Harry was pretty quiet after waking up from defeating the Horcrux. The act of damming his magic and then letting it rip through his mind like a tidal wave had left him fundamentally changed, the full extent of which would only be revealed in time.
The first thing he noticed was that he felt calmer. The comments and needling from his class mates no longer bothered him. Umbridge's insults and lies washed over him without effect. He found himself smiling more.
Over the next few weeks he spent some time going in and out of his mindscape, learning more with every trip. Hermione remained confused about the odd runic symbols that represented the spells Harry had learned as they did not match any known language. Harry didn't care has he had no trouble telling what each rune meant. At least most of them. At first the marks seem like nothing more than random lines, but if he concentrated on one, he knew immediately what they represented.
Some were fairly shallow and only had a faint glow. He noticed these were all spells he didn't know well. Recent ones he was learning in class. Most though, were carved deep and shone brightly. These were the spells he knew well.
"Wasn't this one green, last time we were here?" he asked, looking over some faintly glowing marks that were shallowly carved into the ground. They looked like they had been there for some time as they were almost faded.
"I can't say I was paying that much attention last time," Hermione said. "All the marks are glowing the colour of your magic, why would some be a different colour?"
Harry answered, "I can think of only one reason."
"It wasn't your magic," Hermione agreed. "But what does it do?"
"Only one way to find out," he said with a grin, and reached out guiding the magic from his river toward the rune.
"Harry, don't you cast it on me this… whoa." She trailed off.
"What it is?"
"It's… whoa." She sounded distracted.
"Hermione! Use your words." Harry was just about to cut off the stream of magic to the spell when she continued.
"It looks like some sort of diagnostic charm. Probably something Madam Pomfrey cast on you in the hospital wing. It's showing an image of your body in the air, with different areas lit up. I imagine a healer would be able to tell any injuries from this. But it's showing everything. Veins, muscles, organs. I can see your heart beating. That's your brain right there."
"Well that's reassuring." He pulled himself out of his mindscape to get a better look, but he couldn't keep the magic flow up and the image vanished before he opened his eyes.
"Do you think you could cast it again? Hermione asked.
"I don't know, it's not like I actually know the spell." He closed his eyes and concentrated on the image of the rune. Nothing happened at first, until he pictured Hermione with the rune mark on her skin. He heard Hermione gasp and opened eyes to see a ghostly image of Hermione.
"That's me!" Hermione exclaimed. "This looks like a real time representation of my whole body. But you can even see old injuries. Look there, you can see I sprained my wrist when I was eight."
"I guess that must be really useful when kids come into the infirmary. No need to guess what's…" He trailed off as he noticed Hermione staring at him. "What?"
"Harry," she said. "Where's your wand?" He blinked. His wand was sitting right next to him, right where he left it before going inside his mind. "You just cast that spell without using your wand. Harry, you just did wandless magic."
"Huh."
Snape was in for a shock the next time he tried to enter Harry's mind. Harry was much more aware now of his own mind and magic. The thorn bushes that grew around his mind acted as a barrier to intrusion. Snape tried again and again to get inside his mind, but could only throw himself up against the bushes and was forced to retreat. The thorns even seemed to be doing their own damage. Snape's last attempt of the night saw him with a nose bleed, that he hastily tried to stop before he kicked Harry out.
The victory wasn't without consequence though. The 'bushes' sustained their own damage, leaving Harry strained, tired and nursing a painful headache. Snape was kept out though, which Harry counted as a win. And Harry noticed the next time he entered his mind, it seemed like each time they were threated, it only made them grow back even more impenetrable.
After some prompting Hermione used the Intra Mentem ritual herself and took a trip into her own mind. She expected it to be somewhat similar to Harry's but instead found it to be a vast vaulted library, with literal streams of sunlight coming in through the stained glass windows representing her magic. Her magic was a soft golden colour that lit up rune marks all over the books and shelves.
There was little in the way of walls around her mind, with the windows seemingly hanging in mid-air. It seemed like the sun itself was the source of all magic. More streams of light flowed down into other libraries that could just be made out in the distance.
Harry laughed. "Not exactly surprising, is it? We probably could have guess that for ourselves."
Ron, who joined them in their later experiments, found his own mind resembled an M.C. Escher painting, with his magic represented as streams of flying fish. Neither Hermione nor Harry chose to think too hard on what that could possibly mean.
"Wizards," Hermione muttered under her breath.
