X-X-X
Year Four: A Potter in a Floating Castle
X-X-X
When Padfoot rushed onto the grounds of Riddle Manor in Little Hangleton, Harry felt a lot calmer. He stood up from where he'd been sitting on the grass. He hated to be inside that place with the evil baby and skin-changing servant.
"Are you hurt?" Padfoot demanded as he lifted Harry to his feet.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
Padfoot looked like he wanted to poke each of Harry's muscle groups and demand to know 'does that hurt.' Thankfully he didn't follow through.
"I'm fading a bit, godfather of mine. All my nerve is gone. I'm just tired, ready to collapse in a heap...but there's too much to do first."
"Fine, fine. You're fine. Now tell me the story..."
"Inside."
Padfoot looked unsure, but eventually consented.
Harry led him through the wreck of a home.
"I've talked Barty Crouch Junior," Harry jabbed his index finger toward the person he meant, "through his insane story several times. Maddest thing I've ever heard, and I've heard of plenty of insanity since I boarded the Hogwarts Express for the very first time. Wizards..."
Harry told Padfoot what he knew about Voldemort, from first year all the way to today. He'd told Padfoot most of the old stuff before, but it didn't hurt to refresh his memory. Everything that happened today was new and concerning.
"So, we have my major enemies all tied up."
Harry paused, then stunned the baby and the man again. "Better safe than sorry."
"It's just as you said: madness."
Harry surveyed everything a moment. "On the plus side, Riddle and Crouch haven't approached their other allies. Malfoy's known to be impoverished, though they don't know why."
"But you do," Padfoot said.
Harry nodded, but didn't repeat that story. "The others are suspected of treason or abandoning the cause."
Padfoot finally got his mind turning again. "We're don't have much time. The Aurors want you back, as your kidnapping was reported hours ago and they're already getting beaten up over it."
"We could just leave," Harry said, shaking his head. "Let them wake up and go back to their plotting."
"Neither of us like that. My family would be rolling over in their graves if I left alive such a big threat to any family member. 'Did you forget all the paranoid shit we made you learn as a child?' I can actually hear my mother's shrill voice saying that."
"I just put it as an option. I didn't like it. We'd just come under attack again. Next, we could haul both of them to the Aurors," Harry said.
"Corrupt, useless lot. Pass. What else, kiddo? I know you have a real idea you're hesitating to explain."
Harry did. But he had to lead his godfather down the path he was thinking. "We know what exorcising a ghost looks like."
Sirius shivered. "Non-starter. I had conversations with at least ten people this past summer on just that topic. Nope, no how."
It brought up bad memories for both of them. "Right. I've been kicking an idea around since school started this term, after Old Spencer reworked my spirit medallion."
Padfoot got very serious and very still. He could behave when it came time to plan something important.
"My irritation over Peeves the Poltergeist and Dumbledore the Lying, Plotting Ghost got me thinking about some of the features of the medallion..."
So Harry explained what he'd only speculated about for a few weeks. The medallion could freeze a ghost. It could probably do something like that permanently. If it could do that to a ghost, couldn't it also work on this spirit-thing of Voldemort?
Once Padfoot made sense out of what Harry was telling him... He just shook his head. "Can you do that? Make a permanent version of your medallion?"
"I don't know. I don't dare try tonight, either," Harry said. "I'm shaky and tired."
"But how will you know if it'll work?" Padfoot asked.
"Well, I'll test if first."
Sirius had no doubts about the test subjects Harry had in mind. He began to laugh. Then he stopped. "Are Peeves and Dumbledore similar enough to whatever You-Know-Who is?" Padfoot asked. "Do they make a fair test?"
"The medallion that Old Spencer made me works on anything spirit-based. Remember?"
Harry didn't want to directly mention Sirius' brother Regulus, who had been turned into a revenant and bound into a secret chamber in a Black family residence. The actual medallion that had dislodged the revenant had been a lot less powerful than the one made by Old Spencer.
Sirius paled with the remembrance as he nodded.
"I won't do what the insane ghost of Dumbledore has hinted at, like letting this baby-monster get a body back. No, no, no. I've got him and I'm going to keep him, if I can really make it work," Harry said one more time.
Padfoot kept asking questions. Harry kept explaining what he could, though he didn't have it all worked out. It was certainly experimental, just hinted at by what the medallion Old Spencer could actually do.
"I'll get in touch with the crazy old guy, see if we can draft him into this," Padfoot said.
"Thank you," Harry said.
"For now, we'll hold onto the monster and hope we can find a way to keep him from escaping."
"Good, because I don't want to free it or exorcise it. Runes or spells or something else should allow us to keep it permanently. In a prison that never breaks, never opens, never fails."
Padfoot understood enough now, both the risks and the possible benefits to this plan. He rarely shied way from a high risk operation, but now he was partially responsible for a godson. This wasn't just an amusement or a prank.
"We'll see. For now, we need to explain this kidnapping. We need to stop the Aurors from continuing whatever hamfisted things they're out there doing," Padfoot said.
Harry agreed. He'd been thinking about how to explain everything without Voldemort. He didn't want the Malfoys or Notts or other one-time supporters to get any new ideas.
"Blame it on Snape?" Harry asked. Barty Crouch had looked like the potions professor when Harry first saw him after his kidnapping.
Padfoot laughed.
"Too many potions gone wrong, too many students he hated, too many fumes? He's gone as insane as everyone secretly thought?" Harry continued, in a slightly bemused mood.
"If only we could. It'll have to be him." Padfoot nodded to Crouch. "But he'd give away the rest of it. About his master and their plan."
They both knew what that meant.
Harry was the first one to say it. "Crouch can't be alive when we drag him back."
Padfoot was quiet for some time, working through other possibilities. Finally he half-nodded.
"I don't like it. But people like him killed so many. His master killed my parents and your friends, Padfoot," Harry said.
"I know," Padfoot said. "You learn hardness if the world only gives you hard choices."
Harry nodded. "Better to learn than die."
"We'll have to put the baby-creature somewhere," Padfoot said.
"You told me that Godric's Hall once had prison cells. It's in ruins still. But does any other Potter property have cells? Or anything you've kept of the Blacks?" Harry asked.
Padfoot shook his head no, then stopped.
"Not a cell. A potion. Then we stash him until you're sure."
"Potion? You mean Draught of the Living Death?"
"Either that or you need to keep stunning the damned thing."
"You have some?" Harry asked.
"It's not taught until you're older, not because it's tricky. It's a simple one. But it's very dangerous. Think if you were brewing some and had a bit of distraction. Some of that on your skin and you just enter a living death in your potions nook, perhaps someone finds you in time, perhaps not..."
"But you know how?" Harry asked.
Padfoot nodded. "I wasn't as good as Moony, but I learned for the pranks we did. I still remember a lot. And we'll have the recipe in some book somewhere."
Harry nodded and stopped worrying about that part of the plan. There were plenty of issues, although it didn't take them much longer to finish working out the details of their plan.
The last sticking point was Crouch, namely who would kill him and how.
"I'll kill him just in case there are any techniques the Aurors could use to check on the events," Harry said.
"But..."
"Padfoot, it's okay. Something about my life has forced me to be a killer. Since I was a toddler, since I was a first-year at Hogwarts. With any luck on my side, this should be the last time I need to do this."
Padfoot gave in.
Harry got the stunned Crouch up and standing, then Harry pushed him so his head collided with the fireplace mantle in the room where he'd first woken.
Crouch lay on the bare wooden floor. Harry stood over him watching the blood that came rapidly, then very slowly, from the gash on his forehead.
Padfoot looked sick at the whole thing.
Harry wouldn't admit it, but it felt like his own magic was singing that it had been avenged, that it brought an end to one of Harry's enemies.
Harry had done it to Professor Quirrel and to Rookwood, the Azkaban escapee who had harvested Harry's blood and finger. Now to another of these Death Eaters. He wondered if he would feel any horror over doing this to Crouch. He hadn't before, not really.
He let Padfoot levitate the body before they made their way out of the Riddle Manor. Harry carried the baby-creature in his arms. They had to hide this first, then deal with the Aurors.
X-X-X
It was full dark when Padfoot took Harry and a corpse to Hogsmeade which is where the Aurors, unimaginatively, were still looking for Harry. As if wizards couldn't travel by apparition or portkeys or the floo or a broom or...
"He did it," Padfoot said as he dumped the corpse on the ground. "He kidnapped my godson."
None of the Aurors showed any recognition of the dead man.
"It's not Snape," an Auror said. "The reports said it was Severus Snape."
"Moshbot, get a healer out here, confirm it for the paperwork," said another Auror.
Paperwork… That was the first thought of an Auror these days. Wonderful.
"He was using a glamor or something. Maybe it was Polyjuice Potion," Harry said since everyone was standing around looking at the body or talking about paperwork. No one was asking him questions. Wizards...
"He might have looked like my Potions professor when he took me, but this is who it really was," Harry said.
Moshbot got more piled on him before he left for the Ministry and Saint Mungo's for 'backup.'
Harry and Padfoot took a seat near the body on the street. Harry kept calm, but Padfoot was roiling at the lack of urgency and general incompetence of what he was seeing.
Harry put his hand on his godfather's shoulder. They had more important concerns, like getting through this ridiculousness. What did the Aurors care anyway? It wasn't like they had found or rescued Harry…
If it had only been up to the Aurors, Harry would have died and Tom Riddle would have started walking around again.
No reason they should know the real story.
Still, waiting was no fun.
Harry thought about asking one of them to summon the Defense Professor from Hogwarts. Professor Moody was a good sight more competent than these folks and he was a retired Auror to boot.
He didn't make the request. It would embarrass them and they showed remarkably fragile egos to start with. Not much sense, either.
"Where's this corpse, then?" someone asked.
Harry looked around.
He could see the other Aurors looking around, too.
Three healers had arrived on scene and were moving toward where Crouch was still splayed on the ground.
A few moments later some red-robed Aurors who had plenty of gold trim arrived.
One of the new arrivals, a healer, shuffled over to the body. "He was a year behind me at Hogwarts. Crouch, Barty. He was chucked in Azkaban and died there about ten years ago. Or maybe not."
