Canis Major
Chapter One
The Unexpected Visitor
Author's Note: Okay, if I lose interest in this Harry Potter fanfic, I'm probably going to stop trying to write them. You know what they say, sixth times the charm :)! Anyway, as a college student right now I don't have time to produce Tolkien-quality work. I reserve most of that for my own original content, so sorry HP fans, my heart and soul is not going to go into this or any other fanfiction.
Brianna Davis considered herself a perfectly normal working girl, thank you very much. Never mind the fact that she woke up in the morning with pointed ears, slanted eyebrows, and delicately sculpted high cheekbones that created a strikingly beautiful figure reflected in her bathroom mirror, or her mostly immortal state of being she insisted on her normalcy fervently. She even constantly repeated it into said bathroom mirror while drawing a short, but complicated, rhunic equation on her wrist with permanent marker. She passed it off as a temporary tattoo she liked to put on for appearances sake.
The important thing about these rhunes, elven rhunes, was that they hid her decidedly elven appearance and made her look and feel human - well, mostly human.
Brianna stared at her big teal eyes as the magic took effect. Her hair, normally a glinting bronze, dulled into a comfortable light brown and her skin - which glowed when in the darkness - dimmed into a light peach shade. Her cheekbones, eyebrows, and ears rounded. Everything that made her out to be otherworldly - not human - melted away except for her eyes. Her big teal eyes remained. She wished she could do something about them, but nothing ever really worked; not too much makeup or contacts or magic could fix them, and Brianna was left with a pair of eyes that didn't quite fit her human appearance.
With that finished she put on her work clothes - a simple dress skirt, blue blazer and dressy jacket - and went to work.
Brianna taught at the University of Texas in Dallas as a professor of Ancient History. Her classes were all upper level courses and spoke to her painstakingly earned doctorate degree in human history. The students loved her for the most part with a few arrogant exceptions to the rule. It was a college campus after all and she figured she'd run into a few of those types of students. She mostly ignored them and failed them when necessary.
Her office was filled to the brim with history books. Not all of them were publications by humans and she charmed them to look like mythological tomes and various other literary paraphernalia. She walked in with her usual morning cup of Starbucks coffee feeling the effects of her wonderfully boring life and enjoying every minute of it.
The morning time she gave herself to grade her student's papers was interrupted by her student worker who came into her office holding the daily mail. This morning she only had one envelope.
"This thing came in the mail today, Doctor Davis," her student said with a slight furrow of his blond brow, "it's written in some sort of cursive. And the paper's kind of heavy."
Brianna looked up from her work and scrutinized the lone letter she'd received. Parchment, tight calligraphy that could only be achieved by a ball point pen or feather quill, and irritatingly accurate written address - it could only mean one thing.
"Set it on my desk Stevens I'll look at it shortly. Organize my files again. I've been receiving more useless crap from the college again and I want to get rid of a lot of it," she instructed.
Kyle Stevens, Kinesiology major, set the letter on her desk and scurried over to her cabinet space to start going through the six drawers that had accumulated a myriad of useless documents and outdated (last school year's) student's final essays and exams along with old student profiles. Brianna finished grading the essay she'd been working on before she reached for the offending letter. She pulled a face before hooking her pinky under the flap and jerking up and forward. The top of the letter ripped open and she pulled out the equally heavy parchment pages.
Suspicions high she opened the pages. There was a long introductions, as if she really needed one, about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, an introduction from Albus Dumbledore who apparently wanted something from her and took forever getting to the point, and then the long-winded reason Albus felt the school needed a new history of magic teacher. The students were learning from a ghost. Brianna frowned at the excuse. Yes, she conceded, the students needed to be taught by someone who wasn't dead and frozen in space and time. Yes, her knowledge and experience would be far greater than what most of the students will ever have. No, she decided, Dumbledore's need for her, specifically, centered around something else.
The end of the letter struck her with no small amount of alarm. It read: I will come to you personally on Wednesday, July 28 at ten o'clock. She checked her phone. It was 9:55am.
"Stevens!" Brianna barked.
Her student worker looked up from where he was sorting through her messy files, "Doctor?"
"Take twenty dollars from my purse and take the rest of the morning off. I have a meeting I'll need to attend in a few minutes," she said.
Kyle took out her wallet, something Brianna rarely let anyone do, and drew out a crisp, neatly folded, twenty. He shot her a confused look.
"You don't have a meeting at ten, I checked," he said.
