Chapter One - Exile Vilify

"REDUCTO! REDUCTO! REDUCTO!"

Harry Potter had cast that spell an innumerable amount of times the past few months. It has been one of his strongest spells before he came to Brazil, but with his constant usage of it he was pretty sure it would be impossible to find someone equally adept at it as him. "Maybe Hermione," he thought to himself in a rare second of weakness. And then it was back to blasting away.

"REDUCTO!"

Rocks splintered as bright light connected to previous solid stone. Stone that would have taken the dwarves some 30 paces behind Harry a good day to dig through. Harry had also become accomplished at hitting the rock in the right spot so when it exploded, the fragments flew off to his sides. That had taken some practice. But he was proud that he rarely had to cast any shield charms nowadays. The dwarves had made a game of it, giving him hell for each one he had to summon to protect his 'soft skin', as they put it.

One last reductor curse and Harry managed to break through the barrier that had been holding them up. The stone was no longer black, it was the normal shades of grey. He raised his non wand arm and wiped his brow. It was not hot down here in the mine, but that much spell casting took its toll. Even the light cotton muggle clothes he wore were not enough to fend off the sweat. He turned around then, and gave a bow to the audience that had started to come forward once it was clear Harry was done. "Your welcome," Harry said a bit mockingly.

That was met with a number of snorts and grunts as the dwarves passed Harry with their enchanted pickaxes in hand. One stepped on Harry's foot as he walked by. "Do not get overconfident, wizard."

Harry laughed at Fradren, a lively dwarf, as far as a dwarf could be called lively.

"Did I just feel an ant crawl across my shoe?" No response, but Harry could see the dwarf shaking his head as he heaved his pickax over his head and swung it towards the grey rock that Harry's spells had uncovered. Harry would have to watch his bedroll for the next couple nights. Fradren did not mess around with pranks.

It was funny how Harry's perception of dwarves had changed over the years. Growing up, a dwarf had been an assistant to Snow White. Miners that wore funny hats and existed only in books that Dudley had abandoned and quick seconds of TV time before Dudley found a more action orientated program. A pure fantasy. Once Harry become aware of his true origins, dwarves became less of a thing to admire, if that was possible. Seeing a flock of dwarves dressed up in silly outfits doing Lockhart's bidding in Harry's second year was not a good introduction. Harry smiled as he remembered mentioning that experience to the foreman of this mining expedition, Xaxnoik, a few days after they had met. The elder dwarf had nearly had a brain aneurysm. "They are lost," he had told Harry in his gruff voice. "We do not speak of them." Xaxnoik may not have wanted to hear the tales of the lost, as he called them, but the younger dwarves had no such issue. It seemed every other night spent by the fire before bed, one of them called upon Harry to tell the tale of the lost dwarves and their human costumes.

And that led Harry to his current opinion of dwarves. After he escaped the U.K., after his few months of toiling around, trying to figure out where his head was and what he wanted to do, he heard of the dwarves from a newspaper article in a small wizarding community in Thailand. It was such a small community where nothing of note ever happened that the publishers of the paper would dig up random facts about the world and print them as articles. The article that day happened to be about dwarves, and explained how they mined the Earth for Glitonum, a magical substance. A little bit of research had led him to Brazil, where he had heard a mining expedition was gathering to explore the previously untouched Cabet Mine. It was here that he had found and met Xaxnoik. It was the start of his exile.

The dwarves had very limited magic themselves. Because of this it was standard operating procedure to hire a wizard to come with them. Glitonum existed in the grey rock, while the black rock was next to impossible to break through. A wizard made breaking up the black rock a lot easier.

Also, there were dangers in the mines. In the few months Harry had been with Xaxnoik's party, there had been a few dozen times his wand skills were needed for self defense. Nothing serious, thankfully. They sometimes came upon crevices in the rock where critters resided, and the presence of magical Glitonum could turn a normal worm into a particularly nasty piece of work for a dwarf to try and handle. But for a wizard, no problem.

What was odd about this expedition, however, was Glitonum was not their main goal. This was Xaxnoik's final trek into the Earth. Rumor around Brazil had always told tale of a magical treasure buried deep in the Cabet Mine. Over the years Xaxnoik tried hard to find people to invest in a search for that treasure, but he could never find anyone. So this trek was his. He put his whole life savings into it. Any Glitonum they came across they would save for selling when they resurfaced, but Xaxnoik would not let them stray from the goal at hand. The treasure.

