To Protect Her Son From Beyond the Grave
Lily Potter looked down at her son, and bit her lip in worry over the fact that it had come to pass. Both she and James and Frank and Alice had children that would pass for "the child of prophecy" in the prophecy that Dumbledore had revealed to the four of them. At first none of them wanted to believe what they had heard, it took an oath from Dumbledore that this was true and unfortunately Voldemort had heard part of it and would certainly believe it to be true that got the four of them on board. To think that the fate of the war came down to two boys that weren't even one yet. Lily spent many nights staying huddled in James' embrace with him assuring her that they were going to do all they could to get out of this alive, all three of them.
Even if she and James had to give up their lives to save Harry, something that while she didn't want to happen if it came down to it she was willing to accept, there were still so many people who could take advantage of her darling boy, she needed some way to help him, to be able to keep him safe from beyond the grave. As she got up from the table where she was in the library, she made sure to grab the book she found the spell that caught her interest and went to look for her husband.
James Potter was in the process of cursing Albus "too many middle names" Dumbledore. When his family was safely out of danger the Marauders were going to prank the old man like he had never been pranked before. Part of this was due to being cut off from the rest of the world; James wasn't someone to let a danger against either him or someone he cared for go unchallenged. The other reason had to do with his childhood "nemesis" Severus "Snivellous" Snape. It would appear that Snape was the one who told Voldemort about the prophecy that put his family in danger.
James had just learned from the message that Blinky, his personal house elf, had brought him that Snivellous had been to see Dumbledore begging the aged wizard to save Lily, not Lily and her family or Lily and her son, just Lily. At that moment, instead of the rage he thought he would feel about what was going on James just felt pity for Severus, a young man who wasn't able to let go of the hurts of his childhood to see what options he might have in adulthood to better himself. Still anyone who willfully agreed to follow that madman Voldemort didn't deserve pity, no matter how bad their life had been. As he walked to where he thought his wife was James was deciding how to best contact the rest of the Marauders to get the proper payback on Snape, turning the corner all thoughts of revenge were driven out of his head by what he was seeing.
In the room that James had just entered his son laid upon a table face up, around him was some form of ritual circle with glyphs, runes and all sorts of other arcane symbols drawn to make some form of sense, that James couldn't see right then. Quickening his step, James came up to the side of his wife and looked down upon his son who he was happy to see looked safe and untroubled by whatever it was that his mum was doing, said mum who was looking at her husband with surprise and a bit of guilt in her features.
"Oh, James I didn't hear you coming up." Lily said her surprise at suddenly seeing her husband fading. She supposed that she should have at least talked to James about what she was planning on doing, it was just that everything she needed to do had just crystallized in her skull and she wanted to get right on it in case it faded away, with them "loaning" the Potter family pensive to Dumbledore, something she didn't want to do but was convinced against her better judgment by Dumbledore and her husband to allow.
"I was just worried when I couldn't find you and Prongslet, Lils, what are the two of you doing down here?" Lily's husband, James Potter's voice wove its way around her making her feel loved and protected from the danger that they were currently living in. Spending the first year of her baby's life hiding and living on the run was not something that was ever mentioned in any of the parenting books she'd ever read to prepare for the birth of her son.
"Oh, James, you startled me" Lily replied as she smiled up at her husband. "I'm just putting the finishing touches on a ritual that should protect Harry from any intrusions from foreign mind magic. You, know like that kind that Albus is rumored to do and Severus was learning to do the last time that he and I truly talked to one another. With the two of them at Hogwarts I worried about sending Harry there for his school especially if we're not around to look after him." Lily explained to her husband.
James scowled upon hearing his wife's fears. While he felt he had a justified reason to prank Snape when they were at Hogswart, mainly that the man was a despicable bully to anyone he felt was beneath him, Lily still bound by the memory of childhood ties of friendship, couldn't quite condone what Sirius and Remus got up to with Severus when they met on opposite sides of the battle field, so he stayed out of it. Also anytime the damnable prophesy was brought up it felt like he should go find Voldemort and put the prick out of their misery. Coming back to himself, James asked Lily if there was anything he could do to help, Lily replied in the negative so James sat back and watched, having full confidence in his wife in protecting their son.