If the Aurors had been nervous and useless before, they just got worse.
This case had everything. The kidnapping of the most famous wizard in the wizarding world. Said wizard freeing himself before the Aurors could even find him. Then him bringing the dead criminal back, someone who was already supposed to be long-dead.
Some of the Aurors became excited for the likely publicity. Others went pale over how badly they'd all come off looking during the reviews of their performance.
Finally one of the Healers noticed Harry. "You alright, love?" she asked.
"Well, I'd like to go home. It's been a long day, but no one can decide anything."
"So you were the victim of the kidnapping? You're Mr. Potter?"
Harry nodded.
"I'm Healer Kendle. Do you mind if I check your health?"
Harry nodded again. So did Padfoot.
She waved her wand over Harry a few times. She smiled gently at him. "Some rough treatment today, but nothing lasting?"
"That sums it up well," Harry said.
One of the Aurors then approached Harry. "Mr. Potter, my name is Auror Moshbot. Can you tell me what happened today?"
Finally.
"I visited Hogsmeade on my way to the Hogwarts Express, but I was stunned and kidnapped instead. I woke up somewhere I didn't recognize. I listened to that man talking, perhaps to me, perhaps to himself. Ranting, crazy. I realized he had taken my wand and the other items I had on me. I waited until he came to move me. He stood me up from where I'd been left on a floor, then we struggled. He hit his head on the fireplace in the room. I got my arms free and found my belongings, including my wand. I contacted Sirius Black, my godfather. He came and found me, then we came here. Where we've been waiting an awfully long time. When can we leave?"
"It's complicated. Your kidnapper was reported dead years ago. So unless dead men are rising from the grave..."
Harry knew that one such dead man was trying to do just that, but he didn't say a thing about it.
"That's your end of things. I worked out the apparition coordinates of where they took my godson. You can inspect the place yourself, at your leisure. Send an owl when you're ready to interview Harry. We've been generous with our time tonight and you've just wasted it."
"But..."
"He had to free himself. If there was an Auror who had helped to save him, I might be in a kinder mood. He was attacked last school year by two Azkaban escapees. He was attacked this year by a man that the Aurors didn't even know know had escaped Azkaban. I'm done sitting on the street waiting for someone to start thinking."
"Now see here..."
"Fine. I'll contact my solicitor. We'll do this interview with him, at his office. Assuming you lot can be arsed to remember you even have a case. Come on, Harry. You need food and a lot of sleep."
Harry said nothing, though Moshbot didn't stop protesting. He knew he was in the wrong, his whole crew was, but he couldn't admit it.
Harry turned before he left the area. "The dead man used Professor Snape's appearance to kidnap me, right?"
"Yes?" Auror Moshbot asked, wary.
"I didn't see who stunned me. But that's what you were told by witnesses in the village?"
Moshbot nodded. "That is correct. We had several witnesses."
"I see. But where is Snape, the real one?" Harry asked.
Moshbot and several other Aurors looked surprised then. And more than a few rushed off toward Hogwarts. That would give them something to do.
Harry, for the long day he'd had, didn't actually care whether they found Snape alive. But the dour man deserved some help if he could still make use of it. Everyone deserved at least a little help.
Wilton Skeinbrush finally turned up as the other Aurors were heading to Hogwarts and Harry and Padfoot were leaving Hogsmeade. The Head Auror, or whatever he was, seemed miffed that no one cared for what orders he had to give.
X-X-X
Harry woke at first light, though he was still exhausted. He thought about trying to fall back asleep, but his stomach had something to say about that. He got up and got dressed.
He reviewed everything he could think of. He was a bit tired. He felt safe. He was in his tent on Potter lands in Godric's Hallow. He could hear Sirius snoring in the room he'd claimed before, even though he had his own tent now. Harry supposed his godfather had stayed close in case Harry had a very bad night.
Other than poor sleep, not really.
He was hungry. Harry decided to start fixing things there. He got some water first.
His kitchen wasn't so helpful, though. He'd been at school for months and had only jarred and tinned items in the cupboards.
He opened tins of beans and peaches. It wasn't what he really wanted, but it did the trick for now.
Harry felt a lot less stress than he'd expected. Surprisingly little. He was free.
Free of Voldemort.
Free of a 'revered' professor who had dropped Harry with awful relatives.
Free of being punished for asking questions or being curious.
The direction and shape of his life was now his to choose. He didn't have to fear Dumbledore turning up with some prophecy. Or Rookwood attacking him. Or Voldemort plotting something.
Unless something went very wrong, Voldemort would no longer plague the Potter family.
Padfoot shambled into the kitchen. "How are you?" he asked.
Harry nodded at his tins. "Good. But hungry," he said.
"Oh, I have food in my tent. Shall we take a walk?"
Harry pushed away his tins and stood up.
What Padfoot had was mostly breads and pastries, no wonder he looked plumper now than in September. Still, Harry and Padfoot ate.
"So we have a curmudgeon to track down? He made that medallion of yours," Padfoot said.
Harry nodded as he decided he didn't want anything more to eat. "Old Spencer? Yeah, if we could get him to help it would go faster and be a lot more likely to succeed."
Padfoot sent off a Patronus, which still wasn't a spell that Harry had mastered nor much saw the need to master.
"I know you don't like single-use spells, but you can do a messenger variant of the Patronus," Padfoot said. "I only learned it over the summer. Cursebreakers are a gossipy bunch."
That sure would have been useful yesterday when he was trying to get in touch with Padfoot.
Harry returned to his food, which was all sweet and sweet and sweet.
A ghostly animal, which could have been a monkey, arrived and spoke. "I'm not taking on new cursebreaking contracts at this time. But I can give a bit of advice on who to hire. See you at eleven, Black."
"Okay, that spell's a lot more useful than I expected," Harry said. "I'm going to learn that stupid thing."
Padfoot sent off another Patronus.
The return monkey-message gave an address in Liverpool, of all places.
Harry had time to finish eating, shower, and dress again before they left for this all-too-important meeting.
When Harry knocked on an apartment door, Old Spencer was there behind it, opening it up then demanding that they both step in.
It was only a few months since Harry had seen the man in France, but everything looked different about him. No, different was too mild a word. Everything looked worse, much worse.
He was sicker than Harry had ever seen anyone. While he could move around and talk, his skin was yellowed and his fingernails were gray.
Old Spencer was clearly dying.
"Merlin's Syndrome?" Padfoot asked with a good deal of concern.
"Fancy name. I'm just old, too damned old, Black. Now tell me what kind of curses you have so I can recommend someone."
"Were you sick before?"
"I was old. But all this caught up with me."
"It wasn't anything that happened in France?" Harry asked. Had he missed something? Had he let something happen to Old Spencer?
"I had worse after I left that site. I've had worse every year of my working life. Magic is dangerous." He looked angry, but not at Harry or Padfoot. Probably at the situation. "I suppose it has all finally caught up. Now, speak. I'm planning on a nice long nap, then a bottle of a good crisp white wine, then more sleep."
Padfoot began trying to explain, in general, roundabout terms what he needed, but Old Spencer was getting bored or tired.
Harry decided to simplify. "I need something that can trap a spirit."
"Like a revenant? Can do it. Shouldn't do it," Old Spencer grumped.
"Not like the revenant," Harry said. "I was kidnapped yesterday by someone working for Voldemort."
"That one's dead, boyo."
Harry shook his head. "Not exactly. Voldemort is a spirit who trapped himself inside some construct. I don't want him wandering around. I want to lock him away," Harry said. "Maybe like the medallion you designed for me..."
"Really? A true spirit of Voldemort, strong enough that it can possess something?"
Harry nodded this time. So did Padfoot.
"Well, damn, you've got me interested. I'll have to see it, have to cast some spells, I guess."
The old man looked terrible still, but he also looked about ten years younger. More liveliness to him, more energy, more desire.
"Let's be off." Like a man looking for one last great adventure.
"But I thought you were going to make a referral," Padfoot said.
"I'm the best for this. I built that medallion. I know what it can do and what it won't. You'll have to explain a lot to someone else, or a little to me. Plus I'll be dead very soon. Best to keep your secrets secret, right?"
Harry nodded, then Padfoot did.
"Well, we're not quite sure how to get anyone past the wardlines," Harry said. "For as often as I spoke to some family portraits about the wards on the destroyed house, I never asked about how to modify the property wards. Hadn't needed to. My godfather was invited by my grandparents. I'm a Potter. You..."
Old Spencer waved the concern away.
Sirius gave the old cursebreaker the apparition coordinates. Then all three of them were in Godric's Hollow.
Old Spencer hadn't become any more patient. "Try inviting me."
Harry did, but no luck. Old Spencer couldn't cross the wards.
"Step inside the wardline, then invite me, boyo."
Harry did that, also a failure.
Harry walked back across the wardline otherwise the Notice-Me-Not effect would have still worked on Old Spencer.
"Go back inside, draw your wand, then invite me in, boyo."
That worked as Old Spencer walked across the wardline.
"How'd you know?" Harry asked.
"I've got about fifty different options in my head, styles that came and went in popularity over the centuries. We just had to work down the list."
"What about the others?" Padfoot asked with real curiosity.
"We're in Wales. I would have taught him the inviting ritual in Welsh, then in Latin, maybe a few other languages. Tried a few short rituals oriented on the ward stones. Things like that. Now… Let's see the real deal, eh?"
Harry agreed and had Sirius undo the ward-locks on the spare tent they'd quickly turned into a prison the day before.
Spencer distracted himself for a moment when he saw the field of stone that Harry had cleaned and stacked the summer between his second and third years at Hogwarts. Old Spencer had plenty to say about rebuilding the manor. Harry listened to all of it, but some of it was very similar to what Old Spencer told him in France.
"Now, this creature you have?" Old Spencer demanded.
As if he hadn't gotten distracted.
Padfoot finished lowering the wards and all three of them went inside the spare tent. Old Spencer finally drew his wand.
"Stunned?" he asked.
Harry nodded. "Several times since yesterday."
"He's still out. But one of you keep a wand handy. The kind of tests I'm planning might just break through a stunning."