With his mind protected and the horcrux destroyed Harry was able to relax and focus more on his school work than ever before. Spells came easier to him and he found himself developing new methods of learning; using his new awareness of his own magic, to focus on what was actually happening when he was casting spells.
He tried to cast some of them wandlessly but without a special trip to his mindscape, found working out what mark to use all but impossible. Still, being about to feel his magic meant he was able to control the intensity of any spell he cast. His practical understanding of magic skyrocketed, though his theoretical knowledge still lagged far behind Hermione.
He had even developed a new appreciation for Divination, though he still found the classes useless. Divination, he found, was a much broader subject than he had ever been taught. Trelawney had focused almost exclusively on predicting the future and while Firenze broached other topics, even he kept his focus on what was to come.
Private study, though, showed the topic to encompass far more than Harry had ever considered. The goblet of Fire last year had used a type of divination to find the best person to represent the schools. The age line had had to divine the actual age of the person trying to cross it. Even, Harry smirked at Hermione, the Point Me spell Hermione had created. It may have had the same effect as a compass but it didn't use magnetic fields. It worked by divining North. Hermione was not impressed with his observation.
"Think about it Hermione. Most spells we cast take effect as intended by the caster. We turn the table to a dog, we make the pineapples dance, the object is levitated how we direct it we create, change and conjure as we imagine it. But what about those spells that are designed to find something? Tempus has to divine what the time is. If a spell has to find its own information to work, then it's divination. I think people have forgotten we actually rely on divination much more than we realize."
He was focusing on his own research and ignoring Trelawney's dithering, when McGonagall came to collect him for his forgotten career advice meeting.
This was actually a topic that he had been thinking about more and more since his mindscape adventure. He wanted to be an auror as it seemed like a good fit. He was surprised therefore and a little amused to find that McGonagall was not, strictly speaking, encouraging at first. Apparently his academic record wasn't particularly outstanding, but after being interrupted by the odious Umbridge, her temper was spiked and she vowed to do whatever it took to help him achieve his ambition.
He was talking with her again, after dinner some days later, on what was expected of him; when he asked what, exactly, the job description entailed.
"Really Mr Potter, you're aiming for the position and you don't know what they do?" The professor was not impressed.
"I know they are Dark wizard catchers, and I've seen Tonks and the others act as security but what about investigations?"
McGonagall pinched her lips in disapproval. "That's the job of the investigations department. Nasty lot. They're known around the Ministry as the witch hunters. If someone reports a crime, they are supposed to talk to everyone involved and determine guilt or innocence. In reality they just take bribes to accuse anyone 'inconvenient.'"
Harry wanted to be shocked with that answer, but with his recent experiences with the Ministry he could definitely believe it. This left him pretty disillusioned about his career choice. Every year he had been involved in some sort of hair raising, life or death adventure. Because of this he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everything would have been easier, if not outright avoided; if he had had more information.
He was returning late from one such meeting with the professor going over the prerequisites he needed for training, when he ran into Ron, who was in a steaming temper. One of the younger students he had been protecting had been found bleeding at the bottom of a stairwell, the words 'SHUT YOUR MOUTH!' burned on his arm. Ron had taken the kid to the hospital wing but Madam Pomfrey had sent him on his way before he was able to get any more information.
"Mate, we need go to talk to the kid!" Ron demanded. "Malfoy and his goons were on the quidditch pitch at that time, so it couldn't have been him. If I've got to be watching out for two groups attacking the kids, I've got to know who I'm looking for."
Well Hermione wasn't about to let them sneak out on their own, so the three of them used the cloak to make their way to the hospital wing.
Samuel Rivers was a second year Hufflepuff. The trio found him in bed, after Madam Pomfrey had retired for the night. He was tall for a twelve-year-old, though it was difficult to tell when he was lying down. Ron told them he had tried out for the Hufflepuff quiddich team this year, competing for one of the beater spots. He didn't make the team but had made the short list. He was still awake when they arrived, his arm bandaged from the wrist to the elbow.
The first thing Ron did was demand to know who had attacked him. The trouble was the kid didn't know. "I was supposed to be on my way back to our dorm after herbology, but I needed the bathroom. I used the one just around the corner. I was on my way back when I felt a cutting curse hit me in the shoulder. That's when I fell down the stairs. I must have hit my head, cause I don't remember anything else."
"So you didn't see them?" Harry asked, gently.
"No I didn't see anything."
"What about the message on your arm?" Ron asked.
"What message?" the kid asked. "Madam Pomfrey had already bandaged it by the time I woke up."
