Well, color me intrigued, my young friend. What did you…" he paused as he caught himself and sighed. "Ah, but I get ahead of myself. No matter your proposal, it would behoove us to review your current ventures before discussing a new one. Best to know what we're working with, after all."

"That makes sense," the young dragon acknowledged with a nod, sipping at his newly arrived goblin tea.

"I took the liberty of compiling the appropriate reports when you scheduled this meeting, Mr. Potter," the Vice Director explained as he reached into a drawer and retrieved a sheaf of documents. "Perhaps we should begin with our oldest venture?"

Harry nodded agreeably, and his business partner to of that as a signal to begin.

"Sales of our refractory material, which our nonmagical shell company has dubbed HPRC-1 in their marketing literature…"

"HPRC-1?" the young dragon interjected. "Where did that come from?"

"Ah, I believe…" Slackhammer paged quickly through the report. "Yes, here it is. It is an acronym, signifying High Performance Refractory Composition Number One."

"That doesn't sound very catchy," Harry frowned. "I thought marketing names were supposed to do that."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that, Mr. Potter," the gentleman-goblin reassured his business partner with a faint chuckle. "That sort of name is hardly unusual in industrial materials, and if our sales numbers are any indication, it has hardly had a deleterious effect."

"We're doing well then?"

"Indeed, incoming order volume is still rising with no hint of slacking off in the foreseeable future," Slackhammer relayed. "Although not quite as extreme as the bulk superconductor market, the market for the refractory is strong. For every market sector that approaches saturation, another three new applications are discovered."

"That's good!"

"It is very good, indeed, Mr. Potter, and speaking of the bulk superconductor market, that one is booming to an unprecedented extent." He shook his head in admiration. "As I had mentioned in our earlier meeting, our entire production volume for the next several years had already been sold. Since then, we have brought a new dedicated facility online, almost quadrupling production capacity, and we are still in much the same backlogged state."

"That sounds like a good sort of problem to have, Mr. Slackhammer," Harry said with a grin.

"It most assuredly is, Mr. Potter," the goblin agreed with a toothy smirk of his own. "We are making money hand over fist."

Harry sipped his tea and then asked, "Should we look into expanding production again?"

"We should, yet we cannot at this time," Slackhammer said with a frown. "There is simply not enough skilled magical labor available to support more."

The young dragon nodded with a thoughtful frown of his own, "Are there really that few people? I wouldn't think it would take that many for another facility."

"Unfortunately, the labor markets are rather tight in this nation if one is not willing to 'hire' at the black markets," the rotund goblin explained with a scowl. "And even if we were willing to stoop to such, industrial alchemy is not the usual sort of skill on the block."

The plush office fell silent at that while Harry glowered into his tea. After a moment, he cocked his head as an idea occurred.

"What about those guys we've been smuggling out, the ones you've snuck though with my gold?" he asked. "Do you think any of them would be interested in working for us?"

"An intriguing idea, Mr. Potter," Slackhammer mused. "I daresay that many would be quite eager to work for a fair wage. Unfortunately, they are by and large not possessed of the appropriate skills."

"Couldn't we train them?" the young dragon asked.

"We could," the goblin allowed, "though it would take some years to do so."

"Well yeah, it'll take a while, but if the labor market's as tight as you said, there's not really any way to do it faster," Harry pointed out. "Plus, we're going to have 'em around for a long time anyway, so we might as well double up."

Slackhammer's curiously raised eyebrow spoke for itself.

"Well, I mean, we gotta," the last Potter said defensively. "I mean, if what Mr. Snape said about compulsions and stuff is right, then we've probably got a lot of work to do fixing 'em up anyway — it's not like we can just turn them loose all mentally crippled like that — and that's going to take a long time. And if we're keeping 'em around for… for… um, what's the word for fixing up someone who's wrong in the head? I know I've read it before…"

"Therapy," his goblin business partner volunteered.

"Yeah, therapy, that's it! Thanks, Mr. Slackhammer," he nodded in acknowledgement. "If they've got to stay for therapy anyway, why not offer to train them in a trade we need more of at the same time?"

"That is a proposition that offers some intriguing possibilities, Mr. Potter," the Vice Director said after a few moments' consideration. "It is perhaps something to bring up with the Director. I must admit, our interest in the matter may have been rather short-sighted." He looked at his young business partner intently, "If I do bring this before the Board, may I name you as a potential partner in this endeavor?"

"Sure," Harry agreed easily.

"Then I propose we table the topic until I have the opportunity to do so," Slackhammer said, briskly tapping his papers on the desk then flipping to the next document. "In the meantime, back to our previous discussion. Bulk superconductor sales continue to grow sharply; structured superconductors still require more research to make a saleable product, and I strongly suspect you are more familiar with the state of Hogs Haulage than I at this juncture. Did you have any further questions, Mr. Potter?"

"Oh! I'd almost forgotten about that research group," the currently human-shaped dragon exclaimed. "How are they coming along, anyway?"

"Quite well as such things go, I understand," the portly goblin reported. "Our management team has hired several researchers in computer engineering and set them up with a facility outside London. Reports indicate steady, if rather sedate progress."

"Hmm…" the last Potter nodded thoughtfully. "Nothing more specific?"

"Not that crosses my desk, Mr. Potter. I am afraid that evaluating such things is quite beyond my depth."

"That's alright," Harry reassured his business partner. "If you wouldn't mind, though, could you ask them to keep me in the loop? I'm kinda curious what they're up to."

"Certainly, Mr. Potter," Slackhammer scrawled a note to that effect. "Now if that is all, I must admit to a rather powerful curiosity regarding that business opportunity you mentioned."

The owner of the wizarding world's largest railway gave an eager grin as he began, "Well, you know how we made that new locomotive, right?"

"Indeed," the goblin nodded, his clawed fingers steepled before him. "And I should note that our logistics department is quite interested in licensing the design once completed, if possible."

"I'm certainly open to the possibility," Harry allowed. "Anyway, we've got that, so we can break into nonmagical freight with no problem, but there's something else…"

As one of the biggest — in more ways than one, though his current guise hid that aspect quite well — clients Gringotts Merchant Bank had ever served laid out his plan, the Vice Director of the London branch listened intently, his beady black eyes glittering at the prospects being described.

"So, what do you think?"

"A bold plan, Mr. Potter, a bold plan indeed, yet it is not foolhardy," Slackhammer sat back in his chair as he considered the proposal. "It is, however, more than I can authorize on my own. Do I have your permission to share this with my superiors?"

Harry nodded.

"Then I shall initiate inquiries."

And with that, the meeting ended.

4.7.7 Where everybody knows your name

The pub was a dimly lit, low-ceilinged affair, furnished in darkly varnished woods and festooned with brass fittings. It occupied the basement of a secondhand shop in one of the lower-rent sections of Diagon Alley, and it was presently filled to not-quite-overflowing with the daily after-work rush. Despite the low lighting and tight quarters, it was a friendly place: warm, clean, and comfortable. The welcoming staff were always ready with a smile, and a peaceful atmosphere suffused the whole place.

Of course, the veritable sea of blue and red robes of the law enforcement personnel who frequented the pub in their off hours probably played some role in promoting that peaceful atmosphere.

"Sorry about that," one constable nodded an apology to a brown-haired man sitting at the bar after accidentally bumping him on the way to his seat two stools over. After receiving a good-natured grunt and a nod in turn, he turned to his already seated partner.

"What do you make of that Lockhart business?" the other constable asked as his partner sat down at the bar to order a pint.

"You mean the detain order that's been the talk of the Department for the last month? Not sure, exactly." He took a draught of his newly arrived beer. "Seems kinda odd, don't it?"

"Aye," the first man agreed, sipping his own drink. "Not sure why they haven't issued an arrest warrant if they've got the evidence."

"I'm not sure we've actually got anything solid," the second demurred. "Rumor at the office is split on whether he unlawfully obliviated some people or whether he got kidnapped and the kidnappers obliviated 'em." He barked out a laugh, "'Course, the 'kidnappers' camp seems to be mostly made of the girls in Dispatch."

That elicited an answering laugh from his partner. "Aye, I'm not looking forward to hearing my wife's reaction if we bring him in. She's mighty fond of those books of his, and I need my ears for the job."

"Same here," the second officer nodded. "My little girl at Hogwarts has had nothing but good to say about him, and the less said about those book signings the better. I've talked to some of the lads who've worked security for those. There's a lot of people who practically worship the ground that man walks on."

Both men sobered at that thought, settling down to a thoughtful silence for a few moments.

Eventually, the first officer spoke what they had both been thinking.

"If he is arrested, the evidence had better be damn good, or there's gonna be hell to pay."

The pair finished their drinks in silence.

4.7.8 Dropping eaves

As the talkative pair finished their drinks and left, the brown-haired man two seats down slowly nursed his third beer, his expression pensive. That had been a rather enlightening conversation... more than worth burning through some of his limited supply of cosmetics to make a throwaway face. Now the question became what to do with the new information.

It seemed the DMLE had not seen fit to publicize the nature of his crimes. Was it because they were uncertain of the facts? Possibly, he supposed, but Gilderoy considered it far more likely someone trying to cover his own arse. Accusing a former Ministry obliviator of the sorts of crimes he had committed would not reflect well on the government that had trained and employed him.

Lockhart grimaced and took another swig of his beer. It was a pointless bit of speculation, since there was no way to take advantage of it even if he knew who was responsible, but old habits and all that rot. In any event, it was best to consider his own situation first.

So, the public wasn't certain he was a criminal. That would change as soon as his recent obliviations were reversed; which was just a matter of time given that he had taken a great deal of care to make the things reversible. There had been no reason to turn the DMLE pursuit from diligent and professional to rabid and vicious by effectively maiming two of their own. When they managed the reversal, they'd have him dead to rights on assault, but he had bought himself time.

Now it was just a question of how to take advantage of that time.

During his speculative planning, he hadn't really thought through it all, mostly considering the extra time as simply a bigger lead on his inevitable pursuit. However, this public uncertainty opened new options which might make it easier to stay ahead. Gilderoy fell silent, waving off the bartender's offer to draw him another beer as he puzzled through the first inklings of an idea... something that had arisen from the tail end of the officers' conversation.

Perhaps he didn't have to hide his trail completely. If he made the idea of pursuit unpopular enough, the DMLE might not actively pursue him at all... especially if he faked his death. Gilderoy knew he wasn't good enough to pull off a fake death that would actually fool Forensics, not for more than a few minutes, but for this he didn't have to come up with a deception good enough to persuade his enemies, he just needed one good enough to persuade his fans, at which point they would take care of the rest.

That he could manage, though it would take some planning.

4.7.9 Spring interlude

Time passed as time was wont to do, and the seasons continued their ponderous march from winter into spring. The last scattered patches of snow melted, and the hills came alive with verdant growth. The moors were painted with the lush green of new vegetation and strewn with great swaths of blue and white wildflowers. Sunny days became more prevalent; though 'prevalent' was a relative term in an area that avoided being a temperate rainforest only by virtue of its general lack of trees.

Though, nature had begun to address that particular lack of late.

The previously near-unbroken expanse of heather on the high moors outside the Black Woods had slowly begun to be dotted by a variety of new saplings. They were mostly birch and Scots pine, though a few of the slower growing oaks were pushing up as well. For the first time living memory, the young trees were surviving long enough to establish themselves, aided by increases in ambient magic and spurred by the recent heavy reduction in the local populations of deer and stray sheep. After many centuries of decline, Pliny's silva caledonia had begun to expand again as the trees began their slow yet inexorable march to reclaim the Isles.

Even as he remained mostly hidden from the world at large, the far-reaching influence of the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts proved both subtle and profound.

On the other hand, his local influence, while certainly profound, could not be reasonably called subtle, as attested by the great snap and crackle of rock torn violently asunder that echoed loudly across the valley below the Lair.

"Alright! That's enough for now, Mr. Potter! Clear out of the way so we can reinforce the ceiling," the strident voice of the foreman of the goblin construction team cut through the cacophony.

The Gringotts architects had been quick to finalize the plans for Harry's new metalworking facility. Detailed site plans had been drafted, engineering requirements had been written, equipment orders had been placed, and deliveries had been arranged. All of it had led to this point, when excavation had begun.

"Right!" came the Great Wyrm's chipper reply, even as he backed his massive scaly bulk away from the newly exposed rockface, taking care to avoid the goblin workers rushing in to reinforce the walls and ceiling of the new tunnel section. His diminutive coworkers were armed with mining drills, rock bolts, and a rented boom lift, which was much bigger and easier-to-not-step-on than the previous scissor lift.

Harry had volunteered to provide the bulk of the muscle to excavate the site of the mostly subterranean facility, which had meant that the construction team had needed more skill than heavy labor. They had thus been able to forgo almost all of their heavy equipment and fill out their numbers from the ranks of the recently retired, avoiding two of the biggest sticking points for Gringotts in recent years. A team had been assigned in short order.

Work had begun immediately thereafter, and Harry and his much smaller coworkers had quickly worked out how to cooperate effectively. The foreman estimated Harry's contribution, the rough excavation, would be completed by the end of the school year. That was fortunate timing indeed, if the rumblings Harry had been hearing from the professors about a summer trip across the Atlantic bore fruit. With his part completed, he would be able to leave the finish work to the able hands of the goblins while he was away.

There had been a few missteps along the way, of course; though the flattened scissor lift fortunately remained the worst such incident. Crushed equipment was far easier on his conscience than crushed goblins. The Gringotts team had agreed with the sentiment, and even offered to waive the cost for replacing the damaged equipment in exchange for Harry's offer of assistance with another similarly-sized excavation job in the future.

Having retreated a sufficient distance to clear the work area, Harry settled in for a good think while he waited for the foreman to call him in for his next task. Driving in the number of rock bolts needed for the span took a fair amount of time even for an experienced crew. Fortunately for the young dragon, there was plenty to think about.

The new metalworking annex, while easily the most involved addition to the Lair, was not the only one, nor was it the first. The first had been Harry's new alchemy lab. As of his last lesson, Harry had finally progressed to the point that Mr. Dumbledore declared him ready to begin the second practice exercise. The proud young dragon had been quite eager to get started, but his instructor had insisted he move into a proper laboratory first. Lying down in his living room with a bowl of water was no longer going to pass muster.

To that end, the older wizard had given his young pupil strict specifications for the facility, and the result, completed a few days earlier, was the first truly separate annex to the Lair. Digging it out had been a simple affair — it was just a long tunnel — but Mr. Dumbledore had been very particular about where it had been dug. The hill had specifically not been the one housing his Lair nor the one set aside for the new machining facility; the opening had to 'face away from anything he cared about'; and the tunnel could not 'contain anything he wasn't willing to lose'.

Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of those conditions, but he had dutifully followed them. Now he eagerly anticipated his next lesson, due in just two weeks... just about the time NEWTs would begin.

A pained grimace crossed the dragon's scaly visage at the thought of the exams. Harry was not looking forward to those... not because he was involved in taking or proctoring them, but rather because he had grown to enjoy his time spent training with Abigail, and he was not eager to lose that.

Harry sniffled a little. He already missed her a little, and she hadn't even started testing yet! Stupid tests, stealing away his friend… At least Hermione wouldn't be taking them for a while yet, so she and Suze would still be around. And speaking of his damsels, they had both been doing well lately, the young dragon thought with a proud smile.

Suze continued to improve her woodcarving under her uncle's tutelage, and while she remained focused on bowyery, she had recently taken an interest in runic arrays. Between Harry's lessons with Machinist Stoutknife and his continuing haphazard research into warding the Lair, books on the subject had been strewn about the Lair more than usual in the recent weeks.

Hermione seemed to be learning and casting a brand-new spell every few hours, making for a very impressive display of magical prowess... especially for someone who could see the disparate spell structures directly. Harry had never imagined there could be so many technically distinct ways to make a magical light!

On a more personal front, the young dragon's daily practices had continued apace, even in Abigail's absence. He kept up his rifle practice religiously, and Harry was now consistently getting groupings almost half as tight as Suze's, a not-inconsiderable feat given the centaur maiden's skill with her own guns. He was very much looking forward to showing Sergeant-Major Hookknife how much he had improved when he next had the opportunity.

His spell accuracy practices with Hermione and Abigail had been somewhat slower to show results. Harry was confident that, should another duel come up, he would now be able to reliably hit a human-sized target at the thirty-or-so feet typical of dueling platforms, provided that said human-sized target was kind enough not to move overmuch.

Needless to say, spell accuracy would remain on the practice agenda for the foreseeable future. He did not want a repeat of that embarrassment on the dueling platform in the future.

On a brighter note, Hermione's progress in the same had been nothing short of remarkable; she had taken to the practice like a duck to water. The past months' worth of practice had brought her pinpoint accuracy at normal engagement distances, and the piercing curse they had taken to practicing with now rolled off her wand with a casual ease that Harry found quite fascinating to watch.

His damsels were great!

All things considered; Harry's life was going quite well in his estimation. He'd even had a bit of a breakthrough on that project he'd been working on during the previous year, another reason the rune texts had been out so much. Putting it into practice would have to wait for later, at least until after the summer trip; he just had too many irons in the fire at the moment. Still, at least he now knew it was possible to…

"You're up again, Mr. Potter!" the foreman bellowed, and Harry got back to work.

He could woolgather some other time... preferably a time when he wasn't paying a construction crew by the hour. This was on his own sickle, after all.
 
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Section 4.8 - She turned me into a NEWT!
4.8 She turned me into a NEWT!

4.8.1 For luck

At long last, the time had come.

Abigail was pensive as sat down to dinner in the Great Hall and absently loaded up her plate. After nearly half a year of preparation, the NEWTs were scheduled to begin the next day, and she was quite understandably apprehensive about the whole business.

The wizarding world tended to lean towards very literal naming conventions, and the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests were no exception. Each NEWT consisted of two parts, a comprehensive written exam and an even more comprehensive practical. Each was strictly proctored by one or more Examination Authority bureaucrats from the small army of such which would descend on the school come morning.

Pausing between bites, she sighed. Professor Flitwick had outlined what to expect from the tests just the day before in Charms class, when someone had finally thought to ask him. From the description, it seemed it would be a real winner. Between the two components, each subject would involve at least a full day of testing, with some of the more extensive or energy intensive subjects extending to two or even three days. Even worse, the potions practical had sometimes been known to stretch out to nearly a week, depending on the requirements of the brew the testing committee chose for the year.

With Abigail's course load, that meant that she would be actively testing — or sleeping off the exhaustion resulting from active testing, as she had been warned repeatedly by more than one of her professors — for at least the next week and a half... possibly as much as twice that.

All told, it promised to be quite the ordeal, one that she was only looking forward to insofar as she was eager to see the end of it. That said, she had prepared as well as she could, and she was confident that she would do well. There was really only one final bit of preparation to handle before testing began the next day, and the necessary equipment for that final bit had just sat down in the next seat.

"Hi, Abigail!" Harry Potter greeted her cheerfully as he filled his own plate for the first of many times. "How are you?"

"A bit nervous," she answered truthfully. "NEWTs are starting tomorrow, you know."

"You worked really hard to get ready," her friend reassured her, actually putting down his fork long enough to pat her on the shoulder in a touching display of concern. Anyone familiar with the young dragon's legendary appetite knew that any such pause when there was food in front of him was a noteworthy occurrence. "I'm sure you'll do great!"

The older girl nodded with a grateful smile, and silence fell as they ate.

"Um, Harry?" Abigail ventured as approached the end of her meal.

"Hmm?" he looked up, still busily chewing.

"I just thought you ought to know that I'm probably going to be out of circulation for a few weeks because of the testing," she informed him. "Professor Flitwick was telling us yesterday that we're probably going to be either actively testing or completely exhausted from testing until we finish up."

Harry's expression fell as he nodded sadly. Swallowing his current bite, he commiserated, "Yeah, I kinda figured we wouldn't be spending much time together after NEWTs started, what with you not needing to train for them anymore and such."

"I just didn't want you to think I was avoiding you or anything," Abigail explained over her now nearly empty plate. "I'll be looking forward to going right back to where we were before after the testing."

"Really?" the young dragon's currently human face brightened considerably. "But I thought you wouldn't want to keep training after…"

"Bah!" she waved her fork dismissively. "I need no excuse to spend time with my friend! We'll figure out something else to occupy our time if need be, Harry, don't you worry."

Her friend rewarded her with a beaming smile, which lasted for all of a few moments before his mouth became otherwise occupied as he fell back to ravenously devouring the contents of his fourth plate of dinner. Despite that, the young dragon's pleasure was still quite apparent from the warm emerald fire dancing in his eyes.

As she had so often over the last two years, Abigail fell silent and simply enjoyed the view of those eyes for time. Eventually, however, practical concerns took precedence, once again. With her meal finished, Abigail needed to sleep. Tomorrow's testing promised to be difficult enough without staying up late the night before.

There was just one last thing to do.

"Harry?".

"Hmm?" he looked up.

"I'm going to get some sleep for tomorrow, but first," she held out her arms in a wordless request for a hug, "Wish me luck?"

That request was granted, in spades.

4.8.2 Hunting license

The year-end standardized testing had begun, and with two years' worth of students effectively removed from circulation, the hallways seemed half-deserted. Thus no one was close enough to take note of the small scrap of parchment Su Li clutched tightly as she made her way through the sparsely populated castle on her way to potions. Nor did anyone notice her tight smile, not that they would have known what to make of it if they had.

The parchment was a coded letter freshly arrived from Hong Kong, and it carried instructions that brought an end to her months-long wait. The matriarchs had decided on her target, and her leash was off. She was to proceed with the next portion of her mission.

As the petite girl arrived at the door to the teaching lab, she smiled in anticipation, absently slipping the note from the matriarchs into her robe pocket, hiding it from sight. Coded it might be, but there was no reason to tempt fate should her target's linguistic talent prove even more comprehensive than anticipated. Pausing to take one last breath and set her shoulders in determination, she opened the door.

The laboratory was as it always was before a lesson, bustling with activity, various students arriving and preparing their workstations for the coming session. Her target was already present, as she had expected, diligently laying out the ingredients in the quantity and order in which they would be used during this brewing session, just as Professor Snape had taught them.

It was good advice; preparation was tremendously important in brewing, just as it was in many other things, such as her plans. Now, her months of discreet surveillance were about to pay dividends. She knew her target, and thus she knew precisely what opening gambit to pursue.

She carefully schooled her expression into a friendly smile and cleared her throat.

The small, messy-haired boy looked up and easily returned her smile with a matching one of his own, though he did look a little puzzled at the change from her usual neutral expression.

It was time.

"Harry, would you like to be friends?"

"Sure!"

Oftentimes the simplest plans were the best plans.

4.8.3 Newcomer

It had been an odd day.

As Hermione made her way to the library for her habitual afternoon study time with Harry, she couldn't help but reflect on how different the school seemed today. With nearly two-thirds of its students taken out of circulation by the standardized testing, it was now a place of echoing, half-empty hallways; it was all honestly a little unsettling. Thus it was with some relief that she passed from the alien stillness of the hallway to the familiar stillness of the library.

She could only hope that Abigail's absence wouldn't exacerbate that unsettling feeling. The older girl was off taking her NEWTs, and this would be the first time would miss their regular library sessions since she first started attending them. Harry would be there of course, and so would Suze, but it just wouldn't be the same without another human girl in the mix. She sighed as she rounded the last corner on the way; that would take some getting used to.

She looked up, catching sight of the usual table.

Or perhaps not.

The studious girl's eyes widened in surprise as was met with an unexpected tableau. Harry was there, reading from some esoteric text or other, as expected. Suze was at his side, also as expected. However, the small Asiatic girl sitting in Abigail's usual chair, looking like a delicate, perfectly made-up porcelain doll, was quite the surprise.

Hemione froze for several long moments as she tried to make sense of this new development until her currently human-shaped friend noticed her presence.

"Hi, Hermione!" the sometimes-dragon greeted her warmly, looking up from his book with a welcoming smile. "Come on over and take a seat."

"Hi, Harry," she replied weakly, making her way over to the table. "Um, who is this?" she asked, indicating the petite newcomer.

"Oh yeah! I forgot you hadn't met her yet," Harry replied. "This is Su Li. She's been my lab partner in potions for a few months now, and she just asked to be friends today, so I said 'sure' and invited her to come to the library. Su Li, this is Hermione Granger. She's been my friend for almost two years now. I'm sure you'll be great friends, too!"

She just asked today, and she was already here? That seemed a bit… well no, Hermione caught herself. That sort of immediate wholehearted acceptance was actually pretty normal for Harry. Hermione sighed.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Li," the bushy-haired girl offered, extending a hand to the Ravenclaw girl.

The smaller girl stood and smiled warmly at her Gryffindor peer, reaching out to take the offered hand in a firm clasp. "Likewise, Miss Granger! I've been looking forward to getting to know you as well, both as Harry's friend and on your own merits."

"Oh? I didn't think I was all that interesting," Hermione prompted, releasing the new girl's hand and taking her usual seat. "Why did you want to meet me so much?"

Su Li did likewise, answering, "Well, you have been at the top of our year in grades for a number of months now, and it's not often that that position stays out of Ravenclaw for so long, and I wanted to meet the girl responsible for it."

"I guess," Hermione agreed slowly, only to frown as an unpleasant thought occurred to her. There had been people who had tried to flatter her about her intelligence before, and they had been trying to…

"Just to be clear, I'm not going to do anyone's homework, Miss Li," she stated firmly.

The petite girl answered with a blank, uncomprehending stare for one long moment, then her mouth opened...

...and she laughed.

4.8.4 Getting along

Harry smiled at the high, clear sound of his newest friend's spontaneous laughter.

It was nice.

Hermione seemed to think so too if her reaction was anything to go by. She smiled in return, and it was only a few moments before the two girls were deeply engaged in conversation. It looked to Harry like they were well on their way to forming a fast friendship. Even Suze was putting in a word here and there.

It was nice when his friends got along.

The young dragon had been a bit worried about how Hermione would take the new addition. She had a bit of history of trouble with making friends; that was why he had ended up carrying her off, after all. Fortunately, she seemed to be handling the situation quite well.

Now he just had to introduce Su to Abigail when his older friend finished up with her exams, and then his new friend would be fully integrated into the group. Harry wasn't too worried about that meeting, though. Abigail was awesome, and he was sure it would work out well.

The smile remained as he turned back to his book, content to allow the nascent friendship to develop without interference.

New friends were always a good thing, and he wanted to finish his reading before they retired to the Lair. He had other plans for the evening, and he needed to finish them before tomorrow's alchemy lesson.

4.8.5 Gaudeamus Igitur…

Albus Dumbledore sighed happily as he sipped his tea, enjoying the brisk morning breeze, the mild spring weather, and what he imagined were the admiring gazes of the smattering of muggle tourists passing by.

He knew he had chosen his outfit well this time! One could never go wrong with a classic houndstooth pattern, after all. He still thought the crimson and gold color scheme a tad understated, but he had tried to compensate with a bright turquoise ascot. He was still not certain it was enough.

Albus was away from Hogwarts at the moment, though not too far away, sitting on the patio at a small restaurant in Arisaig, just across the street from the bay.

Arisaig was a strictly muggle village, but the location was nonetheless a trip down memory lane for the old wizard. After his long-ago graduation from Hogwarts, he had explored much of the north of Scotland as a sort of denouement to his school years, making his way by a mix of walking and apparation. Just a few miles down the road from the west end of the Black Lake, Arisaig had been among the first places he had visited. As he recalled, the building now occupied by the rather lovely restaurant he was currently patronizing had been a stable at the time; the basic lines of the sturdy stone structure were still quite apparent, even after the extensive remodel.

He took another sip and sighed. That had been a wonderful time of his life... back before everything became so bloody complicated. It was good to remember those times, especially after that nasty business with Lucius Malfoy last week. However, nostalgia was not the reason he was in the tiny coastal village.

He was there on business.

The aftermath of the Avebury incident, now compounded with that of the discharge at Stonehenge, had led to a great many changes, some even extending to the likes of his old mentor, Nicholas Flamel. The alchemist's ongoing research into the magical background levels had proven itself critically important to understanding the changing situation. Collecting updated results had thus become a much more urgent affair than it had been. In the past,

In the past, Nicholas had been content to allow the sensors to record for decades at a time before he collected and collated the logs into a coherent whole; it was a task that could be put off until either he or his former apprentice had the time to spare. Now that lackadaisical schedule was no longer tenable; they needed the new results regularly and frequently.

To that end, Nicholas had taken on a new student and set her to collating and normalizing the log data as part of her duties. The girl had completed her first update the previous week, and she was now bringing Albus a copy, per Nicholas' request, just in time for the coming trip to the Americas. This was to be their first meeting, which he suspected was the reason his old mentor had asked her to pass the results in person rather than taking the much simpler option and forwarding them himself.

Albus certainly did not begrudge his mentor his ruse. In fact, he was quite looking forward to meeting his fellow student! His long white beard twitched as a smile stretched itself across the old wizard's face. Despite only meeting the ancient alchemist as an adult, Nicholas had been almost like a second father to him. For his old master to take on a new student after so many years… well, it was almost as if he had been given a new baby sister — at his age!

The very idea had Albus tickled pink.

Now, if only he could figure out why the meeting had to take place strictly in the muggle world. Nicholas had insisted, but it seemed a rather odd condition for the old alchemist to set. Albus set down his teacup and broke off a bit of scone, frowning thoughtfully as he chewed the pastry. The girl was learning alchemy and quite quickly at that, judging by Nicholas' enthusiastic boasting on the subject, so it could not be a secrecy issue.

His musings were interrupted by a soft, clear, and very feminine voice, "Please pardon the interruption, sir, but might you be Albus Dumbledore?"

He turned quickly, long white beard swaying with the motion, to find the owner of the voice standing on the other side of the low, whitewashed stone wall that divided the patio from the street proper. The speaker was a young girl, perhaps in the middle of her teenage years, sporting a politely neutral expression, a thick shock of shoulder-length lavender hair, and a refreshingly colorful outfit.

"I am, indeed, young lady," Albus confirmed graciously, smoothly rising to his feet as was appropriate for a gentleman in such a situation. He took in the details of her outfit as he tried to place her identity.

The girl wore a collared white blouse and a matching pleated skirt which would have been rather plain on its own, but the well-tailored jacket that topped it — dyed a vibrant purple and adorned with intricately embroidered filigree of a vivid marigold — more than made up for the unassuming underlayer. When taken in conjunction with the skirt, it gave the rough impression of a well-tailored dress robe. A matching purple and gold tam perched atop a thick head of purple hair, a scarf of rich, brilliantly yellow silk tied in a loose bow around her neck — a lavaliere, if he remembered the term correctly from his time on the continent — and a small leather document case, also dyed a matching purple with bright yellow filigree, completed the ensemble beautifully.

AII told, it was one of the finest muggle adaptations of wizarding fashion he had ever had the pleasure to encounter, styled well enough to fit into her surroundings without falling into that lamentable humdrum drab that so often characterized nonmagical finery. The purple hair was a lovely touch as well, showing an admirable commitment to her chosen theme. She had even gone so far as to use dye, a step farther than most witches bothered to go... at least he assumed she had, given that he sensed no cosmetic charms on her at all.

Such a well-heeled young witch in a small muggle village could only be…

"Might I presume that you are the one Nicholas has working on our project? His new apprentice?"

"Yes, Master Flamel sent me, though I believe I am technically a research assistant at the moment, rather than an apprentice," the young woman averred. "I would not wish to claim a title above my station."

"Ha! I have no doubt Nicholas already thinks of you as his next apprentice, given how he has spoken of you recently, but I suppose confidence will come with time and learning," AIbus happily opined. "In any event, it is my most sincere pleasure to meet you, my fellow student. Come, join me at the table," he gestured to the chair across from him. "Can I get you anything? Tea? Or perhaps a spot of breakfast?"

"Some tea would be quite lovely," Nicholas' new apprentice agreed as she rounded the low wall to join him, revealing in the process that her shock of purple hair did not end at her shoulders as he had first assumed. Rather it was gathered into a tight braid that stretched into a thoroughly impressive cable reaching from the nape of her neck down to the back of her knees.

Committed to her appearance, indeed! Albus noted with approval as he idly fingered his own magnificent beard. He knew from personal experience how much work it took to maintain actual hair of that length, rather than using cosmetic charms to fake it.

"Certainly. Have you any preference, Miss…" he began, even as he raised a hand to signal the waitstaff.

"Flamel, if you please," she interjected as she took her seat, shifting her splendid braid over her shoulder in the process and allowing it to coil up in her lap. "And as for tea, I am willing to try anything, so long as it is hot. I fear that the local weather is rather cooler than that to which I am accustomed."

"Miss Flamel, it is," AIbus agreed. After taking a moment to order tea for his guest, he continued conversationally, "Has Nicholas adopted you, then? He had not mentioned that in our conversations."

She shook her head. "No, he has simply been kind enough to allow me the use of the name during my time as his student and ward."

The elderly wizard sat in silence for a moment as he considered the possible implications of that statement, particularly the potential reasons behind the young girl's choice to abandon her family name. He decided that he did not particularly like them, and his long history as an educator all but demanded that he investigate further. He managed to hesitate for a few moments as prying into her personal affairs was inappropriate in the extreme — the reasons were likely intensely personal, and he had met the girl all of two minutes ago — but eventually his meddlesome urges got the better of him, and he asked the question anyway.

"Might I ask why you have chosen to eschew your birth name, Miss Flamel, if not for adoption?"

This time, it was Miss Flamel's turn to think quietly for a long moment, during which her tea was delivered. After she had taken her first sip, she explained.

"I suppose that is a reasonable question to ask," she began in a tone that screamed of grudging compliance. "You are my senior under Master Flamel, after all; it is natural for you to be curious."

Albus winced at the girl's tone.

"A certain member of my birth family did something very… ill-advised several generations back causing our family to lose a great deal of respect among our peers. The name of The Alchemist opens a great many doors that would otherwise remain closed to one of my lineage."

"I see," Albus nodded gravely, "though I do wonder why Nicholas has not offered to adopt you in that case. I would imagine Perenelle would be rather insistent, if nothing else."

"The offer has been made, and as you expect, Mrs. Flamel has made it abundantly clear that it remains on the table," the purple haired girl acknowledged before sighing despondently. "However, inconvenient though the name is, it remains my heritage. I am loath to abandon it completely."

"I see," the elder wizard said, and indeed he did, both her reasoning and her reasons for not wanting to speak on the topic. The latter of which really meant that he ought to… "I do apologize for prying, Miss Flamel. I am afraid I have been a teacher for so long, responsible for the wellbeing of my students, that I often poke my nose into things that are really none of my business. Yet you are Nicholas' student, rather than mine, so please feel free to tell me off if you feel it necessary."

"Understood," Miss Flamel said gravely. "For the record Mr. Dumbledore, I do not wish to discuss my birth family at this time."

Dumbledore nodded. "Then I shall not inquire further, unless you should broach the subject deliberately," he responded just as gravely, before brightening substantially. "On a lighter note, how have you enjoyed learning under Nicholas?"

That prompted the first genuine smile he had seen from the reserved girl, and for a time they happily chatted back and forth about their various experiences learning under the ancient alchemist.

As he listened to his fellow apprentice recount another amusing anecdote, this one regarding her first encounter with Perenelle and the woman's razor-sharp wit and even sharper tongue, Albus Dumbledore was enjoying himself quite thoroughly. It was nice to have a peer again — and as a fellow student under Nicholas Flamel, the young lady before him was certainly a peer, even if only in the scholastic sense — a source of fellowship untainted by the trappings of power and responsibility. After so long as the dominant force in British wizarding society, he had almost despaired of ever finding another.

Perhaps that was why Nicholas had arranged for them to meet away from the wizarding world, to ensure their meeting remained one of fellow students? As the girl finished her story and sipped at her tea, Albus shrugged internally, dismissing the question. Whatever the reasons, now that they had met he would act his part out properly.

To that end…

"Should you have any difficulties or questions, Miss Flamel," he offered, "please feel free to inform me, and I shall endeavor to assist."

She was his sister apprentice, after all, and what were older brothers for, if not providing help and advice?

"There is one thing," the purple-haired girl began. "Is Mrs. Flamel always so…" she trailed off for a moment as she struggled to find the appropriate word, "smothering? I mean," she quickly backpedaled, realizing that she might have overstepped, "she's very nice and all, and I know she means well, but she treats me as if I were her own child, and I am unsure how to respond."

"Yes, I know what you mean," the elderly wizard agreed with a wistful smile. "She has always treated me much the same way, and no, it does not go away with time." He sighed, "I believe it is because she has never been able to bear children of her own, so she tends to adopt those who catch her attention."

"She is barren?" his fellow apprentice asked, puzzled. "Would not the Elixir have repaired such things?"

"After a fashion," Albus explained with a wince. "The actual mechanics are a tad involved, but 'barren' is a reasonable approximation of the situation."

"And the Elixir?" she prompted.

"Again, the mechanics are involved," the elderly wizard repeated, "and I would defer to Nicholas in explaining them to you. It is an alchemical topic of some note, and you are his student in such matters." At her acknowledging nod, he continued, "Regardless, I do ask that you be patient with Perenelle in this matter. It is a painful one."

"Of course, of course!" the purple-haired girl waved off his request, still frowning thoughtfully as she processed the new information. "It was only awkward before, nothing really important. Now that I understand the situation, it is no trouble at all…"

At that point, Albus' internal alarm — a rather handy little charm, that — went off, reminding him that he had approximately half an hour to get to his next appointment. He sighed regretfully; it seemed he would have to cut things short. Mindful of his surroundings, he mimed looking at a wristwatch he was not actually wearing before making his excuses.

"I am terribly sorry, Miss Flamel," he apologized. "It has truly been a joy meeting with you, and I look forward to doing so again, but I am afraid we will have to cut our meeting short. I have a lesson scheduled with one of my own students, and we still have yet to address the nominal topic of this meeting."

"Of course, I should have handled that when I first arrived," she said in a businesslike tone, reaching into the document case she carried and withdrawing a thick sheaf of papers from within. "Those are a copy of the latest records, current through January of this year."

As she handed the document over, her voice brightened to a much more personable one, "I enjoyed our meeting as well, and thank you for your advice."

"It was my pleasure, young lady," he acknowledged as he stood from the table. "I have already paid for our meal, including another tea for you, should you choose to take advantage. Until we meet again!"

And with that, he walked off down the seaside street, eventually turning the corner and disappearing from view.

His guest stayed long enough to enjoy her last cup of tea. She saw no sense wasting her host's money.

4.8.6 The stuff of stars

In the depths of a newly excavated tunnel, deeply embedded into a hillside in the next valley over from the Lair, Harry Potter happily greeted the newly arrived Albus Dumbledore, eager to continue his tutelage in alchemy.

"Hi there, Mr. Dumbledore!" the young dragon called, his great scaly bulk filling the majority of the narrow, rough-walled tunnel. "I've got the sludge from the first exercise, like you said," he gestured with one talon to a quintet of fifty-five-gallon steel drums, each full of an oily-looking iridescent fluid, "and you can see the tunnel. What do I need to do next?"

"Excellent work, Mr. Potter," the elderly wizard nodded, looking about at his student's preparations. "This hill is free of any other constructions, correct?"

"Yeah, it is!" the dragon bobbed his great scaly head in the affirmative before asking, "Uh, I was wondering, why did I need to make sure of that?"

"That will be made clear shortly," Dumbledore assured him. "First, I must explain the nature of this exercise."

"Okay!" Harry settled in for a lecture.

"As you will recall, the first practice exercise involved controlling the amount of energy going into an alchemical reaction. This was done using an endothermic reaction; the conversion of water into that sludge requires energy, energy which you supplied from your own magical reserves. Performing the exercise allowed you to practice controlling your own energies in the face of an external draw."

Harry nodded along with the rehash of their earlier lessons.

"This second exercise involves controlling the amount of energy coming out of an alchemical reaction. This will be done using an exothermic reaction, specifically the inverse of that used in the first exercise. You will be converting that sludge you have so diligently saved back into water and learning how to deal with the energies released in the process."

"That makes sense," the young dragon said.

"This aspect of your alchemical studies is much more dangerous than the first, Mr. Potter," the elder alchemist warned sternly. "The dangers of a runaway reaction in the first case would only have killed you, exhausting you to the point of death. The danger of a runaway reaction in this case would kill everyone nearby in a massive explosion. I assume you are familiar with the workings of the sun from your independent studies — the reaction known to the non-magical world as 'nuclear fusion'?"

The dragon nodded.

"Since it was first proposed early in this century, 'nuclear fusion' has been known in alchemical circles as 'sidereal alchemy', for it is a specific form of alchemic reaction which occurs naturally in stars," the old wizard explained. "You will be dealing with energies of a very similar magnitude today, in this cave."

"Oh! That does sound pretty dangerous," Harry agreed with a thoughtful frown. He continued with an uncharacteristic note of self-doubt, "Um, Mr. Dumbledore, should we really be doing this? I know my control is a lot better than it was, but I don't know if I trust it that much yet."

Albus' beard swayed as he shook his head, "You need not worry overmuch, Mr. Potter. Just as the first exercise was chosen to be self-limiting, petering out when you were merely exhausted, rather than dead, so too does this second exercise self-limit. When the magical field gradients become too intense, the sludge changes its structure to the point that the reaction requires a radically different activation method. As a result, the reaction cannot run off uncontrollably without a great deal of deliberate effort by a skilled practitioner."

Harry let out a massive sigh. "Well, that's a relief."

"Indeed, Mr. Potter," his instructor agreed. "Now, before we begin, we have a few final modifications to make to your current arrangement."

With that, the elderly wizard set about excavating a small secondary chamber at the end of the tunnel with his student's assistance. Dumbledore then produced a single glass vial, which he proceeded to fill with the iridescent sludge before they transferred the remainder into the new chamber and then sealed it off.

"Hey, Mr. Dumbledore," Harry asked as he shifted a massive spherical boulder into place in front of the carefully carved round opening to the storage chamber, "if the reaction we picked for this is so safe, why are we making all these preparations for it?"

"Safe?" a bushy white eyebrow rose in surprise. "Whatever gave you the impression that this exercise was safe? No, Mr. Potter, the second exercise is not safe at all! It will not run away uncontrollably, but it is sure to run away from you, and in the process, it will release a significant quantity of energy quite quickly indeed. The choice of reaction simply ensures that that release will self-limit to something more along the lines of knocking down a building rather than a city."

Emerald eyes opened wide.

"You will be safe enough, I expect, Mr. Potter," the elder alchemist assured him. "Between your physiology and your magic, you should not suffer any permanently debilitating injuries, and I am safe enough with the proper defensive spells. Rest assured, however, that nothing else in this facility will fare so well. It is why we took so much time to ensure the door to your storage room over there was so well fitted. Being larger than the opening, the coming explosions will simply serve to seat it more firmly, protecting your stock of practice materials."