Spencer got to work, casting several silent spells. He looked horrified and fascinated as he did his work. He clearly harbored no doubts that You-Know-Who was still tethered to the world.
Harry started to chatter. "I had thought that rune-work I did on spirits, that you corrected over the summer, might be useful on him. But I wasn't keen to experiment and possibly set him loose."
"Right, yeah, right," Spencer said, barely able to string words together since he was so deep into his thoughts. Then he began to nod.
"We'll have to make it up as we go along, then test it. Build a temporary spirit collector, find some similar spirits, build a permanent model, then do a test run with a ghostie or ghoul," Spencer said.
Harry nodded as this was the method he'd expected.
"You can make anyone do anything if you convince them it's an honour, even a ghost. Better not to ask, though. Hogwarts has plenty of spirits. To make sure You-Know-Who is gone forever, I'm sure they won't mind lending us a few."
"Binns," Sirius said, laughing. "The Bloody Baron. So many choices..."
"Those they'd notice. Dumbledore's ghost would be safe to borrow," Harry said. "Or Peeves. Two spirits that Hogwarts would never really miss."
"He and Peeves would be a good test. One is a ghost. One is a poltergeist. I don't know exactly what kind of spirit You-Know-Who is. Better to be very careful."
"So how do we do this?" Padfoot asked.
"I need some iron, some bronze, and all the engraving tools you have… No, I'll go back to my workroom for my sets, I know they're maintained."
"Fine, good," Padfoot said.
"I remember the schema our young Ghost Hunter here created, but if we're looking for something more permanent, we might need to tweak it some more," Old Spencer said, fully engaged in the world again. "Might need some spellwork to feed the whole thing power, every so often. I've got an idea about that or two."
"Thank Merlin," Harry said.
This wasn't all on him. Old Spencer agreed with this course and had the skills to actually help. This might just work.
X-X-X
Many hours later, Harry was under his Invisibility Cloak as he carried two small metal cubes onto the Hogwarts grounds.
It was dangerous, but it wasn't the most dangerous thing Harry had ever done.
Walking over to that arena in the distance would be more dangerous. Harry could hear a dozen dragons nearby on the grounds, many deep roaring voices and the tinier, higher voices of infants. The eggs had all hatched.
That was danger you could understand. Claws, teeth, flames.
However, stealing ghosts was something Harry didn't want to explain, or why. People were irrational about Voldemort. They'd practically given up the country when he was last active.
So Harry and Sirius and Old Spencer would solve this now, in secret, and keep the opportunists and the possible conspirators Voldemort had left behind in the dark.
He silenced his feet and the rest of him before he snuck into Hogwarts Castle. While he was under his Invisibility Cloak, he still took care making his way to his little room on the fifth floor. He figured he'd let Peeves and Dumbledore come find him there.
When he snuck back out a few hours later, Hogwarts was missing a ghost and a poltergeist. What Old Spencer had quickly carved had worked, so far, but it was meant to be temporary. The permanent containers wouldn't be small, not at all.
Anyway, all of it would need more work, more testing, immediately.
Old Spencer wouldn't be around for long. They probably couldn't keep stunning that baby-construct – and Old Spencer had told Padfoot not to use anything like Draught of the Living Death on the construct. It did work on a normal body, but who knew what it would do with a magical construct and a possessing spirit?
Now Harry just had to hope the basic idea of storing a spirit somehow was good enough, or fixable by Old Spencer. He'd need to watch all of it carefully as Old Spencer did his tests so he could watch it all in a pensieve later, then write everything down. Old Spencer wouldn't be around to talk to, most likely.
No time, no time… There was never enough time. Harry moved faster. Once he got off Hogwarts grounds he'd use the mirror to call Padfoot. He really wished he could learn to apparate, but he had to wait a few more years.
X-X-X
Old Spencer looked fifty years younger on Christmas morning. He'd been directing Harry and Sirius in various efforts for days now. He didn't look exhausted, though he had every reason to.
No, all his work on the three large hunks of stone in the next room had given him renewed life, for a while. Old Spencer had carved each one with care, with some decorative elements but mostly obscured runes, powerful yet subtle.
Three masterworks, the pinnacle of Old Spencer's craft.
If they worked, if they could hold the spirits they were designed to hold.
His test pieces made of metal were still holding after a few days. The stone ones were built along the same lines, but meant to last much, much longer. Forever.
"Well, go get one of them. The ghost, first," Spencer said. "Bring him into the carving room. It'll take me a while to get my old bones there."
Padfoot helped Old Spencer on his way.
Harry went for one of the hunks of metal Old Spencer had carved. The thing had pulsed with energy since Harry had returned with it. He brought it to where the carved stones, Old Spencer, and Padfoot were.
"Well, get on with it," Spencer said.
"You don't want to..."
"You stuffed him in there. Let him out. Go ahead, boyo."
Harry remembered what Old Spencer had showed him. With a few taps of his wand on significant parts of the metal hunk, Harry released the ghost of Dumbledore. The ghost looked stunned and was unmoving. Slowly the ghost seemed to be able to move its head and peer around.
Then Old Spencer did something to one of the stone plinths. The spiritual residue of Dumbledore was sucked inside the stone.
Harry and Sirius were silent while all of this happened. Harry then walked around that plinth. He was looking for any spirit wisps, any hint that Dumbledore might just escape.
"If the trapping portion was going to fail, it would have happened immediately," Old Spencer said. "No cracks, no explosions, we're good. Now that he's in there, let's see if the truth-teller portion works. I added that in from the bit I had on your medallion."
Harry nodded. "I've tried it out before, on Dumbledore actually."
"Good, good. Who hasn't wanted to interrogate that old man?" Spencer asked. "Go ahead, pick something that will make him squirm."
"I've gotten some answers from him before, you know the things about horcruxes and prophecies. But I could think up some new questions," Harry said, but didn't start the procedure to ask them.
"You've got a conscience about this, I see. You can free him later, if you want. There is an order for destroying the runes on the plinth, then destroying the stone itself. But, you should never use it on You-Know-Who's prison if all this actually works on him."
"Of course. I know that," Harry said.
Harry steeled himself for the test, then used a sequence of spells on the plinth to recharge it, including the Fulmenifer spell he knew so well. Once the ritual was done, Harry had the trapped spirit's attention and started asking his questions.
"What are the secrets of transfiguration that are never written down?" Harry asked.
"Any secret I discovered, I published. Any secret I learned from another, the other person eventually published. Transfigurationists almost always give their secrets away."
The voice sounded just like Dumbledore had as a ghost.
"Why give the secrets away?" Padfoot asked.
"There is more power to be had in professional respect from sharing discoveries than power in holding or using those minor secrets."
There, that really sounded like Dumbledore now. Power this, prophecy that, wheedle, wheedle, wheedle.
"What are the secrets of alchemy that are never written down?" Harry asked. He'd been interested in alchemy ever since he looked into his old teachers, the Flamels.
"If there are any secrets of alchemy, I don't know them," the stone with the ghost inside it said.
"You were said to be a master of alchemy."
"I learned the theories. But I was unable to unlock any of the true hallmarks of an alchemist. I never made a philosopher's stone. I never completed the Aqness Reaction. I tried all the hardest tasks. I completed none of them."
Yet he didn't refute being known as a master alchemist?
"How did you discover the twelve uses of dragons' blood?" Harry asked, desperate to learn something of use. Whatever concerns he'd had about imprisoning Dumbledore in the stone were evaporating quickly.
"I read about eight of them in poorly known books. I got three more from my mentor, Nicholas Flamel. The last one, my true work, was using dragon's blood as a potions base. It makes a few impossible potions possible, but otherwise it's just incredibly wasteful. Do you know how much dragon's blood costs?"
Padfoot was shaking his head. He had once revered this man, who was now admitting to being a gifted promoter at best, a thief and fraud at the worst.
"How did you kill Grindelwald?" Harry asked.
"I didn't."
That left everyone quiet for a few moments.
"How did you defeat him?" Harry asked, picking his words far more carefully this time.
"He was, at any age, a better dueller than me. More versed in spells, with stronger magic available to him, plus a very, very powerful wand. I used several potions misted into the air to slow him and make his brain foggy, then I put on the best show I could. I, of course, won."
"You cheated," Padfoot summarized.
The ghost hadn't been asked a question and so didn't respond.
Harry and Padfoot and even Old Spencer kept thinking up questions. The answers Harry got from Dumbledore's ghost on so many questions ensured that Harry had forgotten all about freeing said ghost.
Some time later, Harry ended the ritual. The stone plinth just looked like a stone, not a special one or a talking one.
"Most renowned wizard of his age. Best talker of his age, maybe. Biggest self-promoter," Harry said. "What did he actually do? What of his legend is even close to true?"
Padfoot gave his godson a hug, it helped, but it didn't relieve all the shock and pain.
"I only knew him from his obsessions as a ghost. Like Binns stuck on goblins. But what I saw of him was the real Dumbledore... Was there anything to him?" Harry asked.
Old Spencer looked more satisfied than irritated about what had happened. "The stone works," he said. "Stop worrying over the bag of air inside it. I always liked him less than other people should have, now I know I was right... Though I can't tell anyone." He huffed. "We'll do the poltergeist next, just to be sure. Then the last one, the real trouble."
"Thank you," Padfoot said. "How can I pay you for freeing my godson from all this horror?"
"I've not got enough time for a bunch of galleons. But there is something I wouldn't mind."
"Name it."
"Boy's got potential with runes."
"Thanks," Harry said, waiting for the criticism. He had spent part of the last summer listening to the old man.
"Runes and spells and trouble, come to think of it. Black, you keep pushing him. You should keep looking for new teachers. He has done a handful of very dangerous things so far, potentially lethal things."
Harry opened his mouth to retort, but found he couldn't. He really had done a few reckless things, with and without runes.
"To keep him alive, keep someone skilled with him. Won't be cheap."
"I would do that anyway. But nothing for you, or your family?" Padfoot asked.
"I've left them well settled, my grandchildren and beyond. And I wouldn't have them asking questions about why Harry Potter and House Black are giving my descendants more gifts. I'd not draw any attention to what we're trying. No one should ever know that You-Know-Who is still around in some form."