"OK, so what are you doing, exactly?" James asked after returning from his darker thought to see that his wife had stopped drawing runes around their son and was now actually painting runes on their son's forehead. James was starting to worry that the stress of hiding from Voldemort was getting on his wife's nerves, she was spending all of her time in the library looking up Merlin knows what to try to protect them and Harry. James couldn't really complain too much as he was spending nearly as much time in the dueling chamber practicing in case the worse happened. Thinking of it like that James realized that he couldn't be too hard on his wife; they both apparently had different ways to blow off stress. Still Harry shouldn't have to suffer from their stress and boredom. Hearing her husband's question, Lily looked up from her painting and scowled at her husband as if her actions were self evident.
"I am creating a ward that will be self-sustaining drawing on a harmless fraction of Harry's magical core to power it." Lily made sure to stress the term "harmless fraction" when James made a face at the idea of a self-sustaining ward be powered by his son, being able to see where his wife was going with her explanation before she got there. While James was a prankster no one could accuse him of being slow. After twisting the explanation around in his head and getting an understanding that while he didn't actually like it he could accept, James softened his features and asked that one question that still was puzzling him.
"OK I understand what you're doing even if I'm not sure if I think it will be good for our son but why do you think you need to do this other than we might not escape another meeting with Voldemort?" Neither James nor Lily had any problems saying the so called "Lord's" name although with the fact that James was an actual Lord and if he wanted to could sit in on meetings of the House of Lords they refused the use Tom's self-styled description. The look on Lily's face caused James to back up a step as she was looking at him in a similar fashion to how she would look back when he was trying to woo her and she didn't appreciate his advances.
"You know as well as I do that Severus has sought sanctuary with Dumbledore and he's been given the position of Potion professor starting this term. Severus was obsessed with knowing what people were thinking, to the point that I learn Occulmency in our second year as protection. Given his hatred of you and his belief that you "stole" me from him, can you truly say that you wouldn't see Severus using Legimency on Harry when he starts Hogwarts?" Lily responded to her husband's question, said husband who was in the grip of horrified shock.
James understood what his wife was saying but he couldn't believe that her fear could actually come true. Snape had been seen on Death Eater runs by credible Auror witness' too many times for the man to be placed in a position of power over children, even if he did come out of the current conflict with his freedom intact. Realizing that this was something that his wife needed to do for her own peace of mind more than anything else James, after getting a magical vow that what she was casting on Harry would bring no harm to the boy left his wife to what she was doing and went to his study to up date his notes to the rest of the Marauders, making sure that they look after his son and keep him as far away from Snivilous as possible. Hearing the chanting coming from the chamber he left his wife and son in, James fearfully contemplated a future with Harry alive and Lily and him dead, as he prayed that his son would never know that future.
()
Harry looked with awe at the ceiling of the grand banquet hall that he was standing in. He still would chuckle at how rapidly his fortune had changed at the Dursley's. Ever since Hagrid dropped Harry off with the Drusely's after they finished their school shopping his "family" had been virtually obsequious in all their dealings with him, it was starting to freak him out and he was glad the time to go to Hogwarts came as soon as it did. The busy haired girl from the train that was looking for a toad (Her-something) was chattering on about the ceiling that he was looking at, which seemed to somewhat draw his attention away from it.
As Harry looked up at the head table where all of the professors sat, he was surprised at how different they all looked. The Headmaster fit the profile of what a wizard should look like from what he remembered from school reading before his aunt and uncle got wind of what he was being taught and put a stop to it. The two witches closest to the elder wizard both looked like what he understood witches to "look" like. There was also a man that looked like a giant also as well as a man that looked somewhat like a troll, followed by a younger man that he thought might be a vampire. While his relatives could control what he was being taught in primary school they couldn't control his relatively few spare minutes, many of which were spent in the library, mostly due to the fact that Dudley and his gang avoided it like the plague.
His grades, if he did the work on his assignment that he should have would have made him the top student in his grade at the primary school he went to. Unfortunately, his cousin was in the bottom ranking in academics at the same school, when Harry came home with his report card showing top marks his relatives' reactions were quite a bit different than he had expected/hoped. Instead of praising him and complementing Harry for doing such a good job in school, his relatives beat him before bodily throwing him in his closet and locking him in there for a week without food. Harry very quickly learned to keep his school work at a similar level as his cousin's to keep himself safe. Within this new school Harry hoped to be able to let his intelligence shine and be seen for his smarts and abilities and not for being the Dursley reprobate relative.