"So, it'll work like a check valve," Harry concluded with a nod, recognizing the concept from some of his own reading.

After a quick explanation of the workings of a check valve, Dumbledore agreed with his assessment.

"That is exactly correct, Mr. Potter, well spotted!" he congratulated the young dragon. "Now for the lesson."

He conjured a small stone bowl and transferred a single small, colorful drop of the sludge into it before setting the comparatively tiny bowl before his enormous pupil.

"Now, Mr. Potter, watch carefully," the elderly wizard instructed. "We will begin with the simplest action possible. You reach out like thus," his magic shifted subtly as it enveloped the bowl, "and shift in this manner."

There was another subtle shift, clearly visible to Harry's draconic eyes, before the drop of sludge in the bottom of the bowl suddenly glowed brightly enough to make Harry flinch back, his great eyes reflexively snapping shut for a moment at the suddenness of it.

"As you can see," Dumbledore continued, betraying no reaction to the incorporeal light show, "I am now slowly converting the material there back into water and absorbing the released magic into my own reserves. That absorption is only possible because of my recent expenditures of magic both in transporting myself here and our little construction project, soon, my reserves will be full, and I will be forced to…" His voice hitched as, between one word and the next, the droplet suddenly glowed a hundred times brighter. "Ah, there! When my reserves were filled, I was then forced to release the rest of the magic involved to the environment at large, where it will dissipate quite quickly."

"Hmm," Harry hummed, squinting as he watched the process carefully. "So, can you do anything else with it? It seems like a waste to just let it go like that."

"That can be done and is, in fact, a standard practice in advanced alchemy," the alchemist affirmed, "though it requires orders of magnitude more skill. Do not attempt to do such a thing without my express permission."

The dragon nodded in acknowledgement of the warning.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the ethereal light cut off, leaving only a wet spot visible — after Harry blinked the afterimages away — in the bottom of the bowl. There was no longer a hint of the colorful sheen that had characterized the alchemically created sludge.

"And there you have it," Dumbledore nodded in satisfaction. "The exercise is complete. Allow me a moment to prepare, and then you may attempt the exercise."

At his student's nod, the elderly wizard flicked his wand through a complicated motion and suddenly took on a luminous sheen to his student's eyes. Another, different motion created a series of glowing semi-transparent half walls across the open end of the tunnel, numerous enough that they almost obscured the outside world entirely, despite their semi-transparent nature.

"What're those for, Mr. Dumbledore?" Harry asked curiously as his instructor reached into his robe for the vial of sludge.

As he tapped out another small drop into the stone bowl, Dumbledore explained, "They are baffles to keep things from getting too loud outside. We do not need curious muggles coming from Mallaig to test our secrecy enchantments."

The dragon nodded in understanding as he looked at the innocent-looking stone bowl nervously.

"So, should I give it a try?"

"Go ahead, Mr. Potter."

Harry's semi-transparent inner eyelids reflexively closed across his great green eyes as he cautiously reached out with his magic as Mr. Dumbledore had demonstrated earlier. It enveloped the bowl gingerly, and then he shifted it just so…

...and then the world went white.

Outside, a muffled explosion echoed off the surrounding hillsides, startling hundreds of the local birds into taking flight.

Back in the tunnel, a dazed dragon slumped against the nearest tunnel wall, punch-drunk, as pulverized stone dust slowly settled out of the air.

"Not a bad start, Mr. Potter," a completely unruffled Albus Dumbledore observed in a chipper voice from within his thick cocoon of protective magic. A nostalgic smile crossed his face, "As I recall, my first attempt blasted me through a two-foot thick stone wall."

"Huh?" the dragon said in an overly loud voice, as he slowly shook his great head, trying to get his ears to stop ringing. "What was that, Mr. Dumbledore? I can't hear you over all that ringing."

"Hmm, perhaps some hearing protection is in order," Dumbledore mused.

It took several minutes for the dragon to recover enough to understand what his tutor had said, at which point, the assessment had been repeated.

"I guess this is going to take a lot of practice, too, huh," Harry observed with a sigh before his expression firmed. "Well, I'd better get started, then."

One quick trip on Albus' part to the Hogwarts greenhouse saw him returning with a massively enlarged pair of the fuzzy, pink, noise-cancelling earmuffs which were normally used for handling mandrakes, and Harry put his great scaly nose back to the grindstone until the vial Dumbledore had set aside for practice was fully emptied.

The local birds would not return to the area for nearly a week afterwards.

4.8.7 Building bridges

As she sat before the roaring fireplace in the Ravenclaw common room, set to ward off the damp chill of the late spring evening, Su Li mused on her progress.

The initial insertion had gone well. Her opening gambit with her target had worked just as well as she had hoped, and that had provided access to the rest of his social circle. Now she was in the process of integrating herself into that circle to suit her purposes. The better her reputation among his friends, the stronger her position would be.

Fortunately, the boy had a rather limited social itinerary, and so far, the operation had gone well.

The Hufflepuffs had been won over quickly. They were Hufflepuffs, which meant that a shared mutual friend was sufficient if paired with even minimal social graces. Su Li could have been an utterly obnoxious boor, and most would have still gone out of their way to try to accommodate her, simply on the strength of their mutual friendship with Potter. Since being personable cost her essentially nothing, Hufflepuff's welcome had been quite warm, indeed.

Potter's pet centaur had been less receptive, meeting her with an aloof sort of neutrality and offering little more than a nod of acknowledgement and a polite word or two. It would work well enough for now, but she would need to put more work in. Her target obviously valued the creature's input, and it would not do for Su Li's purposes for any of that input to be negative.

The real coup, though, had come in the form of Hermione Granger.

The homely girl's fledgling romantic interest in Su Li's target was obvious to anyone possessed of two eyes and the social intuition of a particularly dense rock. Fortunately for her purposes, that was a confluence of traits possessed by neither Potter nor the Granger girl herself. As potentially direct competition, Su Li had felt she had warranted extra attention, and that effort had paid dividends quite quickly.

Overtures of friendship had been made, and the girl had taken the proffered bait. Her only gesture in the direction of caution had been a halfhearted declaration that she wasn't going to be used for doing homework.

Her burst of genuine, spontaneous laughter at that ludicrous theory, Su Li realized in hindsight, had probably done as much as anything else to put Granger at ease. It was as if the bushy-haired girl could not imagine any other ulterior motive. Granger would have been horrified if she had realized precisely why the petite girl had found her concern about academic fraud to be so hilarious.

Su Li would never burn a good patsy for something so pedestrian.

In any event, Granger's naivete had put Su Li in an excellent position going forward. The girl would serve as a friendly advocate among her target's closest confidants, ironically protecting her own rival's interests in her efforts to be sociable. In time, Granger's clumsy efforts at catching Potter's eye would only serve as a foil for Su Li's much more adroit ones, and when other girls inevitably came sniffing around her target, Granger would serve as both a convenient ally in fending them off and a convenient scapegoat for the same, if it came to that.

To top it all off, Granger had proven to be surprisingly good company. Su Li smiled warmly as the fire gave a particularly loud pop. She had not been forced to feign friendliness towards Granger for long. For all that the bushy-haired girl was a useful patsy, she was also friendly, intelligent, well-read, and quite eager to please: all excellent qualities in a friend. A rare find, especially for a European barbarian. Spending time with her would hardly be a chore, always a plus, especially when on a mission that might stretch out for years.

The girl might be useful for other purposes as well, depending on how the political situation surrounding her target shook out. Her orders had indicated some concerns in that regard, to the extent that she had been told to expect the delivery of a communications altar in early summer. A bit of extra effort to groom Granger in that direction would be effort well spent.

For now, Su Li sighed contentedly, happy with her progress. All that remained were the professors, whose measure she had already taken, and Potter's other friend, Abercrombie, who was currently involved in her NEWTs and thus unavailable.

Hopefully, the older girl would be similarly receptive.

4.8.8 Travel arrangements

Somewhat paradoxically, despite the frenzy of activity associated with end-of-year testing, the final weeks of the academic year were normally a quiet time for Hogwarts' regular faculty. Outside proctors from the Examination Authority essentially took a bit less than a third of the students off their hands, and the rest were generally involved in their own, much less extensive, final exams. While such things kept the students busy, year-end testing meant review work, and review work meant reused class materials and rehashed lectures; all of which meant a great deal less preparation time for the faculty.

All of that meant that there should have been plenty of time to meet for their other activities, such as those associated with certain important ongoing projects.

"And so, we meet again," Albus opened the meeting, speaking to his staff, once again assembled in the plush conference room that had served them well in recent years. "We have much to discuss; though I suppose the majority of it will have to wait until Mr. Potter arrives, as it involves him rather centrally."

That lull had been the main reason for delaying the follow-up meeting on the nexus project to so late in the year. Unfortunately, this year had broken from that pattern; the sudden and unexplained loss of one of their fellow professors had made the normally relaxing year-end significantly more hectic than usual...

"Only some of it," Minerva countered as she accepted her first drink of the evening from Filius, who had smoothly resumed his customary role as the group's semi-official bartender. "I, for one, wish to know what in bloody blazes happened with Gilderoy! Why did the man disappear in the middle of the term?"

...which went a long way towards explaining the Deputy Headmistress' uncharacteristically hostile attitude.

"I am afraid I cannot answer that, Minerva," the elder wizard calmly replied, accepting his own drink from the diminutive half-goblin. "Though, I can inform you that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is investigating the situation most assiduously."

"Cannot answer, or will not, Albus," the Scotswoman demanded.

"Cannot, Minerva," Albus answered firmly. "I shall remind you that his departure took place while we were deeply involved in handling Miss Weasley's situation. I know only as much as the DMLE has seen fit to share, and that has been very little."

She held her superior's gaze for one long moment then looked away. Taking a moment to collect herself, she sighed, "I apologize for my tone, Headmaster; I am somewhat overwrought. Things have been rather stressful of late, in the wake of that man's departure. Attempting to organize study groups and tutoring sessions for my entire House on such short notice has been… well, it has been an experience."

On seeing her superior's acknowledging nod, she turned to her drink, an odd, brown concoction that smelled of coffee, vanilla, and chocolate overlaid with the heady scent of alcohol. It tasted much like it smelled, but with an added hint of cinnamon, and as the sip hit her stomach, her eyes immediately widened as she snapped fully awake, feeling as sharp as if she had just awoken from a full night's sleep.

"My goodness, Pomona! You have outdone yourself," she complimented her colleague. "That is a truly spectacular effect!"

"Thank you, Minerva," the plump herbologist replied with a pleased smile. "I thought everyone might appreciate it. I have been working on it for years now; though it still has some way to go, yet."

Curious, the resident potions master, seated on the other side of the room, took a sip from his own cup and nodded appreciatively at the result. "Quite impressive, I agree. Some variant of a pepper-up potion, Pomona?"

"No, this one is actually more in line with my own specialty than yours for once, Severus," the woman explained proudly. "It is a simple extract of the beans of a plant I have created through experimental breeding, a specialized cultivar of the mimic vine which I force-bred with the coffee and cocoa plants. I have developed it with an eye towards making a pleasant tasting, potent, yet non-addictive stimulant which can be grown most anywhere."

"It seems to me, Pomona, that you have already succeeded admirably," Septima Vector opined. "Given that you would not have served us something addictive, I assume that it is still too difficult to grow in quantity?"

"Not so, actually," the herbologist shook her head in the negative. "It is quite simple to grow; the vine is hardy and productive. The problem is one of bio-alchemy. The active components are not soluble in water and require alcohol to extract them from the ground beans." She shook her head, "It works quite well for this sort of gathering, where we are intending to drink anyway, but in the end, I want it to have a wider market."

"Have you considered an alternate extraction method?" Snape asked, sounding interested. "Or, perhaps you might try a vacuum distillation of the extract to remove the excess alcohol? You could then dilute the resulting concentrate with water to lower the effective alcohol content, or perhaps an emulsifier…"

The conversation fell by the wayside as a loud knock on the conference room door heralded the arrival of Hogwarts' resident dragon and his two damsels.

"Hi!" he greeted the room with his usual good cheer.

The new arrivals quickly settled in with their own usual fare, one goblin tea and two waters, and the meeting got on track.

"I believe I shall start with a summary of the current state of affairs," Dumbledore began after pausing to take another sip of Pomona's remarkable concoction. "As you are all aware, we have now drained two of the devices, one by accident at Avebury in 1988, which resulted in Mr. Potter's initial transformation," he nodded to the boy in question, "and the other intentionally just last Christmas at Stonehenge, also at his hand."

"Due to Miss Granger's excellent insight," another nod followed which made the studious girl's whole day, "we also strongly suspect that another such node was drained catastrophically in the East Indies in 1883. Poppy has speculated that another such event may have taken place in Anatolia during the late fifteenth century resulting in the creation of the entity which currently rules the magical Empire of Romania."

"The first of these occurred before we started recording data on the ambient magic levels around the world, and thus remains impervious to further investigation," he continued. "As of our last meeting, we had confirmed that the 1883 event and the 1988 event were each accompanied by a strong, worldwide spike in measured ambient magic, followed by a small but significant increase in the steady state amount afterwards."

He reached over to a side table for a stack of documents which he transferred to the conference table before him. "Courtesy of the efforts of Nicholas' new apprentice, I can now confirm that a nearly identical shift, in character if not magnitude, coincided with our efforts at Stonehenge."

Albus took another sip of his drink before finishing solemnly, "I believe this establishes beyond reasonable doubt our hypothesis that such node discharges and the increases in worldwide ambient magic are causally linked."

That prompted a round of satisfied nods from around the room.

"It is good to finally get something in this mess confirmed, I suppose," Poppy Pomfrey commented with a nod. "With Mr. Potter's permission, given that it has to do with his medical history, I can follow that with another piece of good news."

"Is this about the magic organ thingy?" Harry asked, prompting the Healer to nod. "Okay, that's fine to tell everyone about."

"Very well then, Mr. Potter," she acknowledged, turning to her colleagues. "I have completed my analysis of the strange organs Mr. Potter appears to be using to store all the magical energy he has been draining from the nodes. The organs appear to be reconfiguring themselves using a portion of the energy they absorb, folding back on themselves in a complicated manner which seems to expand their capacity to store energy as more energy is stored."

"The folding process is quite remarkable and seems to have a great deal in common with spatial expansion spells, storing energy both in the folding process itself and in the additional spaces thus created." The pediatric Healer shook her head in admiration. "Based on measurements to this point, the storage capacity of the organs in question seems to scale both with complexity and with size, as such, storage capacity increases much faster than the expected cubic relation that usually governs such things. Given Mr. Potter's rapid rate of growth, there should be little risk in draining any future nodes, so long as he is allowed a few days between the larger ones to allow his physiology to adjust."

"That is most reassuring, Poppy," Minerva spoke in a relieved voice. "There is no risk to Mr. Potter?"

"As his Healer, I can confidently confirm that there is none," she affirmed.

"Excellent!" Albus exclaimed. "Did you have anything else to share, Poppy?"

"I do have something to discuss with you, Albus," the Healer said, "but that is regarding the health of one of our other students, unrelated to this project, and so this is not the appropriate venue."

"I shall place myself at your disposal after we conclude our efforts here, Poppy," the Headmaster nodded agreeably then turned to the room at large. "I suppose our next order of business is plan for the next node. Severus, I believe the floor is yours."

Although he had expected it, the potions master greatly disliked being shoved into the limelight, and his expression soured on general principle. Knocking back one last swig from Pomona's most excellent concoction to fortify him for the coming irritation, he launched into his explanation.

"In the aftermath of our activities at Stonehenge, Sybil designated our next target as a node near the Seven Sisters Peaks on the western coast of North America," he reported, studiously ignoring Minerva's dismissive scoff at the mention of the divination professor's name. "As that location is deep within the sphere of influence of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, I approached my contact among the goblins for advice on how to proceed. I have arranged our travel plans according to his recommendations."

"As soon the students leave on the Express, we shall depart for Stansted Airport's charter terminal on the north side of London where I have arranged to privately charter a muggle aircraft," he explained. "We shall arrive in the city of Erie approximately twelve hours later. The Grand Council, the rough equivalent of our Ministry, is headquartered just outside of the city, and my goblin contacts have arranged an audience for us on the next afternoon. There we shall present our case for operating within their territory."

"'Present our case'?" Minerva parroted. "So, we shall be seeking their official accommodation? We have not done so with our own Ministry; why the change in approach?"

The dour potions master nodded a brisk acknowledgement. "I was advised that the local political situation contraindicates covert approaches in general. The Confederacy has been at war with its southern neighbor for centuries, in a conflict generally fought via covert raiding. Confederate border security would not only be highly likely to discover our subterfuge but would almost certainly resort to lethal measures immediately, rather than asking for an explanation."

The stern Scotswoman raised an eyebrow in surprise, but simply chose to nod in acceptance rather than commenting further. Instead, Harry spoke up.

"Um, Mr. Snape?"

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"This is going to be one of those formal meeting things, right?" the young dragon asked.

Snape nodded.

"Then, do we need a regard gift for it?" he asked. "I know it's a different culture and all, but…"

Snape's eyes narrowed. "I must confess, I had not considered that; I do not know one way or another."

"You said the node was near the west coast of Canada, right?" Hermione chimed in. "I think I remember reading something about gift-giving traditions among the tribes there, potluck… potash… pot... well, pot-something." She frowned for a moment. "I can't quite remember the term, but it was a big, extravagant feast in which lots of gifts were given that was used to commemorate important events. It was banned for about a century by the Canadian government, which is why the book I was reading mentioned it." She shrugged, "I don't know if the magical people do the same thing, but it might be something to consider."

"There are similar traditions among my people," Suze volunteered. "Conclaves always require the exchange of gifts."

"If we need one," Harry volunteered, "I've got an idea for what to give them, if you want."

"I shall investigate the matter," Snape promised with a terse nod of acknowledgement. "In any event, after we obtain permission, we shall set out overland for the west coast in a vehicle I have already arranged. I estimate that segment of the trip will require approximately one and a half weeks. We will then arrive at a Salish settlement near the Seven Sisters Peaks. There we shall search out our target and proceed to drain it. At this time, I do not have sufficient information to estimate our schedule for that task, but I have made tentative arrangements for a return flight from Vancouver. Once we are certain of our schedule, I will finalize them, and we will fly back home."

"Why the overland trip rather than a portkey?" Flitwick asked, curiously.

"The Confederates have apparently managed to interdict their entire territory against magical teleportation." Seeing his diminutive colleague's interest, Snape elaborated, "If you wish to learn the details, Filius, I suggest you approach Gringotts to ask, yourself."

The half-goblin nodded in absent acknowledgement, his mind already spinning off on thoughts of how such an interdiction field might work.

"It sounds as though we will need to plan things carefully," Septima observed. "If you have been forced to make such extensive travel plans, I doubt we will be able to run down to the local apothecary for anything we forget to pack."

That prompted a buzz of conversation about logistics and what would need to be prepared ahead of time.

While the rest of the room descended into the weeds of their own specialties, Snape watched them all with his usual silent glower. He had already said his piece.

"Hey, Mr. Snape?" the resident dragon caught his attention.

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"Does this mean we're all going on a road trip this summer?" the youngster asked hopefully.

"Yes, Mr. Potter," Snape sighed. "Yes, it does."

"Awesome!"

4.8.9 Charity and pride

As soon as the last of their colleagues finished trickling out of the conference room, Albus turned to the school Healer.

"I believe we are alone now, Poppy," he began. "What did you need to discuss?"

"It regards Miss Weasley's condition," she explained. "While I have been able to repair her physically from her magical exhaustion, the mental damage from the possession lingers."

"As I had feared," the elderly wizard nodded gravely. "Is it debilitating?"

"No, it does not seem to be," Poppy explained, "though you know how difficult it can be to identify buried mental commands and triggers. According to the accepted treatment protocols, Miss Weasley should be clear to leave my care within the week. What I needed to discuss with you is a proposal which might allow us to find and address those potentially buried effects."

"A cure for that!" shaggy white eyebrows rose in pleased surprise. "Well then, by all means proceed. This is your field, and as long as you have her parents' permission, you hardly need my approval."

"That permission is the issue, Headmaster," the Healer explained. "The procedure I have proposed is an expensive one, involving significant amounts of time and effort from at least two other skilled professionals besides myself, and a not inconsequential amount of equipment and supplies."

"If you think it is likely to work, then I have a number of contacts that would likely wish to contribute," Albus volunteered.

"As do I," Poppy agreed. "The issue is one of personal pride rather than the availability of resources. As the procedure is not strictly necessary, Arthur Weasley has insisted on attempting to pay the costs himself. He refuses to accept our supposed charity."

The elderly wizard raised a hand to his forehead in a gesture of frustration and mumbled, "Arthur Weasley, what are you thinking?" He fell silent for a moment then asked, "Poppy, did he seem receptive? Aside from the issue of financing, I mean."

"Very much so," she confirmed with an emphatic nod. "He had actually mentioned trying to budget for the procedure some time down the road, even though I pointed out that there will likely only be a window of at most a year or two when the procedure should be feasible."

"What sort of budget would be needed?" he asked.

She named a figure.

"He will not be able to meet that," Albus opined after a moment of mental calculation, "not with how much of his salary he has been committing to the scholarship fund over the years. Even if he withdrew from his ongoing commitments, a Department Head's salary is too low to make that within the year."

"So I had thought," Poppy agreed with a nod. "Do you have any ideas?"

"I believe I might have an option," Albus said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He had a contact that might be able to slip Arthur the money without pricking his pride. The problem would be framing the request properly.

"Please, look into it, then, Albus," Poppy requested. "The longer we wait, the more difficult and uncertain the procedure will be."

"I shall see to it at the earliest opportunity."

4.8.10 Overbooked flight

The project meeting had ended barely half an hour earlier, and there had been just enough time for Harry and his damsels to arrive back at the Lair for the evening. Hogwarts' resident dragon was bouncing about his home, near to bursting with excitement. There had been a lot of interesting things said at the meeting, but one stood above all the rest to Harry's mind.

"We're going on a road trip!" he crowed as he bustled about the Lair, vacillating between tasks as quickly as they came to mind. As a result, he made little progress on any, but that lack did nothing to kill his mood.

"It's going to be great!" he chattered on, rummaging through the haphazard pile of books that made up his current reading list in hopes of paring down the pile to take along. "There'll be all sorts of new stuff to see, and 'cause we're draining another ring, almost everyone'll be there: Mr. Snape, and Mr. Dumbledore, and Mrs. McGonagall, and Mr. Flitwick, and even the ones I don't get to see so much like Miss Vector and Miss Babbling!"

Although his friends were generally nearby, they were also generally quite busy, especially his friends who were also professors. This trip promised at least a few weeks, perhaps even as much as a month, of uninterrupted time with some of his favorite people in the world. It was quite an exciting prospect for the young dragon.

As he ran through the list of those who had attended the Stonehenge draining, he paused in shuffling through his reading pile and his currently reptilian brow furrowed as another possibility came to him.

"I wonder if Abigail will be able to go?"

"She's taking her NEWTs now," he mused, considering the problem, "so she'll be graduating right before the trip, but she's scheduled to start at Hogs Haulage right after that. She might not want to step away for a month, especially since we've got a whole lot of really time-sensitive new business coming down the pipe."

As he was considering the problem, a stray thought reminded him of his offer to provide a regard gift, which sent his rummaging off in an entirely new direction. Of course, the shift in activities did nothing to reduce his excitable babbling.

"I'll have to ask Abigail when she finishes her NEWTs, I guess." He nodded decisively. "Even if she decides not to go, though, at least Hermione and Suze'll be there, so there's that…"

"Actually, Harry," his bushy-haired damsel interjected, "I'm not going."

"You're not?" Harry exclaimed, his celebratory mood screeching to a halt. "Why not?"

"I'm going home with my parents for the summer," Hermione declared. "I haven't spent any real time with them since I started at Hogwarts. By the end of the term, that'll almost be two whole years!"

Harry frowned as he considered that.

"We could probably invite them along for the trip," he offered. "I bet it wouldn't be too hard to shuffle things around…"

"No, Harry, I'm not going to do that!" his human damsel insisted. "First off, they've got their jobs to do, and they can't afford to take the time off for a month-long trip across the Atlantic, and more importantly, I want to spend some quality time with them."

"There ought to be plenty of time on the drive…" Harry began, only to be cut off again.

"Alone time, Harry," Hermione clarified, exasperated. "I mean quality time with my parents and only my parents. Sometimes, you just need to be alone to spend time with your family at home, so you can talk about things and just be together. You know how that works!" She sighed and shook her head, turning away. "It's just not the same…"

"Hermione!" Suze spoke for the first time, her normally gentle voice cracking like a whip.

As Hermione looked up to see what had prompted the centaur maiden to interrupt, she caught sight of Harry's odd expression — a frown somewhere between confusion, sadness, and even a hint of real hurt — altogether a highly unusual combination for her normally exuberant friend. Had she said something… the bushy-haired girl frowned and mentally replayed her recent words, prompting brown eyes to widen in realization.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, Harry, I didn't think about…" she trailed off again. He didn't know how that worked, since he was an orphan with no surviving family worth speaking of. That had been more than a little insensitive on her part, though it did not change her decision on what to do at the end of the day. "Well, anyway, I'm sorry about being so thoughtless, but I still need to go home for the summer."

"Can't you wait until after we get back?" Harry asked, his frown now shifting to one of concern, the hurt having dissipated immediately with her apology even if a ghost of the sadness remained. "It's really important, and then I'd be in the country, and you'd still have a month before school started again, and…"

"No, Harry!" Hermione snapped, unbending. "It's been two years, and I am going to go home to my parents for the summer! As interesting as the trip sounds, and as much as you want me to go with you, this is more important than anything I might contribute on that trip! I'm not an expert on anything, so the most I'd be doing would be keeping you company, and you've got plenty of people along to do that!"

"It's not just that!" Harry insisted, his own voice rising a little with irritation and an unusual note of actual fear. "It's also about keeping you safe!"

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, calming somewhat.

The dragon closed his great green eyes, visibly restraining himself from snapping at his stubborn damsel. No matter how much he wanted to just insist that she go with him, he'd promised when he carried her off that she could stop being his damsel any time, all she had to do was tell him... something he suspected she just might be irritated enough to do, if he followed his frustrated inclination.

After a moment, he calmed enough to explain, "You know how I carried you off as my pet, and how that let me protect you?"

His bushy-haired damsel nodded affirmatively, motioning for him to continue.

"Well, I did it that way so we didn't have to jump into anything too permanent too soon, but it only works if I'm there with you to handle anything that happens right as it happens," he said. "The pet thing is a school regulation, it's not really registered anywhere else for people to know about it... I mean, outside your address during the school year, that's registered, but that just means you're living here; it doesn't mean much of anything about protection."

"What are you trying to get at, Harry?" she asked impatiently.

"What I mean is," he raised a forepaw to scratch at his neck uncertainly in a distinctly human gesture that looked decidedly odd on a massive dragon. "Well, if I'm not there to respond right away, then it's not a real deterrent to anybody, 'cause they'd have no way to know, and for the same reason, I wouldn't have a legal right to respond properly. You don't get to say 'well, you were warned, you did it, and now I'm gonna get you for it' when the warning ain't posted anywhere." He sighed. "I mean, if you gotta go home without me there, can you at least wait until I'm gonna be in the same country?"

Brown eyebrows furrowed in thought beneath bushy hair of the same color. "Are you expecting something to happen, Harry?"

"Not really anything in particular, Hermione," Harry admitted with an explosive sigh which swirled through the Lair, kicking up stray bits of parchment and causing Hermione's skirt to flutter. "It's just, Mr. Snape has told me about all sorts of nasty things happening to people who don't have anyone to protect 'em, and Abigail told me once about a girl she used to know what got disappeared, and…" He paused momentarily to calm himself. "And I'm worried about that happening to you if I'm not there to stop it. So, would you please reconsider? It's just one more month."

Hermione considered the request carefully for a long moment. She had heard a lot of the same stories, and she knew intellectually that that sort of thing happened. That said, she still could not quite believe that it was really as bad as Professor Snape made it out to be. After all, she had never seen any evidence of it herself. If it was really that prevalent, shouldn't she have?

"No, Harry," she said slowly, shaking her head. "I understand your concern, but I miss my parents. I need to spend some time with them, and I'm not going to wait another month. Plus, like you said, it's only a month; I'm sure nothing will happen before you get back."

She regretted the words almost as soon as they left her mouth, not because she regretted the decision, but rather because they resulted in her currently dragon-shaped friend immediately rising to his feet with a bone-rattling growl and angrily pacing about the room, moving much faster than anything that size had any right to move. Although she knew to the very depths of her soul that her friend would never hurt her, standing in the middle of that much angrily pacing dragon was a thoroughly terrifying place to be.

Eventually, he came to a halt with a frustrated growl that rattled the furniture.

"I think I know something we can do," he said abruptly, "but I wanna check on some things first to make sure I don't get anything wrong."

And with that, the dragon swept off into the library, shifting forms between one step and the next as he reached the short flight of stairs to the mezzanine.

Hermione could only nod, still too shocked to do much else.

4.8.11 Worries

A few days later, Hermione wore a worried frown as she made her way to the Great Hall for the last meal of the day.

Since their recent argument, Harry had barely said more than a terse 'hello' to her. Instead he had spent the time grumbling to himself as he went through book after book on seemingly random topics. His behavior seemed highly atypical, and Hermione worried about what it meant.

She hadn't meant to upset him so badly.

Though she still wasn't going to budge on spending the summer with her parents, she thought with a determined frown. Family was important, and she had been away from hers for far too long, no matter how much Harry wanted her with him on that trip.

Of course, despite that determination, the bushy-haired young girl was still just that, a young girl, and she was more than a little distressed about the whole business. To make matters worse, her usual source for advice on such things had been away for the past week and a half busily taking her NEWTs. Without Abigail present, Hermione had been without a rock to steady herself in these troubled times.

Suze had been no help. When Hermione had sought advice from her fellow damsel, the centaur maiden had just given her an incredulous look before advising her to "stop being daft and just do as the Great Wyrm asked". She had made no secret of her belief that Hermione's objections were utterly ludicrous.

Hermione figured it must have been a centaur thing.

She shook her head as she entered the Great Hall. Harry was moping, Abigail was elsewhere, and Suze was completely unsympathetic. The last week had been miserable, and only one thing had brightened the experience. The bushy-haired girl looked up, squinting as she tried to parse through the crowd between her and the Hufflepuff table. Hopefully, she would be… there!

Hermione smiled broadly and lifted her hand in an enthusiastic wave as she caught sight of the newest addition to their usual group at the table.

"Hello, Su!" she asked as she grew close enough to be heard over the dinner noise in the Great Hall. "How was your afternoon?"

Su answered her with a bright smile and stood up immediately to give her a welcoming hug.

Since she had become part of her circle of friends, Su Li had been a godsend for Hermione. At a time when she was without support from Abigail for the first time in over a year, the new girl had been a friendly face. Heck, she had even seemed interested in Hermione as a friend independent of Harry, which was a first for Hermione. Even Abigail had always seemed to be Harry's friend first and hers second.

"My afternoon classes went quite well," Su Li answered conversationally, giving a preoccupied Harry a welcoming pat on the shoulder as she guided him into the seat next to her own. "Defense has been a lot more productive since Professor Lockhart left. How were yours?"

Hermione took the seat on Harry's other side, as was her custom, and continued her conversation over his head as Su Li sat down again.

"I'm a bit worried about number seventeen on the transfiguration test," she began, "The wording could have meant a few different things, and I'm not sure I guessed right."

Su shook her head, "I'm sure you did fine, though speaking of that," she leaned in closer to whisper conspiratorially behind Harry's head, "what did you think of…"

Things continued in that vein for quite some time as the two girls slowly ate their fill in between bits of conversation.

It was just what Hermione had needed to get her through the last week and Harry's strange behavior.

Su really was a great friend!

4.8.12 Investigations

"Goodbye, Su!" Hermione Granger called over her shoulder as she left the Great Hall, waving cheerfully. "I'll see you again tomorrow!"

"I'll see you then!" Su Li responded, wearing a demure smile on her face as she waved in return. As she watched the frizzy-haired girl walk off at her target's side, heading off-campus for the evening, she added, "You too, Harry!"

She was answered by an absent wave and a preoccupied grunt from her target as the boy, attention obviously still on the book in his hands, judging by the glare it was receiving.

Su Li had no idea what had been bothering him over the past few days, but whatever it was, it had seemed to involve quite the extensive literature search. This was the fourteenth book she had seen Potter poring over in the last week covering topics ranging from magical contract law to warding.

Her demure smile remained unchanged despite the seemingly curt dismissal from the boy as she turned to the path back to the Ravenclaw dormitories for the evening. A typical girl her age might have been upset at the lack of attention, fearing that it was an indication of disinterest.

Su Li was not a typical girl her age.

She knew from previous observation that such behavior was normal for Potter when he was on a tear about something, the only unusual thing was his apparent lack of progress. It was nothing for her to worry about. Her only niggling regret was that she had so far been unable to divine his goals, and thus had been unable offer her assistance with whatever it was, thereby securing his gratitude. After all, gratitude was a powerful lever.

Despite the lost opportunity, Su Li felt her mission well begun, which had her smiling contentedly as quietly walked through the castle. There had only been one small wrinkle, a slight inconsistency in her understanding of her target which required resolution.

Potter had proven surprisingly receptive to physical affection, enthusiastically accepting her offer of a hug when she had first made it. That was very strange, in Su Li's estimation.

The boy was at an awkward age, ostensibly smack dab in the middle of puberty, chock full of rapidly changing hormones yelling all kinds of strange and conflicting messages. She had honestly expected the boy to balk at least slightly at the prospect of hugging a new girl. Instead, Potter had acted like a boy still too young to understand that there might be something to be uncomfortable about.

Her smile slipped at the memory as she turned to enter the great stairwell.

At the time, Su Li hadn't known quite what to make of that eagerness and how to patch it into her understanding of her target's psyche. It was possible that the unusual reaction was simply his forthright personality shining through the haze of adolescence, but another possibility had occurred to her recently, one which implied inconvenient things about the boy's physical maturity

She mounted the stairs.

At her target's age, most boys were on the verge of puberty, but sometimes that transition could be delayed by various factors. Given how her target seemed to be a bundle of idiosyncrasies she would not be overly surprised if he turned out to be a late bloomer as well, but if so, her plans would require adjustment.

And that meant she would need to investigate.

Fortunately, that investigation ought to be straightforward enough. Her target had already proven to be open to close contact, which made such inquiries almost trivial. A bit of subtle body language and some artfully contrived 'accidental' touches should be more than enough to both elicit a response from her target if he was capable and enough to discreetly detect it too if she paid attention.

The only question that remained was when to carry out the plan. She was unconcerned about her target, he was much too oblivious to recognize what she was about, as was Granger. The older students would not be so unaware. A private venue would be best, but it might not be feasible. She was running out of time.

Su Li tapped her foot impatiently on the third-floor landing as she waited for a stairway to move back into position.

According to the rumor mill, the NEWTs would be ending tomorrow, and that meant Abercrombie would be back on the scene the next morning, after she slept things off.

The stairway swung into place, and she continued her trek.

To Su Li, Abercrombie was still a mystery. By the time she had received her orders, the seventh-year had already begun testing, so there had been no opportunity as yet to take her measure in person. She'd had to rely on rumors, conflicting and unreliable ones at that.

According to the scuttlebutt, Abercrombie was either grooming Potter as her future husband or had adopted him as her honorary little brother, and those two possibilities required vastly different handling. If it was the latter, Abercrombie was not competition, and Su Li had all the time in the world to test her target at her leisure. The older girl would probably find her amusing. On the other hand, if it was the former… well, her schedule would be much tighter, in that case. If she didn't handle it tomorrow, she would probably have to wait until September.

Su Li absently answered the riddle granting entrance to the Ravenclaw dorms.

Which rumor was correct? That was impossible to say. About the only consistent thing about the rumors was that Abercrombie and Potter were very close. Potter trusted Abercrombie and listened to her, thus the older girl warranted extreme caution. At this stage of the game, she could break Su Li's chances with a single choice statement in her target's ear.

It was that realization that decided things. Su Li would conduct her test tomorrow, before Abercrombie returned. To do otherwise meant that she might need to wait until the next autumn, which was much too long for her patience. Unfortunately, her only time with her target would be at dinner and therefore in public.

Su Li frowned.

It would be awkward, but she would make it work.

4.8.13 Tall tales

The sky above Diagon Alley was overcast and gloomy, spitting rain from time to time, but Constable Miller was quite content to carry out his patrol nonetheless, even in the miserable weather. He had a few reasons for that contentment, among them the fact that his regulation blue overcoat was made for this weather, keeping him warm and relatively dry, which was nice, but the most important reason was that the Alley was quiet.

Miller might have been young as wizards went, but he was old enough to have begun his career during the final years of Voldemort's reign of terror, when the men and women he had trained with were dropping dead left and right. As a veteran of that conflict, he was wise enough to know that in the life of a law enforcement officer, a quiet day was a good day.

That said, the weather was still quite miserable, and he was thus quite surprised to see a young blonde woman seated outside of Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor. At least she seemed to be enjoying a warm drink, rather than the parlor's titular icy fare.

"Good morning to you, Miss," he began, tipping his hat to the pretty young woman. "Enjoying your drink?"

"Good morning to you, Officer!" she responded in a sweet soprano, flashing him a winning smile. "And yes, it is quite lovely. There's nothing quite like the cold and damp to make a good hot drink all the more appealing."

"I suppose so, ma'am," Miller allowed with an internal shrug. He thought it an odd choice, but it made sense after a fashion. Curiosity satisfied, he nonetheless decided to stick around for a spot of friendly conversation. After all, the patrol had been very quiet so far, and the woman was very pretty. "So, what brings you to Diagon this morning, miss? Just the drink?"

"Oh, heavens no!" she averred with a giggle. "The Alley is much too far from home for that! I've some shopping to do in the Alley, just little things here and there. And you? You are on patrol, I assume?"

The conversation continued for a time until the wind picked up, prompting them both to draw their coats a little tighter. Then, the blonde woman gasped, her eyes wide as she stared at something over his shoulder.

Miller whirled to look for himself.

A man strutted along the cobblestone street, drawing admiring looks and whispered gossip from the few women out and about. His flowing golden hair fluttered with every step, in time with the elegant pastel silks he wore, and his beaming smile seemed to light up the Alley around him.

It took but a moment for Miller to recognize the newcomer. After all, that face had been posted prominently on the ready-room board as a person of interest for the last few weeks. Gilderoy Lockhart, wanted for questioning regarding the obliviation of two retired aurors and another Ministry official.

So much for his quiet patrol and his pretty conversation partner. Maybe, if he were lucky, she'd still be around when he finished.

"My apologies, Miss," he apologized with a tip of his cap and a regretful sigh. "Duty calls."

The constable was about halfway to his target when the mood in the Alley suddenly transformed. The previously excited gossip turned to gasps of alarm, and already miserable weather suddenly felt darker and colder. A new figure appeared from seemingly out of nowhere and made straight for Lockhart.

Later, during his debriefing, the constable would realize that two the men were almost identical physically — both blond had blue eyes, both were of identical height and build, and both wore identical outfits — but that was later, when he had time to reflect. In person, the two men were as different as night and day.

The first was handsome and welcoming, the sort of man women flocked to. The second was somehow horrifying, though one would be hard-pressed to say why. It was as if the sunlight was reluctant to touch him, as if the very world about him desperately attempted to recoil from his presence.

The effect was beyond unsettling, bad enough that even Constable Miller, who had from time to time pulled guard duty at Azkaban and had diligently carried out his duty even in the face of its demonic denizens, froze mid-step, unable to bring himself to interrupt the brewing confrontation. He was hardly alone in that reluctance, if the suddenly silent street was any indication.

"Halt, creature!" the disturbing newcomer demanded in a carrying voice.

"And why should I?" Lockhart asked in a personable tone, seemingly unaffected by the air of unease pinning everyone else in place. He seemed to become even more radiant as his tone turned sly, "Who are you to make such a demand of me?"

The second figure was said nothing as he continued to stalk forward angrily.

"Why do you not answer?" Lockhart asked, eyes glinting with a strange light. "Have you no name to give?"

"You know very well who I am, thief!" the unnerving figure growled, coming to a halt a few yards from the blond celebrity. "And you know very well why I cannot answer!"

"A thief, am I?" Lockhart's expression went stony, blue eyes glinting with malice. Slowly his still radiant beauty gained a creeping hint of something else, something inhuman. "I am no thief. What is purchased cannot have been stolen."

"Purchased?" the second figure demanded, incredulously. "No purchase was made! No price was exchanged. You stole it, usurper!"

"No price? And what are the lives of your three companions, if not a price?" Lockhart's transformation was now complete, still beautiful, unnaturally so, but terrifying... an eldritch monstrosity wearing a human mask. "You begged me not to kill them, and I agreed… for a price. Their lives for yours. Three lives for one. Complain not about how I chose to collect!"

"I said I would lay down my life to protect them, not so that you could pick it up for yourself!" the nondescript man spat. "I would lay down my life, and gladly, but not to allow the likes of you to roam freely, using my name, my face, even my magic, as your own. There was no deal, changeling! Return that which you stole, lest I end you!"

"And how do you intend to accomplish that?" the thing which was now called Lockhart demanded in a twisted inhuman snarl. "As you said, I have your magic, your very name. What will you do? For that matter, what can you do, impotent former wizard? How can you take it back? If you cannot take it, then does it not belong to me?"

The second figure, who Constable Miller still could not identify as Gilderoy Lockhart, despite knowing from the conversation that that was who he had to be, suddenly calmed.

"I cannot take it back, no, yet neither do I acknowledge your claim to it," he said evenly, almost unnaturally placid, as if he had come to a decision. "And that denial allows me to do one final thing."

The second figure took one final step closer and grabbed Lockhart's arm. He spoke one word, and Constable Miller could have sworn it sounded like the tinkle of breaking glass.

Then both figures were engulfed in fire.

With that, the metaphorical spell broke, and everyone could move again. The alley erupted in screams as Constable Miller rushed to put out the fire. He succeeded quite quickly, but it was too late, nothing was left but a scorch mark on the cobbles.

Looking up to scan his surroundings, he caught sight of the blonde hair of the woman he had been talking to just as she made her hurried way out of the alley. He sighed.

He had been rather hoping to get her name.

4.8.14 Charlie doing the foxtrot

"What the bloody hell just happened in Diagon Alley?" Amelia Bones demanded.

The Head of the DMLE paced the length of the conference room full of her subordinate officers, giving the impression of a caged tiger. "I had to have heard twenty distinct rumors this morning alone, none of which agreed on anything except the fact that Gilderoy Lockhart was there."