Padfoot just nodded.
Old Spencer returned to examining the plinth with Dumbledore in it, then the other two. Harry had wandered out of the room, but he would surely be back.
"Doubts?" Padfoot asked, nodding at his examination.
"Well, none as of now. I've been over all of them several times. Just nerves, I was this way before trying anything new or anything big."
"If it works all the way, what would you ask Voldemort?" Padfoot asked.
Old Spencer was intrigued at that and quiet for more than minute. "I'd ask him the easiest way to defeat his own ideas, his own surviving followers. You better believe he knows or has some definite thoughts on the subject."
"That would be useful to know. What Harry asked of Dumbledore when he tried out the medallion on him suggested our side was clueless about how to actually win. At least our fool of a leader was."
Harry returned to the room. "I think I want to ask him about what Dumbledore told me. The horcruxes and things like that. Confirm if Dumbledore was on the right track."
It was clear he'd heard everything from when he was gone.
Old Spencer nodded. "If I could, I'd publish all of what we've done. Too many underestimate runes and what they can do. This might push the field forward, but none of us can acknowledge any of this, let alone take credit for it."
"I'm not in it for laurels. I don't think Harry..."
"No," Harry said. "I'll take some answers. Then I'll make sure we all get to enjoy some peace from this part of history."
"Good, not like that ass Dumbledore. I've never known a bigger credit-whore," Old Spencer said.
He finally began to look his age again. All the excitement was fading, but he made no moves to depart. There was another test to run, then the real thing.
X-X-X
It was the strangest Christmas break ever, Harry knew. They'd crammed three spirits into stones, skipped out on the 'traditional' dinner Sirius had started only last year, and returned Old Spencer to Liverpool.
They were just now getting to the gifts on Boxing Day. Harry hadn't even missed them given how busy he'd been so far. Though one thing he'd expected hadn't answer. Not one Auror had sent an owl asking to schedule an interview. Cowards.
Harry had presents from many folks, but Padfoot insisted that Harry open his first.
For once, Padfoot was giving Harry books.
Of course, Padfoot would benefit from these books given that they were on magical Japan and magical New Zealand. Harry had long ago mentioned that his gift to Padfoot, if he wanted it, was one of the seats on the Floating Castle's trip between the two countries. He was there as Harry's last true family and as a 'responsible' adult.
Something occurred to Harry. "Do you want to see the Castle this summer?"
"The Floating Castle sounds interesting."
But that wasn't a passion for Sirius. It was Harry's joy.
"You don't have to," Harry said. "If it's not something you would like. I'd just assumed..." Who wouldn't go insane at the idea of seeing a Floating Castle?
"No worries, Harry. I should see the remaining Greater Magics."
Like it was a duty.
"It's the flying over an ocean that has me excited. Never did that with a broom or my motorcycle. I'll enjoy that part of it just fine, Harry."
Harry smiled. "Good enough."
There was still one problem, though. "I want to give the other two tickets away. Who do you think I should give them to? I've been dithering as I don't want to anger everyone else in the group," Harry said.
Sirius paused as he paged through the books he'd bought Harry. "I can't tell you who. You know your friends. I'd be glad to give you some advice on how to give them away."
"How?"
"Figure out who would value them the most."
"I'm not selling them."
"I didn't say anything about coinage, godson of mine. Let the ones who really want them show it somehow, not just to you but to the others in group. It's got to be fair and seem fair, Harry. Then few people should be cross over the decision."
That was clever, if Harry could figure out some kind of fair challenge.
Padfoot went back to the book, skimming and occasionally remarking on something. Harry was glad that his godfather had invited himself into the planning. For someone who had never been to Japan or New Zealand, he had a good ear for what sounded interesting. And an even better one for things that were probably a waste of time.
There was lots available, except they didn't have a lot of time, five days at most. Harry was having trouble narrowing down the options.
He felt a bit like Hermione with how many lists he had piling up, noting places, features, and prices. There was only so much time most of the group could devote to this. One of the days would be partially ruined by their late arrival, one partially devoted to the Floating Castle, and one day marred by their departure.
Harry had to start narrowing, not adding.
The comments Padfoot made from his review of the different guidebooks had already helped Harry to eliminate a few options.
Harry also made the choice to skip adding 'Muggle' things to the schedule, like a crowded Tokyo shopping district or a theme park like Disneyland Tokyo. Talk about too much culture shock.
Harry kept the focus on the magical side of Japan as he looked at his options.
"Here are the magical zoos they have," Padfoot said as he flipped through a guidebook.
Harry reached for a list he'd already started. "There are three I've seen described. Which one is worth going to, if we can only visit one?"
"Good." Padfoot didn't look at Harry's list. He likely just wanted to open the question. "How about shopping?"
Harry nodded at that. "Magical shopping, lots of options. The biggest district is in Tokyo, the oldest is in Kyoto. Then we plan to stay in the village hosting the Floating Castle. It's larger than Hogsmeade so there should be more shopping options – and merchandise related to the Floating Castle."
Padfoot seemed pleased. "Isn't Japan famous for its hot springs? Let's see if that's possible."
Harry laughed and nodded. "Do they duel in Japan? With magic, not swords?"
"That could be something to see," Sirius said.
"Maybe we could have an unplanned day, where we each do whatever it is we want? I'd like to look into how they build structures, like houses."
"Or let everyone split up completely. You'll all be staying in the same place, I assume," Padfoot said. "Lots of choices so everyone can fill the free days."
Harry started to feel a lot better. He didn't have to get everyone to agree. He just had to have plenty of options to suggest.
Padfoot went back to his book and Harry looked at anything he'd crossed off. If he didn't need to provide a tightly written plan, he didn't need to cut so much. Each person going could cut to fit his or her interests.
They both looked up when they heard a light chime inside the tent.
Harry stood up and walked outside. An owl had left a letter on the roost outside the wardline. It was a useful little thing Padfoot had bought so they could still receive mail even while they were living on warded land.
The problem was that the letter had a black border.
Harry opened it once he walked inside the tent.
"Old Spencer died early this morning," Harry said to his godfather.
"Oh, no."
Padfoot held out his hand and Harry gave him the letter.
"I wonder if..." If asking for his help had hastened his death, Harry didn't say out loud.
"I doubt he'd been that happy in a long time," Padfoot said. "He did one last great thing."
"I want to go to his funeral," Harry said.
"You'd be expected to. That's why you got the letter. You're considered his apprentice, even if it was for just a few weeks. Maybe you're his very last apprentice."
Padfoot kept looking at the letter. "Did he ever tell you that he was named Pertinax Gertrude Spencer?"
Harry must have skimmed over that bit of awfulness. He found a bit of laughter in it, which is likely why Padfoot commented on it. "No, no, he did not. I'll just call him Old Spencer."
"Sirius is a terrible name. But Pertinax? Those parents..."
"I'll send a letter to the family. Do you want to come?" Harry asked.
Padfoot nodded. "I liked him. He knew his stuff and he was willing to help. When things went south in France, he jumped in and took over. He was sick, in pain, and dying when he helped us imprison a great evil. Is there anyone grander in the world than that? Such a one should be remembered."
"Exactly," Harry said.
X-X-X
Harry and Padfoot had been avoiding their last urgent Voldemort task. For all the questions they'd put to Dumbledore on Christmas Day, they had yet to wake up Tom Riddle and do the same.
They could barely even speak to each other about the need to do it, though Harry had spent some time preparing some questions.
It was unnerving to think about sitting in front of a dark lord and demanding answers to questions. Could there even be a reasonable answer to most of them? Would this drive both of them mad?
Still, they had to know certain answers and they wanted to know many, many more.
But this could be so painful.
"You wrote something down?" Padfoot asked as he shifted from foot to foot.
Harry held out his list, but his godfather didn't take it.
"I don't want to know the answers to most of the questions I'd ask. But I think I have a few that are safe," Padfoot said.
"We don't have to do it all today. We just need to figure out if there's anything urgent waiting to bite us."
Padfoot nodded, then stepped outside to their prison tent and began unwinding the wards.
He and Harry went inside.
Harry pulled one of the chairs over to the Riddle plinth, did the ritual to wake the stone, then sat down. Padfoot remained standing, but his wand hand was very close to his wand holster.
"What do you know about horcruxes?" Harry demanded of Riddle.
"I know that all of mine have been destroyed. That was why I pushed Crouch as hard as I did, to my regret. I had to get a new body before my spirit faded from this world."
So the Unspeakables had done as they promised. Harry wondered if they'd ever come looking for this last soul fragment? If so, Harry would be willing to turn it over, so long as they promised to exorcise it safely.
Harry asked more detailed questions about Riddle's horcruxes and confirmed much of what Dumbledore had known or suspected. They both might be insane, but at least they retained some of the details of what they'd done or researched in life.
Harry looked down at his list. He noted which ones he'd already asked.
He should have brought a pencil to tick them off as he asked them.
He picked out the next one, a modification of Old Spencer's suggested question during one of his last conversations with Harry and Padfoot. "What is the easiest way to defeat your ideas, Riddle?"
"Can you defeat an idea? I don't know. But even the most fervent purist would have trouble matching what I did with what I said I was doing. I said I was saving magic, but I ordered the slaughter of family after family. The truth was I didn't care about anyone else, especially not the magicals. Even the purists must know that now. Will they admit to being duped? Privately, yes. Publicly, they'll dig in even harder. But the idea is hollow, false, worthless."
Harry knew he'd be having this discussion with Riddle again in the future after Harry considered all of this more.
"What is the easiest way to defeat your surviving followers?" Harry asked.
"I have feared a upstart or a coup, so I have considered that. I wish I would have put something tricky into the dark mark, but I didn't. All I have is detailed information, gathered over decades, on my followers, their habits, their businesses, and their homes. I could slowly take them down if I needed, but I never insisted on some oath or vow."
Harry would definitely come back to this when, or if, Riddle's old 'friends' began making trouble again. Riddle knew where the bodies were buried – and the wardstones. Useful things to have...
Harry could see the next question on his list, but really didn't want to ask it. Still, he opened his mouth and said, "Why do you believe you were unable to kill Harry Potter?"