Convincing Xaxnoik that he was the right man for the job had not been easy. Dwarves lived to be about 400 years, which made Harry's youth even more pronounced. In the end, after practical displays of his power had brought the old dwarf right to the edge of accepting him, Harry pulled out the card he swore he never would. He told Xaxnoik of his true identity. Of how he had defeated Voldemort. Xaxnoik was impressed, if not as impressed as Harry had hoped. And it had been enough.

Blasting rocks and killing oversized, magical bugs. That was Harry's life now. The best part was none of the dwarves cared who he was. He was pretty sure he had earned their trust enough that he would be invited with them on their next expedition. It was not a bad life. Harry nodded his head. Not a bad life at all. Uncomplicated.

Harry felt a movement beside him as Xaxnoik came up from behind him. The old dwarf was dressed in the same thick wool long sleeve shirt and pants as the other dwarves, though his shirt had a gold line going down the middle, indicative of his status. The dwarves did not need protection from rocks; their skin was very tough.

"Do you feel it," Xaxnoik said in a quiet voice.

Harry paused as he looked down at the foreman. The elder dwarf never made small talk. "Feel what? Is something wrong with the air quality?" Occasionally a crevice would hold a pocket of poisonous air that Harry would need to banish.

Xaxnoik shook his head. "Its something more than that. Its… an energy in the air."

"Good or bad energy," Harry asked. That distinction was important.

The elder dwarf ignored him, walking forward a few steps. Harry kept pace. He had learned over his time with the expedition to slow his pace to be able to walk beside the much shorter beings.

"There is either a mountain full of Glitonum mixed into those rocks," Xaxnoik muttered, "or…"

He was cut off as the dwarf standing next to Fradren buried his pickax in the rock, shattering it and breaking through. A high pitched noise emitted from the crevice that was obviously behind the rock. That shrill shriek dropped everyone to their knees, hands over ears, pickaxes dropped, forgotten on the hard ground.

The dwarves that had previously been hammering away at the rock had the presence of mind to back away from the wall and that terrible noise. They were not a second too late. Before Harry even had time to draw his wand the wall exploded, bigger than any explosion Harry had made with his reductor curses. Rock fragments flew everywhere but those were not a concern to the dwarves or Harry, who by now had ducked to cover his face. Peeking back up a few seconds later he saw a dust cloud from the explosion coming towards them. A wordless spell picked up his dwarven friends and deposited them a good 50 paces behind him. Another spell started to dissipate the cloud of rock dust. Harry stood, his wand at the ready, waiting to see what this crevice, this hidden room in the mine would hold. As the smoke receded, the monsters came forward.

The front line was giant caterpillars. As tall as Harry and as big around as a car, three of them came scurrying out of the cloud of rock dust that still existed inside the crevice they had broken into. These creatures, as shown by the balls of light Harry had cast hours ago in the tunnel to show the way for the dwarves, were black, with flecks of purple engrained in their skin. Harry had seen that before. The flecks of purple were caused by Glitonum, which was what caused the mutation of the ordinary critters. But Harry had never seen them on this scale before, though he had been warned of it. As Fradren put it, "The bigger the hole, the more room they have to grow."

Also a new addition was the spikes that lined what Harry thought of as the creatures back. Also purple, they started shooting off towards Harry and the dwarves. That was a problem, as was the loud shriek they were still emitting. Erecting a shield to protect his companions, he yelled at the nearest creature. "SILENCO!" The sound that it had been making stopped and he quickly repeated the spell on the other two monsters.

Now the issue was stopping these things. They were coming at him moderately fast. "STUPEFY!" That was again directed at the one closest to him. The spell hit the giant caterpillar directly, but all it caused the creature to do was bare its teeth. Wow. It had big teeth.

"No time for thinking like that," Harry thought as he cast again, putting all of his effort into this one spell that he had rarely used. "SECTUMSEMPRA!" The force that came out of Harry's wand caused the underground chamber to shake. The spell hit the lead caterpillar in the middle of its long thick body as it had reared, trying to aim purple spikes at Harry. It sliced it right in two.