"We… well, we don't precisely know," her LEP Operations director admitted reluctantly from his place at the table. "The testimony is confusing, even that of our officer on the scene. On the face of it, it all sounds rather fantastical."

"We had an officer on the scene?" the Department Head demanded. "Then why do we not have a clear picture of what happened?"

"I'm afraid the incident he described simply doesn't hold together," another of her men volunteered.

"Do you have a transcript?" At the man's nod, she held out her hand. "Then why don't you let me judge for myself?"

The document in question was handed over with alacrity, and the room fell silent but for the rustle of parchment as Amelia's eyes grew wider with each new revelation. Finally, she reached the end and quietly closed the docket before setting it gently on the conference table.

A moment passed.

"What the bloody hell was that?" she bellowed. "An elder fae picked a fight with Gilderoy Lockhart in downtown London over a stolen name only to lose in a mutual immolation? That is the most ludicrous story I've heard all year, and that counts my niece's excuses for not doing her chores." She turned to her personnel officer. "Please tell me you checked him for mental influence."

"He was clean," the man in question replied.

"Then how do we explain this…" she gestured to the report on the table, "…this absurdity? If a confrontation like this had taken place, half the people on that street would be insane and the other half would be dead."

The head of Forensics cleared his throat, "We sent a team out and found the place thick with residue of illusory casting, one caster only, human."

"Analysis?"

"Taking into account the evidence collected by Forensics," the director of Investigations nodded to his colleague, "we have concluded that the entire thing was a show put on by Mr. Lockhart in an effort to avoid prosecution by faking his own death. There was only a single human caster and zero indication of faerie involvement." He paused to clear his throat. "Furthermore, in light of this, we also strongly suspect the man is responsible for the attacks on Madam Marchbanks and her two retired auror companions. As for the other allegations put forth in the previous anonymous tip, they remain circumstantial at present."

Amelia nodded along, unsurprised at the development. "Then our next step would be pursuit."

"We can't do that!" the LEP Operations director broke in frantically.

"And why the bloody hell not?" Amelia snapped, whirling to face her subordinate. "The man committed a crime, and it is our duty to see him tried for it and punished if found guilty."

"The public would storm the Department," he explained. "That last bit of theater was too open. Too many people saw it, and the man on the street has already made up his mind. According to popular perception, Lockhart heroically sacrificed himself to save everyone from some sort of eldritch monstrosity. Starting an investigation now will get us laughed at, at best."

Madam Bones let out a frustrated snarl at the assessment but could not dispute it, choosing instead to return to pacing across the crowded yet silent conference room, growling irritably as her gathered subordinates looked on apprehensively.

Eventually, she came to a decision.

"Put a watch on the man's bank accounts and anything matching the magical signature on-record with them," she commanded. "We can call it an audit — protecting his legacy, or some such rot — but if he so much as looks at those accounts or tries to open a new one, I want him in a holding cell before he can blink!"

"Will the goblins be willing to do that?" the Operations director asked uncertainly even as he began drafting orders. "They tend to be rather uncooperative toward any request from the Ministry, not that I can blame them, honestly."

"That is something to consider," Amelia nodded thoughtfully. Given their history, the goblins tended to be quite happy to stick it to the Ministry whenever they could, and understandably so. Centuries of unrepentant slavery and relatively recent bouts of armed conflict tended to breed that sort of resentment.

"Give them a copy of our evidence folder and let them decide for themselves," she decided. "They've got the sense to do something about the situation, and even if they decide to handle it internally rather than give him to us, at least someone will get him."

With that said, she seemed to deflate as she continued, "As for the rest, I suppose there's not much to be done unless he slips up. In the meantime, denying him his finances will have to suffice."

4.8.15 Faceman

In the busy shopping center at Covent Garden, a brown-haired man casually ducked out of a women's restroom, an odd occurrence which, after a subtle flick of his wrist which briefly revealed a bit of wood poking out his sleeve, drew not even a passing glance from the nearby shoppers. He carried a small shopping bag just large enough for a change of clothing, and a few strands of hair from a blonde wig were briefly visible before he finished tucking them safely into his pocket.

The man walked calmly towards the exit into downtown London, a frown on his freshly scrubbed face and his eyes downcast. He was the very picture of a man who had nowhere to go and no idea what to make of himself, a man who was numb to the world.

A man who had lost everything.

It was an unusual state for a man to be in after he had accomplished exactly what he set out to do... of course, 'unusual' was a fitting descriptor for the entire situation.

It was a rare occasion that a man had the opportunity to reflect on his own successful suicide, after all.

As he walked out onto the streets of London, that feeling of numbness finally receded enough for the brown-haired man to think coherently, to consider the full implications of what he had just done.

The Gentleman Adventurer was dead, by his own hand, no less.

The man sighed gustily as he paused at a crosswalk, considering the events of the past few hours. He had pushed his control, power, knowledge, skill, and creativity to the breaking point, but it had worked in the end. He had managed to pull off the crowning achievement of a career of duplicity. He had faked his own death in broad daylight, and he had made a grand show of it.

A more fitting eulogy would have been hard to arrange, he mused, the fake death of a fake hero in a fake battle against a fake monster.

He had planned the deception carefully. Striking up the conversation with the constable had secured a trustworthy witness for the show; his testimony would lend weight to the deception. He had chosen a fae as the villain because the presence of one of the fair-folk in the story would make quite literally any sequence of events believable; the damn things were just that capricious.

Tying in the old tales of changelings and stolen identities had been the final icing on the cake of lies. With that, no testimony could be trusted, not even that of that snatch team when they inevitably recovered. Even their recovered memories would be suspect. Was it Lockhart? Was it the fae pretending to be Lockhart? It was enough to throw everything into complete chaos, all neatly wrapped up with a heroic death at the end. a heroic death that conveniently left no evidence by virtue of its fiery nature.

That incendiary potion he had purchased from Knockturn the day before had been money well spent.

He was free, he thought as the traffic lights changed allowing him to continue his aimless walk, and all it had cost him was absolutely everything he had ever valued.

Now that he was officially 'dead', he could not access his bank accounts or business dealings lest that status be called into jeopardy. As a result, the contents of a pair of overnight bags and cash enough for perhaps three months' expenses made up the sum total of all his worldly assets. Everything he had to his name…

…or it would have been everything he had to his name, he thought with a grimace, if not for the fact that he didn't have a name!

Now he had no credentials, no references, and no work history, and even if he did manage to find new employment, he would not be able to start over with a new identity. In the magical world, official identification was tied to magical signature, and his was already registered to a dead man! He could not open a bank account. He could not take out a loan. He would never be able to legitimately purchase any substantial properties even if he somehow amassed the cash, and even rentals would be a pain in the neck to manage.

He could only participate in transactions involving the direct exchange of cash or bartered goods and services. There would be no financing purchases via intermediaries since he could no longer verify his identity to anyone's satisfaction. Everything would have to be done face to face.

And speaking of face to face, that was one more casualty of this whole farce! He snarled at the thought. He'd had to give up his own bloody face because it was too well known!

He shook his head, now was not the time. These things had to be dealt with, one way or another.

Irritating as it was, the face was old news, a problem already handled, as was apparent from his current appearance. His new hair was short and a medium brown, and his eyes were now a slightly darker version of the same. Even his facial structure had been significantly altered via semi-permanent cosmetic charms. They were the same charms he had used to ensure Gilderoy Lockhart looked the part of the noble hero for so many years, simply used to different effect. They were difficult to cast, couldn't be changed very often, and were absurdly painful, but there was nothing better for a long-term disguise. In conjunction with a bland muggle wardrobe and a still awkward-feeling changed gait, they had practically made him a new, distressingly drab, man.

That said, a new man needed a new name, and that issue still loomed forebodingly. He could not maintain the deception in the long term if he continued to think of himself as Gilderoy Lockhart; something would inevitably slip and give the game away.

Gilderoy Lockhart was dead, and now he had to be properly laid to rest.

Despite the urgency, the man would still have to consider the situation carefully. His new name could not be allowed to lead back to the now-deceased author and adventurer by any path of logic or coincidence, no matter how unintentional or circuitous. It was a vexingly difficult condition to meet; he knew the human psyche well enough to know that.

The human brain made such connections subconsciously, and it was exceedingly difficult to deliberately and permanently cut the metaphorical cord. That was something that any good obliviator had to learn to deal with delicately; not doing so led either to obliviations unexpectedly failing as the targeted minds forged new connections along those circuitous alternative paths, or to complete catatonia if one was too heavy-handed.

Could he trust himself to come up with an entirely new name?

He briefly considered drawing on those very skills as an obliviator to edit his own memory for the purpose before dismissing the idea as too dangerous. He was good, but not that good. That said, he couldn't afford to tarry. As a new man the world was his oyster, and oysters were not known for their shelf life. He'd better get a move on and handle things quickly if he didn't want to end up stuck holding a putrid mess.

Turning a corner, his now brown eyebrows rose as he spotted a red telephone box halfway down the block. As he recalled from his long-ago training with the obliviators, those had… His expression firmed as he set off toward it with purpose in his step. That might be just the ticket.

Entering the booth, he flipped open the attached phone book to a random page and scanned through names, looking for something he could live with.

Five minutes later, a newly christened Templeton Peck exited the telephone box.

And then Gilderoy Lockhart was well and truly gone.
 
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Section 4.9 - ...I got better
4.9 …I got better

4.9.1 Invasion!

The NEWT committee had chosen a potion which, while tricky, was relatively quick to brew for this year's testing, which in turn meant that the testing period had lasted for just under two weeks rather than stretching out to a third. As a result, Abigail's final examination period had just ended, shortly after the beginning of the evening meal hour, leaving her and all her peers exhausted.

Unlike her peers who had gone directly from the test to their beds and slept off that exhaustion, Abigail had another objective. It had been nearly two weeks since she had spent any time with Harry, and remedying that unfortunate situation was far more urgent for the girl than catching up on her sleep. Thus, the evening found Abigail trudging tiredly into the Great Hall with the evening meal in full swing, thoroughly exhausted yet still quite eager to see her friend once more.

Due to her fatigue, she took nearly a full minute to process the scene she encountered. Harry was sitting there at his usual spot at the table, cheerfully demolishing the food in front of him and carrying on friendly conversations with everyone nearby, as was his usual custom. Hermione was seated beside him, carrying on in her usual manner, and his Hufflepuff friends were scattered around the table, again just as usual. On his other side, in her usual spot, however…

Abigail's tired expression hardened into a dark glower.

Seated on Harry's other side was a new girl, a dark-haired girl in Ravenclaw robes that she vaguely remembered seeing around the castle a few times over the past couple years. Based on her appearance, Abigail tentatively placed her as a second year; though she could have easily been mistaken for a firstie if one considered size alone. The girl was tiny.

Her presence at the table was not too unusual in and of itself; Hufflepuffs were hardly shy about inviting their friends from other Houses to dinner. Neither were her actions, really, not when taken at face value. The girl was engaged in the normal sort of conversation for a dinner among friends, speaking, gesturing where appropriate, and laughing from time to time.

No, what caught Abigail's attention — and earned her ire — was the girl's body language.

The small girl had adjusted in her seat to put her ever-so-slightly too close to Harry, compounding the effect by leaning subtly towards him. She took every opportunity to accidentally brush against him: leaning conspiratorially closer when she spoke, brushing against his arm when she gestured, placing a gentle hand on him to steady herself when she laughed. It was light, innocent, yet unmistakably deliberate: a series of continual subtle reminders that she was nearby, female, and not at all averse to being close to him.

Abigail had seen girls run that sort of campaign before, usually when one of her more competent housemates found a boy to her liking.

It was subtle.

It was demure.

And it was brutally effective.

Her glower turned ugly as she saw the new girl lean across Harry to tap Hermione on the shoulder and get her attention, pressing her entire torso flush against the boy's side in the process and even reaching down to brace herself with a hand on his thigh…

Did she just…

That… that… hussy!

Her white-knuckled hands trembled at her side and she sucked in air through her clenched teeth as Abigail struggled to restrain herself from storming angrily over to force that the little homewrecker to skitter back to whatever dark corner of the castle had spawned her. Harry had seen nothing of her since NEWTs had started, and Abigail did not want the first thing he saw on her return to be an angry scowl. That would set entirely the wrong tone. Instead, with a supreme effort of will, she managed to force a smile onto her face as she approached the table. That smile became much less forced when her friend noticed her approach.

"Abigail!" Harry greeted her with warmth in his smile and joy in his voice, shrugging off the new girl in order to stand up and welcome her to the table. "I missed you! How did everything go?"

"Quite well, I think," she reported. "At least the examiners seemed impressed. Thank you for your help with that, Harry!"

Without waiting for a response or asking permission, she leaned in and gave him a hug, which he enthusiastically returned. Holding him tightly, Abigail glared a wordless challenge over his shoulder at the dark-haired interloper who watched the exchange intently. The girl nodded once in calm acknowledgement of Abigail's unspoken claim, her expression unreadable.

After holding the hug for just a moment longer than could be considered strictly innocent, she gave her friend one last squeeze and released him.

"So, Harry," she began, gesturing to the dark-haired girl, "who is this?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot you hadn't met Su Li yet!" the young dragon said. "So, yeah, this is Su Li. She's been my lab partner in potions since just after Christmas break, and she asked last week if we could be friends, and since friends are awesome, so I said we could, and she's been really nice since. I've been looking forward to introducing you. I'm sure you'll like her, too!"

He turned to the newly named Su Li, "Su, this is Abigail Abercrombie, and she's been one of my best friends since last year with that troll thingy around Halloween. She's really great, and I bet you'll be great friends!"

"I am pleased to meet another of Harry's friends!" Su Li greeted Abigail with warm voice and a friendly smile that did not reach her eyes. "I am certain we will get along well."

"Likewise, Miss Li," Abigail replied in identical fashion, right down to the eyes.

4.9.2 All's fair in love and...

"Abigail!"

Su Li slumped back onto her own seat as her target stood up from under her. The interruption was of no real consequence, she had gotten the information she had been after, disappointing as it was, but that name…

That name was precisely what she had not wanted to hear.

"I missed you! How did everything go?"

NEWT testing should have ended only a few minutes ago; Abercrombie was supposed to seek her bed for the night immediately afterward, just like she and the rest of her year mates had done every day before this one. That had been the whole point behind rushing to fit her investigation in today!

Now the older girl had walked in on her at the most inconvenient possible moment and caught her red-handed. There was no way to spin this as anything innocent, no way to back off safely or argue down to a lesser charge. Now Abercrombie knew her intentions without room for obfuscation. Su Li was committed.

Potter and his freshly returned friend exchanged greetings, as Su Li carefully schooled her face into neutral expression to hide her trepidation.

All that remained was to see how Abercrombie reacted. Which of the rumors was accurate? Was Potter her little brother or her love interest?

"Quite well, I think. At least the examiners seemed impressed. Thank you for your help with that, Harry!"

The possessive hug that enveloped Potter between one word and the next could have been interpreted either way. The blistering glare was much less open to interpretation. Well... shit.

"So, Harry, who is this?"

As her target introduced her to this new threat, Su Li managed to collect enough of her wits to respond.

"I am pleased to meet another of Harry's friends!" she greeted the older girl with warm voice, a friendly smile, and a gimlet stare. "I am certain we will get along well."

"Likewise, Miss Li," Abercrombie replied in kind.

Su Li had managed to make a terrible first impression on a girl who could destroy her ambitions very easily, and that put her in a horribly vulnerable position. There was no retreat, not when Abercrombie knew her intentions, and there was no surrender, not with her mission. That made the tactical solution clear. The great general had laid it out clearly over two and a half millennia ago, and the prescription had not changed since.

Retreat was impossible and defeat loomed, and so, when her target returned to the table at her rival's side, Su Li practically glued herself to his side.

When on death ground, fight.

4.9.3 Dinner and a show

The Hufflepuff table was disturbed by a bit of a scuffle in the process of freeing up a seat for Abigail, a scuffle which ended with Hermione moving over by one seat to make room for her older friend beside Harry.

For her part, Su Li refused to give an inch, though she somehow managed to appear polite and considerate in the process. Later when she looked back on the event, even Abigail would be forced to admit with grudging admiration that it had been a remarkably talented bit of maneuvering on the petite girl's part.

At the time, she simply found it infuriating.

Once the seating arrangements were settled, dinner continued. Harry carried on with usual affable good cheer even while serving as the battleground for the first skirmish of a covert war between the two mismatched girls flanking him, a war fought using glares, body language, and passive-aggressive commentary all flying over his head — both figuratively and literally.

For those perceptive enough to catch on, mostly the older students, it made for quite the entertaining show.

4.9.4 Sobering realizations

Abigail slowly made her way back to the Slytherin dorms, stone-faced.

She had made the extra effort to escort Harry to the main gate and see him off for the evening, which had been no mean feat for the exhausted girl. Between her NEWT testing and that debacle at dinner, it had been a very long day, but the effort had been worthwhile, nonetheless. The walk had had allowed her to calm down a little, to catch up on some of their more secretive projects, and most importantly, to spend some extra time with Harry without that interloper spoiling it with her presence.

And it was that last bit that was responsible for her current mood.

As she made her way towards the main stairwell, Abigail considered her situation with Harry Potter. She had known that Granger was interested in Harry in a vague sort of way, but the bushy-haired girl was both generally agreeable and a good friend. Abigail had felt comfortable that the two of them would eventually manage to resolve things to her satisfaction, one way or another. Hermione was her friend, and their competition, if it eventually came to that, would be conducted accordingly. Abigail would willingly accept whatever came of that sort of conflict.

This Su Li was an entirely different creature.

Abigail frowned and folded her arms as she waited impatiently for the appropriate moving staircase to settle into place.

She had expected such a challenger to come eventually, but she had not expected it quite yet. Harry was a prime catch, even if he was something of a long-term investment; every girl in the school knew that much. As an individual he was intelligent, friendly, and charismatic. As the last Potter, he was wealthy and well-connected. As the Boy-Who-Lived, he was famous enough to have been a household name for as long as anyone in the student body could remember. And to top things off, he was stronger in terms of magic than the rest of his generation… combined.

Taken as a whole, those characteristics would normally have made him the most sought-after boy in the school —probably the most sought-after man in wizarding Britain, to be honest — however, two of his other salient qualities had gotten in the way. Harry was still quite young, and he could be exuberant to the point of obnoxiousness.

Most of Abigail's contemporaries had been warned off by the first. It was an understandable response; his age would have warned Abigail off, too, if not for the aftermath of that troll incident giving her the perfect excuse.

As for the second... well, Abigail was on the tail end of her teenage years, and after having suffered nearly seven years of teenaged drama and histrionics, she found such exuberance to be a net positive. Irrepressible good cheer was infinitely preferable to teenaged angst. That said, even she would readily agree that Harry could benefit from a spot of moderation. The younger girls, those closer to Harry's age and thus unaffected by the first concern, were less sure, both of themselves and of what they wanted out of life. They tended to find Harry's excessively enthusiastic good cheer to be more than a little intimidating.

The two effects had combined to leave Abigail's long-term plans for the young dragon essentially uncontested. Even Hermione, the closest thing she had to competition, had done little in the way of actual pursuit. Any progress she had made, she had mostly just fallen into by happenstance. No one else had been willing to throw her hat in the ring in any serious way.

Her smile melted into a scowl.

No one until the arrival of Su Li, anyway.

On the one hand, Abigail could hardly fault the girl for having good taste in men. On the other, the younger girl had been decidedly underhanded in her approach to the situation, which had killed any sympathy Abigail might have had for her. The Ravenclaw had waited to make her move until Abigail was otherwise occupied and unavailable to defend her position, and so she had returned from her NEWTs, irritable and exhausted, only to be blindsided by a new threat on an entirely unexpected front.

To make matters worse, the younger girl had shown neither hesitation nor remorse; instead, she had been at best indifferent to Abigail's irritation. There had not been the slightest hint of apology in the girl, and it was not on account of ignorance of her crimes! Miss Li had known what she had been about; it had all been right there in her body language and facial expressions, plain as day.

In fact, Abigail frowned thoughtfully, the younger girl had seemed almost too knowledgeable about such things.

Su Li had met her on that front as a peer, possibly even a superior, galling as that was to admit. How on earth had a second-year girl managed that?

It had taken Abigail years of careful observation to glean how that sort of thing was supposed to work, and Su Li was twelve! She couldn't possibly have had the time to pick up things the same way; she'd have had to start when she was what… six, maybe seven? For that matter, why would she have bothered? Abigail knew some girls developed early, but not that early!

Abigail scowled. Something about the whole situation seemed off, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. After a few long moments' fruitless consideration, Abigail shook her head, dismissing the question for now. The urgent bit was figuring out how to counter the girl's influence on Harry going forward, not getting bogged down speculating about its origins.

Fortunately, her conversation with Harry after-dinner had given some rather critical information. Harry was going to be quite busy over the summer with an overseas trip, and even though Abigail would not be joining him, neither would Li. The petite girl had not been read-in on the node situation, nor did she know of Harry's nature as a dragon.

At least Abigail could be confident that she wouldn't lose any ground while she was otherwise occupied during summer break... and otherwise occupied she would certainly be! Now that her NEWTs were out of the way and graduation was all but a formality, the time had come to join the workforce, and true to his promise of the previous year, Harry had delivered her a dream of a job with Hogs Haulage. She was ready and eager to get started, and there was apparently plenty of work to be done!

As for what that meant for her new romantic competition, well, it simply meant a few months' delay before she really had to worry. Despite her shock at dinner, Abigail knew she hadn't lost any real ground. She knew Harry, and the boy was still much too immature to realize what Su Li had been angling at, much less respond.

The girl's methods would only reach their true potency once puberty had begun in earnest for the boy and they could take advantage of the boy's involuntary physiological responses. Come next September, though, when school started up again and Harry was a bit more mature, Abigail imagined she would have quite the fight on her hands. It would be a challenge to…

Just outside the door to the Slytherin common room, Abigail froze midstride, eyes wide and mouth agape in horrified realization.

…when school started up again…

She was graduating; there would be no 'when school started up again' for her!

"Oh, bollocks!" she hissed. "That's why the little tart was so bloody smug!"

Abigail couldn't protect her interests if she wasn't there! She would be seeing Harry infrequently at best, and Li would be there right next to him every bloody damned day! How on earth was she going to get Harry to give her a fair shake if she wasn't there to keep her hat in the ring?

If only Harry were a few years older… Abigail sighed. If Harry were a few years older, a great many things about this situation would have been radically different. Without the age gap to contend with, Abigail would not have been waiting like this; she would have already wrapped Harry quite firmly around her little finger and ensured that he was bloody well delighted to be there!

If he were a few years older, Li's designs would have been cause for amusement, not concern.

However, the fact remained that Harry was not a few years older, and the means she might have used in that case were utterly unsuitable for use in this one. They were sickeningly so, in fact, no matter how easy it was to fall into those big green eyes or how often she might fantasize about them gazing into her own from an older but otherwise identical face. Taking advantage of her friend like that was unthinkable.

Thus, the question became: what could she do? The traditional methods weren't available, but neither was she willing to leave the cards to fall where they would.

Harry was smart, loyal, and had a memory like a steel trap; he would never forget a friend, and if he made a promise, she had no doubt he would move heaven and earth to see it through. If he were already hers, she would never worry about him straying, no matter how many passes Su Li made.

Unfortunately, he was not hers. Not yet. For that matter, he had no reason to think of her in a romantic light. At his current age, she was his friend, not anything deeper. She was fairly certain he didn't really have any solid understanding yet of what 'deeper' entailed. It wasn't as if she could just lay her hopes for the situation out logically and ask him to…

Her thoughts ground to a halt for one long moment.

Abigail blinked and followed that stray thought to its inevitable conclusion.

Given Harry's personality that would…

"Oh, God!" she groaned, burying her suddenly burning face in her hands.

Given Harry's personality that would be almost certain to work perfectly.

"This is going to be so embarrassing."

4.9.5 Odds and ends

Albus Dumbledore smiled at the scene before him. Argus Filch, hard-bitten curmudgeon that he was, sat across the desk, openly crying tears of joy as he cuddled the now-restored Mrs. Norris to his chest, the greatest bright spot in his world returned to him.

Pomona had declared the mandrake crop mature earlier that morning, and the harvest had gone quickly. While Poppy had handled Mr. Finch-Fletchley in the Infirmary, Albus had taken the opportunity to prepare and deliver the restorative draught to Argus personally. It was not often that he got to see the results of such charitable efforts in person.

After one last look, he decided to leave the man to his emotional reunion and to get on with the rest of his business. Today, that meant a trip to the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, where Rosmerta provided a pay-by-the-call floo connection in one of her back rooms. Normally, going out of his way just to use the floo would be a silly prospect, he had a floo-connection in his office, but this was a special circumstance.

It was also a ridiculous circumstance. One of his students needed assistance; a number of people were quite eager to provide that assistance; but her parents were too bloody proud to accept that assistance graciously. To get around that, he had had to get creative about providing it. Fortunately, he had a plan and knew just the man to call.

Unfortunately, while it was not strictly illegal, it was also not the sort of dealing he would care to acknowledge publicly, hence his reluctance to use his personal floo connection.

Albus' long beard swayed as he shook his head in disgust.

"Of all the bloody problems to have to deal with…" he muttered as he arrived at the pub.

Ducking into the establishment, the elderly wizard approached the bar and laid down a coin. After Rosmerta gave him a nod acknowledging the payment, he made his way to the backroom floo connection. Soon the fire flared green and a connection was established.

"Hello, old friend," he said.

He paused as he listened to an unheard response.

"It is good to speak with you as well, however, I am afraid this is a business call."

Another pause.

"I need to arrange for a particular individual to receive a large number of galleons."

This time, the response, while still unintelligible, was quite audible.

"Yes, I know you cannot authorize…"

The unintelligible voice interrupted him.

"I am aware you are not running a charity, but…"

The voice grew more irritable.

"I will be providing the funds," Albus interrupted loudly.

The voice went silent before making an interrogative sounding reply.

"It is a bit of assistance for a man who is too stubborn to accept financial help when it is needed," the Headmaster explained. "I need a means to pass him the money without it coming across as charity."

More mumbling.

"An extra sweepstakes drawing would work out quite well, I believe."

A questioning mumble.

"Arthur Weasley."

A pause.

"Yes, he is a subscriber," Albus assured him. "Address in Ottery-St. Catchpole."

The line was silent for a long moment before an affirmative reply came through.

"Two months, it is," Dumbledore nodded decisively. "I will have the funds in your hands by the end of the week."

A pleased mumble.

"The pleasure was mine."

The green light of the active floo connection flared, then petered out.

4.9.6 Awkward discussions

As had become the norm over the week and change since Hermione had insisted on going home for the summer without him, Harry found himself in the depths of the Hogwarts library, busily researching everything from wards to contract law to social customs in hopes of finding some other way to protect the bushy-haired girl in absentia.

He had told her back then that he had a solution, and he did, but it was a solution he was reluctant to employ. The approach had its advantages, but despite those, the young dragon had assiduously avoided taking it, for very good reason.

When Harry had first carried Hermione off to be his damsel, he had gone the route of registering her as his pet as far as the school was concerned. It was a good way to protect her from anyone that might be looking to harm her, and so far, it had worked quite well. The arrangement provided him the excuse to step in to protect her from any threats that arose, whether those threats were the likes of Ronald Weasley and the other Gryffindors — who had actually turned out to be pretty okay ever since he had told them off that one time — or those horrible slavers and such Mr. Snape told him about.

It worked nicely, as long as he was there with her.

But that was the rub, right there; it worked nicely, as long as he was there with her. The fact was that the arrangement would only be effective if he were in place to deal with problems as they happened. It was based on a school rule, and it specifically did not justify hunting an offender down after the event. If he wanted to put a protection in place that would justify that — and thus would carry weight beyond his immediate presence — he would have to go further.

A lot further.

The next step along that chain was to publicly declare his protection, formally placing her under the aegis of House Potter. At its core, such an arrangement was essentially a public notice to all and sundry that if attacked her, the House of Potter would employ its assets to protect, or failing that to avenge, her.

It was that last that was the really important bit, because it was that last that gave the declaration teeth. It was essentially a line in the metaphorical sand — an emphatic statement of 'this far and no farther, or I will make you regret it' — and so long as it was publicly declared beforehand and the forms were followed, it was a threat which the issuer could carry out to the hilt. Actions done in pursuit of such claims would not face legal challenge, though of course, choosing to employ such means also meant forfeiting one's own right to any assistance that might otherwise have been due from the legal authorities.

That ever-present threat was the bedrock on which wizarding society was built, and all Houses had the right to make them, though the ability to prosecute them varied. A newly formed, lesser House might command enough respect to give would-be assailants pause — after all, even a single skilled wizard could be a dangerous opponent, especially one out for blood and willing to die to avenge his family — but for the most part, the calculus of risk was a little fuzzy for such little fish. The danger of retaliation from the victim could be close to commensurate with the benefits gained, depending on the circumstance.

Crossing an Ancient and Noble House, on the other hand, with the centuries' worth of accumulated wealth and privilege that status implied, tended to be a much less ambiguous prospect.

The Head of a lesser House might challenge the offender to a duel, or in extreme cases, might dispatch a few particularly talented House members to deal with the problem violently, but for the most part, they would generally make use of their legal privileges to uncover a crime and leave enforcement for the legal authorities. It was simply a more realistic use of limited resources.

Conversely, the Head of a greater House might well lead off with assassins, follow up with a small army of mercenaries, and conclude with the wiping out of the offender's entire family.

That last bit about wiping out families had seemed a tad extreme to Harry when he'd learned of it, but wiping out the entire family was hardly a requirement, so he could just not do that. In any event, the stark simplicity of it all had appealed strongly to the young dragon when he had learned of it, and he'd been all for going ahead immediately back when he had first carried Hermione off, only for Madam Pomfrey's strong objection stay his hand.

As the Healer had explained, the devil was in the details... or in this case, in the unintended consequences. Such a formal announcement took the form of officially claiming the one to be protected as a retainer of House Potter in an arrangement commonly known as a servant contract, and that carried consequences for those involved. The exact nature of those consequences varied depending on the circumstances of those involved, but they would have been quite severe for Harry and his bushy-haired damsel as they were at the time.

Indeed, those consequences and their severity had not changed during the intervening year, nor would they for quite a few years to come, hence his extensive search for a better alternative. Unfortunately, despite investigating many, many options, the young dragon had had precious little in the way of success.

His initial impulse had been to simply insist on keeping Hermione at his side and dragging her along on the trip despite her protests; however, he had dismissed the idea almost as soon as it had occurred to him. Harry had made promises about what he would and would not do back when he had carried her off, and unilaterally dictating her itinerary over her stated objections would have been a very long step into unacceptable territory.

With that option off the table, the problem had become one of keeping his damsel safe while he was away.

His next thought had been to hire a goblin security team to guard her; he had a history of successful engagements of that sort, after all. He'd already set an appointment with Mr. Slackhammer for later in the week to arrange for one to look after the Lair in his absence, and while he might incur a surcharge for a second one on such short notice, such would hardly have broken his budget. Unfortunately, Hermione's insistence on alone-time with her parents had left that idea stillborn. If his damsel wasn't willing to let him be there, then an entire goblin fire-team would be right out.

That particular condition had ruled out more of his options than anything else.

Harry had even briefly considered letting the Grangers use the Lair while he was away. It was out of the way, defensible, and he was certain Mr. Bane and the rest of the clan would be willing to look out for the Grangers while Harry was away. They patrolled all the approaches as a matter of course, so it would hardly have been an extra imposition. However, Hermione had also said her parents couldn't afford to take off from their work, so that wouldn't do, either. Plus, he'd have that goblin security team at the Lair anyway, which violated his damsel's alone-time condition, so that was a 'no' on two counts.

Magic held some intriguing possibilities. An emergency portkey was an obvious choice — one that Harry would be pursuing as soon as it could be arranged — but it was insufficient on its own. Portkeys could be thwarted, by wards or even by something as simple as surprise. If Hermione were stunned before she could trigger the device, or if she spent too long trying to get her parents out with her... no, it was not enough.

Defensive wards on the Granger family home would have been ideal. Well designed, carefully installed, and properly powered, a defensive ward could turn nearly any building into a veritable fortress, but from what Harry understood from his research on the subject, such wards took time to emplace. While simple wards could be cast on the fly provided the caster was sufficiently skilled, they were little more than a charm that targeted an area rather than a person or an object. A proper defensive ward was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Any defensive ward worthy of the name was a many-layered affair incorporating many diverse forms of magic into its structure, and each of those layers required time to settle and integrate during construction. Because of those waiting periods, most defensive wards took months to emplace, and a proper job like the Hogwarts wards or the wards Harry envisioned for his Lair would be composed of tens of thousands of layers and could easily take decades to install.

Even the most basic defensive wards, the sort that did little more than warn the inhabitants of danger and buy them a few scant minutes to prepare a defense — and consequently the sort that were wholly inadequate for his damsel, in Harry's considered opinion — would take more time than he had before the end of term, especially since he would have to hire them done instead of popping down there to do them himself. In hindsight, he really should have put more effort into learning to ward things himself, but there had just been so many other things to do.

He shook his head and dismissed the thought. There was no help for it now.

One by one, ideas had come to him, and one by one, they had proven unsuitable. Harry had been slowly resigning himself to the fact that there was only the one real option that met his damsel's conditions and kept her acceptably safe. All that remained was to come to terms with the necessity and the consequences that would linger for years to come.

It was all very heavy, and thus Harry was quite pleased with the interruption when Abigail walked up behind him.

"Harry?" Abigail spoke to her draconic friend.

"Abigail!" he greeted her with an enthusiastic smile. "How are you doing today?"

"Can I talk to you for a minute," she asked.

Harry cocked an inquisitive eyebrow, "Sure, we can do that. Take a seat."

After doing so, Abigail fidgeted awkwardly for a few long moments while looking anywhere but at her younger friend until Harry's curiosity finally reached a breaking point.

"So, what did you want to talk about, Abigail?"

"Well, um… oh this is awkward!" Abigail began before sighing and taking a deep breath to set herself. "Well, I was just recently thinking about the future, and it occurred to me that I'm graduating in just a couple of weeks."

"Oh, yeah! Congratulations, Abigail!" Harry said warmly. "Good work on that!"

"Thank you, Harry," she nodded and flashed him a sunny smile before continuing. "The thing is, I was thinking about our friendship when I came to that realization, which forced me to realize that I was not going to be on campus next year with you."

"Oh, I hadn't thought about that," her friend's voice was much more subdued as he considered that wrinkle. "It's going to be a lot harder to keep in touch with you on a different schedule, isn't it?"

"Indeed, it is. Especially with the initial project you're going to have me working on," Abigail agreed. "That will have me traveling all over the country for quite a while. That survey is going to keep me busy for at least half a year, even with the other new-hires to help." She sighed gustily, shaking her head at the prospect. "It's a good thing I did so much work on endurance casting lately; casting that many diagnostic charms is going to be exhausting."

She shook her head and continued. "Anyway, that means you're going to be at Hogwarts next year, and I'm going to be just about everywhere but."

"Yeah, I'm gonna miss you," Harry acknowledged softly, then his expression brightened. "But it's only going to be half a year, then you'll be mostly back in Hogsmeade, right? That's not too long, I guess, and it's not like we're going to stop being friends or anything!"

His smile dimmed slightly as he took in the older girl's still somber expression. "We're not, right?"

"No! No, we're not going to stop being friends, Harry. I have no intention of that!" Abigail was quick to reassure him, leaning in with a warm smile to give a quick hug. Reassurance delivered, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, visibly steeling herself to broach the new topic.

For his part, Harry waited attentively. Abigail's expression firmed, she opened her eyes, and she began to speak.

"It's just… well, I just had something important planned, and it's a bit difficult to do from a distance," she sighed. "The thing is, Harry, while it is true that our friendship is very important to me, I was angling for something a little more… significant, in the long term."

The young dragon cocked his currently human head with an air of childish curiosity and innocently asked, "What do you mean?"

The older girl took in his naïve, trusting, and oh-so-very young expression for one long moment before letting out an explosive sigh.

"I guess it's probably for the best to just get it over with," Abigail muttered before continuing in a more normal voice. "Harry, I am interested in you as a potential husband in the future."

Harry's currently human eyes popped wide open at that.

"Before you say anything," Abigail ploughed on, not about to allow herself to be interrupted after all the trouble she'd had getting started. "I know you're a long way from being ready to make any serious decisions on that front, but I wanted to put all my cards on the table before I left."

"I'm not willing to start anything right now, our ages are too different, and more importantly you are much too young at the moment for that to be in any way appropriate," she continued in a rush, "but in a few years, we will both be older and that age difference will mean very little. I like you as you are now, Harry, and I see a lot of potential for that to deepen into something more as you as you get older."

With her piece said, Abigail fell silent.

"Um… thank you?" Harry managed after a moment or two of shocked silence. "I mean, that's really flattering, and I like you too, Abigail, but, um… I don't really know what to say…" He frowned uncertainly, "What did you want me to do?"

"Mostly, I just wanted you to keep me in mind for that role as you get older," Abigail explained. "I won't be around with you at school, and I wanted to make sure you didn't forget me in favor of the other girls who will be closer at hand."

"I'm not going to forget you, Abigail!" he protested, mortified at the very idea. "You're my friend, and I don't forget friends!"

"I know that, Harry," she assured him, "but if I hadn't said anything you would've had no reason to think of me in a romantic light when the time came for that sort of thing. I just wanted to make sure that, as you do get old enough to think of such things, you don't make any hasty decisions without giving me a fair shake."

"Oh... I guess that makes sense," the young dragon slowly nodded as he rolled the idea around in his head. "So, you want me to promise to talk to you before I do anything like that, then?"

"Before anything that would preclude us building such a relationship in the future, yes," she clarified. "I'm specifically not asking for a promise of future commitment, just a promise of consideration, and of course that promise would be reciprocal. If my interests were to change in the future, I would talk things over with you before making a commitment, too."

Harry thought about that for a long moment, carefully considering the deal from every angle he could imagine, just as Mr. Slackhammer had instructed him to think through such things.

"So, we would be agreeing to hold off on any romantic-type stuff with anyone else without discussing it between the two of us first?" he summarized.

"That's it, exactly," Abigail agreed.

Harry slowly nodded as he considered the idea.

He might not really get the whole kissing and making-babies thing, yet, but the young dragon knew quality when he saw it, and Abigail had that in spades. She was already pretty awesome as a friend, and he had no doubt that when he was old enough to really wrap his head around the whole thing, she would prove to be at least as awesome in that regard.

He also knew investments, and the deal Abigail had offered, if he understood it correctly, was essentially the equivalent of a stock option, a guaranteed opportunity to buy in the future if conditions proved favorable. He could see no downsides to such a thing, and if she were willing to offer it for the price of a conversation — a conversation that he would likely seek out anyway, for her advice if nothing else — he would be an utter fool to pass it up.

While Harry might be young and at times arguably a tad foolish, he was not nearly foolish enough for that.

"That seems like a fair deal. I agree to those terms."

"Deal!" Abigail agreed immediately, sounding quite relieved about the whole thing.

Although come to think of it, the course of action he had been considering when she arrived was just the sort of thing that required one of those conversations. In fact, he probably ought to address that right now; he could use some advice, anyway.

"Um, that reminds me, Abigail," he began, "there's something I've been looking at that we should probably talk about."

4.9.7 Damage control

"What's that, Harry?" she asked, her previous giddy relief suddenly freezing into an icy lump of foreboding.

What had he been working on that their previous conversation could possibly have reminded him of?

"You know how the professors and I are going on a trip at the beginning of summer?"

"Yes…" Abigail nodded slowly.

"Well, Hermione insisted that she was going to go home, instead," he explained. "So, she's going to be back at home while I'm across the Atlantic, and I'm kinda worried about her. I've been trying to figure out how to keep her safe while I'm gone."

"Have you told her about the risks?" she asked immediately, concerned for her bushy-haired friend. "I know not all muggleborn get disappeared when they're away from school, but enough do."

"I did, but she insisted that she wanted to spend time with her parents," the dragon averred. "She wouldn't budge on it."

"Then take her parents along for the trip," Abigail suggested immediately. "You said it would last a month, right? After a month traveling together, she'll probably have had her fill of her parents' company and be ready to get back to school."

"Yeah, I suggested that, too."

"And she refused?" Abigail surmised.

Harry nodded glumly.

Abigail let out an exasperated sigh, raising a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose in a futile attempt to ward off an oncoming headache. "I suppose you want me to talk it over with her?"

"If you want to try, that'd be great!" Harry brightened momentarily before he seemed to deflate. "I kinda doubt it'll work, though. Hermione can be really stubborn about things sometimes, and I think this is going to be one of them."

"What do you plan to do if I can't convince her?"

"I've been looking for options for the last week, and the only thing I can see working is to take her on as a retainer," the young dragon explained. "That would publicly mark her as mine, so I could legally retaliate against anyone who tried anything, and everyone would know it. It's not perfect, but it's the best I can think of."

"A servant contract!" Abigail yelped before leaning closer to hiss, "You know what that will look like, right?"

"Madam Pomfrey explained it to me when I was looking into options to help her out last year," he said with a glum nod. "I just can't think of anything else that might work — at least not anything I can get in place on such short notice. If she'd told me about it back at Christmas, I might have been able to get some wards on her house or something, but not this late."

"Yeah… yeah, I can see that," his older friend said, nodding slowly in grudging agreement. "Still, the hit to her reputation… she'd never be able to find a husband in the wizarding world if you two go this route, not one worth her time, anyway." Abigail shook her head as she considered the matter further, "The only way you could keep it from being that bad would be…"

She trailed off as she realized precisely why their earlier conversation had reminded him of this topic.

"…oh."

"Yeah," Harry nodded at her unspoken realization. "Like Madam Pomfrey told me back then, at our age, people are going to assume the worst one way or another, and the only way to keep things respectable is to set things up for 'the worst' to be a respectable thing for Hermione to be doing, which means…"

"You're planning to give her a silver torc, aren't you Harry?" Abigail said in a dead sort of voice.

"Yeah," her draconic friend admitted sounding guilty.

Damnit! Not even fifteen bloody minutes before… she sighed.

Abigail couldn't bring herself to blame Harry for this; he really seemed to have considered the situation, and this was the only way she could see to protect his friend from the unpleasantness of the wizarding world, given the unreasonable restrictions that stubborn bushy-haired twit had forced onto his shoulders…

No, she stopped herself, taking a deep breath, that was unkind. Hermione was her friend, and she was still very sheltered from the realities of life in the wizarding world. Hermione Granger hadn't had one of her childhood friends disappear in the middle of the night, and Hermione Granger hadn't spent the better part of a year after her OWLs struggling to plot out a career path that wouldn't involve getting on her knees during the job interview. Perhaps it was understandable that the younger girl wouldn't see eye-to-eye on the necessity of being careful.