Padfoot went pale.
"I spent years thinking of nothing but that. There's nothing special about the boy. I spent a year at Hogwarts studying him, finding nothing. Of course, when I killed him a second time, he stood back up and killed the body I was in. I can appreciate the viciousness. I missed something about Potter, didn't I? Whatever is special about him, I still don't know. So, it was either the boy who was special…"
"Or?" Harry demanded.
"The other line of inquiry I considered was that I made a mistake."
"Explain the mistake you made," Harry demanded.
"I understand magic as well as anyone. I know that a magical person making a promise can invoke magical enforcement, even if they don't go to the effort of a formal vow, like an Unbreakable Vow. So I tried to never make promises to my servants and followers. One time… One time, I may have made a promise which I broke the night I attacked the Potter family. I may have died because of my broken, unintended vow. Magic is tricky, even for someone who has learned as much as there is left to learn."
Harry thought to ask more about this, but Padfoot walked forward. He nodded at the plinth. Harry nodded.
"How did you secure Peter Pettigrew in your service?" Padfoot asked.
"Wormtail? I knew nothing about him until one of my servants brought him to me for a meeting. He seemed useless, but I never turned down willing servants. Turns out I was the one mistaken as he was exceptionally dangerous to my health. If only I'd killed him, if only I'd never followed him to Godric's Hollow..."
Padfoot swallowed deeply, then stepped back. He'd been hoping for a different answer. Maybe a story of force or coercion? Maybe a little show of heroism on Pettigrew's part?
Tom Riddle seemed very incurious about his own people. He hadn't asked questions about a new recruit? Harry hadn't yet asked the right questions to get to the bottom of this.
He went with the next question on his list, for now. He'd ponder all of this again once he dug out a pensieve and reviewed these painful moments. "Where did you travel and learn the magics you did?"
"Same places as everyone else."
"But it was claimed..."
The voice seemed amused. "All rumors I started, all the rumors of my greatness, my delving into arcane magics. All the rumors are still working. Think, would you? All the facts about ancient magics, including the Greater Magics, have long since been collected. I learned about horcruxes in the Hogwarts library back when I was a student. I later went to Alexandria and read widely on other topics. I went to lesser known libraries throughout Europe and Asia, but they were still libraries. Still available, but rarely accessed, by lazy adult wizards. In truth, my prowess with magic came mostly because I was willing to practice. Plus I did some spell design."
So no secrets he learned twisted him? He was always set on some awful path? Harry hoped that that wasn't the truth.
Harry also hoped that his own interest in books and spell modification didn't turn him into this revolting specimen. Maybe it all came down to what his magic pushed him to do?
Harry wondered what Tom Riddle's style of magic must be. Padfoot's was play. Hermione's was knowledge and order. Ron's was family. Harry's was, he hoped, helping others and adventuring.
Voldemort's magic must have loved causing pain, not just regular chaos, but actual pain.
"Your supporters already controlled the Wizengamot. Why not have them elect you Minister, if that was what you wanted. What did your war accomplish?" Harry asked.
"Who would want to sit and rule? War was the point, not that any of my slaves realized it. The greatest use of magic is warfare, always has been. And I wanted to use magic."
Padfoot shook his head, but did not leave the room.
Harry found he wasn't interested in the rest of the questions he'd written, but he was interested in what Tom Riddle knew about his followers and others Harry had met or heard about over the years.
He asked about Draco Malfoy's father. "Thinks he's a dueller, but how many hours a week does he work at it? No, he's useful for his mind, and the galleons his forefathers tucked into a vault, but he's less than average with magic."
Cornelius Fudge? "The Minister, or former Minister? Perfectly corrupt, hateable by all sides in a war. Absolutely ideal for my needs. Angers everyone, inflames everything. A perfect bungler."
Dolores Umbridge? "Too revolting to be one of my servants, yet she already believed everything I put out there, not a question. No brain in that one, nothing to look at, no magic at her disposal. Fodder for the war would be her best use."
Gilderoy Lockhart? "Not one of mine, but I met him once. His wand was better suited for scratching his back than casting any magic. Not a bad storyteller if you could stand the personality."
Prestwick Wood? "The editor? Tried to have him killed a few times. I suppose that's the highest compliment you can pay to someone's competence and danger level. You want him dead, but can't quite manage it."
Severus Snape? "One of my double-crossers. Thought he was lying to me about his allegiance, but I knew it wasn't with me. Why tolerate that? I did with many because I could sow more chaos that way, into many camps. Very, very useful if your core goal is more war. More war."
Harry needed to find more paper and a quill. He had thoughts to put down, preparations to do before he came here again with more questions.
Tom Riddle wasn't at all what Harry thought him to be. The conventional wisdom was that he battled to win the Ministry. He could have taken it lawfully at any time. He really just wanted the blood to flow.
Padfoot was glad to leave and to respell the tent. Harry wasn't quite sure if his godfather was shaking, but decided not to ask.
It had been a very hard hour for both of them. Very difficult to hear. Riddle hadn't fought for territory or an ideal or an eventual goal. He fought because he loved fighting. James and Lily Potter died for that.
X-X-X
One day before Harry was due to return to Hogwarts, Harry and Padfoot took the Knight Bus to an estate near Bibury. The grounds were maintained, but the invitation said that they had no Floo access. Sirius said that he would apparate them away after, but he hadn't had the first idea about where Bibury was.
There were pavilions on the grounds so that was where Sirius and Harry walked.
Harry gave his name in the first pavilion and signed the register. Apparently someone had been waiting for Harry to appear as Old Spencer's grandchildren and their children almost came running from other spots on the grounds to say hello to Harry.
Some days fame was just a funny thing, even at a funeral.
Harry spoke to everyone who came to meet him, even though he felt he was taking time away from the other people who came to the funeral.
He tried to remember Celestina Warbeck's advice. He was in public, he was on stage. He would be polite.
While some interactions were painful, a few of the conversations Harry had were actually interesting. "Grandfather said he'd really abused you on that jobsite in France," Jonathan Spencer said. He looked older than Padfoot did, but that could be because his skin was deeply tanned.
Harry smiled and shrugged.
"I did a few sites with him, a long while back," Jonathan Spencer said.
"Are you a cursebreaker, too?" Harry asked.
"For a few years. Then I wound up taking over a site we had excavated. I came back and did a mastery in the history of the pre-Roman wizards of Italy."
"Are you a teacher?"
"No, I still hold the site. I've left it to help out with my grandfather's estate, but I'll go back fairly soon."
Harry lit up at this information, that ancient sites were still being rediscovered, that they had active teams working to understand what had happened.
Harry had questions. Oh, yes, he had questions.
Padfoot eventually had to interrupt Harry from acting insane. His questions had probably been a bit much.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Spencer," Harry said, as Padfoot gave his thanks.
They walked to the next pavilion, but Harry was blushing at his own behavior. "I just started acting like my friend, Hermione."
"Or something." Padfoot didn't laugh, but he was definitely grinning.
Under the largest pavilion was Old Spencer's still slumbering portrait, plus wizard photos of him in a number of places.
In the portrait and pictures he looked solemn, old, and worn. The last two times Harry had seen him, Old Spencer had been completely energized and happy. The plinths he had engineered had had a good effect on his mood, but Harry still had no way to know if they'd harmed his magic further.
At least Old Spencer went out after doing something important.
Harry invested the time to get a careful look at all the photos on display. Padfoot had no idea where most of the sites were. So Harry asked some of the other guests.
Old Spencer had really made his way around the world. A few spots in Italy, a few more in Greece, sites in Ireland and Wales, plus several more that no one knew. Was that Madam Spurl in one of the pictures? Her hair had been very different back in the day.
Harry heard the notice that the service was starting on the grounds.
Harry had to shake a lot of hands and talk to several fairly impolite 'fans.' He kept his cool. Padfoot glared at a few of them which was enough to encourage some of them to better manners.
Harry and Padfoot stood behind the circle of chairs where several of Old Spencer's family members were seated. Eventually Jonathan, the former cursebreaker and Old Spencer's oldest living grandson, gave the eulogy.
Mr. Spencer gave a good snapshot of his grandfather's travels and accomplishments in those few minutes, but not how mischievous he could be. Oh well...
The interment would happen in the family crypt later, for family only, so the gathering broke back into the pavilions.
More people than ever came to find Harry as they must have seen him, or gossiped about him, during the service. Harry enjoyed chatting with Old Spencer's former colleagues. Harry got a fuller picture of where Old Spencer had worked and what he had done.
Cursebreaking was dangerous stuff. If a tenth those stories were true, it was a miracle Old Spencer survived to be old at all.
Harry felt a little sad he couldn't and wouldn't share the very last thing Old Spencer had done. His great service to the wizarding world.
Harry was ready to leave when Madam Spurl found Harry. "Nice service for a prickly old bastard, one of my better apprentices, you know. Now, you, tell me your plans for the Floating Castle," she demanded, as intense as ever.
Harry knew he couldn't say he was still deciding or researching. "I have a lot of lists of what to try."
That got Harry a frown.
"Maybe I should ask you for your recommendations."
Those turned out to be the magic words. First he got a smile. Then he got offers to do this special thing or that exclusive event.
Harry just learned that some people asked your plans in order to tell you what you should do. At least Madam Spurl had suggestions that were better than what Harry had found in the guidebooks.
"I know a few museums, too, the kind you have to be invited to visit," she said.
Harry nodded without committing. Though he probably would like to hear more.
"Good, good. I'll send you a letter with some more suggestions. Now I understand my friend Spencer visited you shortly before his death," she said.
She knew something. Or was she fishing for a bite?
"We started a project over the summer when he was working for my godfather. We didn't really finish everything, but he gave me some good ideas to try in the future."
"I see. It worked, this project?" Madam Spurl asked.
"So far."
She then wore an eager grin. "I'm glad you're being cautious. But I have worked on more than just a taboo left behind by a certain madman. I recognize evil magic, yeah? If Old Spencer helped you with something along that line, I'm sure he did it well. Right?"
Neither Sirius nor Harry had anything to say to that. Madam Spurl knew a lot more than she should. Better to let her guess than to confirm anything.