Harry found it odd that he had people coming out of the woodwork to shake his hand/touch him for something he didn't even remember doing nor actually thought he did. From what he understood it would make much more sense that his parents set up some spells that worked to destroy the dark wizard that he supposedly killed, something like the dead man's switch that he had read about in the spy novel that one of Uncle Vernon's clients gave Dudley that made its way into the second bedroom and was still there when Harry moved in. He didn't really care what actually caused it, the effects were the same; his parents were dead, the bad wizard was dead and he was forces to live with "relatives" who considered his very presence an imposition and affront to their way of life and didn't let Harry forget that he was unwanted.
A sharp 'poking' sensation to his forehead brought him out of his rumination. Harry looked around for whatever caused it and could not find anything around him that would be able to explain the sensation he had felt. Looking towards the front of the hall, Harry noticed that it was almost his turn to be sorted. Standing straighter Harry patiently waited for his turn. All at once it felt like the drills that his Uncle Vernon's firm made were drilling into his head, Harry clapped his hands to his head in the hope that he could make some of the pain go away. As he did this he felt something that he might call a 'twinge' in his mind, things got sort of strange then.
What Harry didn't know was that the protections that his mother's ritual imbued in him had been constrained by both the wards that Dumbledore had initially put on the Dursley family, due to the fact that the wards needed magic to draw from and he was the closest constant source of magic for the wards to absorb. There was also the fact that Dumbledore, after Haary's accidental magic got a little out of control one day at the Dursley's, put a rather substantial block on his magical core, leaving Harry enough magic to stay alive but not much more than that. The simultaneous probe from three sources was such a shock that it brought down the block that had been put on him, this allowed Lily's defense to activate.
In the aftermath of what happened, the opening feast of '91 was put on hold for about a week after the Headmaster and two of the school's professors collapsed before the sorting for that school term could begin. Unsorted kids were made to sleep in the great hall while aurors, unspeakables, and healers from St. Mungos came to offer their expertise to fix the three professors and at the very least get them back to a state where they could at least do basic functions and not be the comatose patients that they were now. Unfortunately, nothing was to be done for the three men; however when running scans over Quirrell a second magical signature was detected. After running deeper scans on the man, signs of a parasitic life force were detected in the back Quirrell's head. Quirenus Quirrell was put up in a special section of St. Mugos that the Department of Mysteries had complete control of so that tests, with the proper supervision could be done. When Harry graduated from Hogwarts the studies were still ongoing with no real conclusion in sight.
Professor Snape and Headmaster Dumbledore also ended up in St. Mungos, in the incurable wing of magical maladies. Studies done on them showed the two men to be virtually brain dead, the only actions their brains capable of producing being general activities such as the running of the heart and lower level function of the brain and things like that. It was said that much like the Longbottoms, there was little hope of either man coming out of their coma-like condition without the healers having any idea what caused it in the first place. There was actually more hope of the Longbottoms healing given that the healers knew what caused the two auror's condition, with the two professors they were casting in the dark.
Upon the incapacitation of three of its professors Hogwarts suspended classes for nearly a month. The school board had to pick a new Head of the school. In a surprising decision they choose Augustus Longbottom to run Hogwarts. When asked by the Daily Prophet their reasoning was as follows; none of the teachers were able to tell them what the daily running of Hogwarts consisted of, not even the Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, who as the deputy head was supposed to have at least that much knowledge of the school. Headmistress Longbottom proved to be a good head after she started to see the trouble students were having using second-hand wands (sometimes referred to as "heirloom" wands) and set up a fund to buy a wand for ever student who couldn't afford it for one reason or another, The first being her own grandson after McGonagall and Flitwick went to her to complain of how much trouble her Neville was having in their class and suggested that he might be a squib.
When Augustus angrily protested that assertion, Flitwick commented that the only other time that he had ever seen a student have that much trouble with a wand to the point that it would not operate for the user, was when it was the complete and opposite of what they needed to be matched with. Upon hearing this, Augustus asked Flitwick to explain. He told her how when some family member insisted that their children, grandchildren or other relation use a dead family member's wand, usually after a battle in which the previous caster fell, that was the complete wrong match the wizard in question's magic turns inward to keep it from harming the user. Flitwick further explained that if the condition isn't caught soon enough then in rare cases it causes that witch or wizard's magic to explode as the trapped magic reaches critical load and tries to find an outlet anyway possible.
A shocked Augustus excused herself and collected her Grandson and departed from Hogwarts to Ollivander's straight away. Before leaving she gave permission to the auror to do a full safety check of Hogwarts, something that Dumbledore had refused in the last few years when Amelia Bones had asked, wanting to check to make sure that the school was the safest it could be before sending her niece there.