"You had 'SHUT YOUR MOUTH' burned into your arm. Can you think of any reason someone might say that to you?"
"I- I don't…" the kid clearly didn't know what to think.
"It seems to imply some kind of secret. Are you keeping any secrets for anyone? Have you heard any gossip that someone might be afraid you might tell? Anything at all?" Harry pressed
"I guess. I reported a student in my class for cheating a couple of days ago. I know one of the sixth years is cheating on her girlfriend. I don't know, maybe a couple of other things but I don't see how anyone would want to attack me over them."
"What other spells were you hit with, do you know?"
"I don't know, like I said Madam Pomfrey had already fixed me up when I woke up."
Harry turned to Hermione. "Pomfrey keeps her medical files in the room to the back. Do you think you could find them?"
Hermione was horrified to discover that aside from a simple locking charm, there was nothing protecting the private medical files of all the students. She grabbed Rivers folder and pulled out the report on the latest incident.
There was nothing in the file on what spells had been used on Rivers, only some general notes on what potions and counters she had used to repair the injuries.
"How is this supposed to help? We have no idea what they actually did. They could have done anything! I mean we can tell they used a hair loss curse because she had to regrow his hair but these are general salves. This tells us nothing."
Harry frowned, looking over the pages. "You're right, there's not much here. But maybe we can find out for ourselves."
Since his adventures in his mindscape Harry had been curious about the diagnostic charm that he had miraculously learned. In addition to that charm, which he still hadn't actually managed to identify, he had found a spell that could map a spell from the residue it left behind.
Casting it on Rivers caused him to light up with multiple spell signatures, some of which were identical and some were incredibly different. They weren't able to tell much from just looking at the pattern but Harry used a second spell to copy the lines of the spell on to parchment and noted down where they had come from.
"But what does all that even mean? It's just a bunch of squiggly lines." Ron was pretty sceptical.
"The book I read didn't explain too much on how to interpret the signatures," Harry answered. "I think it was referencing another book that was supposed to have more detail but I wasn't able to find it. Maybe Hermione would have better luck."
"We'll still need to know which spell were cast by the attackers and which were Pomfreys."
"Note down what she used," Harry told Hermione. "If we can't find the reference book, we might be able to recast the spells so we have something to compare these to."
"Actually that's a good idea," Ron agreed. "If you map out some other curses, you can compare those as well."
They left the kid to get some sleep, promising that they would find whoever had attacked him.
The next morning at breakfast Dumbledore stopped everyone before they could head out to class. He told the school about the attack that took place last night and asked for the attacker or attackers to come forward. Harry was not the only one unsurprised when no one came forward. Dumbledore expressed his severe disappointment in the students responsible and sat back down.
Ron spluttered in outrage. "That's it!? That's all he's going to do?"
"Well what can he do? If they don't come forward, he doesn't know who to punish," Lavender, sitting next to him, said.
"Yeah," Pavarti agreed. "It's not like he can punish everyone.
"He can investigate," Ron said. "Like we're going to do, right?"
"Right," Harry and Hermione agreed.
"So," Ron asked, after they left the breakfast table. "How are we going to investigate."
"First I think we need to talk to his friends," Harry proposed.
"You think they know who did it?"
"No, I think they would have said something if they had," Harry shook his head. "No we just need to know who else might have been in that corridor. We might at least be able to narrow it down some."
Rivers' friends didn't know much either. They had been waiting for him in a lower corridor around the corner and didn't see what happened. They did see some of the other students in the area though, as most of the traffic would have passed through that passage. The sixth year Ravenclaws and Slytherins were on their way to transfiguration. None of the kids knew anyone in that class. The fourth year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs had been on their way to charms. One of their class mates at an older sister in the Hufflepuff class, so a couple of them had stopped to chat. Most had moved on though. And the fifth year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins were moving down to the dungeons to potions. They hadn't seen anyone hanging around from that class either as with OWLs coming up most of them were pretty stressed.
When asked about any secret Rivers might have been keeping, none of them knew anything. One of them mentioned the cheat he had reported but that wasn't really a secret. Everyone know about that by now. It was common knowledge in the common room.
"It's got to be the cheat," Ron said after they let the kids head off to class.
"He doesn't really have any motive though. Everyone already know it," Hermione disagreed.
"He could have been lashing out at the kid who dobbed him in," argued Ron.
"I agree it's pretty unlikely to be the cheat, we should still talk to him," Harry said. "Until we are able to tell more about the spells used we don't have anything else to go on."