"This one's a bit impromptu. I'll explain later. Run along now and do whatever it is college students do these days," she said with a wave of her hand.
Kyle Stevens shrugged and all but ran out of her office. A minute later he stepped through her office door looking just as ridiculously wizarding as he always did. Brianna leaned forward over he stacks of papers.
"On the bright side, Albus, your eccentricity fits in around here," she deadpanned dryly.
Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, and moderator of the Wizengamot, a wizarding version of Parliament, and Red Wizard of the Elven Court's High Wizard Council, smiled serenely at her and sat down, uninvited, in one of her office's leather chairs.
"I have sorely missed your biting wit My Lady," he remarked pleasantly.
Brianna scowled.
"None of that here! You don't know who could be listening," she hissed.
Dumbledore nodded as he peered at her over his half moon spectacles, "As luck will have it, I'm not here because I need royalty. I'm here for a history professor and you fulfill my requirements tremendously."
Brianna sat back in her seat and folded her hands into her lap. She smirked.
"Albus, you know how I feel about people who withhold information from me. The actual truth of the matter would be welcome, thanks."
He sighed and suddenly turned from a serene old grandfather to just… well… old. Brianna's antagonistic mood slackened a bit. Something was, obviously, wrong.
"Sirius Black has escaped from the Wizard Prison of Azkaban," Dumbledore announced.
Sirius Black, famous British murderer, was on the rise. It all made sense now. Brianna leaned forward again and rested her chin on her folded hands.
"You don't need a History Professor," she said, "you need something else."
"I need a protector for Harry Potter, a boy of thirteen, lest Black tries to come after him," Dumbledore said.
Brianna nodded, "And my certain skill set would contribute to the boy's protection."
"And by proxy the school's. I've heard how protective of your students you are, Doctor Davis, and I need a professor who has the skill and, dare I say it, the power to dispatch of Sirius Black should the need arise."
She straightened up. As much as she didn't do this type of thing anymore, Brianna knew that something had to be done. Children were at stake. Albums certainly knew how to exploit her weaknesses.
With a sigh Brianna stood and held out her hand. Albus followed suit and they shook.
"I'll teach and Hogwarts and protect Harry Potter for as long as there's a threat to his life," she said.
Albus smiled, "This is much appreciated, Doctor Davis, and sorely needed."
Brianna nodded and glanced at the mess around her filing cabinets. An idea popped in her head. It would be a good way to keep the boy in her sight at least once a day.
"I like to work with student assistants, Albus. Do you think Harry would be up to the task? I can even pay him to make it seem more like an actual job," she suggested.
Dumbledore extracted his hand from hers with a pleased smile on his bearded, wrinkled, face. She would have given anything to make it disappear.
"I'm sure something could be arranged. Term starts September 1st. Try to get here at least a week in advance. Thank you for your time," with a short down he swept out of the room.
Brianna stood for a while longer staring at the pile of papers on the floor. She felt lucky that Kyle intended to graduate at the end of the summer term. It would make the transition easier. She sat down, whirled around to where her computer sat innocently dark on her second desk, and began to type a quick letter of resignation for her boss, the Dean.
August 22, 2015: Five Weeks Later…
Brianna traveled by plane and stayed in a quaint London Hotel in order to hold onto the last strings of normalcy before she entered into her teaching position at the wizarding magic school, Hogwarts. She would have stayed in Scotland instead of London, but she had business in Diagon Alley before she made her big debut in the world of wizarding magic.
For one, she needed a wand. It was where she was heading the day after she arrived. Diagon Alley. She'd heard of the place, but had never seen it before first hand. Her people were integrated amongst the humans so well that their shops sold both magical and non-magical merchandise. All the elves and other non-humans had to do was ask the clerk and prove to the seller that they were, in fact, being of magic.
The Leaky Cauldron was easy to find. It was the only building on the street that was avoided by most people save for a select few toting along kids. Or, she amended as she approached the small pub and hostel, the kids were toting the parents along. She slipped into the dark pub and searched for the back door. When she found it Brianna slipped out as quietly as she came in. As far as she could tell, no one noticed she'd been there.
The wall would be a challenge, she noted. Most wizards, from what she'd read, used their wands to tap a certain pattern on the bricks and activated a spell that would morph into the entrance of Diagon Alley. But she didn't need a wand. She didn't need to activate the spell. All she needed to do was command the bricks to move.
She gripped the earthen clay each brick was made out of and waved her free hand. There was a shudder and each brick morphed into the arch that witches and wizards were used to. She smiled. The things mortal wizards never really knew. Their magic, she saw, grew weaker with each passing generation.