Though understandable was by no means the same as excusable.

Brown eyes narrowed; Abigail really ought to have a discussion with that girl about her unreasonable expectations very soon.

"I see…" she temporized, buying herself more time to think.

Like Harry had said, Granger could be amazingly stubborn sometimes when she got an idea in her head, and Abigail trusted her younger friend's read on the situation. She would still try to talk the girl out of it, of course, but success probably wasn't in the cards.

Likewise, she couldn't fault him for considering the drastic step of offering the girl a silver torc, the rough equivalent of an engagement ring in European wizarding culture, in the bargain. Had Granger been the daughter of another of Harry's retainers or had Harry been much older than she was, the optics might have been different, but as it was, a silver torc would be the only way to allow the younger girl to save any face. Without one, she would be trading away her good name for safety, and Harry would never allow that to happen to one of his friends.

Servant contracts were ostensibly intended to facilitate the exchange of a service; it was the reason they were commonly referred to as servant contracts, after all. That necessarily implied that the servant should have some sort of valuable skill. It was that skill, their 'service', that they were bartering for their patron's protection. Hermione was a very smart young girl, full of enthusiasm and potential, but the fact remained that she was just that: a young girl. She was just approaching the end of her second year of schooling, and she had neither learned skills — at least, nothing worthy of public recognition — nor a rare inborn talent to bring to the table.

The only thing she did have with which to barter, as far as the wizarding public was concerned, were the clothes on her back, or more aptly, the body under them. With a servant contract in place, it would be assumed, rightly or wrongly, that Hermione was paying for the protection of House Potter in that coin. Without the accompanying torc, that meant she would be seen as Harry's plaything, only a few steps up from a street-corner whore... and even those few steps would only be on account of the exclusivity of her supposed clientele.

On the other hand, the gifting of a silver torc would make the arrangement, and the associated servant, respectable. The public would still assume that there were sexual shenanigans occurring behind closed doors — there was no way around that, not with a young lord taking in an otherwise unrelated and unskilled girl so close to his own age — but the silver torc put any such shenanigans in the context of a long-term relationship, one eventually leading to either a concubinage agreement or, much more commonly, to marriage.

Both of those presented some obvious challenges for her own plans, of course, challenges which would need to be addressed in due time, but first…

Abigail frowned uncertainly for a long moment before mustering the will to ask, "You are just doing this to protect Hermione's reputation, right Harry? I mean, you're not actually…"

"No!" Harry rushed to explain. "I mean, I like Hermione and all, but I don't even really get what that sort of thing is all about yet. I mean, I get from what people have told me that the whole marriage and making-babies thing is a really big deal and all, but I still don't get why, and I figure that means at least I'm still way too young to be making any decisions about that sort of thing, plus, making decisions about things you don't understand seems like a pretty dunderheaded thing to do, and I don't want to be a dunderhead, and that's one of the reasons why I didn't want to do this in the first place, but I ain't been able to figure out how to get around doing it, and I didn't really know what to do, so I was looking for…"

Abigail sighed in relief as Harry continued to babble his way through a surprisingly complete rehash of their earlier conversation. His denial opened options for dealing with the situation without losing out completely.

While the silver torc indicated long-term intentions, it was most certainly not a finalized contract. If it were, there would be no reason to distinguish between it and the golden torc that would eventually take its place when a more permanent arrangement was finalized. If circumstances changed, then the silver torc could be revoked. Such a revocation was, of course, not without consequences itself, but with a little care those consequences could be managed... particularly if the torc was exchanged for another, rather than taken away outright. After a long enough period, it could even be done without any debilitating harm to Hermione's reputation. She would still be tied to House Potter, but she would not necessarily be in the way of Abigail's designs.

For that matter, even if that silver torc eventually transformed from a convenient fiction into reality, it wasn't necessarily the final word for Abigail's hopes. While both were very uncommon, neither concubinage nor multiple marriages were strictly forbidden by law. In fact, as verbose as the wizarding legal code could be on the most arcane and obscure of topics, it had surprisingly few restrictions on such things.

Of course, no laws had been made on the subject because such formal restrictions were generally unnecessary.

Women amenable to the idea of sharing their man with another were… atypical, to say the least. Most tended object quite vociferously whenever the possibility reared its ugly head, and ignoring the vociferous objections of an armed, irate witch tended to be unwise, particularly for the person sleeping with her. At least, it was unwise if that person had any interest in waking up again.

Abigail was certainly not sanguine about the idea of sharing Harry, but neither was she ready to rule out the possibility entirely... not this early, at any rate. Though that said, there was no bloody way, in this world or any other, that she was going to be the one to raise the possibility!

She turned her attention back to her friend, who was still in the process of babbling an explanation.

"…and then you said you were interested in me as a husband sometime in the future, and that was awesome, and I'm flattered and all, and don't get me wrong, but I had no idea of how to respond to that, either, and I was really confused, so I thought I'd ask for your opinion about…"

"So, you don't intend it to be permanent, then?" Abigail confirmed aloud, interrupting Harry's babbling dissertation.

Harry shut his mouth with a click and shook his head.

"Okay, then," she nodded. "I don't think that poses any insurmountable issues with what we were talking about earlier, but thank you for telling me, Harry. You did the right thing."

The young dragon breathed a sigh of relief.

"How about we do this," Abigail proposed. "I'll have a talk with Hermione as soon as I can and let you know if I can persuade her to take a less boneheaded stance on things. If that works, then we can avoid the whole business. If it doesn't work, then I'll let you know, and you can do what you have to."

Harry nodded agreeably.

"Now then, I'm feeling stressed about this whole thing, and I'm sure you are too, so…" she held out her arms in a wordless request.

Harry, quite pleased to comply, hugged his friend with great enthusiasm.

4.9.8 Artisan

Later that same evening, the hissing roar of an acetylene torch filled the Lair as Harry, currently in his human shape, worked with steel. The glowing metal stretched and deformed in his hands like taffy as he shaped it into another branching structure much like the one he had gifted to Madam Marchbanks several months before. As the young dragon reached the end of a small branch, he pinched off the excess and popped the still-glowing scrap of metal into his mouth, chewing and swallowing the morsel with every indication of relish.

Like taffy, indeed.

In the time since the most recent staff meeting, Mr. Snape had managed to confirm that a regard gift would be appropriate for their coming meeting with the Confederacy leadership, and Harry had volunteered to take care of it. Of course, Hermione had thrown a spanner in the works with her insistence on going home for the summer, which had delayed things, but now that Abigail was handling the next steps on that mess, Harry had time enough to work on other projects for the first time in nearly two weeks.

Unlike his previous bonsai model, this one was nearly as tall as Harry himself... in his human form, that is, and it was consequently a fair bit more work to build. Of course, this time around, Harry also knew what he was doing, so the process was going much more quickly than it had the first time.

Soon, he would finish the sculpting, and then he would begin adding the 'antenna' inlays and the runic 'leaves'. Probably another day or so of work by his estimation. Then it would be time to add Suze's carving work for the base — already done except for the final fitting to the tree's 'trunk' — and another bit that Mrs. McGonagall was working on, and then the regard gift would be complete. Barring unforeseen difficulties, it would be ready in plenty of time for their trip.

After that, he needed to pack his personal luggage for the trip. Mr. Snape had said he was handling logistics for them all, so that luggage consisted almost entirely of books to keep him from getting bored. Harry didn't think it would be particularly boring, but Mr. Snape had insisted.

That had been an odd conversation, Harry thought as he paused to reheat the workpiece.

Having Mr. Snape of all people insist on someone keeping themselves entertained was unusual, to say the least. The potions master held himself aloof from such frivolous considerations whenever possible. Of course, the truly odd thing was that it made sense in context. Those normally pointless frivolities would serve an eminently practical purpose during the coming trip, hence Mr. Snape's uncharacteristic interest in the topic.

As the dour man had explained, young children would typically spend at least part of any long trip, be it by plane, by train, or by car, sleeping and "giving the adults responsible for them some blessed relief from their usual puerile antics." For Harry, this was unfortunately not a viable option, not with most of the trip taking place in enclosed vehicles. Harry still couldn't maintain his shapeshift while asleep, and the sudden accidental appearance of a dragon inside a car or plane, especially one whose interior was decidedly smaller than said dragon

Well, it just didn't bear thinking about, really.

In any event, it made the materials he chose to take along to keep him occupied, productive, and above all awake, a thoroughly necessary bit of kit. Thus Mr. Snape had suggested that it would be best to err on the side of caution and take some extra along. The dour man had even warned Harry that he was packing an air-horn himself as backup for that purpose; had looked positively gleeful at the prospect of using it, too.

The young dragon smiled at the memory as he set the torch aside, his workpiece once more glowing a cheerful orange, and got back to work.

It was good to see his friends happy, even if it was at his own expense. Of course, he might have felt differently if it had been a credible threat, although Harry hadn't felt the need to inform his friend of his error. The air-horn wasn't very loud at all by Harry's standards. It wasn't even as loud as his rifle, and Harry was hardly bothered by that.

Heck, he could growl louder than either one; that could get loud enough to knock the squirrels out of the trees, which was really funny even if he didn't do it so much anymore.

The young dragon frowned.

The sight of Suze, temporarily deaf and bleeding out her ears from her ruptured eardrums had been more than enough to teach Harry to be more careful, even if Madam Pomfrey had been able to fix it right quickly and Suze didn't hold a grudge.

Now Harry was much more cautious about that sort of thing.
 
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Section 4.10 - Deception
4.10 Deception

4.10.1 Defense in depth

The sound of a gunfire echoed through a shooting range deep under Gringotts' London Branch as Harry Potter, currently in his human form, demonstrated his hard-earned skills with each of his rifles under the evaluating eye of Sergeant-Major Hooktalon.

It had been a few days since his conversation with Abigail, and Harry had come to Gringotts once again, this time seeking to arrange several things for his coming trip. In a rather unusual circumstance, this time his requests had sat right on the edge in terms of complexity, too involved to handle while he waited, yet simple enough to arrange in a few hours. As a result, Harry had taken advantage of the long wait to take the good Sergeant-Major up on his standing offer to evaluate Harry's marksmanship.

So far, the dragon had done well, though Hooktalon was not one to leave anything half-done.

"Mr. Potter, the ammunition feed of your weapon has just jammed!" Hooktalon barked in his drill sergeant tenor, initiating the final part of his test. "Clear it!"

Harry immediately stripped out the appropriate parts of his rifle, demonstrated that they had been cleared, reassembled the device, reloaded, and returned to shooting. As he emptied the remainder of the magazine, Hooktalon called a halt to the exercise.

"Acceptable work, Mr. Potter," the Sergeant-Major pronounced in his strident voice, the high praise eliciting a broad smile from the young dragon. "Keep at it, and in another decade or two you might improve enough to be called good! For now, remember to keep your breathing relaxed; your groupings at distance are still too loose!"

Harry nodded seriously, committing the advice to memory.

"Now, Mr. Potter," the infantry-gob began, this time in a gruff, yet almost paternal tone, "You have proven yourself able to competently handle a rifle, and we would normally begin teaching you to use a pistol at this point, starting with a Browning or something similar from the armory. However, I think it'd be best for you to get something a little fancier. I understand you're going on a trip to the Confederacy, and I know a fellow up in Michigan — human, but a decent sort all the same — who ought to be able to set you up, goes by the name of Ed…"

"Why not just get started like normal?" Harry interrupted with a frown. "I mean, it just needs to shoot, right? Why would I need 'fancy'?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Potter, a gob's first pistol is an important thing. Your rifle is never too far away, but your pistol is on you at all times, so you're going to want to get something a little more…" he trailed off awkwardly as he searched for the appropriate word.

The young dragon waited for him to continue with bright, eager eyes.

"Look, lad, what I'm saying is that you're the sort of young gentleman that rubs elbows with the likes of the Vice-Chairman," Hooktalon explained, finally finding an acceptable way to get his point across. "A standard-issue Browning works just fine for one of my squaddies, but you're going to need something a bit more impressive to fit in with all the swanky aristocratic-types…"

The sound of a clearing throat issued conspicuously from the doorway.

Whirling to face the new noise, the Sergeant-Major snapped to attention as soon as he identified the newcomer,

"Mr. Vice-Chairman, sir!"

"Hi there, Mr. Slackhammer!" Harry greeted his business partner with a cheerful wave.

"At ease, Sergeant-Major," the rotund goblin nodded to his subordinate, a faintly amused tone in his voice. "If I might have a moment to speak with your student, here, I am afraid we swanky aristocratic-types have some things to discuss."

Hooktalon turned an ever so slightly lighter shade of khaki, "Yes, sir, Mr. Vice-Chairman, sir!"

And with that, the infantry-gob nodded to Harry and retreated post-haste to the other end of the range.

"Congratulations on your accomplishment, Mr. Potter," the dapper goblin congratulated.

"Thanks!"

"Your marksmanship is, however, not why I have sought you out," he explained. "I am here to inform you of the results of your requests."

"Oh! Good," the young dragon said brightly. "Did everything work out?"

"Everything for your coming expedition, yes," Slackhammer nodded. "As requested, I have arranged for you to hire a squad of infantry gobs to provide security for your Lair while you are away…"

"Griphook's squad?" Harry asked intently.

"Yes, Mr. Potter," the dapper goblin sighed. "It took a fair bit of shuffling, but I was able to assign the good Color Sergeant to your lair's security detail once again."

"Good!" he gave a satisfied nod.

"The emergency portkeys for your young ladies were easy enough to arrange," the rotund goblin reached into a coat pocket and withdrew a brown envelope. Handing it to his young partner, he continued, "Two small pins. Say the activation word written on the note within, and they will trigger, attempting to transport the wearer to Gringotts' portkey reception area. Please inform the wearers that due to their small size, the pins will not carry more than one charge, and that anyone arriving via such a portkey will be forcibly detained by Gringotts' security forces until both their identity and mental state can be verified. It is company policy."

"I'll do that, Mr. Slackhammer," the young dragon agreed with a satisfied nod, tucking the envelope into his own pocket for later. "And the rest?"

"I have arranged for Gringotts to keep a weather eye out for your Miss Granger during your absence, which took the greatest amount of effort to coordinate as we do not normally provide such services," he replied. "We will, of course, keep our distance per your requirements, but we will monitor the registries and the news. Should she show up in any sort of public trouble, magical or non, we will step in to defend her on your behalf legally... or physically, as the case may be."

"And the fees?" the young dragon asked.

"As agreed, a retainer plus individual fees for services rendered," the goblin stated. "On account of our excellent business relationship, I am waiving any surcharge for the short notice."

"Thanks, Mr. Slackhammer!" he said brightly, before continuing in a more apologetic tone. "I would have given you more notice, but I didn't find out it'd be necessary until recently, myself. Sorry."

"These things happen, Mr. Potter," the dapper goblin waved off the apology. "Had I thought you simply neglectful, I would not have waived the surcharge."

The young dragon nodded agreeable, that seemed reasonable. "Anyway, I guess that's everything, then?"

"There is one other thing before I allow you to return to your discussion with the good Sergeant-Major, Mr. Potter," Slackhammer noted.

"What is it?" Harry asked curiously.

"I have had the opportunity to make preliminary inquiries regarding the business proposal you brought up during your last visit," the rotund goblin explained. "The Board is cautiously interested, though their willingness to float a loan of that magnitude is heavily dependent on the details of the proposed purchase."

"Yeah, I kinda expected that," Harry agreed with a nod. "The numbers are still borderline at the moment, even with the new locomotive design."

"They have suggested that you run a detailed survey of the assets in question," he relayed. "They feel that the additional information is needed before a final decision can be made."

"I've got that in the works," his young business partner agreed with a nod. "Thanks for checking, though!"

"It was my pleasure as always, Mr. Potter," the dapper goblin said with a toothy smile. "And, if I may, I wish you safe and productive travels."

He was answered with an equally toothy smile; then the young dragon went off to find Hooktalon and finish their earlier discussion.

4.10.2 Headstrong

White-knuckled and grinding her teeth, Abigail glared at the head of bushy brown hair as it disappeared around the corner, its owner walking off in a huff.

That… that…

Then Abigail huffed as well as she gave up on finding the appropriate term to encapsulate what she had just witnessed, too annoyed to think straight. She had known the girl could be stubborn, but there was stubborn and then there was pigheaded. Granger had bloody well jumped over the line into the second category in that conversation.

Abigail had gone into this almost expecting her general explanations about the dangers involved to fall on deaf ears, which they had. After all, had Granger heeded those sorts of explanations before, the conversation would have been unnecessary. What Abigail had not expected was for the stubborn brat to summarily disregard her other story, a heartfelt tale of personal tragedy.

In an effort to help the girl get a visceral feel for the gravity of the situation, Abigail had told her of the abduction of Alice, her childhood friend, and how the girl, barely eleven years old at the time, had been whisked off to an unknown but presumably horrible fate. The story was an emotional one for her, difficult to get through even after more than half a decade, but Abigail had forged on in hopes of helping her new friend avoid the same fate.

It had not elicited the reaction she had hoped for.

Instead, Granger had demanded to know whether Harry had 'put her up to this' and, when Abigail had been stunned silent by the non-sequitur, had immediately launched on an extensive rant about how thoughtless the boy had been for forcing Abigail to dredge up such a painful memory just to push his argument, about how he shouldn't be using Abigail like that, about how going to see her parents was important, and about how she had told him before that she was not going to budge on that.

The completely unexpected response had left Abigail shocked and more than a little angry with the girl: on her own behalf for how she had trampled on some rather tender emotions, on Harry's behalf for the baseless accusations when the boy had nothing but good intentions, and on the behalf of poor Alice whose memory deserved more consideration than had been shown. So in response, Abigail had made some choice remarks of her own. One thing had led to another, and the resulting argument had escalated until Granger stormed off in a huff, her previous irritation at Harry now mostly pointed at Abigail.

She had hoped she could get the girl to see reason, but if anything, Harry had understated the case when he had termed her 'really stubborn sometimes'. It seemed that when Hermione got an idea well and truly into her head, that idea would not be shifted come hell or high water.

Abigail sighed.

Irritating or not, she could only hope that tendency would not come back to bite the younger girl in the future. Those sorts of practical lessons were usually painful. For that matter, all too often in the wizarding world, they could be lethal, and sometimes… sometimes, they could be so very much worse.

She shook her head with a sympathetic wince. Dwelling on what might happen would serve no one, not when the girl in question categorically refused to do anything about it herself or, for that matter, allow anything to be done about it by anyone else. For now…

For now, Abigail had unpleasant news to take to the library, where Harry would be waiting to hear how things had gone.

4.10.3 Operational flexibility

It had all been going so well, Su Li lamented, then she had made one little miscalculation, and now she was scrambling to recover. It hardly seemed fair, but there really was nothing to be done but to get on with it.

For that recovery, she needed information, and like most of her bookish housemates, the second year Ravenclaw had come to the library to gather it. Unlike her housemates, she knew full well that the information she sought did not reside on the shelves. The book she was thumbing through was nothing more than a convenient excuse, chosen for its location rather than its content. Its subject matter was the farthest thing from her mind.

Instead, Su Li was listening intently to the goings-on on the other side of the bookshelf before her. There sat one of the library's reading tables, the one that normally hosted her target's study sessions. Although currently empty, if he stuck to his usual schedule, it should soon be occupied by both Potter and his friend, Abigail Abercrombie.

Abercrombie.

It had been not even two weeks since Su Li had received her orders from the Clan, and already her campaign had hit its first major snag in the form of the older girl. Abercrombie was still mostly an unknown, and Su Li needed more information in order to determine how best to handle her. After how badly she had botched their initial meeting, that meant Su Li was now reduced to covert reconnaissance.

Again.

She thought she had gotten past that stage! Su Li lamented internally. At least she'd gotten the information on her target, even if the cost had been far higher than she'd anticipated. Now she knew her target had not yet hit puberty; his lack of a physical reaction had made that abundantly clear. He had certainly looked — had been blatantly obvious about it, in fact — however, looking had been his only response to her flirting. Of course in hindsight, the fact that he had shown no fear of getting caught staring was itself a good indicator that he didn't understand what she had to offer or why he found it so interesting.

That meant he was still in that awkward in-between state right on the edge of puberty. Mature enough to say, "I like that!" but not enough to know why. "What to do with it" was right out.

The situation was not entirely unexpected given his age, but it was entirely unwelcome.

Had he already hit puberty, Su Li would have had a predictable set of levers with which to control his behavior, levers that she was ready and able to use effectively having both the proper equipment and training. Trying to use them in Potter's current state, however, would only confuse the boy and make him uncomfortable, and while confusion and discomfort were themselves useful levers in the right circumstances, the petite girl was not well positioned to capitalize on them at present. For now, it would be best to wait for her target's body to catch up to where she needed it to be.

Of course, none of that would have mattered a whit if not for her blunder handling Abercrombie. Su Li sighed.

Her initial panicked reaction had been almost precisely the worst approach to take when Abercrombie appeared unexpectedly. She'd made a desperate grab for a quick victory when there was none to be had, and turned Abercrombie into a very dangerous enemy indeed.

Worse yet, it had been entirely unnecessary. Her snap assessment had been accurate in that there had been no way to spin her actions as anything less than what they so obviously were, but in hindsight, apologizing would have been by far the better way to go. She couldn't have portrayed her actions as innocent, but she could have played them off as the overzealous blunderings of a thirteen-year-old girl. A bit of acting and a convincing apology would have defused the situation easily enough.

Now it was much too late, and Abercrombie was overtly hostile and a dangerous threat. The older girl was a highly trusted advisor to her target. One carefully chosen word from Abercrombie in her target's ear, even a bald-faced lie, could destroy Su Li's chances at this point. She had to find some way to regain control of the situation, or failing that, she had to find some way to convince Abercrombie not to destroy her chances outright. Unfortunately, the gap between knowing what she had to do and doing it was wide. By all appearances, the seventh year would as soon curse Su Li as look at her, which made the prospect of mending fences a daunting one.

Now establishing some form of detente with Abercrombie was her absolute top priority, and she had no idea how to begin!

Su Li scowled, careful not to raise her eyes from the book in her hands. That was the reason she was camped out in the library, desperately scrabbling for some valuable bit of insight by eavesdropping on her new rival.

She heard the library door open and she settled in to listen intently. Soon her efforts were rewarded, as the low voice of Abercrombie wafting over to her from the new arrivals. She listened intently as the older girl drew closer.

"…talked with Hermione," Abercrombie's voice became clear enough to understand, though still muffled slightly by both distance and the intervening bookshelf.

"Any luck?" her target asked, their voices grew steadily clearer.

"No, she refused to budge," Abercrombie replied with a breathy sigh. "I'm afraid you're going to have to go ahead, Harry."

What was this? The eavesdropping girl cocked her head curiously.

Her target sighed. "Right, I'll tell her next time I get the chance. Thanks for trying, Abigail."

"You're welcome, Harry," Abercrombie responded, sounding a little melancholy.

"Do you think I'm going to have any trouble getting her to agree to the servant contract?" her target asked.

A servant contract!

That was enough of a surprise that Su Li barely managed to stifle an audible gasp. What could have prompted Potter to take Granger on as a retainer at their age? She knew it couldn't be the usual reason — verifying that was what had put her in this mess in the first place — but what could it be?

Su Li's mind raced through possible options until Abercrombie voiced another critical piece of information.

"No, I don't think you'll have any trouble, Harry," the older girl replied with a morose sort of chuckle, "not with a silver torc in the offing."

A silver torc… oh! Su Li's thought, her dark eyes wide with realization. That put an entirely different spin on things.

"Oh, that's good, then," her target breathed a relieved sigh. "I didn't want to have another conversation like the one about our trip."

Though it did beg the question: why was Abercrombie so blasé about losing out to Granger when she had been so hostile to her? There had to be something she was missing.

"Don't forget our agreement though, Harry," Abercrombie spoke again, in a firm voice.

There was a sudden rustling, probably from her target nodding in his usual overly enthusiastic way if his next words were anything to judge.

"Right!" Potter said quickly, his words practically tumbling over each other in his haste to reassure Abercrombie of his intentions. "You don't have to worry, Abigail. I just want to keep Hermione safe while I'm away, you know?"

That… that was a valid concern, Su Li mused, as a picture of their motivations slowly began to resolve itself in her mind. She had been briefed about the local situation before she left Hong Kong, and it would have been a concern for her as well, had the Clan not taken steps... perhaps that could be the opportunity she needed!

Her eyes narrowed speculatively. Abercrombie was obviously concerned for the girl, so perhaps she could offer to broker a similar arrangement for Granger?

"I know," Abercrombie allowed, her voice barely noticed in the background, "I just wanted to make absolutely sure."

Su Li turned her attention back to her eavesdropping just in time to catch her target's reply.

"Okay," he said with a relieved sigh, pausing for a moment before continuing with some heat. "You know I meant what I said, right Abigail? You asked me to promise to talk over any romantic-type stuff with you before making any permanent commitments, and I promised, and I'm gonna keep that promise! Period!"

An agreement to… Su Li's eyes opened wide. That was Abercrombie's game! The older girl had decided to go the longer and more subtle route, rather than using her superior influence to poison Potter against her rival immediately.

That was good!

That was very good. Su Li breathed a heavy sigh of relief, immediately dismissing her fledgling plans to help Granger as unnecessary. She could work with that.

"Sorry, Harry," Abercrombie apologized quickly, "I know you keep your promises, and I didn't mean to imply anything to the contrary. It's just… well, a girl likes a bit of a reminder about that sort of thing sometimes, you know? A bit of reassurance of where she fits into things."

Though it still begged the question: why had Abercrombie stayed her hand? She had the overwhelming advantage; one quick word to Potter against Su Li was all it would have taken. Why had she held off?

Even if Abercrombie didn't have anything concrete to accuse her of, she could easily have made something up! Make it unverifiable, and that would be Abercrombie's word against Su Li's, and Abercrombie had more history with Potter. Su Li would never have allowed such an opportunity to pass her by.

"Okay," her target's voice had picked up a slight hint of a very, very intimidating growl, "but I'm no liar, and don't like being called one."

Or, she supposed with a nod, perhaps she might have. If that last was any indication of Potter's opinion on liars, then the older girl reluctance to risk getting caught in a lie was understandable. Su Li would have to keep that in mind for herself as well.

"I guess it's kinda like how I like it when you call me your friend, then?" he continued in a more speculative tone. "Even though I already know it, it's nice to hear it again, anyway. Is that it?"

Curiosity satisfied, Su Li tuned out the conversation. She had enough information, and now she had to assemble the scattered ideas bouncing about her head into a coherent plan, and that would take some doing.

Abercrombie had made a masterful move in extracting that promise from Potter. The boy apparently took his promises very seriously indeed, so there would be no way for Su Li to steal a march in the older girl's absence. Potter would not allow it, and he was strong-willed enough to make that stick. By inserting herself into his decision-making process, Abercrombie had removed most of the disadvantage she should have faced due to her coming absence.

"That's not a bad analogy, Harry. And speaking of knowing how we fit into things, I suppose I ought to speak to your new friend sometime. Get to know her a little."

It put them on roughly even footing by Su Li's reckoning. Abercrombie would be away, but she had the advantage of a longer history with her target, and she had that promise. Su Li would be onsite, but she was working from scratch, and any decisive move she made would have to go through her rival for approval.

Deadlock.

"You mean Su Li?" There was the sound of sniffling from the other side of the shelf. "Hmm."

She would either need to gain that approval directly or find some alternative approach. Either one was a difficult prospect, but she did have one major advantage over her rival. Su Li smiled tightly at the realization.

Abercrombie was angling for a husband; her victory condition was strict, marriage or bust. Su Li had much more latitude.

"Hi there!"

Su Li jumped, squeaking in surprise at the sudden interruption. Her hand snapped up to her chest, and the book she had been holding dropped to the floor with a fluttering of parchment and a thump. Looked up towards the source of the sudden voice, she found the concerned green eyes of her target peering into her own from less than two feet away.

"Are you okay, Su?"

She nodded slowly as she tried to calm her racing heart.

"Whatcha reading?" he bent down to pick up her dropped book. "Oh, this one! What were you looking for? I never really got much out of this one; it's not very well-written."

"It was…" she trailed off, trying to recall any topic that the book she had been using as a prop had covered... or for that matter, even its title, and coming up empty. Worse yet, she couldn't even read the title to make a guess with the angle Potter was holding the thing at. After a moment, she decided to ignore the question and hope for the best.

"Um… what are you doing here, Harry?"

A black eyebrow disappeared into the mass of shaggy hair atop her target's head as he gave her a brief skeptical look before he shrugged.

"I was just talking with Abigail over at our usual table. Hey, you want to come join us? Abigail was just saying she had something she wanted to talk with you about."

Su Li went silent for a long moment as she considered the rough, tentative plan she had been hammering out in her head before her target's stealthy approach had startled her half to death.

Could she pull it off now, with so little preparation?

Did she have a choice in the matter?

After a long moment of consideration, she made her decision.

A bright smile spread across the petite girl's face as she gamely replied, "Sure, I've got the time, Harry."

4.10.4 Conversational warfare

Abigail had known something was off when, upon mentioning that she wanted to talk with Su Li, her younger friend had gotten an odd look on his face and sniffed at the air. As he had walked over to the nearby bookshelf, sniffed again, and nodded, she had begun to suspect just what it was. That suspicion had deepened when he had walked around the bookshelf and had been confirmed when she had heard his voice from the other side.

"Hi there!" There was a choked squeak and a thump. "Are you okay, Su?"

The little homewrecker was right there! Had she been…?

"Whatcha reading?" Parchment rustled as pages turned. "Oh, this one! What were you looking for? I never really got much out of this one; it's not very well-written."

…reading a book? Abigail cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at that. It was a library, true, but what were the odds that she would have settled down to read right there?

"It was… Um, what are you doing here, Harry?"

Nope, Abigail thought flatly. The treacherous little tart had definitely been eavesdropping…

"I was just talking with Abigail over at our usual table."

…and Harry hadn't picked up on it at all. Abigail let out a resigned sigh; what was she going to do with that boy?

"Hey, you want to come join us? Abigail was just saying she had something she wanted to talk with you about."

Surely, she wouldn't be so brazen as to go straight from being caught eavesdropping to…

"Sure, I've got the time, Harry."

Apparently, she would. Abigail blinked. Well, she certainly didn't lack for courage.

Abigail hadn't wanted to have this conversation in front of Harry, but that was mostly because she saw no need to clue him in on the fact that Su Li was also interested in him. Abigail had been forced to struggle through that hellishly awkward conversation, and she was not about to spare the interloper the pain and embarrassment of doing the same. Let her do her own work and have the full experience.

Unfortunately, there was no avoiding it now, Abigail sighed, not with the invitation already issued. Though, if she was careful about how she worded things, perhaps she might manage anyway, she mused with a thoughtful frown. Harry could be pretty dense about some things.

With that in mind, Abigail speared the younger girl with a gimlet stare as soon as she rounded the end of the bookshelves. Smiling a hard sort of not-really-a-smile, Abigail went on the offensive.

"Miss Li! it's good to meet you under better circumstances, you know, now that I'm not knackered after two weeks' worth of NEWTs," she greeted the younger girl in a bright tone that indicated it was anything but good to meet her. "I'm afraid your introduction at dinner couldn't have come at a worse time, what with me exhausted and you appearing out of the blue like that to sit in my usual spot next to Harry."

"I understand where you are coming from on that, Miss Abercrombie," the petite girl agreed with a grave nod. "Had I realized we shared such an important interest I would have arranged things differently."

"What would you have done differently, then Miss Li," Abigail asked, one eyebrow raised skeptically, "waited until next term?"

On the other side of the table, Harry's brow furrowed in confusion as he mouthed, "Waited until next term?"

"Perhaps," Su Li admitted shamelessly. "Though knowing what I do now, I would probably have approached you beforehand."

"Knowing what you do now?" Abigail parroted, that skeptical eyebrow rising even higher over hard brown eyes. "What did you hear that makes you think I would be receptive to such an approach?"

The Ravenclaw briefly flashed that same subtle, infuriatingly smug smile that had so angered Abigail during their first meeting, before it fell off her face as she turned to address Harry directly.

"Harry," she began, prompting the youngest Potter to abandon his fruitless attempts to make sense of his friends' conversation in favor of listening intently. "When I was reading, I couldn't help but overhear your mention of a promise made to Miss Abercrombie… something about discussing romantic options."

"Yeah, that's right," the young dragon acknowledged with a nod.

Abigail's eyes narrowed as she struggled to make out where the younger girl was going with this.

"Well, to make that conversation easier, you might want to do a bit of research into the topic beforehand," she suggested brightly, "just so you know the basics."

"Um, Su, Madam Pomfrey said I should probably wait on looking into that stuff until I'm older," Harry objected... sensibly, in Abigail's opinion. "She said I didn't need it yet anyway, and it'd just be confusing if I did it too early."

"Of course, of course!" the petite girl waved off his objection. "I didn't mean to imply that you should be looking into the mechanics of the acts themselves; you don't need those right now. I was talking about generalities, different organizational structures and how they work on the public side of things. After all, you don't need to know all the squishy details of what a man and a woman get up to in private in order to know the whether the woman is his wife, his concubine, or his mistress."

Concubine? Mistress? Abigail's eyes widened in shock. Why the bloody hell would Li bring up that option? Abigail might have considered it, true, but only as a hedge against total defeat! Even then, she wasn't sure she'd be able to stomach such an arrangement. Gracefully accepting the defeat and moving on might just be the better option.

What was going through that girl's head that she would trot out polygamy as an opening salvo?

"I guess that makes sense," Harry hummed as he considered that. "I do want to be able to discuss that stuff proper if I have to. Where do you think I should start looking?"

"You might start with the definitions of those three terms: wife, concubine, and mistress. They mostly have to do with how the resulting children are considered for inheritance," Su Li smiled like the cat who had gotten the canary. "You'll also want to look into how things work in situations with one man and many women. Fair warning, Harry, that can get pretty complicated, but it's something I'm pretty sure you'll need to know, so it's for the best that you get started early."

…I'm pretty sure you'll need to know…

Abigail's eyes narrowed at the implication the younger girl had presented as a foregone conclusion.

That conniving little bitch!

"There is much more to those terms than just inheritance, Harry," Abigail interjected urgently while shooting a sharp glare at the smaller girl who met it calmly, her smug smile unchanged. "There are some profound social repercussions to them as well, far beyond the disposition of children."

"Really?" Harry asked, his green eyes alight with curiosity.

"Of course there are, Harry," Su Li confirmed serenely, recapturing his attention. "That's why you need to learn about it ahead of time, so you don't make any serious mistakes."

"What does Harry need to learn about ahead of time?" a new voice entered the conversation as Hermione arrived at the library table. "Maybe I can help research it?"

"The definitions of 'wife', 'concubine', and 'mistress'," Harry absently told his bushy-haired damsel. "And I'm supposed to look up how that stuff works with one man and many women."

There was an oddly strangled-sounding squeak, and then silence.

After the silence stretched for a few seconds, Harry turned to his human damsel only to find her staring at him while blushing beet red.

"Hermione?" his voice rose in concern. "Are you okay?"

"Why?" she managed to squeak out.

"Why am I asking if you're okay?" he asked, cocking his head curiously. "Well, it's 'cause you're all red and stuff, and I was worried that…"

"No!" the bushy-haired girl burst out, finally finding her voice. "I meant, why are you looking up those things? What led to that as a necessary research topic?"

"Harry, perhaps you could take Hermione aside to explain the situation to her?" Abigail suggested before Harry could answer. "I believe you have something to tell her, and I need to have a private conversation with Miss Li here."

Harry's eyes narrowed in momentary confusion, then his expression cleared as he caught the reference.

"Okay, Abigail!"

And with that, he grabbed the bushy-haired girl by the hand and dragged her off into the stacks, leaving Abigail and Su Li behind.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing, Li?" Abigail hissed as soon as Harry was out of earshot, half-standing over the table to loom menacingly over the much smaller girl. "First you pull that possessive girlfriend act at dinner, and now you're putting ideas of polygamy in Harry's head? What the hell is your angle?"

"I freely admit my actions at dinner were ill-considered," the second-year girl said calmly as she leaned back slightly in her chair. "I had not realized that you were interested in Potter as more than a friend, and I regret to say that I panicked. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have done things differently."

"You also freely admitted that your first choice would have been to leave me in the dark until you could steal Harry away after I graduated," Abigail snarled. "That is hardly a Merlin-be-damned apology!"

"I fail to see how what I might have done is in any way relevant now," Su Li continued airily, brushing off her senior's irritation as inconsequential. "You've already found out, so that option is no longer on the table in any case."

"And what is on the table, then?" Abigail demanded. "There's no way on this earth or any other that I'm going to step aside for the likes of you, and don't think I'm going to be all eager to share either, not after what you tried to pull!"

"I wouldn't expect you to step aside, Abercrombie," the petite girl acknowledged with a polite nod. "Had I expected such a thing, I'd not have raised the possibility in the first place. There would have been no need. Nonetheless, I hope to persuade you not to bear a grudge going forward as I work to make up for my early lapse in judgement."

"That's a hell of a thing to make up for, Li," Abigail growled.

"It is, and therefore I will offer you a hell of an incentive," she echoed Abigail's delivery. "Rather than threaten your ambitions, I instead offer to aid you in them."

"What sort of 'aid' can you offer?" Abigail demanded suspiciously. "And for that matter, why would you offer it?"

"I can be of assistance for the same reason that I can be a threat," Su Li explained, her dark eyes meeting and holding Abigail's own. "Starting next year and stretching until his graduation, you will be mostly absent from Potter's life, while I will be mostly present. I propose to serve as your advocate in your absence, protecting your claim in your stead and keeping you abreast of new happenings which would benefit from your personal attention."

"An advocate, huh?" Abigail sat back down in her chair as she considered the idea, her suspicious glare never wavering.

It was an attractive idea, or rather it would have been an attractive idea if she could have trusted the girl seated across from her... which she could not. Even so, such an agreement still might be better than nothing. The little weasel would have to be at least a little circumspect to maintain the appearance of compliance, if nothing else. That would be more of a guarantee than Abigail had now. Though one critical question remained.

"And what would you stand to gain out of this?" Abigail demanded warily.

Before she agreed to anything, Abigail needed to find out precisely what she might be putting on the table to buy a service of such dubious value.

"Just one simple thing," Su Li said, "a minor concession on your part."

"What would that be, Miss Li? Reciprocation?" Abigail raised a skeptical brow as she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. "If you want me to sing your praises to Harry, I'll warn you right now, that is not going to happen. I've never lied to Harry before, and I'm not about to start now, especially not for the likes of you."

"I need no assistance on that front, thank you very much," Su Li protested, folding her hands primly in her lap and straightening to her full, unimpressive height. "After all, I will not be away from him for months on end, which leaves me with all the time in the world to press my suit. Rather, I simply ask that you not object too strenuously to my pursuit of Potter."

"And what objections would be considered 'too strenuous'?"

"Make no demands that would necessarily exclude my inclusion, lay down no exclusive ultimatums, and I will be content." The younger girl met her eyes with a pleading look. "All I wish is for a fair chance to win my own place in his heart, Miss Abercrombie."

Abigail held that gaze for a long moment, considering the offer carefully. It left a great deal to be desired, but then any realistic deal inevitably would. If Abigail had her druthers, the ever-so-smug little homewrecker would already be en route back to whatever dark corner she had crawled out of, shipped off never to be seen or heard from again.

Preferably in a box.

Angry fantasies aside, murder was a bit much for the situation, no matter how irritating, and aside from having to put up with the little tart and that damned smirk of hers, the proposed deal cost her little enough on balance. Li had asked for nothing that Abigail wouldn't have already given.

In the end, the restrictions were a nonissue. No matter how much she might have wanted to, Abigail could never have made those sorts of demands stick in any event, not with Harry. Not only that, but even trying would have been counterproductive, one of the quickest ways she could imagine to alienate him completely. Her dragon was not the sort to take that manner of high-handedness well.

Abigail still didn't trust the younger girl any further than she could throw Hogwarts Castle, but neither would she be around to counter any of said girl's efforts against her. In that case, having Su Li as a nominal advocate was probably better than having her as an open detractor.

Probably.

Eventually, Abigail came to a grudging decision.

She looked away and let out an explosive sigh, raising a hand to massage her temples.

"Bloody hell, Li! Couldn't you have led off with that rather than trying to go behind my back?" she groused. "It would have saved us both a whole lot of aggravation!"

"I shall be certain to keep that in mind going forward, Miss Abercrombie," she acknowledged with a diffident nod.

"You do that, Li. Look, I'll agree to your deal. No boxing me out, and I won't box you out. You'll get your fair chance to woo Harry, and as far as I'm concerned, he'll be the final arbiter," she said before flicking her wand to check the time. "For now, I've got an appointment in Hogsmeade, so I'm going to go check up on Harry, say goodbye, and then skip out. I'll see you at dinner... and no hogging Harry this time or we are going to have problems, you and I!"

"Of course."

As Abigail walked away from the table, she felt Su Li's too calm eyes on her back. The feeling lasted until she turned the corner looking for Harry. Her concerns had been addressed, but an odd doubt niggled at the back of her mind, nonetheless.

Had she missed something?

Looking back on the conversation, she couldn't quite place what it might have be, but Abigail couldn't quite shake the feeling that she had just made a deal with the devil.

4.10.5 Deceptive truths

Su Li watched the older girl go, her neutral expression twisting itself into a triumphant smirk as Abercrombie disappeared around the corner.

She was back in business!

That conversation had gone so much better than she had dared hope, and the best part was that, despite what Abercrombie no doubt suspected, nothing Su Li had said had been an outright lie… well, aside from that claptrap about wanting only a fair chance. The chance that Su Li wanted was anything but fair, but that hardly counted as a lie any more than Abercrombie's patently insincere 'it's good to meet you' had counted as one.

She had not lied about her willingness to share her target; Su Li truly had no qualms about the possibility. His first wife or his second, his cherished mistress or his knee-pad-wearing 'personal secretary', as long as she spent as much time bent over Potter's desk as she did kneeling under it, it was all the same for her purposes.

Neither had she lied about her terms. So long as Abercrombie refrained from 'boxing her out', Su Li would be more than content to honor their agreement... to the letter. She would do it all, even down to the task of serving as Abercrombie's advocate in her absence, despite what the older girl no doubt expected. No, Su Li was going to play her agreed-upon role to the hilt... not that Abercrombie would thank her for it in the end.