The cheat was a sullen, chubby faced twelve-year-old who was desperately trying to hide how impressed he was by the famous Harry Potter. Harry and Ron were able to catch him at lunch while he sat slumped over his plate. Hermione had rushed off to the library to see if she should find that reference book on the spell patterns.
Ricky Baker shrank even further into himself when he realized they wanted to talk about his cheating. He hadn't studied for one of Flitwicks tests and had been offered the test answers for a fee.
He's pretty angry about Rivers dobbing him but they managed to rule him out fairly easily. He had been travelling with some of his classmates.
Hermione didn't have any more luck in the library. She checked with Madam Pince and found the book had been missing for almost a century. It was out of print too, so they hadn't been able to find a replacement.
"Do you think you could ask Padfoot?" Hermione asked, as they snuck around the school on the way to the next DA meeting. "The Black library is quite extensive, they might have a copy there."
"How's he supposed to get in touch with Sirius now?" Ron asked. "With Umbridge on the loose, we're all on lock down."
"No it's okay," Harry remembered with a start. "I have a mirror I can use. Sirius gave me a two way mirror he used to use to talk to my dad. I can ask him tonight."
"Two way mirrors?" Hermione sounded impressed. "That's much more user friendly than floo talking. I get sick every time I even think about putting my head into the fireplace."
They arrived at the room and were obviously the first there so Harry paced back and forth in front of the wall, concentrating on what he needed. He was always impressed with how the room set itself up and now, with his increased awareness, he could almost feel the spells reaching out to him in order to create what he wanted.
The DA slowly trickled in over the next five minutes and when they had all arrived he called the meeting to order.
"Everyone will have heard about the attack on the Hufflepuff last night," Harry started. "Well we need your help in finding out what happened."
Ron took over. "Last night we recorded the trace left behind by the spells the bastards used on Rivers. Harry and Hermione figured out what Pomfrey used this afternoon but we need your help in figuring out what's left."
Hermione finished the explanation. "First we'll need everyone to divide up into pairs. Harry has a couple of new spells to teach you. The first is the spell we used to map the spell residue left behind when a spell is cast on an object. Each spell leaves a different signature and we are going to use this to find out which spells were cast of Rivers. The second spell you're going to learn is simply how to transfer the signature you get onto a sheet of paper."
Reactions were from the students were generally positive. Most of them had some kind of interest in the task. The Ravenclaws were as always interested in new spells and learning spell signatures sounded fascinating. The Hufflepuffs were keen on finding out who had attacked one of their own and the Gryffindor's wanted to find justice for the kid attacked.
Harry demonstrated the spells to the class and helped anyone having trouble. Then they split of into pairs, one person casting a range of curses, hexes and jinxes and the other mapping the spell, copying it to paper and noting down what spell was cast.
The Ravenclaws, ever the overachievers starting using more than just curses. They started mapping out charms and various transfiguration spells too. Other students joined in and they spent the rest of lesson going over every spell they ever learned. The older students had more spells to cast so when the younger years ran out of spells, Harry worked with them to go over some of the spells they were learning in class.
After the lesson he sent them out of the Room in dribs and drabs using the disillusionment charm to help them get back to their dorms without detection. Then he, Hermione and Ron collected up all the signatures and made their own way back.
Harry wanted to get started immediately on analysing the signatures but it was late and Ron convinced him to head up to bed, promising they could get started after classes tomorrow. They'd already had a long day.
The next day the trio settled into a table in the back of the library with the stack of parchment. "I talked to Padfoot last night," Harry said, "and he said he'd take a look through his library but he wasn't very hopeful. Said it wasn't the type of book the Blacks might have collected. I think we're going to have to rely on what we can figure out with the signatures we took last night."
Hermione sorted each of the different spell into piles and they started comparing each different spell to the signatures they took from Rivers.
At first Harry was just comparing one of each pile to the initial forms, but after the first few he began to notice new patterns between the signatures of the same spell.
The main shape of the signature would be largely the same in all versions but the height was sometimes greatly different between copies. Also the last piece of the shape was vastly different in some pages and almost identical in others. What was even stranger was the last piece might sometimes be the same on completely different spells.
While Harry was distracted by these oddities Ron managed to confirm the hair loss charm had been used on Rivers. He also managed to identify the incendio charm used on the kids arm and the cutting hex as the last spell.
Harry was particularly surprised. "The incendio? The words were burned with incendio. That's weird."
"What's weird about that?" Ron asked.
"The incendio is used to burn. Basically it sets things on fire. To use it to scorch words into flesh is actually really hard. It would take an incredible amount of control to do that."
