AN: Harry Potter is not mine, nor is the characters, the setting, or the environment, it all belongs to Rowling.
Chapter 2: Deep in the Mind of Dumbles
At Hogwarts School located in a tower overlooking the lake, sat a man at a desk whom was also up to his ears in paperwork. But unlike the other, this man was ignoring the mountain of paperwork that cluttered his already messy environment. Instead, he was idly turning the pages of his sweet tooth and candy illustrated picture scrapbook or STACI for short. Some would find it strange that anyone would photograph and annotate different forms of candy, and then immortalize them in a photo journal, let alone naming that journal STACI, but those people are not Albus Dumbledore.
"Let's see…Blow Pops, yes… I remember now… that would be that time in Italy with the Kenmore sisters…" His thoughts clouded slightly, while thinking back into the past briefly, "If only people knew the real reason I like candy so much," he mused lightly with a strange grin on his face.
His musings were cut short by an odd whistling noise that sounded remarkably like a teapot boiling over. Looking up from one of his obsessions, he accio'd the instrument to his desk, while closing the scrapbook and creating a small space to examine the item.
"Well now, Harry, my boy, where have you run off to today…hmmm?" He jabbed his wand at the still screaming gadget. The sound cut off abruptly and the headmaster looked deeply at the machine, while twisting buttons here and flicking switches there. Finally, after three minutes of near silent contemplation the item spit out a small card with a rude noise and a puff of purple smoke, the headmaster handled the card and read it quickly.
Subject: Harry James Potter
Time of Departure: 7:34PM
Current location: Unknown
Dumbledore frowned briefly at the machine, "It has never failed me before…" He set the personal tracker down and rose from his desk. Striding over to bookshelves, he reached down halfway on the lower right side and flipped a hidden switch.
"Perhaps, the tracker was broken during his little temper tantrum last school year," he mumbled to himself. " That boy needs to learn to control his temper… maybe I should get Severus to teach him again, after all, adversity breeds strong men, not that I want him to succeed in learning occlumency… no … that would only allow him a chance to hide things from me."
During his external monologue, the headmaster moved quickly into the room that appeared behind the special bookcase. Striding down a short flight of stairs and into a dark musty dungeon, he wondered off into a large dusty room. The headmaster kept all of his important things here hidden away. Surprisingly, there were not many wards or traps for thieves hiding this little treasure trove, as if Dumbledore could not imagine anyone getting quite this far in an infiltration attempt. But the few alarms and wards that were sparsely positioned throughout the private room had no business being in a school full of curious children.
An old beat up stool sat in the corner with a wizard's hat on top of it with the word DUNCE written ominously in neon green lettering up its side. An innocent looking hand mirror sat on a pedestal facing down with a complicated medusa ward wound around it, and a lure to make you want to look into it. A soul painting hung on the wall waiting patiently for the next fool, who could not resist temptation. A set of cursed children's magical building blocks piled up in one corner, occasionally shifting restlessly as the last victim was still alive, hidden away in its multiple compartments. This along with other apparently random odds and bits casually strewn throughout the area were ignored by the headmaster as he alighted towards a chest in the back of the large room.
Lifting the lid to the heavily locked chest, Dumbledore sighed as he once again stared at his other obsession. This chest was home to blood samples, fingernails, hair strands, saliva, semen, and anything else he could think of that would be of use for his Plan. The contents were collected from people he met during his travels, people who have gone to school here, politicians, friends, family, old lovers, anyone and anything that the crafty man could steal a few vials of something from without being noticed.
Oh, there were close calls, many close calls, but most suspicious people were placated with a pat on the head, a full blast eye twinkle, and an explanation 'for the greater good'. The ones that did not see the 'light' were easily made to forget the entire incident, sometimes fatally. Because of this, there were literally thousands of samples cataloged in this chest. He idly wondered when he would hit the ten-thousand mark and made a mental note to reach that goal before his golden boy 'graduated' next year. He snorted softly, "Like he will ever live to see a diploma from this school."
Dumbledore paused briefly to finger the vial marked Grindelwald, his most well known accomplishment, "if they only knew, "he grinned at the memory. Setting the shrunken liver down, he raised the first compartment samples up to get to the second tray underneath.
Potter, Harry James was written along a vial of blood on the slot farthest to the right. Next to it was Potter, James and Potter, Lily Evans. There were a few other Potters dutifully cataloged underneath, and for a moment Dumbledore mourned the loss of this blood sample, if he used this in the location spell, he would need to acquire another to finish off the Potter family. "Ah, well, perhaps I will just get a more remarkable organ to take its place once the boy has been dealt with," he hummed happily at the thought. It was difficult to get some of the more internal samples, and he did not have a kidney in his collection… yet. "Yes, that seems like a reasonable replacement," he decided with an odd grin on his face. "And perhaps, I could get the matching one from little Tommy Riddle…yes, that would even out everything very well, wouldn't it?"