"Um… how did you do that?"
Brianna started and looked around. There was a boy, young, with messy black hair, emerald green eyes hidden behind big horn rimmed glasses, and dressed in clothes that were obviously too big for him. Shabby clothes, she noted. He'd also sneaked up on her which meant that she was going to have to tweak her disguise just enough to allow for more of her elven hearing to bleed through.
"Very carefully," she said.
He gave her a look and Brianna shrugged.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Doctor Brianna Davis formerly of the University of Texas in Dallas history department. Part time archeologist and mythological expert. At least that's what I am to the human world," she said.
"And what are you to the wizarding world?" the boy asked.
Brianna smiled, "Hogwart's new History of Magic Teacher."
He gaped at her and then looked past her at the arch she'd formed.
She laughed, "I know a few tricks."
"What happened to Professor Binns?" the boy asked.
Brianna motioned for him to follow her which he did willingly while she explained, "The Headmaster decided that Binns wasn't current enough for the students to actually learn anything from him. So, I was asked to take over. Particularly me, because of a certain skill set I have. Apparently this Sirius Black character's dangerous," she rolled her eyes after saying that.
"You mean the murderer who's so terrible that he ended up on the muggle news?" the kid asked.
Brianna shrugged, "He's human, therefore he can be killed. What's your name, by the way?"
He looked startled, "You don't know?"
She blinked at him until he got that she, in fact, didn't know a single thing about him. Stunned he shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other.
"I'm Harry. Harry Potter."
Brianna blinked, "Oh. You're my student worker. I specifically requested for one and Dumbledore suggested you."
He gaped at her and she found herself nearly doubled over with laughter at how absurd the look on his face was. Poor kid!
"You're used to people freaking out at the mere mention of your name, aren't you?" she asked.
Harry, dumbfounded, nodded and remained mute. Brianna chuckled to herself and turned toward Ollivander's, the well-known wand shop in the area. She'd heard from reliable sources that this particular shop owner had the old knowledge and might, in fact, have dabbled in making wands suitable for elvenkind.
"Why are you going in there? Don't you have a wand?" Harry asked while keeping up with her.
Brianna smiled, "Because I don't need a wand, but figured students at Hogwarts would feel more comfortable around me if I had one anyway."
"I thought wandless magic is rare among wizards," Harry said.
She nodded, "It's rare among the wizards who have abandoned the old ways. I, on the other hand, have not abandoned them nor am I a witch."
She entered the shop and Harry Potter followed, which amused her greatly. She could see what Dumbledore had meant when he'd written to her about Harry's curiosity.
There was an old man in the shop whom she assumed was Ollivander, the owner. Her assumption was confirmed with Harry greeted him shyly. The man looked up and nodded to Harry then cast his gaze on her. Brianna raised her right wrist where the elven rhunes were inked on her skin for all to see. His eyes all but bulged.
"Dumbledore informed me of your eventual patronage, Doctor Davis. Please excuse me while I go to the back of the store to search out the suitable stack of wands for your use," he said and hurried away.
Brianna motioned for Harry to sit in one of the old leather chairs while she stood and took stock of the multitude of wands lining the walls of the shop. She wondered why none of them fell into magical heaps on the floor and was silently glad that something was keeping them upright.
She closed her eyes.
"Now this place, Harry, is riddled with the elder magic. You need that magic to make good quality wands. I'm happy to see that at least one aspect of wizard-kind have not forgotten their roots," she said.
"You're a bit odd," he said bluntly.
She snorted, "You don't know the half of it."
Mr. Ollivander returned from the back of his shop with a moderately sized pile of boxes in his arms. He gently set them on the counter and beckoned her to approach him.
"Now, as I'm sure you know, Doctor Davis, the wand chooses the witch or wizard," he winked and continued, "this one," he picked up a red box and took out redish brown wand and held it out to her, "this wand is red oak and phoenix tail. Phoenix tears were added to strengthen the core and give the wand extra healing properties. Give it a wave."
Brianna hadn't known what to expect when she finally made it to choosing her wand. She didn't expect him to whisk it out of her wand arm before she even managed to raise it past her waist.
"Nope! Certainly not that one! We shall try another!" he moved to a blue box and took out a white coloured wand and held it out to her, "Birch and dragon scale heated within a dragon's flame. Makes it durable. Try."