Potter was young and naïve, but soon enough, he would be young, naïve and pubescent, with all the sexually charged poor judgement that the term implied. Su Li had plans for that, all she needed was time and proximity, and that deal gave her both.

At present, she was in a bad position. Abercrombie could destroy her chances with little more than a carefully chosen word. Given a few years to work, though, Su Li would be on much more even footing with her, and if she played her cards right, she could engineer a situation where Abercrombie would have no choice but to go along with sharing Potter. She already had a plan in mind, and her chief rival had just agreed to keep her mouth shut until it would be far too late for it to make a difference.

In the end, whether the older girl gave in and agreed to share, decided to go down swinging and alienated Potter in the process, or backed down completely and quit the field, Su Li would still win.

When she had come to the library, Su Li had been desperate, hovering a few choice words away from abject failure. Now her fortunes had completely reversed. Her greatest obstacle was neutralized, and the plan was back on track. The reversal was such a profound shift that the petite girl couldn't stifle a soft but ever so slightly mad giggle as the heady mixture of relief and triumph bubbled up from within.

She was still giddy five minutes later when her target returned.

4.10.6 Proposals and demands

"Harry, what is this all about?" Hermione demanded as the pair came to a stop at another library table, much deeper into the stacks than their usual one. "Why on earth were you talking about that?"

"Um, well, I guess if I want it to make sense, I'll have to start at the beginning," her sometimes dragon-shaped friend said, scratching uncomfortably at the back of his neck.

"That sounds like a good idea," she agreed, taking the opportunity to sit down in one of the chairs.

Harry leaned against the table and began, "Well, it all started back when we talked about the trip to the Confederacy, and you insisted you weren't going to go."

"Back when you got really angry and stormed off?"

"I wasn't really angry, you know," Harry objected. "I was just worried about you."

"You could have fooled me," she muttered, before continuing in a more normal, yet still library-appropriate, voice. "As I recall, you mentioned that you knew of something we could do, but you needed to check on things. Did you check on things, then?"

"Yeah, I did," he nodded. "I looked around a lot, trying to find an alternative, but in the end, I couldn't find one that would work. I even talked it over with Abigail, and she couldn't find a way around it, either."

"Speaking of Abigail, did you put her up to trying to talk me out of staying with my parents, Harry?" she asked her friend with suspiciously narrowed eyes. "Because I don't appreciate you using her like that!"

"For your information, she volunteered because she thought you were being just as silly as I did!" Harry scowled, offended by the implication. "Abigail told me that she didn't have any luck getting you to see sense either; that's why we're having this conversation now."

"Spending time with my parents is not silly, Harry," Hermione huffed.

"It is when you insist on doing it somewhere so dangerous!" her friend insisted. "It's important for me to spend time with you, too, but you don't see me insisting on doing it downrange at the shooting gallery!"

"Crawley is not dangerous!" Hermione rose and slapped her hands on the table, only just managing to keep quiet enough not to attract the ire of Madam Pince. "We live in a very nice neighborhood, and we're not going to get attacked walking down the bloody street!"

"It is for you, Hermione!" Harry snapped. "I'm not worried about the people in Crawley; I'm worried about the wizards what know you live there! If you'd just let us bring your parents along for the trip, then…"

"No, Harry," Hermione ground out. "I told you before, I told Abigail, and now I'm telling you again for the last time: I am going home for the summer, and that's final!"

Harry held her eyes for one long moment, his green gaze looking harder than she had ever seen it, before nodding once in acknowledgement. "Okay, Hermione, I'll agree to that, on one condition."

"What condition?" she asked, more than a little intimidated by that gaze.

"If you'd told me about this back at Christmas, we could have gotten some wards put on your parents' house to keep you safe enough," he began, "but since you didn't, there's not enough time left for that, so there's only one real option I could find to keep you safe, and Abigail agreed, too."

"And what is that?" she repeated.

"We're going to get you formally registered as my retainer," he explained. "I didn't want to rush into this, and Abigail really ain't happy about it either, but I'm not willing to leave you on your own without at least that much to protect you. It ain't the best, but if I can't be there to protect you, personally, then at least this'll let people know what they're signing up for if they go after you."

"Formally registered?" she asked. Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall what that meant. "Didn't you say that meant something bad for my reputation?"

"Without a torc, yeah." Harry hurried to clarify, "I'll make you one of those as soon as I get back from the trip — I don't think I have enough time to do a proper job of it before then — but we gotta get you registered before I leave, so it can be official and I can be a public deterrent as the Head of House Potter."

Hermione's jaw dropped as the implication hit. Harry had offered her a torc!

Shortly after Harry had carried her off, Professor McGonagall had taken her aside and explained a little about wizarding culture — at least the bits that might be immediately relevant for a barely-teenaged girl who had just been carried off by a similarly aged boy — and the concept of the marking torc had featured prominently in that discussion.

Interestingly enough, Professor Snape had pulled her aside for much the same reason, though in his case, he had simply gifted her with a book on wizarding heraldry and told her that she should read it cover to cover so that she might avoid "any more dunderheaded blundering than that which was absolutely unavoidable due to her unfortunately adolescent condition."

In any case, she knew what a torc meant… or at least she thought she knew. The exact meaning would depend on…

"Harry, what were you planning to make that torc out of?" she asked, seeking to clarify.

"Silver," he answered immediately.

The bushy-haired girl, who still considered herself to be rather homely, froze. That meant…

"Harry," she squeaked, "did you just propose to me?"

"Um," his he sat back slightly, and his hand awkwardly reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, "technically, I guess?"

Hermione froze in shock, her mind racing, and her thoughts running the gamut of reactions. It was so sudden! They were both way too young! Did that mean he thought she was pretty? He had to, at least a little bit, right? She never thought anyone would think of her like that! How could he propose to her when she knew perfectly well that Abigail was interested in him, too? Even she had noticed that, so there was no way Harry could have missed it!

There was even a traitorous little undercurrent of "Take that, Abigail!" that Hermione ruthlessly tried to stamp out as unacceptably meanspirited even for her internal dialogue... no matter how unfair Abigail's appearance had been that one time when they were working out.

As his bushy-haired damsel's outwardly blank expression and prolonged silence stretched on to uncomfortable lengths, Harry rushed to qualify his statement, rather spectacularly misinterpreting her silence as disapproval.

"Um, it's more of a promise ring kind of thing, rather than an engagement, really," he babbled, attempting to justify himself. "I mean, you can get out of it if you want to, 'cause we can switch to a different torc without people talking too much when we get older, like after you get out of school, but for now we need to use a silver one or people will get the wrong idea… um…" he trailed off, his previously panicked demeanor coming full circle back to concern. Hermione still had not moved a muscle. "Um, Hermione, are you okay?"

"Ah… yes, I'm okay, Harry," she replied, snapping out of her shock as she processed his explanation.

So, the silver torc was just for appearances; that made a lot more sense than Harry proposing out of the blue.

She could deal with that.

Hermione sighed. It was a bit unusual — and she would have to figure out exactly what appearances they were trying to maintain — but she trusted Harry, Abigail too, since he said she had signed off on it. If they thought this was important, then she could go along with it, especially if it made Harry shut up about her going home for the summer.

"Okay, Harry," she said aloud, "we can do it that way… if you want."

Now, if only she could stamp out that niggling thread of disappointment.

4.10.7 Final preparations

"Hold it there, Mr. Potter," the goblin foreman called, his strident voice echoing through the freshly excavated artificial cavern which was destined to become Harry's new metalworking annex. Turning to his crew, he bellowed, "Get those blocks in place, you lot! We've got plenty more to move before we're done, and not much time left to do it in!"

A little over a week had passed since his conversation with Hermione, and Harry had been quite busy with a variety of tasks in the intervening time, one of which he was just finishing up now. Currently in his native form, the young dragon easily held the freshly re-crated main body of his massive CNC lathe steady a few inches above the floor as the goblin crew swarmed about, stacking blocking underneath it both to compensate for the unevenness of the rough-hewn stone surface and to allow clearance for a forklift to help move the thing in the future. The next time it moved, they would not have a convenient dragon to do the heavy lifting.

They had finished the main excavation of the facility just a few hours earlier, just in time for Harry's upcoming trip. The goblins would be responsible for finishing the interior and mechanicals in his absence, but there were still a few tasks for the young dragon to handle personally, such as this last-minute heavy lifting. To that end, the young dragon worked diligently with the team to move all the heavy equipment down from the Lair so it could be installed in its new home while he was away. They were currently in the process of moving the CNC. Later would come the rest of the manual equipment, the crates of documentation, and then the twenty identical diesel generators, each large enough to rate its own flat wagon, which had been knocking about the railyards waiting to be unloaded and were now sitting just outside on the Hogsmeade spur line.

Foundry work was quite the power-hungry endeavor, and as long as they were installing generators anyway, he'd wanted to cover his bases.

It was a lot to get done, but Harry was game for the challenge. He just hoped he could get it done in time for the end of term feast tonight. It was Abigail's last one, and he'd hate to miss it.

At least he was sure to be sleeping well that night, and he was certain to be glad of that in the morning. Between saying his goodbye's and his first plane ride, tomorrow promised to be a very long and eventful day.

4.10.8 Bothersome logistics

Four hundred miles to the southeast in a small room which had once been part of a barn before the owner had repurposed it as a storage facility, Severus Snape engaged in his final preparations for the coming trip across the pond. He had paid for the room to serve as a staging area, and it was chock full of boxes, bags, and various pieces of arcane-looking equipment.

Ignoring the piercing shriek of jet engines that ripped through the afternoon calm every few minutes, the potions master walked up and down the rows of equipment and supplies, making notes and ticking off lists on a yellow legal pad that he carried with him as he checked and double-checked that they had everything they would need. The end of term feast would take place later in the evening, and the next morning would see the students depart from Hogwarts on the Express. The expedition would be departing that same afternoon, and that would be their final call for supplies. Reliable resupply would be exceedingly difficult if they forgot anything important.

As he came to the end of the row one final time, the dark man reviewed his checklist, finding nothing missing.

Good.

He had arranged to charter an aircraft suitable for their group and its equipment which was no small task given the numbers involved and the composition of the group. Between the required range and the inclusion of Miss Suze on the passenger list, he had been forced to go with a rather sizeable craft. Fortunately, the goblins had been able to arrange a flight crew that was in-the-know. Severus had also arranged for a rental van, which he would use to carry the bulk of their equipment from this staging area to the tarmac. All that remained was to assemble the personnel.

Unfortunately, that last had proven to be more than a bit difficult.

Snape had hoped to get everyone moving as early in the day as possible, not for scheduling concerns precisely — at the rates he was paying the flight crew would be delighted to take off at any hour, day or night — but rather because the dragon in the group absolutely had to stay awake until they touched down in the New World.

The blasted beast still had yet to learn to maintain a transfiguration in his sleep, and while that was normally a minor inconvenience, in this situation it would prove beyond deadly. If he dozed off in mid-flight, no one aboard would live to regret it. It was one of the primary reasons Severus had refused to even consider flying commercial. The wretched reptile absolutely had to stay awake for the entire nine-hour flight, and adding another two hours of boring wait in the airport terminal was asking for trouble.

Severus had explained that risk to the blasted beast, laying everything out logically, and he had thought he had gotten his point across, only for the last Potter, in a fit of childish obstinacy, to refuse to cooperate at the last minute.

Instead of taking the arranged portkey as soon as the Express departed from the station, the dratted dragon had insisted that he needed to ride the train down to King's Cross in order to see his friends off properly. Then, he had decreed, he and Granger would go on to the Ministry to handle his final preparations for Miss Granger's safety. Only after that, Potter had insisted, would he make his way to the airport.

Snape readily acknowledged the necessity of seeing to the girl's safety via the servant registration Potter had arranged, even to the point of agreeing to go along to assist them with the whole ordeal. It was about time, in his opinion; he had come close to saying as much to the girl's father over a year previous; however the insistence on taking the train to do so rather than a portkey was simply incomprehensible.

Miss Granger would be going on to the Ministry with the boy anyway, and Miss Abercrombie was due to take the floo right back to Hogsmeade! What possible purpose could there be in wasting half a day on the Express rather than saying his goodbyes at the castle gate and taking a portkey? Worse yet was the blasted beast's stubborn insistence on accepting Granger's offer to accompany him to the airport to see him off... again via the train.

Taken together, it would have them taking off on their transatlantic flight in the early evening, after the boy had been awake and traveling all day, which would have them landing on the shores of Lake Erie sometime around midnight, local time, or well after dawn, by their group's reckoning. It would be nearly a full day and night's worth of traveling for the blasted beast, twenty-four hours, during the latter half of which they would all be a bit of a kip away from dying horribly.

Of course, the wretched lizard would pick this of all times to remind them all that he was in fact still his father's son! It could not have been when such a revelation would have been merely irritating; no, it had to be the time when his mulish folly might well send them all plummeting into the frigid waters of the north Atlantic.

The boy had better stay awake.
 
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Section 4.11 - Setting off
4.11 Setting off

4.11.1 The start to a very long day

The village of Hogsmeade slept quietly, strung out along the east end of Loch Morar's southern shore and nestled snugly into the narrow strip of flattish land between the shores of the loch and the hills to the south. The early summer dawn was still some time off, and the streets were correspondingly rather quiet, save for one lone figure wearing the overalls of a Hogs Haulage fireman.

As Mac made his way through the darkened streets of Hogsmeade's western end, on the familiar route to the railway yards, the only sound to be heard was the scraping of the hard leather soles of his boots on the damp cobblestones, and even that seemed muted by the heavy fogbank which had rolled in off the loch.

Soon enough, he arrived at the yard, checked the board in the currently deserted dispatch office to confirm the locomotive assignment for the day, and made his way to the kennels. There the drake-dogs greeted him with their usual happy gyrations and enthusiastic gronking; the sociable critters were quite delighted to see him despite the ungodly hour. A few incidental fireballs later, Mac left the kennels, a freshly fed and watered Smaugey happily trotting at his heels.

As he crunched his way across the damp gravel towards the maintenance shed, Mac passed the looming hulks of the various rolling stock littering the network of tracks crossing the yard. The sun had finally risen high enough for the fog bank about them to begin to brighten, turning the world from lead to silver and lending an ethereal quality to the scene.

Mac felt the enchanting atmosphere rather fitting; there was a certain kind of magic in what he was about, after all.

The quiescent hulk of No. 45401 gradually swam into existence out of the silvery fog, and Mac smiled, the sight like the sudden arrival of an old friend. And an old friend she was, from a certain point of view. No. 45401 was the first of the 'new' batch of locomotives the company had acquired during the sixties, and he'd been working with her for over three decades now... nearly as long as he'd worked with Jim.

As he drew close, Mac began his usual pre-lighting up inspection, not that he expected to find anything amiss with No. 45401 fresh out of the maintenance shed. She'd been due for general repair, and for the miracle workers on the Hogs Haulage maintenance staff, that meant the old girl had left the their hands practically like new... clean, fit, and all-around better than the day she'd rolled out of the Scotswood Works over a half-century earlier.

Unfortunately, 'like new' also implied 'at room temperature'.

No. 45401 looked dead as she sat there on the tracks just inside the shed on 3 Road... dark and cold, silent and still. A cold steam locomotive was a dead, lifeless thing, and at over a hundred tons of cold water and steel, that condition took a lot of work to change, but change it would. It was a work of coal and steel, the water in the boiler and the fresh Highland air, scorched by fire from ol' Smaugey and given purpose by Mac himself.

Earth and water, air and fire, all four elements brought together and made to dance in concert. With them the fireman would breathe life into the Black Five, turning her from the lifeless hulk sitting before him into a living, breathing thing... hissing, spitting, groaning, moving.

Death into life; that was a magic far greater than anything they got up to over at Hogwarts!

However, like all great things, this one demanded sacrifice, in this case an offering of time. Magical as it might be, a cold start on a steam locomotive was a long, slow process, one which would have begun yesterday with a warming fire. Large boilers like the one at the heart of No. 45401 needed to heat up slowly lest the stress of differential heating burst a seam or crack a boiler wall. Once the boiler was hot enough to produce first steam, it could be circulated to equalize the temperature throughout, and things could proceed faster, but until then it was all too easy to ruin a boiler with a bit of impatience.

Initial inspection complete, Mac climbed the steps into the familiar confines of her cab. The rest, things like ensuring the bearings were properly oiled, he would handle while the locomotive was heating up. He opened the fire door, and the gentle warmth he felt radiating from the inky depths of the cavernous firebox told him that the maintenance staff had done their job right. Without that preheat, she'd never be ready in time for their late-morning departure, although even with it, the fire would still need to burn for a long time. It was best to get her going right away.

It was time to light her up.

Grabbing the well-worn handle of his rake, Mac knocked the remains of the warming fire through the grate and then threw a few shovel-loads of lump coal into the pitch-black void of the firebox, the soft rocks making a racket as they clattered on the steel grate in the predawn calm. At Mac's side, the scaly form of Smaugey practically vibrated with anticipation at the sound.

Lump coal took quite a bit of coaxing to set alight, and a non-magical crew would have needed to start with something easier to burn until the fire got hot enough to light it off. Fortunately for Mac, the drake dog at his side had no such difficulties. Smaugey's fire was more than hot enough to touch off a cold load of coal; the real trick was getting the excitable critters to stop before they melted the firebox.

"Alright there, Smaugey," Mac spoke his first words of the morning. "Give 'er a light."

With a happy 'gronk', the ever-eager drake-dog complied, letting loose with a gout of brilliant blue-white flame.

The coal was set ablaze in short order, and Mac gave his animal companion a well-received congratulatory pat on the head before shoveling in some fresh coal and working the rake to even out the fire. It was time to settle in for the long, slow process of bringing No. 45401 up to temperature.

The sun would be well above the eastern mountains and Jim would be showing up with breakfast by the time her steam gauge lifted off the pin.

4.11.2 Nostalgia

She was going to miss this, Abigail mused as she walked along the stone halls of Hogwarts.

The fresh Hogwarts alumnus was on her way to the Great Hall to break her fast for the last time as a Hogwarts student. Someday she might return — as a guest, as a parent... maybe even as a professor, she supposed — but however it happened, it would never again be quite the same.

She trailed a finger lazily along the cool stone of the castle wall as she went, taking the time to look about at the familiar environs with fresh eyes. It was amazing how the realization that she would soon be leaving for the last time seemed to change her surroundings. Things she had taken for granted suddenly became significant in a way they had never been before.

It was bittersweet.

Abigail had accomplished much in her time within these walls. She had done her time, learned what she needed to learn, and now she was eager to set aside those academic pursuits in favor of other, hopefully greater things. It was time to move on, and she was ready. However, among those accomplishments were the friendships she had built, and the greatest and closest of those would remain within these walls for quite some time yet.

Partings were difficult.

Still, she would keep in touch, and eventually her friends would graduate and rejoin her outside the ivory tower. In the meantime, there was great work to be done. She needed to get her career off the ground, and that career would start bright and early tomorrow morning in Hogsmeade, where she was due to be briefed on her new duties with Hogs Haulage. As far as first jobs went, it sounded like a pretty neat one; Harry had really come through for her there.

Her expression firmed at the thought, as did her step.

She had new responsibilities to handle, big and urgent ones, and there was no place in that for maudlin sentimentality. Abigail would approach this new part of her life just as she had everything else before and deal with it as it came.

For now, she was hungry, so she would make the best of this last meal in the Great Hall, and then she would enjoy her last ride on the Express with Harry before they parted company for a time. Then her friend would be off to handle his job across the Atlantic, and she would be off to handle her job on this end of things.

And handle it, she would!

Her friend was counting on her, and Abigail would not disappoint!

4.11.3 A railwayman's breakfast

The sun was clearly visible over the eastern mountains as Jim Coates walked the same path his fireman had traveled several hours before. While the path might have been the same, the difference in the yard around him was, appropriately, like night and day. Earlier, the Hogsmeade yard had been dark and still, now it was drenched in morning sunlight and abuzz with activity as the shunters prepared the daily train, and as rumor had it, that train was going to be a long one... much longer than usual for the Express run.

There'd be the usual seven-coach passenger set for the students, of course, but there were likely to be a great many more freight wagons than the usual three of four. A huge heavy equipment order had been shuffling about the yard for the last month until the owner had finally taken delivery yesterday, and the twenty flat wagons it had occupied would likely be tacked onto the train to get them out from underfoot.

It ought not be too heavy, considering more than half the freight wagons would be empty, but it would certainly be among the longest trains he'd driven since the company had changed the London run to a daily affair back in the seventies.

Jim paused in his walk across the yard to allow the Hogsmeade shunting locomotive, a century-old 0-4-0 saddle tank, to trundle by pushing yet another of those empty flat wagons to join the end of the growing rake.

Jim smiled at the sight, as he always did.

The proud old lady was a longstanding fixture of the company, having been in continuous service since her purchase back in 1894, new from Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. She'd originally been acquired for the purpose of building the Hogsmeade branch line itself, and with the completion of the line in 1901 she'd been turned over to shunting duty. There she had stayed ever since.

The Barclay had long been the darling of the maintenance staff on account of being the only locomotive in the Hogs Haulage stable to have been purchased new, directly from the manufacturer. She was their baby, and no one else had ever worked on her. Though Jim had to wonder whether she'd be replaced in that role now that the new prototype was nearly ready for her first commercial run... after all, the old Barclay might have been adopted into the company as an infant, but the new locomotive was actually born into it.

It was something to think about.

The Barclay rolled past, and Jim crossed the tracks she had been using with a skip in his step on his way to the locomotive he would be driving for the day, No. 45401. She sat on the tracks just outside 3 Road rumbling audibly, with the billowing column of black smoke pouring out of her chimney standing as proof of long hours his fireman had already put in getting her ready. Judging by the volume and speed of that smoke, she ought to be just starting to build pressure, which meant Mac had her right on schedule.

Good man, that. Reliable.

Jim appreciated that sort of reliability and made sure to reward it when he could. That was why he'd brought breakfast, as was his usual custom on those times when his fireman had to finish off a cold start. One of the privileges of rank was the ability to sleep in for such things — he'd worked his way up over the years, and he'd earned the right — but Jim had always figured if his fireman was good enough to drag himself out of his nice warm bed long before dawn to light the locomotive, then the least he could do would be to provide a good breakfast. It was a small price to pay for an extra four hours abed.

Such courtesies were the grease that kept the wheels of society turning.

When he drew even with the second of the locomotive's three pairs of driving wheels, its top several inches above his head, Jim judged himself close enough for Mac to hear him over the low rumbling roar of the blower and shouted a greeting.

"How's it going in there, Mac?"

The words prompted a bit of a clatter from inside the cab, and moments later, Mac poked his head out the door.

"Mornin' Jim!" the fireman greeted him cheerfully only to raise a coal smudged brow as he caught sight of what Jim was carrying. "Wotcher got there?"

In wordless answer, Jim brandished the satchel containing their breakfast with a broad grin of his own, causing his fireman's face to light up in a happy grin.

"Come on in then!" Mac called as he drew his head back inside the cab. Shortly thereafter, the dull roar died down when the blower shut off.

Covering the last few yards, Jim handed the satchel up to his grinning, coal-encrusted fireman, and used his now-free hand to help hoist himself up to the running plate.

"How's she comin' Mac?" he asked. "Anythin' to worry 'bout?"

"Nah, Jim, she looks t' be in top shape," his fireman answered, even as he retrieved his wand from the holster at the small of his back and cast a quick cleaning spell on the steel blade of his coal shovel. "Inspection went fine, an' I already checked tha mechanicals. Maintenance did a grand job on our ol' lady here."

"Good to hear!" Jim said with a nod as he set about unpacking his satchel of goodies.

"So, wha's on th' menu this mornin', Jim?" Mac asked eagerly as he opened the fire door, revealing the crackling flames within. He laid his now-clean shovel across the floor of the cab, the gleaming steel of the shovel blade halfway inside the firebox where he left it to heat.

"The usual, Mac," Jim answered, "egg an' bacon, bit o' bread for toast... everythin' ya' need for a proper fry-up."

Mac made an approving sort of noise.

"The Missus sent along some biscuits, too," Jim added, drawing a separately wrapped packet from his pocket.

"Biscuits, ya' say?" Mac perked up, eyes lighting with anticipation. "Your wife's recipe? Tha oat ones?"

"Fresh baked just yesterday," Jim confirmed with a nod. "Tol' me ta' tell you it was a thank you for getting' up so early an' savin' me the trouble even with a little baby in the house."

Irene, Mac's wife, had given birth to their fourth child in early January, their third son. Now six months old, little Dave McDonald was quite a handful.

"'s no trouble," Mac averred. There was a loud hiss as first a pat of butter and then a few rashers of bacon hit the hot blade of his shovel. "Little Davey got me up all on 'is own anyway 'bout the right time."

"Regular alarm spell, he is, right?" Jim said with an affable laugh, remembering the long-ago days when his children were that age.

Even as he laughed, though, Jim reached down to pull Smaugey away from the fire door with a practiced heave, having felt the drake-dog drawing a deep breath. "Careful there, little fella. You'll get yours soon enough, but you give that a blast and it's not gonna taste good when you get it."

"Aye, an' glad we are fer it, too!" Mac nodded emphatically, ignoring the byplay. The he sighed, "'e's likely t' be our last; the missus don' think we're goin' t' be able t' 'ave another. 'nother five years 'til Davey's old enough ter be safe 'round a little 'un 'imself, an' by then Irene figgers she'll be too old."

"'s been that long already?" Jim marveled. "Why, seems like jus' yesterday when you two started steppin' out together, but I suppose time does fly." He shook his head. "Though, ya' sure wouldn't know it by lookin' at the pair of ya'! When me and the missus covered for ya with your little ones a coupla' weeks back, could'a sworn you two looked jus' like you did back then!"

"'s been near thirty years, Jim," Mac replied simply.

He judged the bacon far enough along and reached for the eggs. Soon the sizzling redoubled as freshly cracked eggs hit rendered pig fat.

"How's the rest o' the family been, Mac?" Jim asked, making conversation as they waited.

"Oh, been getting' 'long fine, they 'ave!" his fireman answered. "Evan's doin' well on 'is lessons, an' Colleen's growin' like a weed!"

"An' how's Mikey?" Jim asked, absently patting Smaugey's scaly head.

"Mikey... well, he ain't too 'appy wit' 'is work," the fireman said. "Don' like the people there too much, an'..." he trailed off for a moment. "Ah, food's done!"

The pair ate, sparing a rasher or two for the drake-dog; all the while, the fire continued to burn.

"Anythin' I can do fer the lad?" Jim asked, resuming the earlier conversation even as he unwrapped the oat biscuits his wife had sent along as an extra treat. "Looks like there'll be plenty to do 'round the yards, if he's lookin' fer new work."

"Tol' 'im 'at m'self," Mac shook his head, absently accepting a biscuit from his long-time friend and coworker. "Said 'e gave 'em 'is word, an' 'e's gonna keep it, e'en if they are gits."

"Good man, that," Jim gave a sage nod. "How long?"

"Year end," his fireman answered.

Jim nodded again, chewing his biscuit as thought the situation over.

There wasn't much that could be done, really. The boy had given his word, and that was that. He'd just have to tough it out until the end of the year. Jim could lay some groundwork for the lad, though. Mikey had already talked with the young Mr. Potter back at the picnic, but it'd be better for things to start lower down... less resentment that way.

As far as it went, Mr. Potter was well-liked, but favoritism from on-high still stank to high heaven no matter who was involved. Best for little Mikey's recommendation to come from the ranks and then get a friendly nudge from the higher-ups, rather than coming down the chain unsolicited.

"I'll talk t' some of the fellas 'round the office," the driver promised his old friend. "See if we can't have somethin' lined up an' ready when 'e gets loose."

Mac's eyes lit up and he clapped Jim on the shoulder in thanks.

"Thank ya, Jim!" he managed after he finished chewing. "Tha's mighty kind o' ya."

The older man nodded. It was just a shame there was nothing else to be done. He reached down for another biscuit, only to pause and look at the baked treat with fresh eyes. Perhaps there was something he could do for the poor lad; he'd have to remember to tell the missus about it when he got home.

It might not actually help in any practical manner, but Jim had yet to see a day that couldn't be brightened by a good homemade biscuit!

Looking out the window, he saw the old Barclay chuff by, pushing yet another of the empty flat wagons to the back of the rake. How many more of those were left? Sticking his head out the window, Jim waved the guard over from where he had been keeping a careful eye on the assembly process, noting down each vehicle's details in his well-worn pocket-sized notebook.

"Mornin', Jim," he greeted easily as he jogged up. "We've got a fair old train today, wot?"

"Too right that," Jim agreed. "An' it looks like it's gettin' longer. How many more o' those left to go, Ivor?"

"Should be tha las' one there," he replied, pulling a small notebook out of his pocket to consult his notes. "Seven coaches, two vans from Ogden's an' one from Sparky's at sixteen-ton each, an' them twenty flat wagons, empty. Jus' gotta get this last one over and then coupled up, put on the tail lamp, and then it'll be time for the continuity test and final inspection."

"Thirty wagons... well, I'll be," Jim shook his head. That was nearly three times the usual length, and even mostly empty more than double the weight, of their usual rake on the Express run. It was something to keep in mind, but it was still well within the old girl's capabilities. "Thanks, Ivor."

The guard gave a nod and jogged off to give the formation one final once-over, and Jim pulled his head back in.

"How's the boiler, Mac?" he asked, turning to his fireman. "She good t' go?"

"Aye, Jim," the man replied after checking the gauges and listening carefully to the sound of the fire. "She's good 'n ready."

"Looks like that's the last wagon," the driver said. "We'll be up soon."

It was time to get back to work.

4.11.4 All aboard!

No. 45401 shuddered and hissed as she rolled to a stop at the Hogsmeade passenger platform. It was time to board, and on the whole, her passengers were eager to do so.

For most, summer holiday awaited, a time away from homework and responsibilities. Others had new horizons to explore and new possibilities to investigate.

Whatever their reasons, the passenger coaches quickly filled, and twenty minutes after she had come to a stop, the guard blew his whistle and raised a green flag signaling right away.

A single short whistle blast issued forth, No. 45401's fire door was closed, and shortly thereafter her driver opened the regulator. Then, huffing and hissing, the great iron horse pulled out of the station, off on her journey, carrying the future of wizarding Britain to its next destination.

4.11.5 Until we meet again

Harry let out an explosive sigh and bounced to his feet as the Express had pulled to a stop at the hidden platform at King's Cross. It had been an emotional trip, and he was... while not exactly eager to get on with things, at least eager to not be on the train any longer.

After the intense personal drama that had marked the week after the end-of-year testing, the remainder of the term had passed all too quickly, and with its passing had come the great parting of ways.

For Harry, it was the first time he'd had to face a real goodbye... at least the first time he could remember. Abigail had left for a few months during the previous summer, but he'd been unconscious when she had left. Hermione had been with him nearly continuously since he had befriended her, and Su Li had become his friend so recently that this was the first opportunity for such a goodbye to have occurred.

The young dragon found it to be a thoroughly unpleasant affair; though at least he could console himself with the fact that Suze would still be nearby.

"I'm going to miss you guys!" he said as his companions stood up as well.

"I'll miss you too, Harry!" Abigail took the opportunity to pull him into a tight hug.

She also took the opportunity to glare at Su Li over his shoulder, while the petite girl contented herself with quietly smiling back at her from across the cabin. Predictably, Abigail scowled in return. Working agreement or not, there was no love lost there.

"You've got your emergency portkeys, right?" the young dragon asked as she released him.

He had distributed the Gringotts emergency portkeys to all three girls during the trip.

"I do," Abigail reached up to tap her neck where the tiny gold pin was pinned to the inside of her blouse's collar.

There was a round of nodding from the other two girls, though Hermione's was rather anemic.

The frizzy-haired girl had been silent and withdrawn for the whole trip. She had her upcoming registration on her mind, and after taking the time to research what it meant in full, she was having trouble thinking of much else. Hermione remained mute as she and Su Li gathered their luggage, and the quartet made their way onto the hidden platform.

Abigail filled in the conversational gap admirably as she busied herself with saying goodbye.

"Harry, you stay safe on your trip," she said, giving the boy another hug. "I expect you to have lots of good stories to tell when I see you next. I'll be heading off to my job, so it might be a while."

"Hermione, you stay safe too!" That prompted another hug, which got a weak smile from the bushy-haired girl.

"Miss Li…" she trailed off before turning away with a perfunctory nod. There was nothing to be said.

With that the older girl grabbed Harry for one final hug and then made for the floo station.

"Until next year, Harry," Su Li said with a shallow curtsey before she too walked off.

"Well, Hermione," the young dragon said to his damsel, "I guess this is it."

"Right!" Hermione agreed with somewhat forced decisiveness. "Mum and Dad are out on the nonmagical platform. We'll meet up with them and get going."

And so, they did.

4.11.6 Misgivings

The Granger family and its currently human-shaped plus-one exited the Underground at Embankment Station, passed a couple of colorful street vendors, and turned to walk under the shop-lined underpass of Embankment Place on the way to Whitehall.

All around them, the mood among the shoppers and tourists was quite festive, out and about for their entertainment and the joy of it all. Harry was much the same, looking about in wide-eyed wonder at the new place and interesting sights. Even Hermione had started to recover some of her good cheer, largely because her parents were back by her side.

Said parents, however, were not nearly so jolly.

Tony Granger hadn't had nearly enough time to come to terms with the full implications of their current errand. When Hermione had sent a note beforehand about an errand at the Ministry, she had implied that it was a minor affair that could be taken care of in passing on the way to taking her friend to the airport. Neither he nor his wife had had any idea what that 'minor affair' entailed until Harry had taken the time to explain, an explanation which had taken place while they were riding the Underground from King's Cross...

...all of about five minutes earlier.

The boy had made a very convincing case for it, though without that long-ago conversation with that Snape fellow to provide context, Tony doubted he would have been nearly so ready to take the boy at his word. With the memory, he could accept the necessity... barely.

To be honest, even after more than a year, the true implications of what that man had told him had never really settled in for Tony. Now that those implications had him willingly — if grudgingly — sending his thirteen-year-old daughter off to sign away her future, they were finally starting to settle in properly.

Right now, they felt rather like a millstone around his neck, and the shock had left him more than a little numb.

"Are you sure you don't want us to go with you, Hermione?" Tony asked his daughter for the third time in as many minutes. "I don't really like sending you off on your own in downtown London, especially not to do something so important."

His little girl's bushy head of hair rustled as she again shook her head in the negative. "Honestly Daddy, we're only going to be going a few blocks. And Harry will be there with me the whole time even if something did happen; you don't have to worry."

Tony's expression soured, prompting his wife to squeeze his hand in a combination of comfort and warning.

"The entrance wouldn't even open if you were too close, anyway," Hermione continued, oblivious to her father's discomfort. "The secrecy wards wouldn't allow it. Professor Snape is going to meet us inside, too. We won't be on our own for long."

"I know that, sweetie," he would never have considered allowing it otherwise, "but I'm your father, and it's my job to worry."

"Don't worry, love, I'm sure Harry will take good care of our daughter," she shot the boy in question a significant glance, "won't he?"

"Of course, Mrs. Granger," Harry said earnestly, "I mean, that's sort of what this whole thing is about, innit?"

"Yes… yes, it is," Tony agreed grudgingly.

"There's the entrance!" Hermione spoke, pointing to an unassuming telephone box tucked into a cranny on the building at No. 3 Whitehall Place, just behind the support for a skybridge connecting it to the building across the way. "Come on, Harry, we need to get going if we want to finish in time to get you to Stansted for your flight!"

"Hermione!" her mother held onto her daughter's shoulder until she was sure she had her attention. "You and Harry meet us back at the Gardens when you're done."

As his little girl walked off to inextricably bind her future to that of the boy beside her, Tony Granger watched them go, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Sharon," he asked after a moment, "are we doing the right thing, letting Hermione do this?"

His wife's only answer was to squeeze his hand with her own.

4.11.7 Posting banns

Oblivious to her parents' misgivings, Hermione and her sometimes draconic friend crammed themselves into the telephone box that disguised the visitor's entrance of the British Ministry of Magic, and Hermione used her wand to carefully tap out the entry code on the phone's keypad.

As she tapped the final two, corresponding to the 'c' in 'magic', the device triggered, blacking out the windows as the interior of the telephone box dropped like a stone, somehow managing to bring them to a safe, if terrifying, stop moments later and several dozen meters below ground level. The phone and the wall to which it was attached then swung out of the way, revealing the visitors' lobby, in which stood a very grumpy-looking Severus Snape.

"Hi, Mr. Snape!" Harry greeted the man cheerfully, utterly unphased by the abrupt trip. Hermione barely managed to nod in greeting as she attempted to recover from the sudden bout of vertigo.

"It is about time you two showed up," the man greeted his students with his usual good cheer. "Come! Due to your insistence on riding the train, we have no time to waste."

The trio set off to the Family Registry Office, passing a bewildering array of offices, conference rooms, and lounges along the way.

Harry, in his usual manner, smiled broadly at everyone he saw, though he got little in the way of response from most. The one exception was a redheaded man seated in one of the lounges just outside their destination. He looked up from the cup of coffee he was nursing and answered in kind.

With Snape's expert assistance, Harry and his damsel managed to get in and out in just a few minutes. The relevant paperwork was remarkably easy to fill out.

On the way out, they brushed past the man from earlier, now no longer smiling, who was walking past the door in the opposite direction. Harry's head snapped to the side as the man drew even with Hermione, a frown forming as he looked intently at his damsel's leg.

"What is it, Harry?" she asked, noticing his sudden movement.

Harry's currently human brow furrowed further in concentration before he spoke, "I thought I saw something move by your leg, but I can't see anything different."

"Really? I don't feel anything," she craned her neck to look down and moved her leg this way and that, examining it herself. "I can't see anything, either. Maybe it was just my skirt?"

"Huh, I guess…" he trailed off before dismissing the issue with a grunt.

They had a train to catch.

4.11.8 Fallen heroes

"Did you catch that, Control?" the redheaded man whispered into a small communication device hidden in his collar. He waited for a long moment before he repeated, "Control?"

Several floors away, in a darkened room half full of complicated looking equipment which framed a very detailed three-dimensional image of the redheaded man and his environs, two men stood in shocked silence next to a table full of half-empty coffee mugs.

"Control, do you hear me?" the redhead's voice issued from one of the supporting pieces of equipment.

"Control?"

"We hear you, Weasley," one of the men, Auror Sergeant First Class Kingsley Shacklebolt, finally managed to respond.

The room fell silent again for one long moment before he finally managed to sum up his opinion of the events he had just witnessed in the form of a heartfelt and highly uncharacteristic "Shit."

"Yeah," his partner, Auror Sergeant First Class Rupert Hayes, immediately agreed, "there goes another one…"

"Damnit!" he slammed his hand down on the table hard enough to rattle the mugs. "I'd thought the Boy-Who-Lived would be better than this!"

"What's all the racket?" their boss, Amelia Bones, asked, sticking her head into the room.

"You're not going to like it, Chief," Shack warned her.

"I don't need to like it, just tell me what's happening."

"The Potter boy was just past, along with a suspected Death Eater and some poor bloody muggle-born girl he's somehow talked into registering herself as his servant," Shack reported.

"Shit," Amelia said shortly, unknowingly echoing her subordinate's earlier reaction. "No signs of mental tampering, I suppose? No signs of Imperius?"

"Nothing we could detect," Shack confirmed.

"As usual…"

"You are going to like this though, Chief," the redhead's voice issued from the mission comm equipment once more.

"What do you have for me, Weasley?"

The now named plainclothes agent, Auror Second Class Matt Weasley, a cousin to the better-known branch of the House, smiled broadly enough to be visible on the surveillance display. "I tagged her with a cavalry marker!"

His fellow Aurors and the Chief gave him a round of startled looks. A cavalry marker was Department of Magical Law Enforcement slang for a tiny pellet of bioalchemically-safe metal, enchanted with a carefully masked tracking charm and made to record and transmit spell use on the bearer. It was usually implanted into the forearms of undercover DMLE officers, and it was that use which had given the device its name. When an undercover operation went south, that little implant would do an excellent job of calling in the cavalry.

They were expensive work, especially as they had to be made by trusted DMLE personnel for self-evident security reasons, and they didn't last long once administered — the body's own magic would tend to break down the enchantments over the course of a week or so — but they were one of the DMLE's few advantages in the fight against the pureblood and 'novae pure' industrialists and their underground slave trade.

It was a trade that, despite supposedly having been stopped by Dumbledore's maneuverings on the Wizengamot some thirty years prior, everyone who was anyone knew was still going on. The appeal of cheap, hell, almost-free factory labor was just that strong, and as production-line manufacturing of enchanted goods spread, it was becoming more and more common.

Worse yet, once someone had been got by the group — dubbed the Syndicate by the investigation team for lack of anything else to call it — it became an absolute nightmare to prove that they weren't willing, the combination of memory charms and various other mental magics was just that hard to track, especially with the well-intentioned legal protections against unlawful search and seizure..

Half the time the poor bastards walked in the door of the DMLE offices under their own steam and were registered as bonded servants only hours before their servitude was illegally sold on the auction block.

"How?" Amelia finally asked.

By way of an answer, Matt slid a microdart projector out of his sleeve. The thing looked a bit like a muggle hypodermic syringe, and it was again usually used for undercover work, this time to surreptitiously fire tiny tracking darts into suspicious packages.

"Charmed it so she wouldn't notice and shot it into her leg when she walked past me, Chief," he explained. "That Potter kid is something else, though. He almost caught me despite the charm."

"Good work, Weasley," Amelia congratulated her subordinate. "Did you happen to catch the girl's name?"

"No, ma'am," he responded immediately, "but I can find out. It'll be posted in the logs here, and those are publicly accessible."

"You do that," without waiting for the man's acknowledgement, she turned to the other two aurors in the room. "Okay boys, I want that girl monitored 24-7; this could be our chance to roll up the damn Syndicate for good. Shack, Hayes, hand-pick the personnel monitoring her and make damn sure they're trustworthy. We know there are moles in this department, and if word gets back to those bastards, heads are going to roll, understood?"

There was a round of nodding; everyone in earshot was trustworthy, very competent, highly intelligent, got good hunches, and just generally good at their jobs... they had to be.

There were, after all, two kinds of auror: competent and dead.

Many people mistakenly assumed that the Ministry Auror Corps were the Wizarding police. In one respect, that assumption was correct, but not if one assumed that this meant they were beat coppers. The blue-overcoated Ministry Law Enforcement Patrol — known as LEPs in Department parlance, and simply 'The Police' by the average British wizard on the street — were the Wizarding equivalent of the friendly neighborhood 'Bobby'.

More educated guesses called them the Wizarding equivalent of a SWAT team or armed response unit. Again, that guess was still wrong; the Ministry Hit Wizards were the Wizarding equivalent of a SWAT team or armed response unit.