"Expect my letter. Perhaps I'll see you in Japan this summer."
"You gave me your tickets," Harry said, confused.
"I get tickets for most of the trips. I actually use them once every five years or so. The other freebies I give away, don't worry about me."
"But you're still visiting?"
"This summer just got more interesting to me. Two weeks ago, a team announced it had finally settled on a window to reexplore part of the castle itself. There are runes that people are fighting over, what they are, what they do. I'll be coming to look, oversee some experiments. Probably referee the infants."
Harry wondered if he should offer to give the tickets back. It would hurt something awful, but he could put in for a future lottery. He decided that Madam Spurl would ask for them back if she wanted them. There was nothing shy about her.
"And how is your Mayan adventure?" Harry asked.
"A French team finally got inside the Chamber. I've been in to look, plus I cracked a few of the side rooms, but the French have overall control of the place. Damn my eyes. I was just a bit too blind to see what I needed to see."
"When will it be open to visitors?" Padfoot asked.
"Given what was done at Chichen Itza, what the runes describe, what magic is still active... I'd say never. Some photographs will make it out. But you want in, you'll need to be a historian or a cursebreaker, something like that. It's killed more people than we can begin to count."
"It's still dangerous, even now?" Harry asked.
"So many people were killed in there on purpose, to make the runes powerful, that it will remain dangerous longer than any of my great-great-grandchildren will live."
Harry was both disgusted and still intrigued. "Any publications coming out?"
"I'll send you a couple draft articles I've received or commented on. I'm not kidding, it's gruesome."
"I'm not committing to go into cursebreaking, but it is the most fascinating branch of magic I know about right now," Harry said.
"You do know how to flatter an old woman. Be seeing you. I'll expect more of the story when we talk in Japan."
Harry and Sirius left the service just after her, in between waves of his fans coming up and asking him questions. He made sure to thank as many members of Spencer's family as he could see.
X-X-X
Harry didn't take the Hogwarts Express back to school. He asked Padfoot to side-along him to Hogsmeade. He had little interest in being in a place where everyone expected him. What 'Snape' or Crouch did to him a few weeks earlier hadn't faded all that much from his mind.
Harry really did feel a lot less tense, but he wasn't quite calm when he was out in public these days. Shopping in Diagon was a pain, as was going to a funeral.
Harry remained polite when the other students arrived and the questions started about his kidnapping.
Harry decided to go for funny when he was asked a question he refused to answer. He didn't go rude when he was asked rude questions, like what it felt like to kill his first person.
(Answering that one truthfully would have been trouble, since the first person he killed was Quirinus Quirrel back when Harry was a first year.)
Within a few days of classes restarting, all of the madness over Harry's kidnapping dampened quite a bit.
Until Harry's first Potions class of the year.
Snape looked terrible, like half his hair had been removed root by root. He had deep bags under his eyes and was so pasty you had to find a new word for his skin other than 'white.' Clear? Translucent?
"I suppose I had better explain some things otherwise you, like the prior classes, will melt even more cauldrons than usual. Yes, I was kidnapped prior to the school year starting back in September. Yes, I was held in a trunk in my own quarters here at Hogwarts. Yes, you were taught potions by an imposter. Yes, Mr. Potter was abducted by the same imposter. Yes, Mr. Potter killed his abductor, and mine. For that, Mr. Potter, you have my thanks."
Then Snape launched into some complicated potion that was supposed to remove ingrown hairs. Wasn't there an easier spell for this? Wizards really had no logic about some things.
Harry never got a chance to acknowledge Snape's thanks. The dour professor wouldn't let him.
So Harry was also never truly tempted to tell Snape that his imposter was actually a better Potions instructor. Harry ducked a major bit of trouble by keeping his mouth shut.
Finally new rumors percolated and the mess about Harry's abduction became less important.
There was new work being done to cancel the Triwizard. The other schools were gone, but the Tournament was still continuing, officially. Whatever deal had been done to open up the Minister's office and cancel the Triwizard seemed to have unraveled.
The new election was delayed, not canceled.
The Triwizard wasn't delayed, even though everyone wanted it canceled.
All this seemed a much better thing to gossip about than Harry's bad day in Hogsmeade.
Even Neville liked politics, it seemed, that day in late January. Until then Harry had had no idea. But Neville was walking with Harry after Herbology and trying to sound out what Harry thought about the still unsettled race for the next Minister.
"After Fudge and Nott, I think that big stone down by the lake would make a better Minister," Harry said.
Neville laughed, but wouldn't take it as Harry's real sentiment. Which it wasn't.
"I don't care for any of the candidates so far. You?" Harry asked.
Neville shook his head.
"Is there anyone who hasn't said no, anyone better who could run?" Harry asked. He still hadn't heard back from the possible candidate he'd contacted before his kidnapping, Prestwick Wood.
"Many. But Nott has kind of soiled things. He was about the very worst in a century or two. Fudge was only slightly less terrible."
"I had a person in mind," Harry said.
"You did?"
"It's been a month since I wrote him. Nothing."
"You wrote someone and he didn't respond. At all?"
"Remember the Prophet editor? Oliver Wood's uncle."
Neville nodded, then thought about it. He seemed neutral to the idea.
"He knows the corrupt, how they work, how to defang them. He almost said he's got a hold on at least some of them. But I don't know what he would actually want to do, if he became Minister. I just have an idea he could settle into that world without being eaten alive," Harry said.
"He might not have done enough to get the votes," Neville said.
"What do you have to do? Just be in the Ministry?"
"Not always. Fudge and Nott were Ministry types, but that wasn't required."
"The previous ones?"
"You have to have a real profile. Someone prominent. Maybe a Wizengamot elder. Maybe a business owner. Some have been Aurors of prominence. Nott was a lackey to Fudge and sort of slimed his way into the office. Fudge ran a minor department before he became Minister, but his major advantage was that he wasn't in disgrace at the time, like the other candidates."
"Huh," Harry said. Neville had learned a lot more about recent history than Harry had bothered looking into.
Harry looked around. It was an odd day and something bothered him. No snow, that was odd for January.
No noise, either... That was especially odd for this particular year. Harry had snuck into Hogwarts over the break, on his ghost-stealing quest, and had heard all kinds of dragons.
"Hey, Neville, it's pretty quiet in there."
Harry pointed to the Triwizard arena.
Neville looked, then shuddered. No one really liked that stadium, its occupants, and its bloody history.
Harry really couldn't hear a thing from the arena. "Neville, just stay here a second. I want to see what's up."
"Harry, you can't."
"Be right back."
Harry broke out into a jog. He still heard nothing the closer he got. Then he went swift-and-quiet up the stairs.
On the arena floor, there was evidence that dragons had been there.
However, there wasn't a single dragon remaining, not Bobminth nor any of the others. Not one. Not a baby dragon. Harry stared and stared and nothing changed. No sign of battle. No sign of further destruction.
They were just gone, likely under their own wings and by their own decision.
Harry turned and ran. He waved for Neville to join him. He ran for the nearest teacher he could think of, Professor Sprout, back in the greenhouses.
"Professor..." Harry was completely out of breath.
"Mr. Potter, what is it?"
"I don't know who to tell, but the dragons in the arena..."
The witch went pale. "Yes, what is it?"
"The dragons are gone, all of them, even the smallest ones."
"All the dragons are gone? And we didn't know." She turned to some of the older students who were either in class or studying on their own time. "Everyone, everyone up to the castle. Now. Leave your things. Move swiftly. Dragons are loose, possibly."
Needless to say, Hogwarts became a zoo of people wearing red robes, blue robes, and whatever it was that dragon keepers wore.
If witches and wizards were terrified having huge dragons in close proximity to Hogwarts, they were jibbering when the dragons were loose and possibly anywhere within flying distance.
Harry had to give his story about a dozen times, as if he'd stolen a bunch of dragons.
Wizards. Better to just call them idiots.
It took weeks for the Ministry to give up hunting for the dragons. They hadn't returned. Only then did the demolition start on the arena.
X-X-X
It was the second-to-last week in February and it was time to do more work on the plan to visit the Floating Castle this summer. The group was still large enough that they needed to meet in the Gryffindor family room.
Harry had heard there were other groups, or perhaps just families, preparing to visit the Floating Castle in either Japan or New Zealand. He was quite pleased that he had received a good idea from Madam Spurl and presented it in such a way that a lot of other people got excited about it.
He was finally ready to announce his surprise, that he had two tickets to give away for the flight between Japan and New Zealand. He was waiting until the end of the meeting or he would derail a lot of otherwise attentive minds.
Neville and several others had taken over the lists of options that Harry had started. They were presenting some ideas and getting feedback from the larger group.
They'd borrowed the books Harry had bought or been given. But it was all up to them now. Wasn't delegating great?
The rest of the reports, on the inn options and some of the food possibilities, were over. The room was at peak excitement after talking about zoos and Floating Castles and hikes up a volcano. Harry suspected what he would soon reveal would blow the windows open with all the shrieking.
Harry started small. "I got Gringotts to answer a few questions about the money we'll need. It's different there, of course. They don't use the galleon like we do or the yen, which the Japanese muggles do. The magical Japanese have metal coins, but they're not the same sizes as ours and they're modeled after flowers, I think. We'll have to trade our gold in Gringotts Japan, so bring coin with you. Questions?"
There were a few. Some of which had been answered before. Some of which were new. Hermione, as the secretary of the 'club,' wrote them down for researching.
"Now, last meeting we decided we'd all see the Floating Castle at the same time. So I got us our tickets reserved, a single three hour block. We get to float up twice, maybe three times, because a normal tour is just an hour. We'll have a guide and get to see a couple of rooms."
"A couple?" Hermione demanded. There was her Gorgon of learning rearing its head again.
"It's massive, don't forget," Harry said. "Absolutely massive. It could house fifty thousand witches inside, back before it started to crumble."
Hermione calmed down. Even she realized the impossibility of seeing a structure that large in just three hours.
Harry smiled a little smile, a mischievous smile. "One more thing. I mentioned it before, the quarterly flights of the Floating Castle."
"You weren't able to enter the drawing, though?" Neville asked.