She made it to her shoulder before he took the wand out of her hand. There had been about twenty wand boxes Mr Ollivander had taken out for her to try. She'd gone through two and still nothing. Part of her felt slightly frustrated while the rest of her was curious. Wands melded with magic as a way to provide the best channeling process. They were focal points with mood swings.
This haphazard method continued until only one box remained. Mr. Ollivander seemed interested in that one and met her eyes with his knowing grey gaze.
"Do you know what these wands represent?" he asked.
She shook her head and glanced behind her at Harry. His eyes were riveted to the scene and clearly drinking in every moment. She didn't blame him. Wandlore was interesting at the best of times. Now there was a whole other side to it that he'd probably never been taught in school. Not if his current history teacher was permanently stuck in a mindset from three hundred years ago. Even with her updated knowledge Brianna had to admit that she didn't know much about why the Ollivander family had been commissioned into making these wands in the first place.
"About one thousand years ago, give or take a few years, my ancestors had been commissioned to make wands fit for the elven kind. Each house was represented, each family, and each great ruler. Only these twenty wands remain from all those years ago. This last one is the important one - the last ever made for the House of Aldura," he removed it from the box on Brianna blinked.
Silver bark from the island paradise of Avalon. The wand glowed in the dim light, like her skin, and without even touching the thing she felt the pull. This was her wand. It was made for her. There were even rhunes carved along its length starting beyond where her fingers would grasp the wood.
She swallowed and was glad that very few witches and wizards could read elven rhunes. These rhunes proclaimed who and what she was - the fate and destiny she'd been running from ever since it had been revealed to her.
"The House of Ages, I believe the elves call it? This is made from the bark of the Silver Oak trees found in the court of the White Council. The core are three elven hairs from the first of elven queens. An unpredictable wand for anyone but the intended owner and their blood" Ollivander said with a knowing glint in his eyes.
Brianna pursed her lips and took the wand. Her fingers warmed and she raised it above her head and then pointed it at a vause. It burst into sand and water. She flicked it again and the sand and water rose into the air and swirled in an intricate dance. When they merged they made a swan in flight. She deconstructed the object again and turned it back into a vause.
"What was that?" Harry Potter asked.
She'd almost forgotten that he was there.
"Transmutation, my boy, at least to those of us with unpracticed eyes and limited knowledge. Albus Dumbledore would call this the base of all alchemic arts," Mr. Ollivander replied gleefully.
Brianna smiled at him tightly and reached for her bag of money, "And this is how much, Mr. Ollivander?"
He smiled, "One galleon and five sickles."
She paid and quickly whisked Harry out of the shop before Mr. Ollivander revealed anything more to him.
They walked down the cobbled streets in silence. People passed them talking excitedly about their summer vacations and how disappointed they were that the school years was starting again. A few of them, she noted, remarked on the new reading list for their history class. She smirked at that. At least she was able to provide Flourish and Blotts multiple copies of what she needed her students to read.
"Are you an elf?" Harry finally asked.
She'd been waiting for that question and already knew how to answer, "I have the wand that I have. That's all I will say."
"And I'll be your student worker this school year?" he continued.
She nodded, "That's what it's looking like."
He remained silent for a while and Brianna used this time to enter the broom shop and purchase a Cleansweep 7 for riding purposes. She noticed him glance longingly at the newest racing broom on display and smiled. The Firebolt was expensive and, while she could, in theory, afford it, the thing would be far too much for her teacher's salary.
Harry broke the silence when they left the shop, "Professor Dumbledore wants you to look after me, doesn't he?"
"Yep, he's up to his old meddling ways," she said dryly.
"But why you, exactly?" Harry asked.
She smiled, "Because I have a certain skill set most followers of His Royal Darkness don't have. Hopefully you'll never have to see them, but I've been around too long to expect nothing to happen."
From the impressed look on Harry's face, Brianna realized that he wasn't used to hearing cynicism where it appropriately needed to be. She patted his shoulder and walked back toward the Leaky Cauldron.
"So, your aunt and uncle let you stay the rest of your summer holiday here or what?" she asked.
"Um… not exactly."
She looked at him, confused and a little worried about his response. Harry caught her look, blushed, and awkwardly elaborated.
"I… um… kind of blew up my aunt," he mumbled.
"You blew up your aunt?" Brianna asked slowly.
"She's my uncle Vernon's sister and she was insulting my parents and I got so angry that I just lost control and… it was an accident, but I still did it," he explained hurriedly.
Brianna found herself staring at him too shocked to speak. His non-related aunt had been insulting his parents in such a way that he had lost control of his magic? Something that he should have already gained a good amount of control over by now? Where had his aunt and uncle been in this conversation?