No, the aurors were something a cut above even that. They were Wizarding Britain's elite counter-terrorist task force; you didn't send an auror to an armed robbery; you sent a Hit Wizard. When someone's sending bomb threats, or a portkey point has been hijacked, when hostages have been taken, when people have been killed or worse, that's when you sent in the Aurors.

Hit Wizards were hand-picked from the ranks of the LEPs. Aurors were hand-picked from the ranks of the Hit Wizards. Sometimes, an LEP cadet was fast-tracked from DMLE Academy graduation to the Auror Corps for one reason or another: perhaps due to rare magical ability, perhaps due to raw talent, or occasionally due to connections. That last was highly unpopular among the majority of the corps, the ones who got there by being just that damned good at their job.

An auror had to be one part detective, one part police officer, and one part warrior. They were the best of Wizarding Britain's best. They weren't the Wizarding equivalent of a police armed response unit; they were the Wizarding analog of the Royal Marines.

They were also — due to the numbers involved, the unpopularity of such dangerous jobs among the well-heeled and pure-blooded, and recently the fruits of a certain Hogwarts professor's ongoing efforts to cull the applicant pool — mostly made up of wizards and witches who struggled to find better than a subsistence wage. Whether that was because they were muggle-born, half-blooded, or just plain old poor, they found themselves welcomed with open arms in the LEPs, and then they rose quickly — because they were quick, because they were clever, because they were lucky, because they were deadeye shots, because if you wanted their trust you damn well earned it, because they were always looking for an ulterior motive, and because they were just that damn good.

And, as soon as that cavalry marker went off, they would take great pleasure in demonstrating that prowess.

4.11.9 …and a bag of crisps

"It is about time you got here, you wretched reptile," Severus Snape said by way of greeting as Harry and the Grangers finally reached lobby of the charter terminal after nearly two hours of travel. "Everyone else is already aboard and have been for the past half-hour."

"Sorry, Mr. Snape," Harry apologized, "but Mr. Granger wanted to stop to get a snack."

For his part, Tony Granger was staring out the window. "Is that a Boeing 737?"

"It is, indeed," Snape nodded tersely. "The 77-33 model, to be precise."

"You chartered a private Boeing 737?" Hermione's father squeaked.

"Yes I did, and we are currently on the clock," Snape snapped impatiently. He turned to Harry, "Get on the plane, Mr. Potter! You have already been allowed more than adequate time to say goodbye to Miss Granger."

"How much does that cost?" Tony asked, dazed.

"Somewhat in excess of three hundred galleons per hour, Mr. Granger," the potions master told him irritably as he ushered the currently human-shaped dragon out the door onto the tarmac. "And you have already wasted half an hour of that getting your 'snack'. Now, we must be going, so I bid you good day!"

Tony swallowed heavily as the door swung closed behind the potions master and his charge, leaving the room feeling quite empty. His brow furrowed for a moment as he ran through a bit of mental math, then he nodded.

Wordlessly, he turned and began walking woodenly back the way they had come, in such a daze that he almost walked into another pedestrian. After an absent apology, which the man acknowledged with an affable tip of his broad-brimmed hat, Tony reached into his coat pocket to dig out the remains of his snack.

"Tony?" Sharon asked, reaching out to catch his shoulder.

"I'm going to go enjoy the rest of these crisps," he said in a numb sort of tone, staring into the bag with a dumbfounded expression on his face as if seeing the common snack food with new eyes.

Looking up, he noticed his wife's raised eyebrow, so he explained. "They apparently cost Mr. Snape there a bit more than half what we spend on of our yearly mortgage payment."

With that, Tony Granger carefully retrieved one of the salty, fried potato wafers and ate it, chewing deliberately and thoroughly before swallowing.

"I'd hate to let them go to waste."

4.11.10 Observer

A man tipped his hat to the obviously shaken father, his concerned wife, and their just barely teenaged daughter as he passed them on the sidewalk outside the charter terminal at Stansted Airport. He had forgone his usual face paint for the day in the interest of avoiding attention, though if one looked closely enough, it was still possible to pick out the ghostly image of the two elongated red diamonds which would normally have been painted over his eyes from the traces of pigment he hadn't quite been able to scrub off.

That was not to say he passed completely unremarked upon. Tall, whipcord-thin, and dressed like he had stepped off the set of an old Western film — complete with broad-brimmed hat, snakeskin boots, and an unseasonably long brown leather duster — the man garnered plenty of odd looks, even bare-faced. He nevertheless ignored them all with the ease of long practice in favor of fiddling with something he removed from an inner pocket of his coat.

The odd contraption appeared to be a simple torsion pendulum, little more than a thin disk with a tiny speck of rusty red set into one point near its rim. The whole assembly dangled from the end of a short hair-thin thread tied at its center of mass. Allowing the device to hang so it could rotate freely, that little speck of rust soon oscillated reliably about a line which, when carefully projected, tracked the movements of one aircraft in particular as it taxied towards takeoff.

"Well, that answers the question of where you are now," he muttered, intently watching the airliner as it queued for takeoff. "But where are you going, I wonder?"

Green eyes narrowed as they took careful note of the registration number emblazoned on the side of the aircraft.

"This is going to take some legwork."

4.11.11 Time to think

The trip home had so far been a quiet one. Hermione slept soundly seated between her parents, her head settled comfortably against her mother's shoulder. It had been a long and trying day, and the opportunity to rest on the two-hour-long trip back to Crawley was a welcome one.

The trip had also given her parents plenty of time to review the documents their daughter had signed that day. Their train ride was much less restful.

"God, I hate this," Tony Granger said for the fifth time in the last ten minutes as he once again finished rereading the servant contract in his hands. "How can this even happen in this day and age? We're in Britain, for God's sake, not some uncivilized third-world hellhole!"

"I don't know about that, love," his wife said quietly, gently stroking her sleeping daughter's hair. "From what you've told me of your conversation with that Snape fellow, I'm fairly certain that we are living in an 'uncivilized third-world hellhole'."

"Maybe we are," he allowed, "but did it have to get our daughter stuck in this!" He slapped the contract gently against his knee, being careful not to wake his daughter with the noise. "This bloody damned thing is a whitewashed slave contract. There are no limits on what that boy could make her do!"

"You've met Harry, love," Sharon chided him. "You know better than that."

"For now, sure," her husband scoffed. "He's too young for anything at the moment, but in a few years… I was a boy his age once, Sharon. Once puberty hits, his self-control is going to be shot to hell, and that contract will be a constant temptation."

"Tony Granger! Think about just what that boy actually is for a moment," she gave him a pointed look. "If he wanted to do something of that nature, he wouldn't need a bloody slip of paper to give him permission!" She shook her head, "Harry has given you every reason to trust him and not a single one not to, outside your own paranoid imagination. Give him a little trust."

Tony slowly nodded, forced to acknowledge the point.

"I'll tell you what, Tony," Sharon proposed. "Why don't you stop obsessively rereading that damned contract, and after we get back to Crawley, we can go out to eat and celebrate getting Hermione back for the summer, rather than worrying about things we can't change? At least try to look at the bright side of things."

"Alright," he said grudgingly. "I still hate this, though."

"Tony!"

4.11.12 Don't worry, I speak jive

"Wow!" the Great Wyrm of Hogwarts marveled as the airliner broke through a thick layer of dingy grey mist to reveal the blindingly bright sun-drenched cloudscape above. "I hardly ever fly this high!"

"Truly, it is remarkable," Suze agreed from her position at the next window over; it was the only place on the plane that she could fit, squeezed into the space at the head of the onboard conference table. "I look forward to seeing the stars from this vantage."

"That'd be pretty cool," Harry agreed. "If you want, I could take you flying up this high more often, myself..."

"Perhaps not quite yet, Mr. Potter," Severus Snape said from his place at the table. He was much calmer now that his three-hundred galleons per hour were being put to productive use, rather than being wasted on a bag of crisps. "One topic that arose in my discussions with Mr. Slackhammer was the efficacy of the nonmagical aerospace detection grids at discovering your presence."

"How did that come up, Mr. Snape?" the young dragon asked without turning, unable to tear his eyes away from the fantastic tableau on the other side of the window.

"I had suggested enlisting your assistance to provide transportation across the Confederacy, rather than arranging ground transport," the potions master explained. "It was explained to me that the muggle nations maintain sensor grids which are monitored quite assiduously, and that your size and metallic composition would make you stand out on them like the proverbial sore thumb."

"Oh, yeah! You mean their radar and stuff," Harry said. "I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess that makes sense. Huh. It's a good thing I've stuck to low altitude flying in the mountains, then. I must've been lost in the ground clutter, otherwise we'd have had all kinds of jet planes and stuff trying to find me."

Snape raised an eyebrow at that. "Am I to understand you know how such things work, Mr. Potter?"

"Sorta," he shrugged. "I get the basics of how radar works, 'cause jet planes are pretty cool, and that stealth fighter one is really weird looking, so I wanted to know why it was shaped like it was, and since it's all about not being seen by radar, I had to look into that a bit."

"Anyway, you got transmitters that send out radio waves, and those bounce off of stuff, and then a sensor picks up those bits that bounced and you can figure out what it bounced off of by how the signal looks, but I don't know the technical details yet, 'cause I haven't looked into it very much." The last Potter shrugged. "I know metal reflects radio really well, though, and so do lots of sharp corners, and round bits too, oddly enough, and my scales got lots of metal and lots of sharp bits and lots of round bits, so if I were to fly by an airport or something they'd probably think I was about the size of the whole terminal from the return."

"I see," the potions master nodded. "Mr. Slackhammer seemed to think that, while our current concealment spells would not work to prevent such detection, it might be possible to adapt them to do so. Do you think you might be able to manage such a thing?"

That question was interesting enough to finally pull Harry away from the entrancing vista outside; though the fact that they had climbed high enough for the clouds below to lose some of their previous fantastic detail might have contributed to his willingness to look away.

"Um, I guess... maybe?" green eyes narrowed as their owner considered the problem. "I know you can change something's shape to make it so the radio waves get bounced away from where they came from, but I don't know how I'd manage that, 'specially since I change shape all the time when I fly." He paused momentarily as another thought occurred. "I know the stealth planes have coatings on 'em that absorb the radio waves they use for radar, so that might work."

"A coating, you say?" the potions master asked, his professional interest piqued. "What sort of coatings do they use?"

"I dunno," Harry shrugged. "They're real secret. The Americans only admitted they had the things four years back, and all the stuff about how they work is still kept really quiet."

"Understandable," the dark man nodded slowly. "I wonder what sort of properties such a substance would require. What exactly are these 'radio waves' you speak of, Mr. Potter?"

"Um, well," the young dragon paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts. "You know how light acts like a wave?"

"Yes, I recall you saying as much in our earlier conversations on the topic," Severus acknowledged. "Am I to understand that radio waves are a form of light, then?"

"That's it!" Harry nodded enthusiastically. "Anyway, different colors of light have different wavelengths. You can see light between about four hundred nanometers and a bit less than eight hundred nanometers, but light can really be any wavelength. The radio waves they use for radar are a lot longer, like a ten million times longer, so you can't see them."

"So, one would need to make a material of a color that cannot be seen," Snape mused. "Remarkable."

"Perhaps you could alter a color charm to do the job," a new voice interjected itself as Filius Flitwick inserted himself into the conversation.

Snape nodded a brief welcome his colleague. "How would one handle the feedback? The color charm is directed by visualization, as I recall. How does one visualize an invisible color?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea," the diminutive half-goblin chirped happily, "but I am certain figuring it out will be great fun!"

"I seem to recall a runic implementation of a color charm that I came across at some point," Bathsheda Babbling volunteered, sounding eager to get in on the conversation. "It was horrendously impractical, as I recall — lots of memorization of which modification produced which color — but I had no idea of that light-wavelength business. Perhaps there is some pattern to the runes of which I was unaware."

"Ooh! Can I get a look at that?" Harry asked excitedly. "I was trying to do something like that before and I couldn't get the colors to work out right."

"I'll have to look it up when we get back to the castle, Mr. Potter," the rune mistress averred. "I'm afraid I do not have the material with me, but I would be quite pleased to assist when I do. Might I ask what you were working on?"

"Sure! I was looking at making this thing for a regard gift, you see…"

The conversation quickly grew to encompass the entire group from Hogwarts as increasingly esoteric and technically involved ideas flew thick and fast. The Hogwarts faculty held some of the finest magical minds in the whole of wizarding Europe, and it showed. Harry, who sported similar interests — as well as a near-eidetic memory, eclectic and wide-ranging reading habits, and a biological supercomputer in his skull completely filling a brainpan larger than most bathtubs — was having a grand time of it.

As he sat at the table, thirty-five thousand feet above the surface of the Atlantic, the young dragon could only smile. This was going to be a great trip!

4.11.13 Starry night

Off to the side and out of the conversational scrum, Suze watched on for nearly an hour, smiling gently at the brightly animated face of her dragon. Eventually, she turned back to the window before her, just in time to catch the slow setting of the sun, delayed by both their altitude and their westward travel.

She was hurtling across the heavens in a metal box too low-ceilinged for her to stand up properly, moving faster than she ever had before in her life and completely at the mercy of the strange contraption and the mysterious humans operating it, but despite that the centaur maiden felt content. As the sky darkened, the familiar patterns of the stars faded into view, their light gently illuminating the tops of the clouds marching by far below.

Her Great Wyrm was happy; she was at his side; and the sight before her was as beautiful as any she could have ever hoped to see.

As far as Suze was concerned, all was right with the world.
 
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World Building: Hogs Haulage
In the process of preparing the three railway scenes in this section, I established with the kind help of several of the denizens of the CaerAzkaban group (thank you again, if you happen to see this) a history and locomotive stable for Hogs Haulage.

I thought people here might appreciate seeing it as well.


Hogs Haulage History

Dunkelzahn on CaerAzkaban said:
So that would make the revised timeline:
  • Founded in 1894, at which point they purchased a Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST new to build the Hogsmeade spur line along the south shore of Loch Morar. That locomotive remained in place to perform shunting duties. It is the only locomotive that was actually purchased new in the history of the company.
  • In 1895, they picked up a Manning Wardle 0-6-0ST "Llandinam" from the Pemboke and Tenby Railway, just prior to the railway's acquisition by the Great Western due to financial difficulties. The locomotive had been used in constructing the railway in 1863. It is intended as the London terminal shunter.
  • Hogs Haulage picked up their next locomotive in the form of a pair of 1870's vintage Highland Railway 4-4-0's (No. 7 Fife and No. 10 Westhall) before the 1901 opening, purchasing them when they were withdrawn from service by Highland Railway.
  • In 1901, the company opened service, running their 4-4-0's on the main line, and moving the Manning Wardle to King's Cross as a shunting locomotive.
  • That year, they also picked up four LB&SCR Class A1's (No. 48/51/65-66) for their scrap value when the locomotives were withdrawn from service, keeping them in anticipation of opening new routes to Glasgow and other destinations with significant magical populations.
  • In 1905, the company picked up a G&SWR 187 Class to keep up with slowly increasing traffic on the route, holding off on buying another locomotive until plans for new routes firmed up.
  • That kept up with business requirements until negotiations started to firm up for a second route to Glasgow in 1924, the search for a new locomotive to add was ended prematurely when the founder was assassinated by Abraxas Malfoy in 1924.
  • That setback and the subsequent interference essentially killed expansion, and the stable remained static in number but ever-increasing in performance due to the maintenance staff's ongoing tinkering until 1939, when one of the old 4-4-0's blew a bearing in mid-run and was retired to the maintenance barn 'until they had time'.
  • The other 4-4-0 and the G&SWR, after four decades of magical tinkering, were able to keep up with the slowly but steadily increasing traffic well enough for a few years, though their condition steadily declined due to the heavy use.
  • Acquired a surplussed Hunslet Austerity in 1946, when the Manning Wardle broke down unexpectedly and badly. The were a large number of the Hunslets available locally, and they didn't have the time to bring down one of the A1's in time to make the schedule, so it was purchased in a hurry. One of the A1's was moved down on the next run to serve as a backup immediately thereafter, and the Manning Wardle was moved back to Hogsmeade for repairs.
  • Schedules were starting to get a little tight until the massive round of steam withdrawals in the 1960's made a surfeit of inexpensive purchase options available.
  • 1961 saw the acquisition of No. 45401 (Stanier Class Five). Obtained in a hurry to relieve the aging and overworked locomotives.
  • The additional locomotive takes a great deal of strain off her older sisters by lengthening the time for their maintenance cycles.
  • 1962 saw the acquisition of No. 45030 (Stanier Class Five). Obtained in a hurry to relieve the aging and overworked locomotives.
  • With the acquisition of the second Black Five, the 4-4-0 and the G&SWR join the other 4-4-0 in the barn as soon as 45030 goes through its initial enhancements.
  • 1963 brought in No. 5972 Olton Hall (GWR 4900 Class) and No. 4844 Coldstreamer (LNER Class V2 2-6-2). Started shopping around for good deals, since there was now enough capacity for the route.
  • 1967 added No. 70015 Apollo (British Rail Standard Class 7 Pacific). Started shopping around for good deals, since there was enough capacity for the route.
  • With the introduction of the steam ban in 1968, the nature of the locomotives could be hidden easily enough with magic, so service continued.
  • That has been enough to keep things comfortable for them up until Harry acquired the company.

Hogs Haulage Locomotive Stable
Dunkelzahn on CaerAzkaban said:
That puts Hogs Haulage's locomotive stable at this point in the story here (withdrawn, mainline, shunting):

  1. Andrew Barclay 0-4-0ST (Built 1894, Acquired 1894, new) - Main shunting locomotive at the Hogsmeade yards
  2. Manning Wardle 0-6-0ST "Llandinam" (Built earlier than 1863, acquired 1895 from Pembroke and Tenby Railway) - 1901-1946, main shunting locomotive King's Cross, 1946 retired to barn for major maintenance
  3. Highland Railway No. 10 "Westhall" (Built in 1858-1859 as 2-4-0 Seafield Class, Rebuilt as 4-4-0 in 1873 as an effective prototype for the HR F Class, Acquired in 1899 from Highland Railway after withdrawal) - 1901-1939 mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route, 1939 retired to barn after blown bearing
  4. Highland Railway No. 7 "Fife" (Built in 1858-1859 as 2-4-0 Seafield Class, Rebuilt as 4-4-0 in 1875 as an effective prototype for the HR L Class, Acquired in 1899 from Highland Railway after withdrawal) - 1901-1962 mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route, 1963 retired to barn after acquisition of No.45030
  5. London, Brighton and South Coast Railway A1 Class 0-6-0T No. 51 "Rotherhithe" (Built Dec 1876, Acquired Feb 1901 from LB&SCR after withdrawal) - 1901-? Shunting pool at Hogsmeade yards, mostly idle
  6. London, Brighton and South Coast Railway A1 Class 0-6-0T No. 65 "Tooting" (Built Aug 1874, Acquired Feb 1901 from LB&SCR after withdrawal) - 1901-? Shunting pool at Hogsmeade yards, mostly idle
  7. London, Brighton and South Coast Railway A1 Class 0-6-0T No. 66 "Hatcham" (Built Aug 1874, Acquired Feb 1901 from LB&SCR after withdrawal) - 1901-1946 Shunting pool at Hogsmeade yards, mostly idle, 1946-? Moved to shunting pool at King's Cross, mostly idle
  8. London, Brighton and South Coast Railway A1 Class 0-6-0T No. 48 "Leadenhall" (Built Dec 1876, Acquired Aug 1901 from LB&SCR after withdrawal) - 1901-? Shunting pool at Hogsmeade yards, mostly idle
  9. Glasgow and South Western Railway 187 Class, No. 197 (Built 1870-1872?, Acquired 1908 from G&SWR after withdrawal) - 1908-1963 mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route, 1963 retired to barn after acquisition of No.45030
  10. Hunslet "Austerity" 0-6-0ST (Built during WWII, acquired from military surplus 1946) - 1946-? main shunting locomotive King's Cross
  11. Stanier Class Five No. 45401 (Built 1937 Armstrong Whitworth, Acquired 1961 from BR after withdrawal) - 1962-? mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route
  12. Stanier Class Five No. 45030 (Built 1934 Vulcan, Acquired 1962 from BR after withdrawal) - 1963-? mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route
  13. GWR 4900 Class 4-6-0 No. 5972 "Olton Hall" (Built 1937, Acquired 1963 from BR after withdrawal) - 1963-? mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route
  14. LNER Class V2 2-6-2 No. 4844 "Coldstreamer" (Built ?, Acquired 1963 from BR after withdrawal) - 1963-? mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route
  15. British Rail Standard Class 7 Pacific No. 70015 "Apollo" (Built 1951, Acquired 1967 from BR after withdrawal) - 1967-? mainline locomotive on Hogsmeade-London route
  16. Potter Rail Prototype Mark 1 4-6-0 No. 1 (Built Dec 1992 in-house) - Built for mainline operations but not yet in service, essentially the 5AT as a coal-burner plus the full suite of additional magical optimizations to the steam handling and drive train that had been developed in the Hogs Haulage maintenance barns
So that should be useful for my future efforts.
 
Section 5.1 - Coming home to roost
5 Rules of Engagement

5.1 Coming home to roost

5.1.1 Ambush

As the Granger family car pulled into the garage at their home in Crawley, Hermione was practically bouncing with excitement, pulling a fair imitation of her friend Harry's usual resting state in the process. For the first time in what seemed like ages, she was back at home, and her parents were with her, and she'd be able to see all her old favorite places, and they were going to have a great summer!

The sun might have set hours earlier, but between her long nap on the way home and a quick stop for dinner — and, perhaps more importantly, an after-dinner ice cream — Hermione had hit her second wind, which led to her bounding energetically into the house as soon as her father unlocked the door.

"It's so good to be back home!" the bushy-haired girl gushed as she looked about.

"And it's good to have you home, dear," her mother agreed. "Now off to bed with you! It's been a very long day."

"But I'm not really tired yet," Hermione complained. She turned to her father, asking, "Ooh, Daddy! Could we play a board game? How about…"

Her question was interrupted by a cacophony of breaking glass and splintering wood. A split second later, her father jerked his arms up reflexively in a futile attempt to shield himself from the glassy shrapnel of a shattered window, and then his daughter watched him collapse to the ground, bleeding from a multitude of nasty-looking cuts to his face, arms, and torso.

The young girl turned her still uncomprehending eyes towards a wand-carrying man squeezing in through the window he had just broken. She didn't recognize him, but the situation suddenly became crystal clear as the stranger caught her eye and had the audacity to smile at her.

He was here to… but wasn't the registration supposed to…

Hermione still didn't know what to think, aside from the fact that she really didn't want that man to come anywhere near her. Fortunately, her body didn't precisely need to think to know what it was about.

Such was the benefit of practice.

In a motion drilled to the point of reflex over the course more than a hundred hours on the range — drills which Harry had insisted should include drawing the wand from its carrying place for each set, as his own goblin instructors had taught him to do with his guns — Hermione smoothly drew her wand from its wrist holster, raised it to point at the man's obnoxiously grinning face, and twitched in the minimalistic, perfectly timed movement to cast a piercing hex.

And, just as it had in practice, the resulting hex flew true, punching right through that leering face, which went slack for a moment — just long enough for the image of that face and the grotesque hole she had punched in its forehead to sear itself forever into her memory — before the now-deceased man collapsed heavily to the floor.

"Wot the 'ell?"

Hermione whirled at the unfamiliar voice behind her, noting with a strangely numb detachment that her mother had also collapsed on the floor, lying next to her father. Neither was moving. She found the source of the voice in the form of another man, looking at her with a shocked expression on his face, even as his wand pointed off in a direction that she suddenly realized had been where her mother would have been standing before she fell.

Without any conscious direction from her, her wand rose once again, and fired once again, taking the man in the shoulder this time. The wound had just started to bleed when Hermione caught a flash of glowing red out of the corner of her eye, and then she knew no more.

As Hermione's unconscious body collapsed to the floor, the emergency portkey Harry had given her earlier that day remained pinned to the inside of her shirt collar, untriggered and forgotten.

5.1.2 Call to arms

Amelia Bones sat in her office late in the evening, her fingers drumming with nervous energy on the single folder occupying the desk before her. Unlike most of the paperwork that crossed her desk, almost all of which was handled at least in part by her staff, this one was written entirely in her own hand. Also unlike the vast majority of her paperwork which was generally filed in triplicate to different locations for redundancy, this copy was the only one of its kind.

Operation Good Housekeeping.

The proposal was entirely off the record, a black operation, something she had long seen the necessity of but had never had the opportunity to carry out. It was also the sort of operation that she hated with every fiber of her being, precisely the sort of illegal under-the-table dealing she worked so hard to stamp out. The only difference was that this one was intended to help the cause of justice, even though it circumvented the letter of the law.

Bones scoffed at that last thought; the hypocrisy encapsulated within was thick enough to cut with a knife.

She hated herself just a little for the fact that she was seriously considering going through with it.

The situation with the Granger girl had hit Amelia hard. The woman had long viewed the continued existence of the underground slave trade as something of a personal insult, an affront both to common decency and to her own duty as the chief law enforcement officer in wizarding Britain. It was something she could not set aside, a righteous obsession, a vile perversion that she would see ended: for herself, for her nation, and for the hundreds of names listed in that book she kept enshrined on her side table.

She looked over at the book in question, a list of nearly five hundred names culled from unsolved disappearances, nearly five hundred names belonging to people that she and her investigators were certain had disappeared into the black markets, nearly five hundred names that represented but a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of victims of that bloody business.

As her eyes fell on that morbid reminder of the stakes, Amelia's restless fingers stilled; her eyes hardened with an icy resolve; and her thoughts turned back to the situation at hand.

In addition to a harsh reminder of the ills of society, the Granger girl's situation was also one of the best opportunities they had ever had to roll up at least part of the sprawling criminal organization her investigators had dubbed, the Syndicate. Auror Weasley's quick thinking had given them a way to track the girl, and that meant they could catch some of the bastards in the act.

It was the chance to get hold of one loose thread, something they had never managed to accomplish in the nearly three decades that had passed since Dumbledore rammed the ban on slavery down wizarding Europe's collective political throat. With that loose thread and careful investigation, they might just be able to unravel the whole putrid mess.

However, the very fact that they had not yet managed to catch such a break in an investigation spanning thirty years implied some very bad things about her Department, bad things that she thought she had a good handle on but had never been able to prove with full legal rigor. It was those bad things that Good Housekeeping was intended to address.

If the Granger situation played out as she hoped, then…

At that moment, the door to Amelia Bones' office flew open and Constable Morrison, one of the LEP officers who had been monitoring the Granger girl, came crashing in.

"Chief! Spell fire at the Granger place, our girl just got stunned and bound!"

Amelia was on her feet like a shot, slamming the alert trigger that would scramble the auror teams with the heel of her hand as she came upright... a trigger that had been untouched since Voldemort's renowned encounter with Harry Potter back in 1981.

This was the biggest break they'd had in any of the covert slavery cases since slavery had been forced to become covert, and she was not going to bloody well waste it, no matter what that required of her.

Behind her, the dossier detailing Operation Good Housekeeping lay abandoned on her desk.

Abandoned, but most assuredly not forgotten.

5.1.3 The getaway

At a certain house in Crawley, a man stood clutching his shoulder in an attempt the stanch the bleeding. He was, however not focused on his own wound, rather he was staring uncomprehendingly at the scene before him.

"Fucking 'ell!" he said in a shocked voice. "The bloody twist went an' killed 'im."

"Shut up an' get over 'ere," one of his compatriots, crouching next to the girl's unconscious mother with his wand twitching. "Take care o' the father before the gavvers get 'ere." The man looked up from his task and caught sight of the blood running down the first man's arm. "And quit bleedin' everywhere, ya idiot! Do ya wanna get nicked?"

The man flicked his wand up to seal his own wound before doing as he was told, kneeling to get to work on the mental modifications to the girl's father.

"I just daan't…" he was cut off by the panicked shout of one of his other compatriots.

"We got incomin'! ROBINS! Get tha bird an' scram!"

The wounded man and his compatriots dropped what they were doing and scrambled to comply. He grunted in pain as his punctured shoulder reopened when he hefted their unconscious target, but he still managed to make it to their return portkey in time.

They spun out of existence mere seconds before the rapid-fire cracks of the incoming auror response squads apparating in disrupted the evening quiet, leaving the girl's two unconscious and partially obliviated parents, a dead body, and a few seemingly insignificant bloodstains behind them.

5.1.4 Pursuit

"Clear!"

The perimeter of the Granger household had already been secured, but the clearing operations were still going on inside when Amelia Bones arrived on the scene. As the Director, she was technically supposed to have waited to come until the site was confirmed secure, but she had missed the first wave only because she had taken the five minutes required to don her old uniform, complete with its layered armor.

There was eager, and then there was stupid. Amelia generally did her best not to fall into the second category.

"Report!" she barked on arriving at the scene.

"Chief!" Auror Hayes snapped to attention. "The site has been secured. The Granger girl has been taken, but control reports the cavalry marker is still intact and tracking. It's currently in transit. On-site we have two non-magical adults, presumably the girl's parents, stunned and partially obliviated, and one deceased adult wizard, killed before we arrived." The man smiled a hard sort of smile, "Between that, and the blood we've found on the carpet — one of the attackers, by the placement — it's clear that the girl didn't go quietly."

Amelia spared only enough time for an answering smile before she began issuing orders.

"Keep an eye on the tracker for the girl and send for a team from Forensics; we've got blood from one of their men, and that means we can put a leash on the little rat." Her eyes narrowed for just a moment before she added, "And get your partner over here, I need him to help plan the assault."

Auror Hayes saluted smartly and went off to carry out his orders. A few moments later, his partner, Auror Shacklebolt arrived.

"Chief?"

"I need you to prepare a recon squad and a heavy assault team. You'll be going after the Granger girl whenever her trace stops long enough for us to catch up," the dark-skinned man nodded in simple acknowledgement.

He was one of her most trustworthy men, perhaps the only one she would trust to carry out her next order.

"And Shack," she added, waiting for him to meet her eye so there would be no misunderstanding, "Good Housekeeping is a go, remember that when you're choosing personnel. You will find the relevant information in a dossier on my desk; see it done and destroy the dossier immediately afterwards."

Shacklebolt's only indication of surprise was a slight widening of his eyes. Nonetheless, he saluted in acknowledgement.

"Yes, Chief!"

As her man left to carry out her orders, Amelia took a moment to indulge in a pained sigh at the necessity of that last order, before she called for another of her officers to arrange another pursuit and assault squad to follow up on that bloodstain Hayes had reported.

Even if it was just one of the small fry, she was not about to let any of the slaving vermin slink away from the purifying light.

5.1.5 If you can't take the heat…

One portkey and half a dozen apparations later, the fleeing group of thugs stopped long enough to catch their breath and contact their controller for instructions. The injured man also took the opportunity to foist his unconscious cargo off on one of his compatriots and reseal his shoulder wound.

"Let the pitch kna we got the twist, an' we're dodgin' tha bloody damned Robins," the group's leader ordered their signals man. "Find aahhht wot 'e wants us ter do wif' 'er."

Dealing with the interest of the authorities usually involved finding and removing any trackers and then going to ground to wait for the passive trail to go cold.

"De gaffer says ter take 'er ter de auction," the signalman relayed with some understandable disbelief in his voice. He looked up to his immediate leader, "Any idea wa' that's about? We 'aven't evun checked 'er fe trackers, yet!"

The leader frowned, eyes narrowed, as he considered the problem. "Ask 'im ter confirm."

The signalman complied, frowning himself as he relayed the boss' answer. "'e says ter juss do it, and dun retreat to Safehouse Foteun ter wait fe things ter die down." He paused for a moment, long enough for the next message to come in, "'e says we wasted way tew much time ed de bird already, bes' ter make 'er someone else' problem rite quick."

"Bloody two-foot," the leader mumbled under his breath, before he addressed the group. "Alwigh', ya 'eard the geeza, get on it!"

5.1.6 A bigger fish

Nearly two hundred miles away in a small house in the country, a closely related scene played out.

"There, it's done," a man said as he sat back from an enchanted piece of messenger parchment, the sort that echoed any writing made on it to a second, linked parchment. He turned to glare with impotent rage at the man standing across the room. "My men will drop the girl off at the auction, and then retreat to Safehouse Fourteen, just like you asked. Now get the hell out of my house!"

The target of his glare, a painfully nondescript man with an inexplicable air of competence about him, was standing on the other side of the room with his wand drawn threateningly. Between them, a woman and two terrified children had been bound and forced to their knees.

His wand never wavering, the painfully nondescript man raised a finger to his ear and nodded once.

"My spotter confirms that the target has been delivered," he said in a dead sort of voice, neither it nor his demeanor betraying emotion of any sort.

"I told you they would; now get out!" the first man demanded indignantly. "You've got what you wanted!"

In lieu of an answer, the nondescript man's wand flicked once, and there was a wet splash followed by a meaty thud.

"No!" the first man gave a strangled cry as he saw his wife murdered before his eyes. The intruder's wand then denied him the chance to say or do anything else. Two more movements and two more thuds followed.

Ten minutes later, the nondescript man walked off the property, still expressionless and unhurried, leaving the house behind him a burning mausoleum.

Five minutes after that, the flames had wiped out any lingering trace of his role in the events there.

5.1.7 Horrifying realizations

"Gentlemen," a man's voice came from somewhere off to her left, "we have something just a little special for you tonight, a late addition to our lineup for this session."

Hermione was having trouble thinking as she struggled to understand exactly what was going on around her. Her thoughts flowed like sludge due to the lingering effects of her forcible incapacitation, and her body was running on autopilot.

The voice continued, "This fine young mud comes complete with matching wand and basic training in its use. Just a little work and she'd make the perfect line overseer, personal assistant, or maybe a handmaiden for a young gentleman."

She vaguely realized that she was standing on a stage of some sort, but everything was fuzzy, like some sort of dream. Somehow, however, she knew that whatever this was, it was no dream.

"Bidding starts at twenty-five galleons…" the man's droning voice continued, "twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five to the gentleman in the white robes. Do I hear thirty? Thirty, thirty, thirty…"

Then it abruptly clicked in the back of Hermione's still hazy mind.

She was being sold.

5.1.8 Powder charge

It had been nearly twelve hours since Shacklebolt had been given the order to organize his team. In that time, the forward recon squad had scouted the nondescript red brick building to which the Granger girl had been taken, and he had assembled his men on the roof.

As he waited for his technical team to signal their work completed — a simple but subtle temporary ward intended to prevent any of the esteemed persons within from escaping their justly deserved fate — he took the opportunity to look over his men as they prepared to force entry.

Nobody would mistake the six crack auror teams for beat coppers now.

Nobody.

They looked like some kind of hellish long-coated, red-clad riot police in their blood-red enchanted robes. Beneath those they wore heavy-duty dragonhide body armor reinforced with paper-thin, highly spell-resistant cold steel plate over their vitals. Their heads were encased in cold steel helmets with full, featureless faceplates, their interiors lined with gold to carry the bubble-head, communications, and one-way transparency enchantments. The effect was only enhanced by the fact that Teams Six and Eight were now carefully rappelling down the sheer face of the building with their wands fitted into magic-inert aluminum 'expelliarmus cages' strapped to the back of their casting hands.

From inside, they could hear a voice, muted by the intervening walls, "…two hundred ten, two hundred ten, two hundred ten to the gentleman in the front with the gray robes. Do I hear two hundred twenty? Two hundred twenty, two hundred twenty, two hundred twenty…"

5.1.9 Load and tamp

Matt Weasley felt the fury building up inside him as he peered cautiously through the small, dusty window high on the side of the building.

An auction house! A goddamned auction house, right under their noses.

He tamped that anger back down, controlling it for later use, as he listened to Shack's calm voice counting down in on his helmet's built-in earpiece.

"Ten. Nine. Eight…"

5.1.10 Hammer fall

"Going for two hundred and ten galleons to the gentleman in the front in the grey robes; going, going…"

That was when a voice from somewhere above and behind Hermione bellowed "GO!" and something went flying past her head.

Whatever it was burst in a dazzling flash of white, the thump of a detonation knocking her breath out of her lungs. As she blinked the spots out of her eyes, she just barely managed to catch the windows up at the top back of the auction hall bursting inwards on the receiving end of booted feet, a voice roaring "DMLE! FREEZE!" over the ringing in her ears.

A rapid-fire spray of spells careened around the room, something struck her on the back and knocked her sprawling, and as she managed to pry her face off the deck, she was witness to the auctioneer flat on his face on the floor, pinned down by a burly man in blood-red robes and polished steel helmet who'd rammed his boot into the small of the other man's back. His wand, wrapped in a meaty fist and securely connected to his forearm by a dull blackened metal linkage, was aimed squarely at the back of the auctioneer's head.

"Frezno Dolohov, you are under arrest. Go ahead, creep; go for the wand, make my day."

The whole room was, Hermione noted with her slowly clearing mind, crawling with red-robed, helmeted men, and the people who had already been there were all on the floor.

Then a spell flashed past, missed the burly man by an inch, went on to decapitate another of the red-clad men, slipping into the narrow space between his armor and helmet, and then all hell abruptly broke loose.

Hermione whimpered as she tried to make herself one with the floor.

5.1.11 Loose ends

As the snatch team arrived in Glasgow at the broken-down dockside flophouse that was Safehouse Fourteen, they heaved a sigh of relief.

"Made up that's over, rite?" the team's signalman spoke as they finally crossed the threshold. "Damn job went ed way tew long."

"Too wite," the leader agreed. "A whole damned year!"

The injured man winced as he worked his still wounded shoulder and made to sit down on a chair, "I can't believe that bloody twist actually managed to kill ol'…"

He was interrupted by the crash of broken glass and fell over in surprise as a fusillade of spell fire came in through three different windows. The fall was the only thing that saved him.

"Bloody he…" the leader began, only to be cut off when his face evaporated into a pink mist. He was followed one after another by the other, still standing members of the snatch team.

After just a moment to stare at the horrifying sight, the prone man apparated in a blind panic, leaving a foot behind in his haste.

Moments later, a painfully nondescript face poked in through one of the broken windows to survey the scene, carefully taking note of each of the bodies, including the foot poking out from behind one of the chairs. Count reached; the face nodded in grim satisfaction.

Minutes later, the flophouse was ablaze.

5.1.12 Recoil

They'd searched her, scanned her with assorted magics, removed something from under the skin on the back of her left leg, taken the shackles off her wrists and ankles, and portkeyed her back to what they said was the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Headquarters.

There they'd let her clean herself up, given her a set of plain wizarding robes to replace her own trashed clothes, shown her into a clean sparsely-furnished room that reminded her of those police interview rooms you see on the TV, given her a hot cup of tea and something to eat, and now the burly man from the auction house, his faceplate removed to reveal a broad dark-skinned face, was seated on the other side of the smallish room, watching her with quiet concern.

She minded her own thoughts for nearly half an hour before it got too much, and she asked the question that'd been on the edge of her mind since she surfaced from the stunner.

"Are Mum and Dad okay?"

"I'm afraid they were hit with a couple of memory-modification charms before we got to the scene," the big black guy said, "We're working on reversion and it's looking good so far, but it'll be a month or so before the Healers are done."

"What about the ones I hit with piercing hexes?"

"You hit the first one directly in the forehead; he was dead before he hit the floor. The second is still alive; another team is currently tracking him. That was an excellent piece of precision casting under fire, young lady, I couldn't have placed the spells better myself and I'm considered a crack shot."

"... am I in trouble?"

"All wizards and witches have the right to respond to a lethal threat with lethal force, lass. And as soon as someone casts a hex, that's a lethal threat," The big black guy leaned forwards, his expression solemn, "It took a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, a lot of tears, to win muggle-born such as you and I that right, Miss Granger."

"I know you're going to feel like shit when it sinks in that you killed a man, everyone does the first time," he went on seriously, "but it was entirely justified and scum like that deserve worse than you gave him. You haven't broken any laws; your underage use of magic is covered by the right to self-defense. You're not a perp; you're a victim who did a good job of trying to fight back."

"...oh."

The room fell silent for another long moment.

"Um," the young girl began, "what are you going to do with me now?"

"That's something that will have to wait for later when the Director is…" the big man began, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. A murmured conversation later, he turned back, "It looks like 'later' is now. Come on, little lady, the Director is waiting in her office."

After a short walk down a busy hallway, the man knocked on an unremarkable looking door, and they were quickly ushered in.

To say that Hermione was surprised when she saw the very familiar 'Dirty Harry' poster on the wall in the Director's office would be an understatement.

"That poster was used to advertise a muggle 'film', I believe the term is, known as Dirty Harry," a severe-looking older woman, presumably the aforementioned Director, said when she noted where Hermione was looking.

"Daddy's a big fan of Dirty Harry." Hermione said.

"Indeed? Myself, I saw much of that during a stake-out early in Voldemort's rise, in 1971 as I remember, and quite enjoyed it; it reminds me of the way I made the Auror Corps, and his compassion for victims and methodology for dealing with crooks is quite inspiring."

"Oh." Hermione said, not quite sure what to make of that assessment... not coming from a woman she assumed to be near the top of the law enforcement apparatus of the wizarding world, anyway.

"It paints an excellent portrait of what the DMLE have to deal with, for all that it's set in a muggle context." the greying-haired woman mused. "Now then, take a seat, young lady. We have a lot to discuss; don't be afraid, you're not in trouble anymore, my lads made damned certain of that!"

Hermione sat down and listened.

5.1.13 Obligations

"Thank you, Mr. Steelhammer," Crackjaw Slackhammer said with a nod as his aide placed a silver tray carefully on the side of his desk.

Business continued to boom, and the Vice-Director of Gringotts' London Branch found himself catching a hurried working lunch at his desk, as he had been forced to do all too often of late. The portly goblin had been in meetings all morning negotiating new staff contracts to follow up on his largest business partner's recent personnel suggestion, and he had another meeting scheduled for later that afternoon to discuss renegotiating the NASA contract. The only time left for the normal exigencies of business seemed to be during mealtimes, and he had a stack of correspondence to catch up on.

Several minutes passed with only the rustle of documents and the occasional clink of fork on plate to interrupt them, until he came across one, small communique. It was marked as coming from his own personal staff, but the handwriting was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar handwriting was hardly an unusual circumstance nowadays with the number of new-hires he had brought on staff to keep up with the rapidly expanding business. The content of the message on the other hand, was quite unusual indeed... unusual and unwelcome.

He rang a small bell, and soon his aide returned.

"Please contact Madame Axetalon," the dapper goblin requested. "I have need of her advice."