"How much control?"
Hermione answered, "At a guess I'd say we're looking for someone between an advanced fourth year and a lazy sixth year."
"What do you make of these?" Harry asked going over the cutting spells. "These," he indicated the first of the five used on Rivers, "have strong high peaks and loops and this last bit are all the same. These last four are all smaller and undefined, they're more different in size but the last but again the last bit is identical and different from the first one."
"So what does that mean?" Ron asked.
"I think…" Harry speculated out loud. "I think that the height of the peaks indicates the strength of the spell, the more magic used. And these last bits on the signature could be indicating the caster. If it is then we might be looking at two different attackers. One of whom is stronger than the other. The strong one cast the initial hex at Rivers back, and burned the message his arm. The other one made these other cuts and used the hair loss charm."
"Why do you think the strong one did the burning?" Ron asked. "The peaks on that one are almost flat."
"I don't think the weaker one would have the kind of control."
"So we have two attackers," Hermione said. "But we're still not any closer to identifying them. Unless they are a part of the DA we have nothing to compare this to."
"Actually I've been noticing something else." Harry pulled several different signatures toward him. "If we assume this last part is identifying the caster of the spell, they why are so many of them similar."
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked. "They all look different to me."
"Not really," Harry disagreed. "See all these are spiking in the same pattern. If you straightened all out these loops they'd be identical. It's just the loops that are different. But these ones," he grabbed another pile. "The loop is all the same but these peaks are completely different."
"How does that help us?" Hermione asked.
"What if these aren't a personal magic signature but a wand signature. In all these different spells there are only three different patterns of peaks. That must be dragon heart string, unicorn hair and phoenix feather core. The loops represent the different woods."
"So what about the attackers? What do they have?" Hermione asked, excited.
"The peaks are the same on both, so they both have the same core. I think it's got to be dragon heart string."
"Why?" Ron asked.
"Cause these are signatures Hermione and I cast when we were eliminating Pomfreys spells. I have phoenix feather and Hermione has unicorn hair. The peaks don't match so that only leave dragon heart string."
"So how are you going figure out what wood it was?" a voice said from behind them. They jumped and twisted around to see Susan Bones. "This is really impressive. I didn't know you could identify spells like that. I though you needed a wand to know what was cast."
Harry shifted over to give her a place to sit. "The book I found it in was pretty old. I think the technique might have fallen out of practice a couple of centuries ago."
"I wonder if that might be the reason the ministry records what wand a wizard uses when they enter the building," Sue mused.
"We need to get the DA to map their spells again but this time note down their wand cores. Sue will you ask your friends to let us map their wands? We only need one signature from each wand but we need as many different woods as possible."
"Sure no problem. I can do that during tutoring sessions," Sue agreed eagerly. "All the lower years are being offered tutoring now so it'll be easy. And I can ask Lisa Turpin from Ravenclaw to do the same in their house."
"We can get the Gryffindors signatures easy. They fire off enough spells at night in the common room it won't be hard to get one from everyone," Ron said.
"We just need to make sure we record who cast the spell and what wand they used. If we're lucky the attackers will be among those we test, but it's not likely. So we still need some way to match wand to wizard."
Unable to be of any more help, Susan left to collect the signatures. Ron left shortly after to start his rounds. Harry and Hermione continued going over all the spells and Hermione took notes of any observation Harry noted.
The different classes of spells were in different colours. Charms in gold, transfiguration in purple, hexes yellow, jinxes dark blue and curses in black. Fire spells all had a peak in the same place. Transfigurations were the hardest to separate. They found that most transfigurations, no matter what they were changing, were essentially the spell. The differences were when the object was whether the object was living. Conjurations were different and all had higher peaks indicating the increase in power need to pull them off. Some spells were both charm and transfiguration, shifting from purple to gold halfway through.
It was fascinating stuff. The insight into what magic what doing when a spell was cast was incredible.
"I wonder what the correlation might be between the spoken spell or wand movement and the spell itself?" Hermione asked after one break.
"I wonder if there is one," Harry counted. "We've seen the professors levitate things just by pointing their wands, forget about the swish and flick. We know wordless magic is possible, we'll be learning about it next year. You've seen Flitwick in class, he uses his wand more like a conductors' baton. So I'm thinking neither the motion or the words actually make any difference."
"But why would they spend all this time teaching us spells if we didn't really need them?"
"Did your parent's teach you to ride a bike?" Harry asked apropos of nothing.
"Of course," Hermione answered confused.