The search of Hogwart led to some shocking results. Snape would have been arrested if he wasn't already comatose, as a warrant with no expiration date was sworn out against him for the number of illegal and dangerous potion ingredients he had in a place full of children. The Cerberus on the third floor lead to Hagrid being arrested due to animal cruelty for keeping an animal that big in a space that small, Hagrid's explanation that he did it at the behest of Dumbledore, lead to the discovery that the former Headmaster had set a trap for someone that required the rest of the staff's help with.
When questioned the staff couldn't say what the tests/traps were for only that the Headmaster had asked them to put them up a few weeks before the fall term started. When pressed, most of the staff responded that they thought it was some kind of test for the sixth years who were worried about whether they would pass their NEWT's next year. While Amelia wasn't sure she believed the professor's explanation it was clear that while what they set up was very negligent, the true purpose of it was kept from them. While not absolving them of guilt it did keep them from being arrested for child endangerment. That and the fact that it was somewhat impossible to even contemplate running a school if you fired the main staff.
Wizards from the organizational board that administered the OWLs and NEWTs came and assisted in the running Hogwarts. One of the things that they did was set up the positions of Headmaster/mistress, Deputy Headmaster/mistress, and Heads of Houses as independent positions from those of Hogwart teachers. This was quite a shock for many of the teachers, especially McGonagall and Flitwick who had expected to move up to the position of Head and Deputy Head respectively when Dumbledore retired. They were told that they could step down as professors to show their willingness to the board that they wanted to run the school. The two professors were assured that if they didn't get the headship their teaching position would be returned to them. After considering, McGonagall decided not to go for it believing that Dumbledore would heal from what happened shortly and return and reclaim the position, making the appointment temporary at best. Flitwick, being part goblin, was denied even being able to interview due to his part creature heritage. His tenure saved him from being dismissed outright, something that annoyed the section of the board that Lucuis Malfoy and his ilk led.
For Harry, his time at Hogwarts was the best that he knew. To the surprise of many in the wizarding world when his sorting was reported, Harry was not sorted into either Gryffindor or Slytherin but Ravenclaw. When wizarding Britain read about this it lead to most of them believing that Harry had to have been sequestered in some sort of high intensity environment where he was trained in esoteric magic from a young age and his sorting into Ravenclaw was just a continuation of this.
Harry's sorting, while not wrong for him caused many of his peers who originally wanted to be his friend to draw away from him for not conforming to their expectation of how his sorting was supposed to go. Surprisingly one of the people who acted like this wasn't a peer but Professor McGonagall. The transfiguration professor treated Harry rather coolly until Flitwick commented on how she wouldn't have reacted if Harry had been sorted into her house instead of his. Realizing that she was letting a preconceived opinion of someone color her relationship with that person, McGonagall worked over the year to treat Harry better than she had been. While Harry didn't exactly warm up to her, he didn't treat McGonagall with the outright suspicion that her previous behavior had warranted.
Harry's seven years at Hogwarts caused him to flourish in ways he didn't know were possible. It was no problem keeping his studies under control due to a side effect of the procedure that his mother did giving him a photographic memory and instant recall. The incident during his first night at Hogwarts cause his scar to close and heal up, relieving him of the headache that had pestered him for as long as he could remember.
When he found out that Hermione Granger had been insulted to the point that she sequestered herself in the girl's lavatory, Harry did the sensible thing. Upon reaching the Ravenclaw dorms, Harry found a Ravenclaw prefect, a young lady by the name of Penny Clearwater, and asked her to check on Hermione. After checking the girls bathroom with some of the other female prefects from Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor (Snape hadn't been gone long enough for his influence to fade from Slytherin) Hermione was brought to McGonagall who was informed of Ron Weasley and Seamus Finnigan's bullying of those they found odd or scholarly, outside of Ravenclaw. Both boys lost twenty-five points and were assigned a weeks detention. McGonagall never thought she'd say it, but she greatly enjoyed a post-Dumbledore Hogwarts without the old man constantly overturning his professors' punishments that were made by anyone other than Snape and enforcing the Potion Masters punishment without question.
Harry graduated Hogwarts with the highest honors ever seen at Hogwarts since his parents were there. While somethings were strange and dangerous at Hogwarts, all in all Harry had a peaceful time at Hogwarts, graduating with a degree as a curse breaker and a job already set up with Gringotts along with his girlfriends Fluer and Luna.