Returning to his office after putting his amusements away, the headmaster began the preparations needed to fix his personal tracker. I need to get a collar for that boy, he thought viciously as the tracker started making odd noises, yet again. After several hours of tinkering, finally the tracker was cobbled back together. He was not overly worried about the current location of his boy, with his fame he could not go anywhere in the Wizarding world without being mobbed or shunned. If that happened, he would expect a floo call almost immediately, in fact, he was a little disconcerted that he had not gotten one already, unless the little fool managed to get himself captured by the Dark Lord. If that happened, then the personalized portkey that he had imbedded into the back of his hand would have gone off, and would have brought the wayward child back where he belonged.
"No… he is probably off moping the loss of his dogfather, or sneaking out to Hogsmeade for pranks and fire whiskey, like all other children his age," he mused as he fused the blood sample to the tracking gadget reader. "Oddly enough, he still does not seem to be all that interested in the fairer sex. I should have Severus give him the 'Talk' soon, after all, can't have the boy blundering around creating little Potters." Finally, the instrument started to puff a few pops of white smoke signaling that it was all ready and repaired.
"Now then, where is Harry Potter," he intoned solemnly, while re-twisting a few buttons and odd screws. After a few minutes of contemplations and strange beeps the item spit out another small card with a small ding and a puff of white smoke, grasping this new card the headmaster was almost giddy with anticipation.
Subject: Harry James Potter
Previous Location: Hogwarts School
Current location: Not Here Now
Only sheer willpower prevented the small instrument from meeting the wall at an accelerated pace and splattering its mechanical remains over the expensive sixteenth century rug lying on the other side of the room.
"That should not be possible! The boy's blood should have gotten me within a hairsbreadth of a location!" Dumbledore fumed gesticulating at the whirring item on his cluttered desk.
---Meanwhile back on an unplottable warded island in a dangerously inhabited castle--
Harry rose from his hidden location slowly. He had waited nearly an hour after the Dark Lord had crawled into bed, both to make sure that the potion knocked him out thoroughly, and to make sure that Nagini did not come back in at the wrong time. Harry was still not sure if that cocktail he put together would put the animal down for good, or if her magical mutated nature would annul the potion, and so he waited.
Thinking that the coast was finally clear, he cast a mild light charm on the ceiling forcing his eyes to readjust for a few minutes. The magic did not wake the Dark Lord, not that he thought it would. The man could be crucio'd in his sleep right now, and he would only feel a vague discomfort. A minor light charm did not have a hope in hell of waking the sleeping wizard with that potion running through his system.
Pulling out his map, Harry scanned it for dangers, specifically, large venomous snakelike dangers, and found Nagini, almost immediately, immobile in a small garden on the second floor. She is either asleep or dead…he thought to himself and couldn't honestly care which. Restoring the alarm charm on the map he closed it and hid it back into his pockets.
Taking a moment to observe the Dark Lord sleeping, Harry visually scanned his nemesis for the first time in almost a year. He was still bald, his nose was practically non-existent, he was pretty tall over six feet; his features were a combination of human, snake, and some other unidentifiable creature. If he did not know better, he would think he was looking at the starring role of one of the old muggle vampire movies. At least he has put a little more meat on his bones, Harry thought charitably, though he would still be considered somewhat emaciated.
Shaking himself out of his reverie, Harry pulled out a small trunk from his back pocket. He enlarged it with a word and unlocked it with a prick of his finger and a password. First things first, Harry pulled out a small gunlike item, the design he 'borrowed' from one of the London hospitals, highly modified. This item would inject medicine into a patient; it was currently modified to work with various potions. Who needs to swallow vile concoctions, when you can inject them, mutter a small healing charm and with a wave of the wand be done with the matter? Harry would rather have a small burst of non-existent pain that easily can be healed, and then be forced to ingest some of the more dubious combinations of potions that are out there. Harry remembers vividly eating crickets, spiders, grasshoppers, and all manner of creepy crawly things, during his younger years, when Petunia refused to feed him, but there are some limits on the disgust-o-meter even he will try not to go over; hence the potion injector.
Switching a vial of clear fluid into the injector, Harry walked over to his 'patient'. Pressing the end tip to the unconscious man, he pulled the trigger. The previous potion sent the Dark Lord to a deep sleep, but the second one would make him completely immobile and in a form of stasis until it's all over. It was a permutation of the infamous Draught of Living Death that Snape was so fond of waxing intelligent upon.
There, now… he won't wake up for anything I may do. Harry thought before getting to work.
AN: Thanks going out to berkum for catching that spelling error. Have also edited the summery to warn of Dumbles creepiness.