"Did they use training wheels?"
"Yes but at least we knew they were training wheels. How could we get to fifth year and not know spells were pointless?"
It took a couple of days before Susan and Lisa were able to collect all the wand signatures. Harry kept in touch with Sirius using the mirror and kept him up to date on the investigation. Sirius noted that he would have liked someone to have been so diligent in investigating his supposed crimes.
The corrupt investigations department aside it seems like the Wizarding world was happy to ignore any crime unless it effected them personally.
When Susan and Lisa did come back with the wand signatures they head back to the remote library table to compare them. Susan's students had all cast wingardium leviosa and it was easy to disregard the first part of the signature.
Lisa's Ravenclaws however had the idea to use the mapping spell on the wand itself, which only gave the signature of the wand. They must have gone through dozens of different types of wood before Harry spotted one that matched. The wand was a mistletoe and unicorn hair wand and the shape of the signature matched exactly. Once they found the first one it wasn't long before Ron found the second signature matched a willow and dragon heart string perfectly.
"Yes!" Ron exclaimed in victory. "Now we've got the little shit!"
"I don't think so mate," Harry disagreed taking a look over the signature. "This is a first year Ravenclaw. They were all down in potions."
"Plus no first year couldn't have cast those charms," Hermione added. "Even the cutting charm was too strong for a first year."
"But the wand is the same."
"I think that just means there are two willow and dragon heartstring wands," Harry said. "But that does bring us to our next problem. All this is basically useless unless we match the wand to a wizard."
"It's not useless Harry," Susan vehemently disagreed. "Aunty Amelia would be really impressed to have this kind of information in any of her cases. You at least narrowed it down a huge amount. We might not know an exact age or gender but they've got to be in either fourth, fifth or sixth years. They are probably both in the same year. So we are looking for a couple friends in the same year with a willow unicorn and mistletoe dragon wand. That's heaps to go on."
"But still basically a dead end."
"Maybe you can get Ollivander to send you a list of wands. He would have sold the wands to most of the students at Hogwarts."
"Would he do that?" Harry asked. "Wouldn't that be private information?"
"No, why would it be?" Susan said. "The ministry gets a list every year with all the wands he sells. They never do anything with it though. I bet it's like you said. They used to use the information, but they've forgotten what for. I'm sure Ollivander would send us a list if you asked, Harry."
In the end it is Hermione who drafts the letter to the wand make and has Harry sign it. She wrote that it was for a class project. Harry figured it would be a couple of days before they heard anything so he was very surprised to find Hedwig returning with a huge list of names, dates and wands going back fifty years.
This time when the trio gathered in the library Susan joined them. "Look at this list, it's huge!" Ron was in awe."
"I wonder if Ollivander actually keeps records or he writes it out from memory," Harry said remembering the creepy man. "Let start sorting through them and see if we can find a willow unicorn and mistletoe dragon wand sold in the same year."
They started with six years ago and worked backward. It was slow going as there were also plenty of adults getting new wands as their own needed replacing.
"Here's a willow unicorn wand, sold to Wayne Hopkins. He's a Hufflepuff in our year," Susan pointed out.
"And here's Calvin Travers with a mistletoe dragon wand same year," Harry said.
"He's also a Hufflepuff in our year. The two are good friends."
"You know anything else about them?" he asked.
"Some," Sue answered. "We've been in the same year for five years, but they mostly keep to themselves. I think they were friends before Hogwarts. Travers is pretty good in class, he's earned us a few point in charms. Wayne's a bit friendlier but not much, he's pretty quiet."
"So they know Rivers? Why would they attack him?"
"I can't think of anything."
"There's no way the teachers are going to believe our evidence," Ron said. "Especially not with Umbridge around. Travers is a pureblood."
"What about Baker?" Harry asked. "Is there any connection between them?"
"Actually yeah," Susan said. "Baker is Hopkins cousin. You think they might have been retaliating?"
"Or protecting something. What if they were the ones helping Baker cheat? If they thought Rivers knew about their help they might have wanted to scare him quiet."
"I agree with Harry," Sue said, sadly. "I don't think the teachers are going to believe us. So what do are we going to do?"
If the teachers wouldn't help them they decide to do it themselves. The next DA meeting they present their evidence. The students, at least, are more accepting of the results of their investigation. It seemed Travers and Hopkins hadn't made any friends. Harry had to be very firm to shut down any mention of retaliation. Sinking to their level wouldn't help anyone.
They decide shun him. Harry could speak from experience that was incredibly stressful.