"It takes place a year in advance, so I missed it, regretfully. The flight is over thirty hours. There are food stands set up, guides in some of the main rooms, areas where you can set up a tent, plus a self-guided tour available."
"Don't torture us," Colin Creevey said.
"Here's the new information. It leaked out to someone that I wanted to be on the flight. I got a gift before the holiday break of four tickets, two of which are for me and a 'responsible' adult."
The room filled with noise at that.
"Who had tickets?" Hermione asked.
"Our Defense professor from second year, Madam Spurl, remember her? She's consulted on the Floating Castle. She was the first one to mention it to me, actually. So I owe her a lot. I have also enjoyed the group that's planning this trip. I've decided to give the other two tickets to two people in the group."
There were interested people at that and others who went glum, as if Harry would pick favorites.
"I want them to go to the people who will value them most." He had decided he liked the term Padfoot once used as they discussed this problem. Yes, Harry wanted people who would value the tickets.
"So we'll do a contest. I've put together a list of ten spells you probably don't know or don't know well. Whichever two people make the most progress on these spells in the next month get the tickets. It's totally optional. If you're not interested, don't participate."
"What spells?" Neville asked.
"Some travel spells. A couple translation spells, like those Hermione was talking about last meeting, plus spells that will keep you out of trouble."
Harry hadn't included the Mind's Water Globe or Sunfire or the Lightning-Bearer on this list, but he had put down Diviso as a good cutter. He had also put down a few spells he intended to learn, like some illusion spells he'd been curious about since he was a first year student. Harry had found a few books on illusions in the used book stores he haunted.
He handed out the sheet of parchment listing the ten spells.
"Be honest when explaining how good you are, as we're measuring improvement in these spells. I'll go first. I'm excellent with Diviso...," Harry said, listing his strengths and also his lack of knowledge for the illusion spells. "But I want to learn them. Maybe it'll help me to keep out of a few fights from now on."
Hermione listed her strengths with the ten spells, mostly with the translation spells, but said she would rather have someone who really wanted a ticket to have it. She would learn the spells, but not compete for a ticket.
Harry smiled at that. It must have hurt to give up an opportunity to increase her knowledge. He was going to have to thank her somehow.
Pretty much everyone else seemed interested in competing for the tickets. Though Colin did say if he didn't win one, he wanted someone to take his camera and document everything that happened. It wasn't that bad of an idea. Or maybe show off a memory next year in a pensieve...
Harry beamed at it all. They'd been excited before, but the excitement was at a whole new level now. The contest idea seemed to work so far. People were excited, rather than sullen, even though only two of them would win the tickets. Harry needed to thank Padfoot for the really good idea.
X-X-X
A few hours after Harry announced he had two tickets for the Floating Castle flight, he trudged to a ceremony ending the whole Triwizard Tournament. This day was apparently the day originally selected for the Second Task, which hadn't happened, thank Merlin.
Whatever the hold up in officially ending this debacle, it had dissolved once the dragons from the First Task escaped their arena in January. No bureaucrat or politician or parent wanted their names associated with continuing the Triwizard.
Harry had been invited to the ceremony since he had served as Cedric's 'adviser,' which had been a lie according to Barty Crouch Junior. Still Harry was glad to have helped Cedric before the task and helped quite a few others during it. He could have done without meeting Bobminth and her consorts, though.
The words from the politicians were brief and mumbled. It was a short, awkward way to end the whole thing.
After the politicians spoke, they left. Finally the bad idea was dead. It was sure to be remembered for how badly it had gone, killing off Aurors and journalists and even permanently disabling a Minister of Magic who was likely to die any day.
Cedric seemed a lot less nervy now. "I won't miss your 'Dueling Club,'" he said.
"We're restarting that soon. Are you sure?" Harry asked, almost laughing. "I could swing you an invite."
"I'll pass. I'm trying to get a Charms master interested in me."
Cedric was a solid student. Was he deluded about his odds? "Was the process of finding a master that hard?"
"It takes time and a lot of money. I was hoping to work for one this summer so I could prove myself, maybe get a lower cost for the mastery."
"How much will it run?" Harry asked. He'd known, in an abstract way, that some of his professors had proven their mastery of a field, but he hadn't dug into how they did that.
"Supporting myself, the honorarium to my master, the books and library subscriptions I'd need, travel and portkey costs, fees for the tests I'll need to take… It'll run more than a thousand galleons. Getting that kind of coin was partly why I entered the Triwizard drawing."
With no completion, there was no winner and no galleons award. Cedric had risked his life for no gold at all.
"Your parents?" Harry asked.
"My dad? If it isn't a job at the Ministry, it isn't anything. He had to get a mastery for what he does, but he sort of loses his hearing when I mention that. You'd think he and Molly Weasley were the same blasted person on that issue."
"How long does it take?" I asked. "Once you graduate and start?"
"It's ten hours a week for three years or more. Potions Masteries are harder, like forty hours a week, mostly brewing. But most of that they can sell, recoup the cost of the ingredients and then-some. The work you do for a Charms mastery, you can't usually profit from." Cedric shrugged. "Not until you are a master."
"Well, what do you do for three years? How do you earn a mastery?"
"I'll have to create one or more charms, more than just a minor tweak, and prove it to the Ministry. I'll travel to libraries and conferences to learn about what's happening in the field. When I'm ready, I have to sit some exams to prove my breadth of knowledge on all classes of charms. I'm okay taking a few years to learn and practice. But the upfront cost..."
Harry nodded, thinking.
To Cedric, it was a large enough sum he'd been willing to risk his life in this awful tournament.
To Harry, with the Potter fortune safely tucked away on his own land, a thousand galleons would make him pause, but it wouldn't keep him from buying or funding something life-altering.
Here and again Harry had been considering the advice Celestina Warbeck offered last year, advice on how to be famous, but also how to do good. She said she helped other artists to get established. The idea of helping individuals appealed to Harry, even if her specific choice didn't.
Maybe he needed to do something similar, but for witches and wizards who could improve Wizarding Britain.
Now that the threat of Voldemort was gone, Harry needed to think bigger. He noticed a lot of problems, but had done little to fix them so far. For example, Harry didn't like much of what he saw in the Ministry. He had had decent teachers at Hogwarts mostly because the Flamels insisted on it for the two years they'd been in charge. The wizarding world needed more good people doing good things.
Could Cedric do some good if he had more training?
"What profession are you thinking of, after the mastery?" Harry asked.
"About everything I've even considered requires one. You want to make brooms for Nimbus? Charms mastery required. You interested in making a self-stirring cauldron, or those unbreakable crystal vials for an apothecary? Charms mastery required. Want to go on the dueling circuit? The ones who make money at it, they all have masteries. Spell developer? Charms mastery required. Half a dozen offices in the Ministry, charms mastery required. You want to apply to be a cursebreaker? They require a mastery in a related field before they'll consider you. Charms, runes, things like that."
Harry was sure that Cedric could do well if he had a bit of help now. He decided at that moment to get involved.
"Most Quidditch players spend the off-season working on something else, charms mastery or healing or the like. Not that I'm good enough to go pro right after school..."
"You get a Master interested and I'll pay the fees," Harry said very quietly. "The honorarium, the books, the testing fees. You can cover your living costs, but the rest..."
"What?" Cedric asked.
"I meant it."
"Harry, you can't..."
"I made the offer. It won't be a loan. I'll pay the fees if you convince a master to take you on."
"I'd have to repay it..."
"No. You won't repay me or the Potter family. Pay for someone else in the future to get something valuable. Could be training. Could be a medical treatment. That's all I want."
"You're not joking, are you? It's hundreds of galleons for the honorarium alone."
"I made the offer, Cedric. I'd like to help you, if I can."
"But I'd owe you or your family service. There'd be a contract."
There was something about being indebted that made Cedric wary. If he wanted surety, Harry would be glad to do a contract. It wasn't like he'd thought through all the details. "We can do a contract. But it'll call for you to do a service for someone other than a Potter in the future."
Cedric began nodding, thinking it all through.
He looked a lot less stressed now.
"Are you sure?" Cedric asked.
"I am."
"Good. Because I really want this."
"I'll ask around for a law-wizard who can write it up," Harry said, wondering if Padfoot knew of someone like that.
Harry hoped this would work out as well as he expected. Money and friendship could be a problem, but hopefully not this time.
X-X-X
It was the first day of March and the slightly smaller Gryffindor dueling club was in progress. Nearly all the girls in the club had departed once it was clear that Cedric wasn't coming.
Interesting to think they'd all come just to ogle the Hufflepuff. Harry would be sure to mention it the next time he saw Cedric.
Harry was dueling a sixth year called Morton Biggs. He was even bigger than his name suggested, almost like he was a cousin to the Hagrid family.
Harry was trying out some of the ideas he'd first learned from the Sundown duel last year. He'd used some of those ideas to save his life during the First Task and again during his final confrontation with Voldemort.
Morton had a lot of endurance, but he wasn't landing many spells. Part of that was Harry's diverting spells that would otherwise land. Harry had a big, stupid grin on his face as he considered all of this great fun.
Morton, though, was getting frustrated.
"Let's call it, Biggs," Harry said.
"You're a monster, Potter. What is it you were doing?" he asked.
"You watch that Sundown duel last year?"
"No, I missed it."
"Well, I've been modifying spells, like they talked about." Just not exactly the way they did, Harry left unsaid. It was slow-going work and he'd been distracted with other tasks along the way. He figured he'd keep up with his research and practice if he had a dueling club to force him to keep being inventive.
"How?"
"It's touched on in Arithmancy, but not much in third and four year. So I read ahead." All true. Just not exactly how Harry was accomplishing what he did. Still he'd read up on the proper method to look for tips.
"I wish someone had told me. I'm in Creatures and Muggle Studies."
Harry commiserated a moment, then shook Morton's hand to end the duel. Morton went over to one of his friends and began asking about Arithmancy.
Harry looked around the room. Most people were sweating. The duels were hard this time because Harry had let them go on quite a long while. People weren't trying to win, mainly because Harry suggested they use this time to practice spells coming up in exams, especially OWLs and NEWTs.
Harry saw some decent transfiguration and a few pranking spells. It was all good fun.