"And your aunt and uncle didn't ask her to stop?" she asked.
"No, I think they agreed with her on some level. Aunt Marge doesn't know about the magic so they told her that my parents died in a car crash and my aunt and uncle made my parents out to be drunken lazy irresponsible parents," Harry said, heat flushed across his cheeks.
She felt his magic as it boiled inside of him, but he managed to keep it contained. This time.
"Your aunt and uncle said all of that about your parents?" she asked more to herself than to Harry.
"Yeah, they hate magic and everyone who practices it," he insisted.
"Hmm," Brianna replied unhappily.
It seemed as though Harry needed protection for more than just mass wizarding murderers. She looked at him as they went back under the arch and entered the Leaky Cauldron.
"Harry if anything happens between now and the start of term and even after term starts I want you to come to me about it, alright? Don't go to Dumbledore. I'm your protector and your instructor. We'll be seeing a lot of each other, so we might as well make it so that if anything bad does happen you can come to me about it," she instructed.
Harry looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked at her directly in the eye. She had to admit, his eyes were just as weird as her's. No one had the vibrant green that he had like no living human being had her teal.
"I'll agree only if you can get me into Hogsmeade for our weekend visits. I never got the form signed," he said.
She smirked. The kid was conniving when he wanted to be. She was impressed.
"You're my Student Worker. You can go wherever I let you," she said confidently.
He beamed and Brianna bid him a fond farewell and left the Leaky Cauldron. While playing chaperone to a bunch of teenagers hadn't been in her weekend plans it would give Dumbledore the proverbial middle finger when she was completely okay with.
Brianna took the time she had on her walk back to the hotel to think a few things over. Harry Potter was staying alone among strangers at a pub. Harry Potter, who was both her student and her protectee, seemed to have had a bad home life experience. Harry Potter had magic. Not just stored magic that was rejuvenated inside of his body, but actual, elemental based magic. There were very few things in life that could actually stun her. Harry Potter's affinity for the old magics, the roots of all wizardkind, stunned her.
She remembered that Harry had the Holly and Phoenix tail-feather wand - a powerful wand meant to channel powerful magic. It was the same as Lord Voldemort's wand and could, possibly, mean that Harry was just as powerful, if not more so, than Lord Voldemort.
With a frown she turned the corner of the street she needed and passed a throng of gaggling girls crooning over the latest Orlando Bloom picture. She didn't notice or else she would have rolled her eyes.
Then, of course, there was this Sirius Black character everyone was so afraid of. According to the newspapers he'd blown up a street and killed quite a number of people - most normal humans with only one of the deaths being a wizard - and then he laughed like a madman afterwards. He was possibly after Harry, her student, her charge, her employee if she wanted to get on technical terms. And the boy was nice and cautious enough, but not clearly at the level she wished he was. Then again, did he even know that Black was after him? If he didn't then she was going to at least inform him of that. While his ignorance would be lifted it would give her a chance to pursue other things…
Like maybe Sirius Black's case file and trial notes?
It took a lot of self control for Doctor Brianna Davis to keep herself from releasing an evil cackle.
Dumbledore wanted a protector for Harry so he was going to get one. What better way to do it than eliminate the threat before the idiots in the Ministry did?
She was outside of her hotel building when she spotted him in a back alley. A large shaggy dog peered up at her with oddly blue eyes and a cautious gate that would have sent most people packing. Brianna, though, liked dogs. She was also an elf. She didn't have much fear of large dogs attacking her. She took one cautious step towards this one and he backed away from her.
Brianna held out her hand, "Come to me, sweetie. Come to me."
Her hand was palm down, not palm up - a show of submission.
It took forever for the dog to approach, but when he was finally close enough to sniff her hand his furry tail began to wag. Brianna began to pet him and croon in his general direction. She was told by Professor Dumbledore that students and teachers were allowed to have pets. Maybe a dog would be exactly what she needed.
She stood and snapped her fingers. The dog came to attention immediately and Brianna smiled down at him.
"I'm calling you Mort," she said, "and you're coming to Hogwarts with me."
He looked pleased, though she was certain the newly christened Mort couldn't understand a word she'd said. With a wave of her hand Mort was invisible and she nonchalantly led him into the foyer of her hotel fully intending to introduce him to a bath.
Then she'd contact her old friend, Amelia Bones, for copies of all of the files the Auror office had on Sirius Black.
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