No one helped them, no one talked to them, they refused to pass them food at dinner. At first it was just the DA, but the rest of the students quickly picked up on the behaviour and began to imitate it. They were loners themselves but even so it only took a couple of hours for them to pick up on the behaviour but once they did they couldn't miss it.
Hopkins became anxious and jumpy. Travers became petulant. He started picking fights, yelling at people to pay attention to him.
He was throwing a tantrum in the common room after only two days when Rivers approached him.
"You attacked me. You hit me in the back with a curse, knocked me down the stairs and burned words into my arm. I will not shut my mouth. And if you want to be a part of this school, this house again, you will tell Professor Sprout what you've done."
"Listen to me, you little twerp. You…" Susan, watching closely from the sidelines hit him with a silencing spell.
"You know what you have to do. Sprout will be making her rounds in an hour."
Travers stormed out of the room.
Hopkins confessed the next day.
The drama of Rivers' attack was the only action they would they would see for the rest of the year making a nice change from previous years. Or at least it was quiet for them. It made an interesting change to read in the paper about Voldemorts attack on the ministry. The article made it sound like there was something in the ministry the Dark Lord was after. He sent his Death Eaters in a head of him but they had met resistance and Voldemort had come to back them up, revealing himself to the ministry and the reporters who were there. Several aurors had died in the ensuing spell fight. There were several reports of sightings from the notorious Sirius Black.
The minute he read about the news at breakfast the morning after his last OWL exam, Harry ran back to his dorm to grab his mirror. He and Sirius hadn't talked in a few days, Harry being so busy with his OWLs. He needed to make sure he was alright.
"Sirius!" He hissed over the mirror. "Sirius Black! Padfoot!" The mirror stayed blank. He looked up at Ron and Hermione standing in the door. "He won't answer. He always answers."
"He's probably just having breakfast," Ron said.
"It is early," Hermione offered.
Harry was jittery all throughout the day. He couldn't focus and was constantly checking the mirror for any sign of Sirius. Half way through a potions lesson he was completely ignoring he was called to the headmasters' office. At first he turned in the direction of the office Umbridge was using but was pointed in the direction of Dumbledore's office. The office that had been sealed since Dumbledore departure.
He had to pause before he went in and the door felt like it weighed ton as he pushed it open. But he needn't have worried because the first thing he saw on the other side was his godfather. He was standing with his back to the fireplace and Dumbledore sat behind his desk.
Harry threw himself at Sirius in relief. "I was so worried about you," he said. "I've been calling you all day. I thought you might be hurt or caught by the ministry."
Sirius chuckled, keeping his arm around Harry's shoulders. "Well I guess you could say I was."
"What?"
"Last night Voldemort revealed himself to the world," Dumbledore said. Harry had all but forgotten his presence. "He sent his Death Eaters to retrieve an object from a secret room in the Department of Mysteries. The Order had been on guard in the area and were able to hold them off. When they failed Voldemort himself was forced to join them. I have to say Harry, it is very impressive that you managed to block him out. I would have expected if anything would slip through this would." His words sounded strange and he stared intently at Harry as he said them.
Harry frowned, confused. "I haven't had any dreams or headaches for months. I would have told you if I had."
"Of course Harry, of course. Well the battle between the Orders forces, the ministry aurors and the Death Eaters was a fierce one. And tragic. Many people lost their lives and every life is precious."
"But the aurors did at least manage to capture one man alive," Sirius interrupted the headmaster.
"They did?"
"It was Peter, Harry," Sirius said a grin spreading across his face. "They caught Peter. That's where I've been all day. The ministry has officially cleared me of all charges. I'm a free man."
"Free?" Harry gasped. "You're free?"
"As a bird. They even apologised, which meant exactly nothing, the bastards."
"Why don't you two catch up, I know you have a lot to talk about. Sirius, please remember what we discussed," Dumbledore said.
Godfather and son walked out to the grounds and around the lake. They managed to avoid most of the students, and those they did encounter didn't seem to recognise the supposed notorious killer. Which was good cause he didn't want to get mobbed. Sirius promised the news of his pardon would come out in tomorrow's papers.
"What did Dumbledore mean 'what we discussed?" Harry asked.
"He, ah… He wanted me to talk to you about… about your living arrangements." Sirius stared straight at the ground as he said it. "About where you're going to stay this summer."
"That's easy, I'm going to stay with you. I don't even mind Grimmauld Place, it's better than the alternative."
"That's just it Harry, Dumbledore says you need to stay with your family."