He had hoped that things would remain quiet during Mr. Potter's absence, but it seemed that was not to be. Now he had an obligation to fulfill, and hopefully his family's solicitor would have an idea on how to proceed.

5.1.14 Truth and reconciliation

It had not taken Amelia long to finish her interview with the victim. Ostensibly about arranging for her upkeep during her parents' convalescence — as a result, the girl was now ensconced in a hastily converted office in one of the unused bits of the DMLE — the true aim of the conversation had been to get a personal feel for the girl.

The circumstances of her rescue had been more than enough cause to justify a deep mental scan, even without asking the girl's permission; catching the bastards red-handed loosed a great many of the legal restrictions that normally stayed her hand. In the process, they had retrieved a copy of the girl's memories — currently sitting in a nearby pensieve — and those had raised eyebrows for reasons completely unrelated to her kidnapping.

Some things required a personal take on the situation, no matter how busy one was, and the revelation that the nation's boy-hero was, in fact, a sixty-foot-long iron dragon was certainly one of those things.

Now it was time to talk to her experts.

"What do you have for me?" she asked the Department's expert in mind magics. "Should we take this seriously? The memories looked clean to me, but..."

Faking pensieve memories was difficult but not entirely impossible. A sufficiently skilled caster could embed a compulsion into the target's psyche to force them to cast a second compulsion on the targeting memory as it was copied. That secondary compulsion could then taint the viewer's perception of the divined scene, making them see something other than what the divination actually showed. Of course, the skill to pull off that sort of context-blind thirdhand casting was rare in the extreme — especially when involving multiple viewers — but it still seemed more plausible than what they had seen in those memories.

After learning of the bloody dragon-who-lived, she was inclined to keep an open mind.

"Chief," Doyle said, "She doesn't just look clean. The only traces of any mind-magics I can find on her are a calming draught about two years ago and my own probes. I went in as deep as I dared, and... nothing. She's as clean as I've ever seen anyone."

Amelia frowned, glancing at the pensieve on the side table. "So, what you're saying is, this... this crazy story her memories are telling us is real?"

"I'd be willing to bet my badge on it, Chief," the Department's best expert on mental magics asserted. "That sort of embedded casting is almost impossible to hide, and any concealment strong enough to hide it would wipe out everything. If it had been hidden, there wouldn't be a sign of that calming draught either."

"I see." Amelia said, still staring at the pensieve.

"What're we going to do, Chief?" her head of Investigations, Jake Dubrovnik, asked.

"The only thing we can, Jake. We enforce the law."

"The Potter boy?" Shack asked.

"...hasn't broken any laws, and neither has the Granger girl. There's some hearsay evidence of conspiracy to commit grand treason and conspiracy to fraudulently remove registered servants from the United Kingdom, and I'm not certain if he should be classed as an unregistered animagus, but I think we'll file investigating those at the bottom of our priority list."

She shuddered. "I for one don't fancy getting on the bad side of a magical creature that shrugged off eight Killing Curses in the space of thirty seconds – especially not one that gulps down mountain trolls and Dark Lords like you or I would eat chocolate frogs."

"Are we treating this as a prospective Dark Lord?" Doyle asked.

"We'd better be on alert for that, but I don't think the Potter boy's Dark Lord material." Amelia told him. "Nothing like this has ever come up before, lads; we're going to have to play it by ear."

"Am I the only one who's got this feeling whoever's behind that damned auction house is going to find out exactly why the Hogwarts motto is good advice?" Emma Trussel suddenly asked, the senior interrogator's voice betraying no small amount of malicious glee at the misfortune looming on the horizon for the architects of that particular abomination.

"You're not alone in that, Truss. They haven't so much tickled a sleeping dragon as given it a swift kick in the fundamentals." Amelia sighed, raking her hand back through her hair. "I just hope I'll be able to impart to him how important this case not getting screwed up by over a hundred tons of pissed-off metal is... preferably without getting myself char-grilled..."

"At least we've got a month before he comes back and complicates things," she sighed, valiantly resisting the urge to bury her face in her hands in frustration. "Dammit, who'd be a cop?"

"Rough job but someone's got to do it, huh Chief?" Shack gloomily agreed.

"Indeed..." she shook her head before continuing in a lighter tone. "What the hell, it certainly beats inspecting cauldron bottoms! Okay, lads, enough about that, let's get back to the here and now. What have we determined?"

"Preliminary interrogations have revealed a lot about the Syndicate's composition," Dubrovnik reported, nodding an acknowledgement to Trussel, who had been responsible for most of that information. "Unfortunately, that composition is going to make it very difficult to roll the whole thing up."

"What's the problem?" Amelia asked.

"They've compartmentalized it all, Chief," he said with a grimace. "The buyers there were front men, disposable cutouts, and not even they know for sure who they were working for. Tracing through that mess is going to take time."

"Damn it!" Amelia growled. "And with how public our raid was, the vermin will have ample opportunity to burn their connections and cover their tracks. Do we have anything?"

"We got Dolohov dead to rights running the auction house," Shacklebolt offered, "and they might be low-level, but we got all those buyers."

"You may not have heard yet, but we managed to track and capture one member of the snatch team that kidnapped the Granger girl. He's been singing like a canary in Interrogation Room 3," Trussel volunteered. "Unfortunately, he's eager to talk because someone offed his whole team in an obvious, but nonetheless very effective, cover up job."

The senior interrogator shook her head in disgust. "Every lead he's been able to give us has been found dead and burned beyond even magical recognition. We're going to keep on it, but I don't expect to make much progress."

"So, we have no leads on the ones most directly responsible for Miss Granger's kidnapping?" the Director summarized with an exasperated sigh. "Nothing to give the giant, soon-to-be-furious dragon, then... bloody typical, that is. Does anyone have any good news?"

"I've got a couple," Dubrovnik offered with a tight grin. "First, we've managed to trace and freeze the accounts the buyers had been set up with to make purchases, along with the Dolohov's working funds. Legal has already started the motions for us to seize the assets."

"How much?"

"Almost four times our annual budget, all told," Jake laughed. "Should be enough to get more of those cavalry markers and see if we can repeat this success in the future."

There was a general mutter of approval.

"It might be worth a shot, but I'm not sure it'll work," Emma interjected. "I get the impression from our little songbird that the Granger job was highly unusual. He's talked about standard procedures to get rid of trackers and how they were specifically told not to bother this time. If we get enough detail from him, we might be able to sneak something through, but from what he's told us so far, they're thorough. I suspect we'll not be seeing a repeat of the same tactic any time soon."

"Perhaps," Dubrovnik allowed, "but I'm sure the extra funding will be helpful in any case. The next one, though, is an unmitigated success. One of the buyers made a major mistake," he explained with a wide grin. "He was carrying a handwritten set of instructions in his pocket. Forensics traced it back to Octavius Crabbe by the magical signature, as compared to his Wizengamot security registration. It's airtight, a confession written in the man's own hand."

"Ha! That's more like it," she barked out a laugh. "Well, let's get to it! There are some doors at Crabbe Manor that won't kick themselves in. Doyle, get some rest. You're dead on your feet. Jake, keep your people on point, we want to track down as much of the Syndicate as we can before it manages to reorganize itself and hide again. Truss, do they still need you for interrogations?"

When the hard-eyed woman shook her head in the negative, Amelia continued, "Then I'll need you to put your ops hat back on for a while. I need Shack for something else, so you'll be filling in. You're on point for the Crabbe Manor job, put your team together as you see fit from the available personnel."

"On it, Chief." Trussel said, rising to her feet and nodding to the others.

"Shack, you're with me for a moment. Everyone else, get to it!"

After the rest of her officers had filed out of the room, Amelia broke the silence.

"How are you holding up, Shack?"

"I'll live, Chief," he replied in a tight voice. "Just did what I had to do."

"I know, Kingsley, and you did it well," Amelia agreed. "You managed to slip Good Housekeeping in without compromising the official mission at all, and that is extremely impressive, but I know how hard it was to do what I asked you to do. If I could have done it myself, I would have, but circumstances…"

Kingsley grimaced, "There is no need, ma'am. They were traitors, and they got what they deserved."

"They were," she nodded, "I strongly suspect at least one of them was responsible for tipping off whoever cleaned up after the Granger kidnapping, but before they were traitors, they were our comrades... at least, that's how we knew them. If you need to talk…"

"Understood, Chief," the big man nodded.

"In the meantime, there's something else I need your help with," Amelia said. "It'll still need to be secret, but this one should be much less dodgy..."

And so, she explained.

5.1.15 Concerns

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" Amelia asked impatiently as she walked into Conference Room 10. There was a great deal to do, and she really didn't have time for this.

The pair of men in the traditional eye-burning yellow robes of wizarding solicitors stood up from the table in unison.

"Good afternoon, Madam Bones. Solicitor Williams," the solicitor on the left introduced himself. "Your secretary intimated that you were quite busy, so we shall not waste your time with the usual pleasantries. It has come to the attention of Gringotts Merchant Bank that you currently hold Miss Hermione Granger in custody. On behalf of Mr. Harry James Potter, the Bank has contracted myself and my colleague, Solicitor Wilson, to represent Miss Granger in any legal actions in which she might have become involved."

Amelia frowned. "I assume you have the paperwork to back this up?"

"Of course," he assured her, gesturing to his compatriot who had somehow produced the relevant documents while her eyes were off him. "We have here a copy of the appropriate declaration that is on file, which you will be able to verify with the appropriate office, proving Mr. Potter's right to involve himself legally. We have here a copy of Mr. Potter's contract with Gringotts Merchant Bank giving permission for the company to serve as his agent in these matters during his absence. And we have here a copy of our employment contract, authorizing us to act on the Bank's behalf in representing Miss Granger."

"May I see those?" she asked, pulling off her monocle to give it a quick polish.

"Of course."

A quick read proved the documents to be, if not legitimate, then at least good fakes. Amelia decided to take them at their word for now.

"I see," she said. "Well, this seems to be in order, but I do ask that you allow me to have a word with you before I take you to see Miss Granger."

"Certainly, so long as it does not delay us from our duty overlong," Williams replied as both men nodded.

"Miss Granger is currently in our custody as a victim rescued from a terrible situation, not as a suspect," Amelia explained, giving the men a hard look. "She remains in our custody at this point because we have nowhere else to send her. Her parents were injured in the incident and are in no position to care for her, and Mr. Potter is currently unavailable."

"Furthermore, while she killed one of her assailants in the incident, it was a clear-cut case of self-defense. I warn you to be careful not to imply that she might be facing any legal action or punishment for her actions, even hypothetically," Amelia sighed. "This has been very hard on the poor girl."

The professionally impassive expression on the solicitor's face softened.

"Thank you for the clarification, Madam Bones," he said. "Is she likely to be called to testify in the case?"

"Unlikely," Amelia said, standing up and making for the door. "All but one of the men involved are already dead. That one survivor has so far proven very cooperative."

"I see," he gulped, and even his stoic companion looked a little uncomfortable as they followed her out the door and down the corridor. "It was a serious incident, then?"

"You have heard of the auction house raid?"

"It has been all over the Prophet," he agreed.

"We pulled her out of that," Amelia said simply.

"Ah," he said, just as simply.

They were silent for a moment as they continued to travel through the warren of corridors that was the Ministry.

"Madam Bones, if you are at liberty to say, may I ask after Miss Granger's parents' condition?" the yellow-clad man asked tentatively. "I would like to know whether there are any... arrangements I should be prepared to handle in order to spare my client."

"Fortunately, nothing so dire," Amelia shook her head. "They were obliviated, but we got to them in time."

He sighed in relief and said nothing further.

They came to a door, much like any of the several dozen others they had passed along the way, and Amelia gave a knock.

"Who is it?" a girlish voice called from within.

"Amelia Bones," she answered.

The door soon opened.

"Miss Granger," Amelia began, "it seems that Mr. Potter arranged contingencies for your assistance before his departure."

The girl's brown eyes lit up.

"These men are solicitors who have been retained to see to your legal needs, and they have come to make themselves known to you."

The two yellow-clad men stepped forward into the room and began to introduce themselves.

"Greetings, Miss Granger, I am Solicitor Williams, and I have been retained..."

The door closed behind them, and the hallway fell silent.

5.1.16 Uncertainty

It had been a very long day, Hermione thought as she sat up in her bed, a makeshift affair put together hastily in an unused and out of the way DMLE office.

Situated in the heart of downtown London, her current accommodations were barely a hundred meters away from the bustling streets that marked early evening in one of the greatest cities of the world; though one would be hard-pressed to tell from the inside of the room. After all, that hundred meters consisted entirely of solid dirt and concrete so the converted office was very quiet, indeed.

In the quiet darkness, Hermione hugged her knees to her chest, her bushy hair splayed out over them as she hid her face from the world. Barely twenty hours had passed since that window had shattered and with it had shattered the rest of her world. She had been wrong, and she had been kidnapped just as her friends had warned. No amount of denial would make that go away or return things to how they had been.

She had just wanted to spend time with her parents, and now they were in St. Mungo's, and she was all alone. The past twenty hours had been a whirlwind of revelations, and she just wanted everything to stop. Now it had, and she had the peace and quiet necessary to think things over.

Not that it helped overmuch.

The registration was supposed to have made sure this wouldn't happen, and yet happen it had. She had been kidnapped, she killed a man, her parents were in the hospital, her kidnappers had put her on auction, and... and if the Aurors hadn't shown up when they did; she shivered and shrank in on herself further, shying away from that line of thought. She couldn't bear to follow that line of reasoning to its inevitable conclusion, so she jumped to another.

Why hadn't Harry come for her? He was supposed to protect her! He had promised!

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it was unreasonable. She knew exactly why he hadn't come. She knew that he had no way of even knowing what had happened, much less intervening. She knew that the only reason he hadn't been there to save her had been because she herself had prevented him from doing so by arguing against it so vociferously. He would have been there if she had allowed him...

...she knew that!

And yet, despite that knowledge, a treacherous little voice continued to whisper poison into her ear as she sat there in the dark, hunched and shivering... doubts and fears, denials and accusations.

Had Harry lied? Did he really care? Was he really her friend, or was there something wrong with her that made her not worth saving?

Were those fears reasonable? No, nothing about that little voice was reasonable! Hermione knew that, at least intellectually, but for a scared little girl alone in the dark, intellectual detachment was in critically short supply.

It promised to be a long, restless night.
 
Section 5.2 - New places and interesting people
5.2 New places and interesting people


5.2.1 Contested landing

At the same time Hermione lay unconscious in the back room of the auction house on the other side of the Atlantic, a privately chartered airliner touched down with a squeal of tortured rubber in northeastern Pennsylvania. As it taxied to its parking spot on the tarmac outside the terminal at Erie International Airport, its passengers prepared to disembark, a process which in many cases involved waking up from their naps. Such was not the case for Harry, so he took the extra time to reflect on the first flight he had ever taken that was not under his own power.

To be honest, it hadn't been half bad, though the novelty had worn off pretty quickly; once night had fallen, there had been little but the steady rumble of the engines to indicate they were flying at all. At first, conversation had kept him nicely occupied, but eventually that too had died off. Even an excitable bunch of academics with a new toy to play with can only stay awake for so long, and many had opted to go to sleep after the first few hours, leaving Harry at loose ends. Only Mr. Snape had stayed awake the whole time, watching Harry for signs of nodding off with all the attention and caution he normally reserved for a particularly deadly potion.

Attentive as he had been, however, Snape had not been particularly talkative, which had led to Harry digging a random book out of his stash of reading material to pass the time. One had led to another, and it was thus that Harry found himself carefully tucking volume seven of Durrell Jenner's Investigations of Radioactive Decay in the High-Thaumic Limit back into his luggage as the jet came to a stop. As far as reading material went, it had not been the best of choices for the trip, consisting as it did mostly of tables of measured half-lives of various radioactive isotopes and how they varied according to thaumic background count. The thing was dry as dust, but Harry wasn't about to let it get damaged just because it was boring.

As looked up from the bag, the currently human-shaped dragon caught sight of a pair of men standing at a safe distance from the plane on the tarmac, waiting for the engines to spin down. They were clad in official-looking dark business suits, but perhaps their most distinctive feature was their hairstyle. Their heads were plucked bald aside from a four-inch wide strip running along the top of their skulls from the forehead to the nape of the neck. His sharp eye also picked up on a pin of an odd design on their lapels, a darkly glittering rectangle with some sort of geometric design emblazoned across it. Unfortunately, the yellow sodium lamps made the colors impossible to determine.

"I see you have discovered our welcoming committee," Severus Snape noted without preamble.

"Who are they, Mr. Snape?" Harry asked, stifling a tired yawn.

"They are the Confederacy's border guards," the potions master explained as the rest of the adults bustled about the cabin. "I would assume from the Mohawk tribe, judging by their choice in coiffure."

"Oh, I remember reading about those guys, the Keepers of the Eastern Door, right?" the young dragon said, perking up with a bit of interest. "Why are they here? I thought landings were authorized."

"I would imagine they will inform us soon enough."

It took another five minutes for the flight crew to fully secure the aircraft and deploy the airstairs, at which point Severus climbed down to the tarmac. As he stepped away from the airstairs, he looked up and his eyes widened. What he had thought was a two-man welcoming party was in fact just the vanguard. Perhaps seventy-five times that many sheltered behind a line of black armored cars just beyond the reach of the floodlights, wands at the ready to fire from cover. Dark eyes widened as the sallow-faced man turned even more pale than usual, signaling frantically behind his back for his colleagues to take care.

"Might I inquire as to the reason for the large welcoming committee?" he asked, managing to keep his composure admirably as a pair of the men approached. "I had not anticipated such a warm reception."

"That is for you to answer, stranger," the left man challenged. "Just what are you carrying on that plane?"

"Only passengers and their effects," the potions master said with a puzzled frown.

"Passengers and their effects would not have triggered every magical proximity alarm from here to goddamned Newfoundland!" he snarled. "Now, what is on that plane?"

Snape fell silent for a moment, considering the question. What were they carrying that could have caused such an effect? There was nothing onboard that was particularly interesting or energetic. Perhaps it was some manner of interaction with the more esoteric equipment they had brought along? Then his thoughts stilled as a half-forgotten memory swam up from the depths. It was something Septima had said during her early attempts to measure Mr. Potter's magical potential using his monstrously large aura...

...his monstrously large aura that they had just dragged over hundreds of miles of Confederate countryside at high speed.

Oh, bollocks.

"In hindsight, I believe I know what caused that," the sallow-faced man began, "and I do apologize for the false alarm, but I can assure you that he is, in fact a passenger, if a rather unusual one."

"Oh?" a skeptical eyebrow rose to rather odd effect given the man's hairstyle. "Then let's see this 'unusual passenger'."

"Mr. Potter," Snape called up over his shoulder, "come here please."

There was a bit of a commotion as the dragon, in his usual pint-sized human shape, hopped cheerfully down the airstairs.

"What do you need, Mr. Snape?" he asked brightly.

"This is the one?" the guard asked. "Doesn't look like much."

"It seems that our passage has been noted quite widely due to your aura, Mr. Potter," Snape explained, ignoring the comment. "In order to reassure our hosts that we are not attempting to smuggle something unpleasant into their territory, I believe it would be for the best to reveal your nature now."

"I thought we wanted to wait until we met the Grand Council?" Harry cocked his head curiously.

"That does not appear to be an option at this juncture," Severus countered, "not if we wish to avoid unproductive conflict."

Harry looked around the area with new eyes at that assessment, taking note of the previously unseen men and vehicles.

"Well okay, Mr. Snape, if you say so," he allowed, sounding utterly unconcerned. He turned to the Mohawk officials. "Um, I'm going to have to go over there a little first," he asked the leader of the security delegation. He gestured to the paved no-man's-land between the 737's wing-tip and the line of armored cars. "From what I can see of your setup, that should still be inside the concealment charms, and I don't want to risk breaking the airplane if I bump into it."

The security spokesman nodded his assent, motioning for the men behind him to hold their positions as the young-looking boy scampered the seventy-odd feet onto the open tarmac. Then the small form shifted.

What had been a scrawny looking little boy stretched and lengthened, precipitously gaining bulk as his skin darkened, sprouting scales as he grew two extra limbs and a long tail. Mere seconds later, an utterly massive dragon stood in the boy's place, silvery scales glittering darkly under the sodium lights. From nose to tail-tip it stretched more than half the length of the airliner behind it, and it likely outweighed the one-hundred-and-ten-foot-long, mostly hollow aircraft by a very wide margin.

It was quite the startling transformation. Luckily, the security team was too busy freezing in atavistic terror to do anything untoward before Harry defused the situation in his own inimitable way.

"So yeah, I'm kind of a dragon," the monstrous beast said in the same boyish voice it had used while in its other form, raising a great taloned paw in a friendly wave to the assembled security personnel. "It's nice to meet you!"

Back by the airstairs, Snape watched the formerly belligerent spokesman closely, quietly amused at his slack-jawed expression.

"He is unusual," the potions master said, straight-faced, "yet he is nonetheless a passenger."

"Indeed..." the man squeaked before clearing his throat and repeating in a more normal voice, "Indeed. Then I suppose we should get on with our business. The People of the Flint greet you, strangers. As Keepers of the Eastern Door we ask of you your intentions."

"We seek an audience with the Grand Council to request permission to carry out an operation of great importance within your territory," the dour man intoned.

"Then we greet you with a hand extended in peace," the representative said, stepping forward and extending his hand to the potions master.

As they clasped hands, a sigh of relief rose from the surrounding men at the sight, audible despite the distance and the poor acoustics of the open tarmac.

"You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that," the spokesman breathed, now much more comfortable with the situation than he had been moments previous.

"I suspect I might have some notion," the potions master countered dryly. "Now then, my local contacts have arranged our accommodations for the evening, so with your leave, I believe it would be for the best if we relocated presently. Mr. Potter over there has been awake for nearly twenty-three hours unless I miss my guess, and I would prefer to get him off the tarmac before he falls asleep. Attempting to move him after the fact would be rather more of an adventure than I care to deal with."

At that, the guard laughed, and with the tension thoroughly broken, he and his compatriots waved the baggage handlers in to unload the plane.

5.2.2 Lakeside accommodations

Barely an hour later, the scenery had changed greatly, exchanging the harsh lighting and shrill scream of jet engines for the gentler crash of waves against the shore and near pitch darkness. A gentle wind rustled the leaves overhead at a blufftop campsite on the south shore of Lake Erie. Moonrise was still hours off, and even then, the clouds were thick overhead. The only light to be seen was the occasional firefly, blinking yellowish green in the warm summer night.

One pair of the bioluminescent beetles moved in curious synchrony, mirroring each other in flight as they danced, drawing nearer and nearer, blinking in unison. Then, in the blink of an eye, one disappeared, leaving the light from the remaining insect to dimly illuminate a great scaly eyelid.

Harry had blinked back, and the tiny, bewildered creature flitted off in another direction.

The travelers from Hogwarts had arrived at the campsite about half an hour earlier and had quickly erected a rented wizarding tent, into which they had retreated to sleep off the meager remains of the night as soon as they renewed its space expansion charm and triggered the auto-transfiguration on the furnishings. Harry could just make out their occasional snoring through the open tent flap.

The young dragon had elected to sleep outside rather than taking up Mr. Flitwick's offer to hyperextend one of the rooms in the tent. It was nice out, and there were even those curious little fireflies... though those had been slowly drifting off and ending their nightly display in favor of well-earned rest. The one he had blinked away seemed to be one of the final stragglers. Between the darkness, the fatigue, the hypnotic crash of the waves at the foot of the bluff, and the warm weight of Suze nestled against his side, the young dragon figured he would soon be following their example.

Unseen in the darkness of the overcast moonless night, Harry's great green eyes closed again, this time reflexively as his mouth opened into a great toothy yawn. Harry's last thoughts as he drifted off were of his absent damsel. It'd be morning back home, so he figured she was she was probably up and about, enjoying her first day back with her parents.

That was good.

Harry's face flexed into a sleepy reptilian grin.

He hoped she was doing well.

5.2.3 Art gallery

Gravel crunched under the tires of a pair of minivans bearing the livery of a local taxi company as they pulled into a parking lot on the edge of the Erie Bluffs State Park, and the motley group from Hogwarts — eight witches and wizards, a currently human-shaped dragon, and perhaps most impressively a centaur maiden — piled out of them, the latter feat made possible by Flitwick's rather... artistic use of cushioning charms. As Snape stumped over to pay the drivers — and to subtly trigger a delayed removal of the notice-me-not charms which had fended off any awkward questions from them — dragon in the group took the opportunity to examine his surroundings.

The lot was unremarkable for the area, nearly indistinguishable from a dozen others like it that they had passed along the way. Paved with gravel and bounded on one side by the road which separated it from the corn field across the way, a dense row of tall evergreens hemmed in the other three sides entirely hiding the rest of the facility from view. The only access beyond was through another evergreen-lined pathway which quickly jogged to one side, blocking any line of sight.

"Come, my contact has assured me that we are expected," Snape said as he turned to his compatriots. He then led the way towards the tree-lined pathway as the pair of minivans pulled away.

The group set off, pebbles crunching underfoot as they followed the twisting path deeper onto the property. With the trees lining the sides, sight lines were limited, but as the path turned once more and opened up onto the grounds proper, Harry's green eyes opened wide. The gravel path continued to wind through a broad grassy lawn, lush green and fluttering in the breeze off the lake. Along the way, it passed a plethora of art installations: totem poles, stone plinths, strange constructions of wood and bone, brilliantly colored banners fluttering in the breeze, all sorts of things dotted the lawn. There was even a long line of house-sized boulders each with an entire mural painted on its side reminiscent of the cave paintings that Harry had read about before in passing.

Of course, they all paled in comparison to the Great Longhouse itself.

The large rectangular building dominated the site, not so much because of its design — built with an exposed roundwood frame and plank walls on a stacked stone foundation, it was essentially a pole barn by any other name — or its composition. No, what truly caught the eye was the fact that every square inch of the structure was covered in art. Each exposed beam bore intricate carvings and bright paint in a riot of colors, each one unique. Every wall was covered in murals, be they painted or carved or both. The approach to the door was guarded by a long series of totem poles and carved stones flanking the broad gravel pathway, and even the pathway itself incorporated periodic carved medallions and a strange but clearly deliberate pattern picked out in different colors of gravel.

There was art everywhere, and every single piece of it had its own story to tell, its own personal symbolic language. It was a remarkable sight, especially for a creature with the innate linguistic bent of a young dragon like Harry, and unlike a fully developed formal language, these partially developed artistic lexicons did not resolve easily. Art — good art, that is — was dense, a near bottomless well of beauty, insight, and meaning. Left to his own devices, the young dragon likely would have wandered the grounds for hours, fascinated.

For better or for worse, Harry was not left to his own devices, and the party soon reached the door where Harry was jolted from his odyssey into the dreamings of the centuries' worth artistic minds who had contributed to the riotous display by the great doors swinging open in front of him.

5.2.4 Politics

The interior of the Great Longhouse, the seat of the Confederate government, was a sight to behold. Banners and tapestries woven by the best artists any of the Nations had to offer festooned the walls and ceiling, lending a colorful gaiety to the place. Sculptures of bone, wood, and leather sat at regular intervals giving ceremonial seats for the guiding spirits so that they might watch over the machines of governance. Arrayed throughout it all, art pieces of all sorts in a spectacular range of materials — from bone scrimshaw to glazed pottery, carved wooden masks to fur paintings — depicted the histories of the Nations, accompanied by the elaborate beadwork tapestries known as wampum to commemorate notable treaties. Hardly an inch of wall or ceiling was left unadorned.

It truly was a magnificent sight, one which had only improved over the eight decades that Toh Yah had served on the Grand Council. Unfortunately, after those eight decades, it was no longer enough to distract the old Warleader of the Diné Protectorate from his boredom as he waited.

Turning away from the walls, Toh Yah's gaze fell upon his fellow councilors seated around the low stone hearth and simmering cooking pot that was the focal point of the Great Longhouse. Six low benches like the one upon which he sat, roughly rectangular cross sections of a truly massive tree trunk, were arrayed in a circle about the fire. There was one for each of the great nations that had come together to form the Confederacy, each seating a varying number of representatives, and all arrayed in a circle about the common pot... a union of equals come together for a meal, sharing friendship and common purpose.

Toh Yah shook his head, lips twitching into a sardonic smile at the thought. It sounded so high-minded when put like that, rather than the thoroughly practical consideration that it was. No other arrangement could possibly be acceptable for the wildly dissimilar and fiercely independent Nations of the Confederacy. Anything implying a real hierarchy would have dissolved into bloodshed within hours. This was, after all, the same organization which had conducted all its business through translators for the first thousand years of its existence, not because the participants couldn't learn the others' languages — no, they had all done that quite early — but rather because choosing any one official language would have been a slight against the Nations whose languages were not chosen. It had only been in recent centuries that they had settled on the newly arrived language of English as an official common tongue. It had never been spoken by any of the members, and it had therefore been equally offensive to everyone.

Were it not for the constant threat from the Aztecs, the Confederacy would likely have never... Toh Yah checked his own thoughts, reluctant to ascribe anything positive, no matter how indirect and unintentional, to the monsters in human skin across the southern border.

He dropped the line of thought with a frown in favor of tapping his fingers impatiently on the great slab of wood beneath him — the bench reserved for representatives of the Diné Protectorate, of which he was the only one — as he waited for the last few councilors to arrive. Ironically, the absentees were a few of the minor representatives from the Salish Commons, the ones who had called for the special session in the first place.

Typical.

"While we await the arrival of our late members, perhaps we can address some other ongoing business," the antler-wearing primary representative of the Haudenosaunee, Tadodaho, proposed suddenly from his seat on the other side of the fire, proving that Toh Yah was hardly the only impatient one in the room. "Have there been any new developments on the negotiations with the Sleepers?"

He scowled. Toh Yah had been quite enthusiastic about that operation when it had first been proposed, throwing his not inconsiderable political weight behind the project from the beginning. It had been intended to combat the growing influence of the Aztec-run drug cartels, and it was something that even the most reluctant of his colleagues had fully supported after the 1986 Pueblo Incident. The Incident had proven the effectiveness of the associated smuggling apparatus alone, let alone the cocaine trade it enabled. The magically engineered drug facilitated the remote harvest of blood magic from the suffering of the addicts and those around them, and with a user base of tens of millions around the world, that was no small advantage, magically or financially speaking.

Efforts had stepped up in recent years, and eventually Toh Yah had found a Sleeper politician, then CIA Director George Bush, who was receptive to the idea of cooperation despite the necessary veil of secrecy imposed by the Silence. The man had made it a central leg of his platform for his presidential bid.

At that time, things had been looking up. A covert partnership with the nonmagical American government and its vast military and logistical might would have been a coup of unprecedented scope in their millennia-long conflict with the Aztecs, and as election day had loomed closer the project had looked very close to succeeding, especially after Bush's opponent had made a rather impressive public relations blunder in the final weeks. Everything had seemed to be in the bag.

In the bag, that is, until Aztec covert ops had managed to slip something by counterintelligence...

"Nothing so far," Wahchinksapa, proudly wearing the eagle feather headdress of a Chief of the Seven Fires Council, responded in his deep baritone roughened by over a century on the High Plains. The height of the headdress made his careless shrug obvious as he continued, "Lynch refuses to consider our proposal."

...counterintelligence headed by the same man who was now so lackadaisically reporting on his continuing failure to salvage the very situation he had allowed to fall to ruin.

"Perhaps he would be more receptive if someone else were to explain the situation," Toh Yah bit out through clenched teeth, his eyes narrow as he struggled to maintain a civil tone.

No one would be well served by an internal conflict, and the Warleader knew that Wahchinksapa was a good man and a competent leader. It was just that they had come so close....

"Perhaps, though I have no idea what else could be said," Wachinksapa allowed with an apologetic shrug, meeting his colleague's angry gaze with his own understanding one. "We have presented the case as plainly as we can while maintaining the Silence. Unfortunately, it has so far proven insufficient; the Sleeper politicians have considered the issue to be political suicide ever since Bush's campaign collapsed in '88."

Aztec intelligence had fabricated evidence regarding the then-recent Iran-Contra Affair and anonymously delivered it to Bush's opponent, Michael Dukakis. Eager to salvage his campaign after the infamous tank photo, the desperate man rushed the document to the papers immediately rather than taking the proper precautions to verify his sources. It had sparked an investigation resulting in a criminal indictment of his opponent mere days before the election, all but ensuring Dukakis' victory on election day.

"He was exonerated, was he not? The program should no longer carry such a stigma," Toh Yah argued.

"He was, we made sure of that," Wahchinksapa said, his baritone hard with remembered irritation. "Unfortunately, that exoneration came after the election. By then the Sleeper journalists had already stopped paying attention; a particularly fractious squirrel can stay on topic for longer than those idiots. First impressions are the only impression you can really count on nowadays."

"Then make them pay attention!" Toh Yah grumped, leaning forward impatiently.

"How? What would you have us do that we have not already done?" Wahchinksapa asked tiredly. "Our efforts in that direction ushered in Lynch's election in the first place. What else is there to do but to wait for him to come around? More disruption will only delay things further."

The old soldier sighed at that and nodded in quiet acknowledgement as the room fell silent but for the crackle of the fire.

It was true. Confederate intelligence had taken the Aztec success as a personal insult, and in the years since they had busied themselves with stamping out everything and everyone even remotely associated with the embarrassing failure. They had provided evidence of the cartels' involvement in Dukakis' election and guided the ensuing investigation: pointing the nonmagical investigators in the right direction whenever they ran into a dead end; calling in anonymous tips; rescuing 'destroyed' evidence with covert repair charms; and prompting many a conspirator to develop a conveniently guilty conscience at the most inopportune times with compulsions. Over the past five years, they had enabled what was quite possibly the most brutally effective and far-reaching internal affairs investigation in recorded history.

By the end of his term, Dukakis' name was mud. His party was defunct, its shredded remnants on the verge of being openly declared a criminal organization. More than half the former Sleeper politicians were in prison on various corruption convictions — worse in some cases, like that nasty husband and wife pair still on trial down in Arkansas — and the rest were scrambling to find their place in the new political landscape.

The sudden collapse of one half of the previous order had spawned half a dozen fledgling political parties to fill the void, among them that of the current Sleeper president, Jeffrey Lynch, who had been elected in a landslide on a hardline small government, anti-corruption ticket. The man had so far been very keen on sticking to that agenda, which while admirable, was honestly a large part of their problem.

"Could we rename the initiative and try again?" another man proposed, breaking the silence. The leader of the Salish Commons, he was a rather heavyset sort who sported an elaborately embroidered outfit woven in a rainbow of colors accompanied by finely wrought jewelry of bright copper. In his early seventies, he was the youngest of his peers. "I always thought the War on Drugs was a stupid name, anyway. Would that break the association?"

"In time," a hoarse wheeze came from the next bench over. "Have patience."

Bundled up so heavily that he looked rather like a man-sized pile of elaborately patterned green and white cloth, the four-century-old representative of the Great River Coalition was by far the most senior member of the Council. Despite being barely audible, his voice carried weight on account of the wisdom of age and his extreme magical talent... source of both great deeds in his youth and the longevity that still kept him kicking. Such was doubly the case since he would likely last only a few more years. While magic could stave off the effects for a long time, eventually and inevitably age came upon everyone. When it did, a wizard spiraled into a final decline, and the longer aging had been delayed, the steeper that decline would be. The wizened ancient of the Great River was now well into that final spiral.

The elder's brief pronouncement killed discussion for a time, leaving a silence in its wake broken only by the low crackle of the hearth fire.

"Perhaps we could simply explain the situation in full detail rather than hiding behind the public health excuse," a new voice, deep and rumbling, offered from the last bench. "If we paint it as the calculated assault by a foreign power that it truly is rather some horribly self-destructive but still personal habit as they believe it to be, I would imagine the Sleepers would be much more open to action."

Everyone turned to the sole occupant of the final bench. The representative from the Frozen Shores was a compact man, surprisingly so in light of his voice, and he sat atop the furry polar bear pelt that would have been a ceremonial cloak in colder weather. In contrast to his compatriots' elaborate finery, he wore only a loincloth and a few elaborately carved ornaments of ivory and bone. Despite his scant attire, his skin glistened with sweat in the mild summer weather.

"And break the Silence?" the Salish headman gasped in shock.

"Why not?" the loincloth-clad man inquired with a careless shrug. "What purpose has it served?"

"Without it we would have been caught up in the Wars," the rainbow-clad man protested, clutching at the beaten copper necklace. "You saw what happened to our Sleeper cousins, how many they killed! We cannot possibly trust those barbarians!"

"Yes, yes... our Sleepers fought a long and difficult series of wars against theirs, the newcomers eventually won, and rather than enslaving or exterminating the defeated as any sensible people would have, the insane fools left their former enemies alive, even offering them land to use as their own," the loincloth-clad man sneered. "Such horrible monsters those Americans are!"

"You know perfectly well it is not that simple!" the Salish representative protested. "So much culture was lost!"

"What culture?" he scoffed. "Remember that you speak of those same Sleepers that we abandoned as useless dregs over a thousand years ago! They were pathetic then, and they have only degenerated since. Nothing of value was lost."

"Nothing of value? Nothing of value! Look at what we have lost, even with the Silence protecting us!" the copper-bedecked man protested, waxing poetic as he fell into a practiced argument. "Traditions, ancient rites, venerable institutions of our great culture... abandoned! And for what? Fear! Fear of the American Sleepers and their baseless and unthinking prejudices, their unwarranted interference... all because you were afraid something would slip and endanger the Silence, and now you want to give it up voluntarily? How dare you say that..."

"Oh, shut up! That tired old saw was already ancient when you were appointed to the Council, and it has not improved since," Tadodaho interrupted with an exasperated groan. "It has been a hundred and twenty years, and you are still whining about giving up your damned slaves! That was before your time, for that matter, it was before your grandfather's time, if I recall. Stop already!"

The man shook his head in disgust, antlered headdress swaying with the movement, before continuing sternly, "And for the record, it was not out of fear that something would slip, it was in reaction to something that did slip... something that slipped four hundred and sixty-seven times! You were the ones who couldn't keep your mouths shut around the Sleepers, not the rest of us. The Council only stepped in when your forebears forced our hand with their own incompetence!"

"You kept slaves too!"

"We did," he acknowledged calmly, "yet you don't hear us complaining about losing them over a century after the fact, do you? And we, at least, would have grounds to complain, since we gave them up on account of your ancestors' stupidity."

"But..."

"There was more to those wars you spoke of than you are willing to admit as well," Toh Yah interrupted. "I saw many of those firsthand. Had I been in the American Sleepers' place and my people been subjected to the atrocities theirs were..."

"Comanche," the Great River elder interjected in a laconic wheeze, as if that one word were argument enough.

In a way, it was. It took quite a lot of bad blood for an entire tribe to earn the name 'enemy', after all. There was a reason that the magical counterpart of that nation no longer existed... some people were just bad neighbors, and the Nations of the Confederacy shared none of the American Sleepers' childish compunctions against genocide.

"Exactly," Toh Yah agreed with a nod to the elder. "That the American Sleepers did not exterminate them all, that they did not hold a perfectly justifiable grudge, ought to be evidence enough of their good nature. That they went further, integrating the rest into their society, is simply insanity. However, while they may be crazy, that particular brand of insanity does bode well for our chances in this case. If the Americans could get past that sort of atrocity, then I refuse to believe we would have any trouble with them."

At that point, the last few members of the Salish delegation finally filtered in.

"Perhaps the Sleepers might have accepted us... had approached them back then," Tadodaho ventured. "I do not believe it would go so smoothly now... not after hiding for so long. Perhaps if we..."

"That will have to be a discussion for another time," he was interrupted by another voice, this one belonging to the only female present. She spoke with firm and final authority. "The Council is now at full attendance, and our visitors await. It is time to receive them."

She was Jigonsahseh, Keeper of the Great Longhouse and the only woman present at the meeting of the exclusively male Grand Council. Her thick shock of hair white with age, she nonetheless stood resplendent in the rich blue of her formal garb which shone iridescent, the firelight glinting from the thousands of tiny mother-of-pearl beads encrusting its elaborate embroidery. Jigonsahseh was not a member of the Grand Council itself, those seats were reserved for the men, but she was the final authority on proceedings within the Council chamber. Outside the proceedings, she also headed the matriarchs' council which held final sway on both appointments to the Grand Council and on large-scale magical affairs.

All told, she cut quite the imposing figure.

"Of course," Tadodaho acquiesced easily as the rest of the men immediately fell silent, everyone shifting slightly to ensure they were seated firmly atop their respective benches.

With that, the doors swung open behind Toh Yah, seemingly of their own accord, to admit their visitors.

"Enter in peace, strangers, and make yourselves known to us. I am Jigonsaseh, Keeper of the Great Longhouse," she introduced herself to the guests.

As she spoke the ritual greeting, animation charms built into the benches engaged, slowly and smoothly turning and then levitating into a rough approximation of amphitheater seating so that everyone could face the newcomers as one front. As the wooden slabs floated off the ground, beaded banners which had served as rugs when in their resting position fell to hang from the front edge of the slab benches. The individual banners, or wampum, hung down depicting the sigils of the associated nation picked out in purple and white beads.

As craning his neck to see them would have been beneath his dignity while within the Council chamber, it was only as the benches settled into their final positions that Toh Yah got his first look at the newcomers. It was a motley group — including both a child and a centaur of all things — and at ten strong, it was an unusually large one as well. The old wizard barely suppressed an amused snort as he watched the young boy in particular, his head turning rapidly this way and that as he attempted to take in the entire interior of the Great Longhouse at once in wide-eyed wonder.

As the group reached a good distance for talking, he settled in alongside his colleagues to hear what they had to say.

5.2.5 A hand extended in friendship

Much to Harry's fascination, the interior of the building was even more ornate than the exterior. Where the outside had been covered in bold carvings and paints, the inside was festooned with softer furnishings. Colorful blankets and banners woven with intricate designs, sculptures of bone and leather, carvings of all sorts in a spectacular range of materials, bold wooden masks and elaborate beadwork tapestries, ornate pottery, and even hide 'paintings' made by carefully shaving an image into the fur. Hardly an inch of wall or ceiling had been left unadorned, and even the free space between was curtained in layer after layer of free-hanging decorations, at least around the perimeter of the room.

A large central rectangle, however, was almost entirely clear. The floor was clean, sanded wood, for once plain and free from carvings, and in the center of that expanse stood a curious sight.

Six low benches sat around a low stone hearth at the center of the room, full of elaborately dressed men. Smoke from the hearth fire licked at the edges of a large cooking pot as it made its way towards a hidden chimney opening in the roof. A stately and imposing looking woman in blue tended the hearth, unbowed with age despite her snow-white hair.

"Enter in peace, strangers, and make yourselves known to us," the woman spoke in perfect English. "I am Jigonsaseh, Keeper of the Great Longhouse."