The bottom half of the creature, without its head, shrivled and turned to dust in front of everyone. But the top half, with the head still attached, opened its mouth in a soundless yell of pain. Saliva mixed with blood was shot out of the injured monster's mouth and coated Harry, even though the thing was still a good 15 paces away. The thick, oily substance smelled worse than anything Harry had ever sniffed before. Ignoring the attack on his senses, he grimaced as he saw the cut in half creature continue to approach. He quickly used a smashing spell, aimed inside the thing's mouth. That was all it took for an explosion to occur, and the creature no longer existed, its inside bits and guts once again covering Harry.

One down, two to go. Sectumsempra this time aimed right at the creatures face. It was if a giant sword had been swung at it as the spell made contact and its head was severed from its body, the head breaking off as the body went to die. But Harry did not have time to watch its death. The last creature was almost upon him.

He again aimed at its face carefully. "SECTUMSEMPRA!" The creature did not move exactly as Harry had planned and the spell missed. The giant caterpillar, with its mega sized legs, leapt into the air, aiming to land on Harry as it continued to shoot spikes off its back towards the shield protected dwarves. Harry had a split second to think. If he missed with Snape's spell again, it would all be over. That thing would crush him. Even if he managed to splice it half the other half could still take him out. That meant one option. "Damn it," Harry said as he pointed his wand at the caterpillars widest point, and uttered words he never wanted to speak.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

As soon as he spoke those terrible, damning words he threw himself out of the way. There was no need to see if the spell had worked. That was just about no way to stop it. The monster's limp body flopped down, unmoving, where Harry had stood only seconds before.

Harry got up on his knees, breathing heavily. He resisted counting his fingers and toes. Though he wanted too, to take his mind off the evil spell he had just cast. A hand on his arm startled him.

"Good job, wizard." Harry smiled at this point. Even now, after he had saved all of the dwarves lives, Xaxnoik could not bring himself to call Harry anything other than wizard. But the praise was enough. "This should not be like this," Harry said to himself. "I came here to escape death. Why does it follow me?"

"Balngert, gather up all of those purple spikes that you can. They have Glitonum in them and might be worth something to the wizards." Xaxnoik was back to business immediately. His resiliency was astounding.

As the elder dwarf moved forward, Harry called out to him. "Wait. I should go first. Just in case…"

Xaxnoik kept walking. "If there was anything else in there it would have came out already."

"Let me do my job. Let me earn my way."

Harry knew the part about earning his way would appeal to Xaxnoik. He stopped. "Perhaps I grow hasty, anxious to find the treasure," he sighed. "Go ahead."

Harry stood up and walked to the crevice. "Lumos" he muttered, and light made a path for him. Blood and guts on his clothes and body forgotten, he stepped over the threshold of the long ago naturally crafted room. The smoke was beginning to clear. Harry could sense about 5 dwarves behind him. They were anxious to keep going. Not much phased them.

The hidden room was just big enough for the three monsters that had emerged from it to fit into it. It did give off the same rank odor, and had slime hanging from the walls. Other than that, it looked like any other part of the mine that Harry had witnessed as they dug their way down. That was, until the light from his wand caught something in the back of the crevice that should not have been there. He walked a little closer. It was a trunk, and a decent sized one at that.

"Is that," Harry paused and gulped. "Is that the treasure you seek?"

Xaxnoik walked up to the trunk which was as tall as he was and snorted. "This is too modern. It is not from the era we know the real treasure to be from. Which begs the question…"

"… how did such a modern trunk find its way down here," Harry finished with a frown.

"Exactly." With that word Xaxnoik tried to open it, but a built in lock prevented him from doing so. He stepped back and looked at Harry.

Harry walked up to the trunk, wand out still shining light. He wordlessly cast the spell, and a click echoed off the walls of the caterpillars cavern. Another wave of his wand and the lid of the trunk swung open. The light from Harry's wand caught what lay inside and Harry dropped to his knees, clutching his chest in shock.

Inside the chest was a person, or someone who looked exactly like a person, that Harry knew was dead. Dead during the Battle of Hogwarts. Nymphadora Tonks.

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