"No," Harry cried, backing away. "No." Sirius reached out in apology and Harry knocked his hand away.
"I'm so sorry." Sirius had tears in his eyes. "With Voldemort on the loose…"
"No!"
"Harry," Sirius said sadly. "I'm not okay, I'm not. I forget things, important thing like eating and sleeping. I have nightmares. Before Azkaban, I was in my prime, I could have fought of a dozen Death Eaters. Hell I did. But I'm not that man anymore. I couldn't… If anything happened to you…"
"I have fought trolls, giant spiders, giant snakes, dementors, dragons, Death Eaters and Voldemort. Sirius I'm not a little kid any more. I can take care of myself. We can take care of each other. Why should be we live in the dark, while the Death Eaters walk around freely?"
"I know it's not right, but if it keeps you safe-" Harry interrupted him.
"I am not going back to the Dursleys." Harry was determined. They had done enough to him. He would never go back to that house. He stepped back toward Sirius and grabbed his arm. "They are not my home, they are not my family and I am not going back. Now you can come with me, wherever I choose to go, or you can listen to Dumbledore and stay in that hell hole."
"What? No, you can't leave," Sirius gasped eyes wide. "You're in danger."
"We'll leave the country, go some place warm." The idea wasn't a new one, ever since he had received that bird of paradise from Sirius two years ago he had dreamed of going to the beach. "Where did you go after we rescued you and Buckbeak?"
"My family… they have some land, an island somewhere. I don't even know where exactly where. There's a portkey."
"Just one?"
"Yeah the Blacks have always been incredibly paranoid. Only one way on and off the island."
"Then it's perfect." He smiled.
NOTES
This next story comes from my dissatisfaction with Divination. In the books we have quite a number of reputable characters speak of how useless and 'woolly' divination is. But this just seems to be 'seeing the future', which, yes okay, would be imprecise. The future is always subject to change. Unless one has the gift of prophesy then anything would be nothing more than guess work. But what about seeing the present? Or even the past?
To divine means, among many other things, 'to discover.' There are any number of spells that could, in part be considered a divination. Or at least use some form of it. One that always jumps to mind is the Point Me spell. The spell essentially 'divined' where north is. Fanon also have casters use it to find other things. Another is Prior Incantato, which reveals the last spell the wand cast. What else could that be but divination? We don't know much about healing from the books but surely any diagnostic spell would be a type of divination as well.
I'm a big fan of crime procedural shows, like CSI, Bones and Criminal Minds, and it has always made me wonder, how to the aurors do their jobs? The TV series 'Constantine' based off the comics Hellblazer, shows John Constantine using magic to investigate magical events. So how would that work for wizards?
Do they look at a crime scene and find evidence? What does evidence mean to a wizard? Does a wizard know about fingerprints, could they identify them if they did? I think it's unlikely they would know about DNA. What about a 'magical signature'? Fanon uses this concept fairly frequently but I can find no evidence of its existing in canon. If aurors can't tell who cast the spell, can they at least determine if any spell was cast at all, what a spell was or when it was cast? Magic leaves a trace in the wand, does it leave a trace where it hit? Does a spell change when cast by a different person? After all everyone walks, talks and writes differently, it stands to reason they would cast differently too.
We have seen aurors as enforcers, security and as fighters but are they investigators? Tonks is said to have studied 'Concealment and Disguise' and 'Stealth and Tracking.' Poisons and antidotes are also said to be essential studies for Aurors. Which is great for 'Dark wizard catching' but what about finding 'who done it?'
I think there is fairly ample evidence that aurors don't focus on this aspect of their job much. There's Sirius being thrown in prison without any sort of investigation. If they had so much as checked his wand they would have seen he hadn't blown up the street. They couldn't have checked him for a Dark Mark. Hagrid got arrested without any investigation in Harry's second year. And for that matter wasn't arrested in his third year for Myrtles death, regardless of whether he did it or not, he was blamed for it. Dumbledore didn't lift a finger to prove Malfoy was behind giving a dangerous cursed object to an underage girl.
It seems like, if a wizard isn't jumping up and down screaming, "It was me! I did it! Mwaa ha ha!" then nobody can do anything. Malfoy and the other Death Eaters as case in point. If there had been any investigation into their actual crimes buying their way to a pardon would have been a lot harder.
I'm not sure when in the Order of the Phoenix McGonagall had the career talk with Harry, but if it doesn't match my timeline, then fine. This is fanfiction and I can be handwavy to the timeline if I want to.