As she spoke, the benches began to shift with a quiet rasp of wood sliding on wood. The ones closest to the door swiveled in place until they faced the Hogwarts party and then rose a few inches off the ground, while those behind the fire rose much higher. They eventually settled into a sort of levitating stadium seating arrangement which framed the hearth and the woman who tended it.

The Hogwarts contingent stopped at what seemed to be an appropriate distance from the fire, and Albus took the lead.

"Greetings Jigonsaseh, I am Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and these are my colleagues," the old wizard began with a shallow but respectful nod before running through a round of introductions for each of the professors who had accompanied the group.

"...and finally, we have Mr. Harry Potter and his young lady, Miss Suze," he concluded his introduction gesturing to the two in question. "We have come in pursuit of a matter of notable importance involving a number of ancient artifacts, several of which we believe to be located within your sphere of influence. Before I explain further, however, we would present you with a regard gift to commemorate our meeting, as is proper." He turned to Harry. "Mr. Potter, if you would?"

Snapping back to his senses at the address, the young dragon sharply nodded and reached into his pocket to withdraw what appeared to be a tiny twig. A tap of his wand undid the minor transfiguration that had shrunken it to fit in his pocket, and the sculpture slammed outward against his fingers as it suddenly reverted to its original size. Despite weighing over a hundred pounds and standing taller than his current human form, Harry carried it easily as he approached the fire and gently set the sculpture's carved wooden base on the smooth floor with a slight thump.

As soon as they had returned to their proper size, the runes on the steel tree had begun charging, and by the time he had crossed the room, the glowing, drifting patches of light that served as leaves had begun to fade into existence, seeming to bloom as the base touched the floor. Soon they were casting their ethereal glow over everyone around the fire. As Harry released the trunk, a tiny eagle figurine which had been perched quietly on a steel branch unfurled its silver wings and took flight with a piercing cry, circled the room once, and then came back to alight onto the tree once more.

Through it all, the assembled Council watched with rapt attention.

"I hope I got the white pine right," Harry said nervously after stepping back slightly. "I know it doesn't look quite like the Scots pines back at home, so I was working from a drawing in my encyclopedia set, and Suze did the carving on the base, and... um, there are some arrows under the tree in a hidden compartment in the base just like I read about your founding story, and Mrs. McGonagall made the eagle. Sorry if the cry isn't quite right, she based it off a hawk, 'cause we don't have any bald eagles back home for her to listen to. Anyway, I hope you like it!"

"It is quite remarkable, Harry Potter. I thank you on behalf of the Nations for your fine gift." She nodded gravely before her eyes narrowed. "However, I must ask: why have you seen fit to enter this place of peace wearing a false face?"

That accusation drew a hard gaze from every man around the fire.

"Because I couldn't fit through the door otherwise," the young, apparently human boy fielded the question with easy aplomb.

Those hard gazes quickly melted into confused ones... all except for one sitting in the back row on the same bench as a man in an antlered headdress. Dressed in beaded and fringed deer hide with his hair in the same distinctive style as the guards from the previous night, the odd man out leaned forward, smiling faintly as if in anticipation of some great joke.

"Well, now that you are inside," a harsh voice demanded, "perhaps you should reveal yourself to us properly? In fact, I must insist."

The voice belonged to a grim-faced man dressed in all the colors of the sunrise who sat on the center cushion of one of the foremost benches, his gaze still rock-hard. Despite its colorful nature, his clothing was nonetheless very practical-looking, cut for easy movement with no trailing bits to catch on things and studded with enameled armor plates covering his vitals. His only nod to the finery of his colleagues was a copious quantity of silver and turquoise jewelry which stood out in bright contrast to the rest of his attire.

Unfazed by the confrontational tone, Harry looked about the room, calmly estimating its measure.

"I guess I ought to fit if I curl up tight," he shrugged. Turning to his compatriots, he asked, "Um, guys, do you mind moving back a bit. I don't want to step on anyone by accident."

The rest of the Hogwarts contingent complied, and soon enough a giant dragon swelled into existence, leaving the cavernous interior of the Great Longhouse seeming rather unbearably cramped. After a collective inrush of breath, the room fell silent but for the crackling of the fire and the quiet snickering of the Mohawk chieftain.

The quiet was interrupted by a loud thump.

"Oops!" Harry's childish voice broke the stunned silence as one of the masks adorning the wall fell to the ground, having been dislodged by an errant twitch of his tail. "Um, I don't think it's broken... um, sorry?"

"That is quite alright," Jigonsaseh assured him nearly automatically, the childish tone of the apology familiar enough to trigger the same response she had given her own children and grandchildren so many times over the years. "There was no harm done, simply take more care in the future."

The great draconic head gave an earnest and enthusiastic nod which, were it not for the creature's terrifying visage, would not have been out of place from her own sons back when they were that age. The tiny spot of familiarity was enough of a point of refence for her to begin to collect her wits.

"Why then have you come to us, Harry Potter?"

"Well, I came along because they need me to deal with the node thingies, 'cause no one else can drain them properly, as far as we know," he said with a great draconic shrug... an odd sort of thing that shrug, involving as it did two pairs of shoulders and a long, rippling neck. "Mr. Dumbledore is better at explaining that, though, so maybe..."

"Of course, of course," the blue-clad woman agreed with a sigh, the reminder finally setting her fully back on track. "Albus Dumbledore," she called to the man where he presumably still stood unseen on the other side of the dragon in the room, "if you would continue."

And, as soon as the remainder of the Hogwarts contingent managed to squeeze back into view, Dumbledore continued. The elderly wizard spoke of ancient artifacts and apocalyptic explosions, and the Grand Council listened with rapt attention until eventually the tale drew to a close.

"And finally, our seeress informed us that the next node on our itinerary ought to be the one that lay near the Seven Sisters Peaks, which I have been led to believe lie within Salish territory. That is why we have sought you out at this time."

The room fell silent but the occasional crackle of the fire as the Council considered the request.

"I see," one of the men spoke from the center of the bench directly behind the fire. He wore an antlered headdress and beaded leather. "What say the Nations?"

Each bench conferred among themselves for a short time, until the harsh-sounding man spoke up from his bench.

"The Diné Protectorate does not object to the newcomer's activities. They have approached us honorably," he nodded to Harry, who practically preened at the acknowledgement, "and their stated goals are in our best interests. We do, however, suggest that the matter be forwarded to the matriarchs for a review of its spiritual implications before final permission is granted."

That drew a round of nods from around the fire.

"The Salish Commons agree on both counts," a man decked out in polished copper spoke from another bench. "Should the women also agree, they will be welcomed within our territories."

"Agreed," wheezed a green and white pile of cloth on another bench.

"The Seven Fires concur," a man wearing the elaborate eagle feather headdress that was so iconic in popular culture nodded.

"As does the Alliance of the Frozen Shores," the loincloth clad sole occupant of the last bench spoke up from where he sat.

The antlered man looked to his fellows on his own bench, who nodded in assent.

"Then it is decided, for the Haudenosaunee also agree," he nodded, antlers tilting with the motion. "The Great Council grants its tentative approval, pending review by the matriarchs. Honored Jigonsaseh," he turned to the blue-clad woman, "we leave this matter in your capable hands. So speaks Tadodaho."

The Keeper of the Great Longhouse nodded in grave acknowledgement, and so the meeting ended.

5.2.6 Delay is...

Across the Atlantic and five time zones ahead, it was already mid-afternoon in London as Crackjaw Slackhammer watched the blindingly yellow robes of the recently hired pair of solicitors disappear behind the door to his office. The news had been... not precisely good, but it had been far better than he had feared.

The Brethren had a long and bitter history when it came to family members being held in Ministry custody after all, and learning that his business partner's young lady was being held by the organization had not augured well. Finding that she seemed to be in actual protective custody rather than the sort of 'protective custody' that had come very close to sparking the Bold '99 six months prematurely had been a weight off the goblin's mind.

The girl was safe, sound, and not being held under duress. Because of that, the Nation would not be required to take precipitous action to keep his agreement with his youthful business partner. For a few tense hours there, the Vice-Director had feared that he had managed to drag his people into a shooting war for which they were ill-prepared, but in the end, it seemed to have turned out for the best.

That was good.

He sighed.

Now he just had to decide what to tell the young dragon of this incident.

The portly goblin sat back in his chair and grimaced as he took a sip of his now unpleasantly tepid cup of goblin tea before knocking back the remainder in one go.

That was an entirely new problem.

Slackhammer had seriously considered waiting to tell Mr. Potter until he returned home. Practically speaking there was nothing to be done from across the Atlantic; the only thing the boy could conceivably accomplish was to fly back under his own power at the risk of revealing himself to the nonmagical air defense grids and disrupting the important work he was there to do. By those metrics, it would be irresponsible in the extreme to interrupt.

On the other hand, Slackhammer also knew well how the boy thought, and if he withheld that information, it would be a tossup whether his youngest business partner would accept his reasoning or be offended by the perceived lie. If he accepted it, then all to the good, but if he did not... well that was the sort of thing which could poison any relationship, business or otherwise.

Therein lay the rub.

The continuing joint venture with Mr. Potter was critically important, not only for his own future but also for that of Gringotts and the Brethren as a whole. Fostering and maintaining that relationship had become one of Slackhammer's primary responsibilities of late. It was the sole reason he had entered into the ridiculously open-ended protection agreement with the young dragon in the first place... the very agreement which had had him on tenterhooks all afternoon fearing a sudden outbreak of war and a personal appointment with a firing squad for his role in causing it. Despite that, he did not regret the choice.

The goodwill of the Dragon of Hogwarts could not be jeopardized.

Tragically, both available options did so... one by risking the success of two critically important long-term projects, the other by preserving those projects at the risk of earning the personal ire of a great wyrm.

The portly goblin slammed his cup back down on his desk with a loud clatter of breaking porcelain as he stood up from his desk and began pacing, showing more energy in his frustration than he had all day in his worry.

What was he to do?

The door opened to admit his batman, Steelhammer, who held the door with one hand, the other resting on his sidearm ready to draw as he sought the reason for the commotion. As soon as he saw the desk, his hand fell from his holster and he ducked back out of the office, soon returning with a dustpan and a small whisk broom.

"Troubles, sir?" Steelhammer asked in his usual deadpan as he busied himself with cleaning up the shards of broken ceramic.

"Indeed, Mr. Steelhammer, my apologies for the mess," Slackhammer replied with a sigh of regret at the necessity of the gob's current task.

It was not becoming of him to cause his men extra work in a fit of pique. There was much work to be done and no profit in wasting time with... he froze at the thought, eyes widening as an idea coalesced.

Perhaps that was... not quite correct in this instance.

"Tell me, Mr. Steelhammer," he asked suddenly. "Is Quickknife still courting that fetching young lady — Snickersnack, I believe it was — down in Signaling?"

"Yes, sir... at least he was as of two days ago," he said, not batting an eyelash at the apparent non-sequitur as he collected the last of the porcelain shards and dumped the lot into the waste bin.

The Vice Chairman nodded thoughtfully and continued, "We have all been working quite hard of late, and I believe the office would be well served by an evening off. Give each of the staff a galleon from my personal account and instruct them to take the rest of the night off and use it to enjoy themselves. After that return, I will have one more task for you before you may retire for the evening as well."

"Yes sir, Mr. Vice Chairman," Steelhammer acknowledged with a nod as he turned to carry out the unusual order.

"And Steelhammer," Slackhammer called after him, "be sure to suggest that Quickknife take his young lady out for a night on the town... something that will keep the pair out late. Tell him I will be very disappointed with him should she return to her desk before..." He quickly tallied the hours in his head. "... call it lunchtime tomorrow."

Steelhammer nodded and left.

With that, the dapper goblin sighed in relief as he returned to his now clean desk and retrieved a sheet of parchment, setting to writing out a quick report to Mr. Potter on the situation and his own recommendations, taking care to mark the message as urgent.

Soon, Steelhammer returned.

"Ah, good. Have they left?" Slackhammer asked. At the Corporal's nod, he continued, "Then please take this to Signaling and place it on Miss Snickersnack's desk." He handed off the report. "Remember, her desk only. You may then retire for the evening."

As the reliable gob nodded and left to carry out his final task of the evening, his superior indulged in a stiff drink. Sighing contentedly as he sipped his firewhiskey, he relaxed into the plush embrace of his office chair and enjoyed the silence of the now-empty office, smiling a toothy sort of grin.

The portly goblin raised his glass to the small bookshelf off to the side of his office which carried upon its shelves a modest collection of books, among them several written by a human, one C. Northcote Parkinson.

"Here's to you, Mr. Parkinson," he saluted the author whose recent passing had prompted him to reread his books. "You may well have saved my life, possibly among a great many others."

Delay truly was one of the most powerful tools in the bureaucratic arsenal.

Now he just had to remember to send the field agent a case of something nice for the holidays lest the poor unfortunate try to kill him once he finally sussed out who was responsible for the mess that was about to fall in his lap.

5.2.7 Names with teeth

Toh Yah strode purposefully across the rolling grassy expanse of the Great Longhouse complex.

The audience had been full of surprises, Toh Yah reckoned as he shrugged off his annoyingly ornate formal jewelry. Fortunately, only most of those surprises had been unpleasant. Shrinking the jewelry, he stowed the tangle of silver and turquoise away in a convenient pocket without breaking stride, leaving him in the warm Painted Desert camouflage of the armored battle fatigues which had been his standard uniform for as long as he could remember. Aside from the colors, which varied with the environment, he was fairly certain he had worn nothing else for at least two hundred years.

That Albus Dumbledore had painted a dire picture, and the potential bad outcomes were spine-chilling. At least he also seemed to have a well thought out plan for handling the situation, so Toh Yah didn't feel the need to worry about it too much. He had spent a lifetime dealing with dire possibilities, and a good plan was far better than what he usually had to work with. The women would handle the details, as was their duty. If they deemed it necessary, they would tell him what needed to happen, and then he would make it so, as was his duty. Spirits knew they had never been shy about telling him what to do in the past.

Though speaking of spirits, there was something he did feel the urgent need to investigate, and had his colleagues not forgotten their childhood lessons, they would have been right by his side.

A Great Serpent had appeared.

Or to put it in proper context:

A Great Serpent, among the greatest of the wide variety of powerful beings the Nations knew collectively as 'spirits', had appeared right in front of them for the first time since the days of the Sundering.

Toh Yah had trouble imagining how it could be that he was the only council member seeking the creature out, yet here he was. The elder from the Great River had the excuse of barely being able to walk, and Wahchinksapa obviously had other business, given the beeline he had made for the parking lot. Those were understandable, but the rest of his colleagues had headed for the cafeteria of all places...

Fools, the lot of them.

Pausing at the top of a slight rise, Toh Yah looked out over the grounds and quickly spotted the small human child that was the guise to which the Great Serpent had reverted to fit through the Council chamber door. Destination now set, the old soldier resumed his brisk pace, determined to strike up a conversation before his fellows came to their senses and tried to interrupt.

The creature stood before a grand mural painted on the side of a massive boulder which it was examining closely. Toh Yah frowned as he tried to recall what the piece depicted. It was one of about twenty such pieces that littered the grounds, and it had been a while since he had last taken the time to walk the grounds and actually look at them. If he recalled that one was... he trailed off only to smile as he drew close enough to directly confirm his vague recollection.

How appropriate.

"Reminiscing?" Toh Yah asked conversationally.

"What do you mean?" the spirit asked, turning to look up at him cutely with its big green eyes open wide with curiosity.

Toh Yah's hand twitched at his side as he fought down his instinct to pat the creature on the head. This Harry Potter was uncannily good at imitating a young human child. It seemed an odd choice for a great and terrible creature of the spirit world, but if it was content to pretend to be an adorable human child, then Toh Yah was content to allow it its idiosyncrasies.

It was, after all, a great and terrible creature of the spirit world; there were far worse things it could choose to do with its time.

"That mural depicts the story of the Great Bridge and the Sundering, the story of how we came to inhabit this great land long ago," he explained, pausing for a moment to meet the creature's vivid green gaze. "It was also the last time that your kind deigned to interact with us, Great Serpent."

Green eyes opened wide.

"I would imagine that you would have had a different perspective on the time, living across the ocean in foreign lands," Toh Yah ventured. "What was it like there?"

"Um, I don't know personally," the currently human-shaped creature shifted uncomfortably. "I mean, from what the centaurs have told me — they've got some similar legends — that was a long time ago, and well... I'm only twelve, you know. I mean, I'll be thirteen at the end of next month, but..."

The Great Serpent trailed off uncertainly, and it was the old wizard's turn to be surprised as wizened eyes opened wide.

The Great Serpent was only a dozen years old? It was practically a newborn! Toh Yah had not realized that spirits even came that young, though now that he thought of it, he supposed it made sense. Everything had a beginning, after all, so it stood to reason that spirits could be born, and if they could be born, then they could obviously be young. That said, the revelation killed most of what he had planned to ask. Toh Yah frowned thoughtfully; this would require some thought on how to proceed.

"Mister... uh, what's your name?" the young Great Serpent asked uncertainly. "I didn't catch it earlier."

"I am called Toh Yah," the old soldier answered absently, still lost in thought.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Toh Yah," Harry Potter nodded politely. "I remember you saying you represented the Diné Protectorate. That's in the southwest, right? Between the... Great River Coalition to the north and the Aztec Empire to the south?"

"And extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east," Toh Yah confirmed with a nod. "We also share borders with the Seven Fires and the Haudenosaunee out in the far east of our territory, but very few of us live out in those parts."

"Okay, neat! Um, I'm sorry I'm not older, Mr. Toh Yah," the creature apologized, rubbing the back of its head in another of those remarkably humanlike gestures. "You seemed pretty disappointed."

"No, Harry Potter, I am not disappointed," Toh Yah shook his head, "but I am at a loss on how to proceed. I had planned to ask your advice under the assumption that you were one of the Great Serpents of legend, ancient as the mountains with the wisdom attendant such age. Unfortunately, it seems that is not the case."

"Oh!" it fell silent for a moment as its face screwed up in thought. "Um, well I might not be really old, but maybe we could talk about whatever it is anyway? I mean, sometimes it's good just to get another perspective on things." It shrugged, "I can't see it hurting, at least, even if I can't help much."

"Perhaps," Toh Yah answered with a shrug of his own. He smiled, "If nothing else, I suppose I could tell you some of my stories from the war! My great grandchildren have always enjoyed those."

"That's the war with the Aztecs, right?" Harry Potter confirmed.

"Of course," Toh Yah's white-haired head bobbed in confirmation. "There has been nothing else in many decades... at least nothing more consequential than an ugly bar fight. We have been fighting off those damned cannibals for over two thousand years, taking and retaking the same blood-soaked ground the entire time. Other conflicts rarely garner enough importance to become an actual war."

"Really?" the Great Serpent frowned. "I'd think that someone would just give up and stop fighting after that long a stalemate. I mean, that ground can't be that important, right?"

The old wizard barked out a humorless laugh. "No, that land serves no purpose beyond being a defensive buffer. The problem is that the Aztecs do not fight for land; they fight for blood."

"You mean they're out for revenge?" Harry Potter ventured with a puzzled frown. "After two thousand years?"

"No, they are out for actual blood, human sacrifices," Toh Yah explained. "When given the chance, they raid us, taking our people — men, women, and children alike — as sacrifices, either to feed to that bloodthirsty snake they call a god or to fuel their wretched magics. We object to that, and thus we have the war. We will not be overrun and turned into their own private hunting preserve as they have done to the tribes in Central America, not on my watch!"

"Oh... I guess that makes sense," the Great Serpent said, sounding somewhat taken aback. "I guess... I'm still kind of surprised that it's run this long, though. I mean, after two thousand years, especially with that kind of motivation, I figure someone ought to have won out by now. I mean, that sort of back and forth usually leads to someone winning in the end..."

"In large part, it is due to the nature of their magics," the warleader explained. "Technically, with our allies in the Confederacy, we have a significant numerical advantage, but Aztec blood magics draw strength from death and suffering, meaning that any time we gain the upper hand and start winning the war, their mages get a new, plentiful source of power, allowing them to push back ever harder. The deeper an offensive goes, the more powerful the defenders get."

Harry Potter nodded. "I get that, but why hasn't it gone the other way? Wouldn't they strengthen regardless of who was doing the most dying? I'd think that would be just as much of an issue if they were winning."

"There have been a number of such times, times when they came to occupy significant portions of our territory," the old wizard nodded gravely. "Again, the Aztec lust for blood saved us, as odd as that might seem. Had they pursued a scorched earth policy, we would have been finished any number of times, but they want a rebellious population, a cowed population apparently makes for poorer sacrifices. That, combined with the sheer size of the Confederacy, meant that eventually the tides would change, and liberators would come. The last such cycle of conquest and liberation ended shortly before my birth, early in the eighteenth century. The tides have been mostly in our favor since, though that has shifted of late."

"How so?" the young spirit asked curiously.

"At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Aztec Empire controlled most of the area the Sleepers know as Texas and New Mexico," Toh Yah explained, nodding. "I personally led the offensive which pushed them out of the Rio Grande valley... twenty years and two thousand miles of continual combat, ending when we ran them into the sea."

"Wow..." Harry Potter breathed.

"It was that campaign which earned me my name, Toh Yah," he smiled a wistful sort of smile.

"What does it mean?"

"It means 'He-Who-Walks-by-the-River'," he elaborated, his wistful smile taking on a predatory glint. "I understand the cannibals gifted me with a much less flattering name for the same achievement."

"What's that one?" the Great Serpent asked curiously.

"Chichiltisokitl," he replied.

At the creature's curious expression, he explained, "That one translates to 'Red Mud'." His smile turned downright nasty.

Harry Potter nodded slowly at that, closing its eyes as it considered what it had been told. "Umm you said it had shifted, what's changed?"

Toh Yah closed his own eyes and sighed, then he began, "Many times the balance of power shifts with the development of new techniques or technologies. Our last liberation was ushered in by the development of the Interdiction..."

"That's the ward thingy you guys have up to stop magical transportation, right?" the Great Serpent asked.

"Yes, it is," the old wizard confirmed. "The Interdiction spoiled Aztec battle tactics which relied heavily on superior mobility, allowing our allies to sweep in using the new tactics they had developed to take advantage of the shift. They did so, to devastating effect."

"How do you take advantage of that?" the creature asked, puzzled. "I mean, aren't you just as restricted as they are?"

The old wizard closed his eyes for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.

"Horses are fast, are they not, Harry Potter?" Toh Yah suddenly asked.

"I guess?" Harry Potter ventured, frowning in confusion at the apparent non sequitur.

"Did you know that a properly trained human can run down any horse in the world?" the Warleader continued. "Horses are sprinters. They will win a short race, but humans can always win in the distance, running the horse to exhaustion."

"At that time, there were no other transportation methods available," the old wizard explained. "Trains would not become available for nearly a century, and automobiles did not enter the picture until the turn of this century. We wizards had our own methods, of course, but the Interdiction ended those, so it was either on horseback or on foot. We chose the latter for one, simple reason."

"Okay..." came the leading response.

"While any properly trained human can run down a horse given time, a properly trained wizard can outrun one in the short distance, too. Better yet, he can maintain that pace for a very long time. Our warriors were and are properly trained, Harry Potter," the old man explained, meeting the Great Serpent's vivid green eyes intently. "The Aztecs were not. My name is He-Who-Walks-by-the-River for a reason. When I said we ran them into the sea, I meant we ran them into the sea; the entire campaign was conducted on foot. During the past few centuries, our infantry has ruled the field, and in the absence of magical transportation the Aztecs have struggled to find a counter."

"But you said that's changed lately, right?" the Great Serpent asked. "What's going on now? Is it because of cars and stuff?"

"Part of it was the introduction of nonmagical automobiles, it is true; automobiles blunt the edge of our advantage; however, the effect was minimized due their introduction on both sides of the fight at roughly the same time. The major issue has been something else," the Diné leader explained. "The enemy has used blood magic-based enhancement rituals for quite some time, and those can make Aztec infantry quite competitive — even superior in many ways — but they have never had the resources to enhance any group larger than a raiding party. That changed half a century ago, and the numbers of enhanced personnel have increased dramatically since."

"For several decades, the reason for that remained a mystery, until we finally identified it approximately twenty years ago," he continued. "The Aztec mages had begun to employ a new tactic, a method of harvesting power from the Sleeper population mediated by a magical drug called cocaine."

"I've read a little about that," Harry Potter volunteered. "It's an extract from the leaf of the coca plant, I think. I didn't think it was magical, though."

"It is," Toh Yah assured the young spirit. "Artificially engineered, too; though our analysts do not believe it originated from the Aztec labs. It doesn't seem to match the earmarks of their favored methods. The current theory is that they stole it from someone else, though we have no idea who."

"I think that article mentioned it originated in South America, but it was a nonmagical encyclopedia, so I'm not sure if that's right. If it's a magical plant, then someone probably hid that part, too," the young dragon deferred with a thoughtful frown. "I've got no idea what might work to counter it either. I'd guess interfering with the distribution systems or something... maybe find some way to immunize people? I know you can counter-dose for potions sometimes, depending on how they work, but the logistics would be hard for millions of people." It sighed, "I assume you know all that better than I do anyway."

"We have several programs in that vein," the wizard agreed. "Unfortunately, they have borne frustratingly little fruit."

"Um, well... it seems to me that the problem is that they're catching up on the physical magic front, right?" Harry Potter offered, his words coming faster as his ideas presented themselves more clearly. "They're starting to put you in the same position as you had put them when you first put the Interdiction up, maybe..."

Toh Yah cocked a curious snowy-white eyebrow and waited attentively.

Green eyes opened wide as a smile appeared on the creature's boyish face.

"Hey, can I get a look at how you set up that Interdiction thingy?" it asked.

"Why?" the warleader asked suspiciously.

"Well, depending on how it works, we might be able to..."

Toh Yah leaned closer, listened intently to the young spirit's counsel.

As it finished its explanation, the old soldier smiled.

5.2.8 Winnebago

Walking down the gravel pathway towards the parking lot, Severus Snape's sallow face was twisted into a scowl, as was his wont. It was, however, a lesser scowl than his usual fare. The meeting had gone as well as could be hoped, and the potions master was cautiously optimistic that the trend would continue. Thus, he had few reservations about going forward with the second half of his business for the day.

It was time to take delivery on his new vehicle.

That morning during his meeting with his local Gringotts contact, the goblin had assured him that the vehicle would be available in the Great Longhouse's parking lot after the council meeting. All that was left was to finalize the sale. Snape had high hopes for the thing... he ought to. He had paid a great deal of money for it, after all.

As the dour potions master rounded the last bend in the pathway and passed through the stand of tall evergreens into the parking lot, he caught sight of what he could only assume was the vehicle in question. It was massive, but he had known it would be from the earlier discussions; that was the point, after all. At a bit over thirty feet long, it was nearly half the length of the locomotive that pulled the Express, and that was about as far as that comparison went.

The locomotives Snape had grown up around had a certain grace to them, a grace apparent in the curve of their boilers and the coordinated ballet of their exposed driving mechanics. This vehicle was a blocky affair with hardly a curve to recommend it and all its mechanical components concealed within the beige box that was its main chassis. Even the wheels themselves were half-hidden by squared off wheel-wells. Other than the windows and door, the only structural point of interest was the front end which projected forward to form a sort of beak a little less than halfway up the front face of the awkward-looking thing. It was a box on wheels, the bland color only broken up by accent striping in a dark brown and orange that ran down the length of the vehicle at about chest height and outlined the windows.

Taking it in, Snape shrugged internally. It would do.

As he made his way across the expanse of crushed stone, two men stood beside the wheeled contraption engaged in conversation. One was easily recognizable as a council member despite standing with his back to approaching potions master, the representative of the Seven Fires Council, if Snape remembered correctly, the prominent feathered headdress he still wore was a dead giveaway. The other was a younger man, dressed simply in blue jeans and a collared chambray shirt with a blocky orange 'W' embroidered on the chest pocket. He was the first to notice Snape's approach, motioning to alert the council member as soon as he did so.

"Greetings, Severus Snape!" the older man turned around and called out with a broad, well-practiced smile. "It is good to meet you in a less formal situation, especially if we are to be working together on these things in the future. Your elder mentioned a number of these devices in our territory as I recall."

"Indeed," the dour man agreed gravely. "This will be only the first of many, should everything go well."

"And the last time we do anything if it doesn't," the feather-bedecked man delivered the morbid observation with a slightly whimsical air.

Snape shrugged, not feeling the need to reply. It was true after all.

The councilman took in Snape's laconic response, then nodded slightly as if he had learned something profound.

"Well, it occurs to me that some introductions are in order," he said, changing the subject. "As I do not believe we were formally introduced, I shall begin with myself. I am Wahchinksapa, chief of the Seven Fires Council. This is Kohana," he gestured to the younger man, "a brave of the Winnebago, one of the Seven Fires tribes, and more relevant to this discussion, the senior project manager in charge of fulfilling your commission. Since he is one of mine, I decided to come over and sit in on things."

With that, Wahchinksapa stepped back leaving Kohana to step in with the broad, slightly artificial smile of a salesman.

"Mr. Snape, it is good to finally meet you in person!" he said warmly, offering his hand to Snape, who shook it readily, if briefly. "It's hard to get the true measure of a man secondhand."

Snape nodded in terse acknowledgement.

"We have customized your vehicle to your specifications," Kohana continued. "All our standard features, four-mode automatically reconfigurable interior which will comfortably sleep twenty-five, deployable space expansions, full climate control systems, and the rest of our top of the line suite. We have also exchanged the engine for a 600 horsepower Cummins-brand diesel to accommodate your extra features, namely that under-floor cargo compartment."

"As requested, the compartment is fitted with its own independently deployable, variable extent expansion, de-interlocked from the movement safeties so the vehicle can be operated while it is deployed. At full expansion, it will provide approximately double the volume of the vehicle's main compartment, though I strongly recommend against driving with it so deployed," the man frowned. "For that matter, I would not recommend driving with it deployed at all. I do hope you remember that moving expanded spaces is dangerous, Mr. Snape. Neither Winnebago Customs nor our nonmagical affiliate, Winnebago Industries will be held liable for any damages if you manage to kill yourself while driving with the space expansion deployed; we have specifically written a disclaimer to that effect into our bill of sale."

Snape nodded. "I am aware."

"Very well, so long as you are aware," the man nodded, his smile returning as if a switch had been flipped. "Then I suppose our next step is to take you through and show you all the systems in detail before we get you behind the wheel. She's a bit of a beast, so we'll want to let you take her through her paces before the final handover; that Cummins takes some getting used to."

"We'll start with the exterior," Kohana began. "She started her life as a 1984 Chieftain 33RU before we brought her into the garage; the newer models changed around some of the internals, and we're still reworking the enchantment anchors to accommodate them. We had to strip her down all the way to the frame for that engine upgrade. It's not just finding a place to stick the bigger engine, we needed to strengthen the drive train; that Cummins would have sheared the stock model right off, same with the tires on the other end."

Kicking out, his foot thumped off the rear right tire, the outer one. "These are standard semi tires... that is, tires for an articulated lorry, as I believe you would know them. If you need to replace one, be sure to ask for steer tires. You will need six for a full set; we doubled up on the rear axle, though my mechanics did a good job of hiding it from casual view. You'll need the extra bearing capacity if you're planning to fill up that cargo compartment of yours."

He led on, Snape following him as they rounded the back of the vehicle with little more than a quick note of the spare tire and the ladder for roof access and stopped by the fuel fill.

"That was all stuff for the mechanics if you run into a problem; this is the first bit you need to pay attention to as the operator," Kohana continued. "You'll be looking for diesel to fill up, that will usually be a green handle on the pump, but other than that it is just like filling up your car back home. However, that panel there," he gestured to a small, covered access panel next to the fuel fill, "is a custom feature of ours, the access hatch for what we call a bricking tank. A lot of our customers, especially those from the Frozen Shore, operate a long way from the nearest fuel station, and the bricking tank makes it easy to fuel up for a long trip. It works like so..." The sales rep popped open the access panel and began pointing out components and explaining their function.

The potions master nodded as he listened intently to the first of many explanations that would follow. He learned a bewildering variety of things about the nature of his recent purchase, how to operate it, things to do, and things not to do. He learned that when Winnebago Customs declared a vehicle "all-terrain", they meant all-terrain, and he learned that his new top-of-the-line magical RV was in fact significantly better appointed — and more spacious, at least when parked and its expansions deployed — than his own home back in Britain.

Most of all he learned, much to his growing irritation, that his uncharacteristically impulsive decision to save time by just agreeing to get 'all the bells and whistles' during the ordering process had backfired quite spectacularly. The explanations and demonstrations of feature after feature would drag on for more than an hour and a half.

5.2.9 Observer

As the youngster droned on, Wahchinksapa watched intently.

The chieftain did not normally make a habit of overseeing such transactions; the men knew their business far better than he did after all, but this was a special circumstance. Wahchinksapa had led the Seven Fires for three-quarters of a century, and he had managed all Confederate intelligence operations for nearly half that time; he had not risen to either position through recklessness or gullibility. So when Jigonsahseh had taken him aside and informed him that one of the visiting delegation stank of darkness and pain, he had immediately formulated an excuse to get close to investigate.

On the face of it, such an aura might well be nothing to worry about. Such things were to be expected of those who had lived hard lives in dark circumstances. Unfortunately, such things were also to be expected of an infiltrating Aztec blood mage doing his level best to be inconspicuous.

He would watch, he would learn, and then he would judge.

5.2.10 Practicalities

"And when you are ready to go, this readies the vehicle for departure," Kohana tapped another small gold-inlay on the control panel to the right of the door.

As his wand touched the magically conductive metal, a slight pulse of magic triggered a dramatic alteration. The rich furnishings of the large sitting room which filled to inside of the cabin twisted and blurred as they changed, mapping into a new configuration as the auto-transfiguration engaged. Cabinets became luggage racks; couches and chairs moved and altered into comfortable bucket seating complete with seatbelts and rigid floor attachments; and tables merged into the floor. Doors faded into unbroken walls, the rooms behind them disappearing as the space expansion which had allowed their existence was undone. Even the main cabin seemed to ripple as it shrank slightly, and soon everything looked very much in keeping with what one might expect from the interior of a luxury tour bus.

"As a reminder, the interior can only be reconfigured if the parking brake is engaged and no human is beyond this line," he indicated the edge of the carpet about six inches beyond his own feet where he stood near the door. "Also note that the safety interlocks only check for humans. If you have any other living beings with you, pets or the like, you must ensure that they are out of the danger zone manually. I believe that is the last of it unless you have any questions?"

"No, that will suffice," Snape declined stiffly, his eye beginning to twitch irritably every time his guide opened his mouth.

"Then I suppose it is time to get you into the driver's seat," he said with an eager smile, gesturing towards the front of the vehicle. "Come this way, and we can get started. You mentioned early on that you are familiar with driving a car, and the stability charms take care of most of the really difficult parts of driving a vehicle this big. You should expect it to handle much more sluggishly than you are likely used to, but that should be the only major difference. Take a seat, and we can get started."

Snape sat down and reflexively reached for the belt across his body with his left hand only to grasp empty air.

"Other hand, Mr. Snape," Kohana offered helpfully, "it's reversed on this side of the ocean."

The unasked-for advice earned the man a venomous glare from his customer as Snape quickly corrected his mistake and jammed the buckle into place with unnecessary force. A few moments later, the key turned bringing the massive diesel to life, its insistent rumble reverberating across the parking lot. Soon enough, Kohana had his customer driving the massive vehicle about the almost empty lot getting used to its quirks.

"Alright, I think we're ready to take it out on the road now," the still cheerful salesman pointed out, earning himself another dark glare. "Now the first thing to remember..."

"Do you perhaps have any errands you might wish to run in preparation for your trip, Severus Snape?" Wachinksapa interrupted.

A dark eyebrow rose in wordless question as Snape turned to eye his previously silent passenger.

"Two in fact," he drawled. "We are in rather dire need of some appropriately detailed maps of our destination in British Columbia, of the major roads between here and there, and of southern... Michigan, I believe it was. Mr. Potter sprang another intermediate destination on us yesterday... a friend of one of his goblin acquaintances, I believe."

"I see, and the other?"

"Picking up a purchase from a nearby facility," the sallow-faced man informed him.

"That's perfect!" Kohana exclaimed. "Always better to have somewhere in particular to go. "As I recall, the closest place to get maps that include customs bypass locations for magicals is probably..."

"Perhaps you should go take care of that, youngster," his elder interrupted him again. "An international highway map and detail atlases for Michigan and British Columbia?" he ventured, looking to Snape for confirmation. At the dark man's nod, he continued, "yes, those three, please. Feel free to take one of our loaner cars over by the dormitories."

"But we still need to..." he protested.

"Now, please," Watchinksapa cut him off firmly. "I am certain I will be sufficient to see to your customer's acclimatization to the rules of the road."

As soon as Kohana left, the chieftain turned to Snape, "You looked as though you were about to unload on the poor boy, so I thought to intervene."

The potions master spared him a nod, carefully not denying the observation.

"That said, you do need to get used to handling this beast in traffic," Wahchinksapa asserted. "Where did you say that pickup was?"

An awkward fifteen-minute drive and an even more awkward parking job later, the pair could be found strolling through a local automotive scrapyard.

"Tell me again why you need this for a road trip?" the Seven Fires chief questioned with a grunt of exertion as he helped levitate a stripped down, half-crushed sedan back to the motorhome. He had finally taken off his feathered headdress, which he had left draped carefully over a seat in the Winnebago.

As the twisted hunk of steel and aluminum crashed to the ground, his companion sliced it into three relatively manageable chunks with two waves of his wand.

"Food for Mr. Potter," Snape replied with a grunt of his own as he levitated the chunks into the now-expanded under-cabin cargo compartment of the Winnebago to join its two fellows. "In the past I have had the misfortune to be in close contact with the wretched lizard when he is truly hungry, and I have precisely zero desire to repeat the experience."

"I can imagine," the older wizard agreed with a note of horrified awe at the idea. "He eats steel?"

"That and quite nearly everything else, but steel and coal are perennial favorites," Snape gave another grunt as he levitated the last of the chunks into the ever more crowded compartment. "We intend to substitute diesel fuel for his usual daily coal intake which should be easy enough to acquire as we go. Steel, however, is difficult to arrange enroute."

"I see," Wahchinksapa nodded, and the conversation fell silent for a time as they worked to load the scrap metal.

Several automobile carcasses later, the potions master closed the cargo compartment door with a clatter and latched it shut. He turned to the Seven Fires chieftain and asked, "Have you learned what you came to learn?"

"What do you mean?" the older man asked.

"A man of your stature would not spontaneously decide to spend hours overseeing what was ultimately a minor economic transaction on the part of one of your constituents," Snape reasoned. "Therefore, you must have had an ulterior motive, and the only one I can think of is intelligence gathering."

"And what intelligence would I have been searching for?" he asked curiously.

"That I do not know," the sallow-faced man admitted with a scowl and a shrug. "I know of nothing I might be aware of that you would both be interested in and that Albus has not already revealed."

"And if I told you that it is a question about you, yourself?" the chieftain asked, meeting Snape's gaze intently. "Does that give any hint?"

The potions master met his eye unflinchingly, though his scowl turned slightly puzzled.

"No."

Wahchinksapa nodded slowly, coming to a decision.

"One of my colleagues informed me that you 'stank of darkness and pain'," the chieftain explained. "Such a description fits a condition which can arise from a variety of situations, most commonly it is found among those who have faced... difficult lives."

Snape nodded stoically.

"It can also describe the feeling given off by a blood mage doing his best to conceal his nature," he elaborated.

The dark man nodded in understanding. "I see, and what have you concluded?"

"I do not believe that you are an infiltrator," Wahchinksapa declared.

"Very well," Snape nodded, turning to the door into the RV. "I suppose we should be off then."

The old man barked out a laugh at the man's calm acceptance and turned to follow.

5.2.11 Greenlit

As the Winnebago rolled to a stop and its engine cut off, Snape and his single passenger slumped forward in their seats at the sudden relief. Both men were soaked with sweat and trembling from exertion. The cabin was silent for a long moment before anyone recovered enough to say anything.

"I do not envy you your coming travels, Severus Snape, particularly when you get out on the highway where there are minimum speed limits," Wahchinksapa managed to pant after nearly a minute of recovery. "Moving that expanded compartment a mile and a half put us in this state. Are you certain you will be able to handle the strain?"

"Not on my own," Snape admitted, "but with the entire group, Albus and the dratted dragon among them? Splitting the load among everyone, I believe we will manage well enough."

"Very well," the Seven Fires chief shrugged and stood, now recovered enough to do so. "I will need to go make my report in any case. Safe travels to you."

With a final nod, the man set out for the Great Longhouse. Snape took the opportunity to continue his recovery, leaning back in the driver's seat and drifting off.

After an indeterminate period, though it could not have been too long, given that the sun was still well above the horizon, the dark man was awakened in an unpleasantly familiar manner.

"Hey, Mr. Snape!" the voice of the resident dragon burbled excitedly from near his right ear, waking him from a sound sleep.

"What is it, you blasted beast?" he demanded irritably as he tried to shake the sleep out of his head and the soreness out of his muscles.

As he stretched, he noted that the maps he had requested earlier in the day had been delivered while he slept and now sat on the dashboard alongside the final bill of sale for the vehicle. The form had a place for his signature marked with a yellow sticky note which asked him to return the completed form to Wahchinksapa.

He must have been more tired than he thought to have slept through such a thing.

"Mr. Dumbledore wanted me to let you know we got final approval for the trip, so we'll be heading out in the morning," the young dragon reported. "He couldn't find you, so he asked me to try to..."

"Yes, yes," the potions master waved him off. "Was there anything else?"

"Well, I also had the best conversation with Mr. Toh Yah about that Interdiction thingy they use to stop magical transportation! He's one of their best military leaders, and he explained how it works, and I've got a ton of ideas if I can figure them out. I mean, maybe...."

"Enough!" Snape demanded irritably. "You may tell me about it later, but for now, I must rest for our travels tomorrow."

"Um, Mr. Snape?"

"What is it?" he snapped.

"I was also supposed to tell you we're supposed to attend a meal commemorating our new relationship with the Confederacy. It's kind of important."

Snape sighed and picked at his robes, giving them a tentative sniff and recoiling with a grimace. He was still rather ripe from his earlier exertions, certainly not suited to what might well turn out to be a state dinner.

"Very well, allow me ten minutes," he nodded to the currently human-looking dragon. "In the meantime, make yourself useful by plotting out our course for the first leg of our trip tomorrow. I believe our first stop will be your acquaintance in southern Michigan."

"Okay, Mr. Snape!"
 
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