Harry brought the duels to their end. They were out of time and the participants were winded. Maybe they'd all build up more tolerance later?
Harry found he still had plenty of energy after he wrapped up the dueling club. He decided to go for a walk on the grounds.
Hedwig landed on his shoulder soon after he walked onto the grounds. "And how are you?" Harry asked.
She didn't answer of course, but there was a contented air to her, not that dissimilar from how Harry felt.
"It's going to be a good spring. It's going to be a good year, I think."
Harry saw Hagrid out doing something with one of the vegetable patches near his hut so Harry walked over to him. Hedwig stayed for a while before she flew off.
Harry knew the world felt lighter to him, but he couldn't explain why. Hope for this summer's trip? No longer having the menace of Voldemort threatening him?
Nothing seemed to harry him these days, not even classes getting harder or Snape acting full-on vicious now without Professor Perenelle Flamel to keep him in line. Alastor Moody was also more insane than his reputation.
But Harry was content.
His life was full and wonderful.
X-X-X
Harry had not made the mistake of asking another Hufflepuff out this Hogsmeade weekend.
But he could pick out the young Ravenclaw gentleman who had. There was a vast number of students in yellow and black following him around. Susan Bones, contrary to her promise the year before to not haze any of the third years, was one of them.
Poor kids, the ones getting bullied and the wrong-headed ones doing the 'pranking.'
Harry ran the errands he had, namely replacing a few shirts as learning new spells could be hard on them. He got some more chocolate which he seemed to crave more and more. He then took a table in the Three Broomsticks and ordered some lunch. Some people wandered in. A few stopped to chat. Then Luna Lovegood came in and sat down at his table.
He hadn't spoken to her much since she made a prediction to Harry before Yule. But, to Harry, it sounded like she had known what was about to happen to him, the kidnapping. So he asked her about her prediction.
Luna just smiled, then ordered bangers and mash.
She started prattling on about various things while Harry went back to work on his shepherd's pie.
Eventually the Hufflepuffs, all of them, tried to squeeze into the Three Broomsticks. It was not successful. The Hufflepuff girl and her Ravenclaw beau were absolutely miserable. Harry locked eyes with Susan Bones who flushed and looked embarrassed. Well she should.
"You should date," Luna said.
"What?"
"Practice up now. You're destined to have a dozen children if you marry well."
Harry suspected he shouldn't try to argue against anything Luna said. She was just a bit too in-touch with the future to be safe doing that. "I couldn't even come up with that many names."
"I wouldn't worry about that. But get started soon, make yourself stop stuttering around women. Get ready now. You won't meet the one until after you've seen all the Great Wonders."
"All of them?" More than one was known to be destroyed or lost. How would Harry find a destroyed Great Wonder?
"Oh, yes, all of them."
"Atlantis is sunk. No one's quite sure what Shangri-La is, just that it's not around any longer. So you're saying I'll never marry."
"I'm not saying that at all."
Harry couldn't even begin to consider what all this meant. Would his adventuring take him to places that weren't really lost or destroyed? "Someone will find Atlantis?" Harry asked.
Luna just smiled. Then another butterbeer arrived for her. She pocketed the cork for some reason.
She was definitely as strange as a seer, though Harry liked her. But he apparently wouldn't be marrying her, if her own prediction was true. He had already met Luna, but he hadn't met the woman he would marry – and might not for a very long time.
X-X-X
It was a busy evening in Gryffindor. Harry was just leaving his dorm for a lecture on making wizard portraits when he heard his mirror make its distinctive tone. Padfoot was calling.
"What's up, godfather?"
"You know a Prestwick Wood?" Padfoot asked.
"Hermione had him in as a guest speaker. I've written him a letter since then."
"He got in touch with me. He wants to meet you tonight."
"How?" Harry asked.
"He can sneak in to Hogwarts if you've got a place to talk."
Harry nodded and gave directions for his spot on the fifth floor, the one he'd stayed in between his first and second year here.
"Stay by the mirror. I'll Floo him back, see about timing."
All of which meant Harry had to make his apologies to Hermione, with a promise to explain later. She was so frazzled with the last second details that she didn't much mind. Plus her lectures had good attendance even if she didn't bully anyone into attending.
With the timing suggested by Padfoot, Harry had little time to spare so he made his way to his fifth floor suite. He didn't wait for long.
The door creaked open. Two people came in, Mr. Wood and an Auror Harry didn't know. They'd both been using some kind of disillusionment. The Auror inspected the area then disillusioned himself and left, probably to stand outside the door.
"I'm sorry I never wrote back to you, Mr. Potter," Prestwick Wood said.
Harry was really confused about why all of this was happening, and with so much secrecy. At the very least, he could be kind. "Call me Harry."
"Call me Press, then. You did start me thinking, really thinking."
Harry nodded, finally catching on to the topic in question: the race for the new Minister of Magic. "Are you going to run?" Harry asked.
"The nominations open tomorrow. Right now, I plan to put my name in."
"Who else is likely to run?"
"Two Aurors I've heard of, someone from Floo Services, a Wizengamot member. And me."
Harry wondered if Wilton Skeinbrush was one of those Aurors. Harry hadn't been impressed by the man during the aftermath of Aurors attempting to subdue dragons. Or his appearance in Hogsmeade after Harry had been kidnapped, then escaped.
"And why did you want to talk tonight?" Harry asked.
"Sorry about how last minute this was."
Harry just nodded, not sure if he wanted to accept the apology until he understood all of this better.
"Before I filed to run, I wanted to know why you wrote to me. What was it that you wanted from me?" Wood asked.
Wanted? How about a real human in office? "I don't want another Fudge. Or a Nott. Or a Skeinbrush."
"Oh, you know him."
"Two brief, unpleasant meetings."
"You don't know me. You know a bit about my family from Oliver, maybe. But you reached out to me, sort of put the idea in my head. You don't expect anything?"
He was trying to find out what he would owe Harry.
Nothing. Harry was too young to sit on the Wizengamot and vote. He might be famous, but he wasn't offering an endorsement nor did Press seem to be asking for one.
"You won't know this, but I have a pretty good sense of the Ministry," Harry said.
"How?"
"I stayed in Hogwarts between my first year and my second..."
"After..."
"Yes, after Professor Dumbledore was killed. I suspect everyone at the Ministry trooped through there just to be seen having influence in the investigation. I had a way to keep out of their sight, but I did stop to listen in. I didn't like what I heard. Likewise, after the Goblet of Fire was exposed as a fake. Lots of cowards. No one brave, no one admirable, no one willing to say 'enough.' Which was in poor contrast with your talk on surviving the dark years. You showed the kind of honesty I thought was missing from the place."
Press nodded, considering what Harry said. "I initially didn't think much of standing for office. But I mentioned it to a few people and learned more about how things stand now. Something happened in the Wizengamot recently. It's filled with proxies since the summer, perhaps those people who attacked the Quidditch World Cup just weren't healing from their injuries. The Wizengamot is shaky enough right now that I think I can win. Then we can root out the monsters from the last war. Finally, a decade too late. That possibility is why I'm doing this."
Wood was definitely thinking of the Ogden family, who probably had some role in the death of the McKinnons, his old bosses at the Daily Prophet. Revenge was as solid a reason as any other, just so long as he had other goals.
"What do you think you want to accomplish?" Harry asked. "If you're successful."
"A more honest legislature and high court. Also, I'm very interested in helping out the stalled hospital move. St. Mungo's can't stay in London where it is, not taking up the prime space it does. Muggles are trying to clap hands on that building, it's worth an actual fortune."
"How can I help? Why did you want to meet with me tonight?" Harry asked.
"I hadn't decided that the odds were actually in my favor until yesterday. I had to talk to a lot of people first and they started talking to other people. This news took months to percolate back to me."
Harry just nodded.
"I wanted to find out the why and how of that letter. I wanted to thank you. I don't think I'll need your help, at this time. With an emphasis on those three words."
"Your black book of blackmail should take care of it?"
"Something like that," Wood said.
"Well, you have my best wishes. I support a cleaner Wizengamot. I support competent people holding Ministry jobs. I support moving the hospital out of London."
"Then I'd be happy to keep in touch, Mr. Pot- err, Harry."
Harry shook the man's hand, then went to catch the remaining talk on making wizard portraits. He'd think more about the conversation later. Things like that took time to digest. Mr. Wood – or Press – would eventually want something.
X-X-X
Hermione's hair often frizzed when she was stressed. Tonight, though, she looked like someone had stolen all her hair and given her a mane of crooked bristles pointing in every direction. Exams started in a week, but tonight her stress came from hosting the last 'secret' lecture of the year.
Her stress came from her invited guest, the first non-Gryffindor to give a lecture.
Why a non-Gryffindor? Because goblins weren't allowed to attend Hogwarts, so none of them would be an alumnus.
Yes, Hermione Granger had invited a Gringotts goblin to give a talk on money management. She fully expected this lecture to leak and cause a minor scandal in the pages of Daily Prophet, no matter what the Gringotts expert said.
Harry was trying to calm her down, but the others in the family room weren't helping. The four Weasleys still in residence were bouncing off the walls. Their father, Arthur Weasley, was the new Minister's Undersecretary. This was a major, major promotion.
Harry himself was suffering some surprise, too, as Padfoot had contacted him an hour ago and let him know that Prestwick Wood planned to put Sirius Black on the Wizengamot in September. Possibly as a reward for Harry Potter, though given to his godfather. Harry wasn't sure the reasoning, though neither was Padfoot.
It was going to be one of those crazy nights.
The only good side to things was that the family room was a bit less crowded than usual. The fifth and seventh years had almost all bowed out given their upcoming OWL and NEWT exams.
Hermione left to collect their guest. Harry listened to the Weasley gossip, but he was trying to think what advice a Gringotts goblin would give. This could either turn out to be very tedious or marvelously informative.
Hermione returned with her guest. He had dressed up for the occasion in a fine suit and all kinds of golden chains leading from one pocket to another. Hermione led him up to a raised podium while she stood on the floor.
"Please welcome our guest from the investments office at Gringotts in London, Bloodsmile."
The goblin looked out and nodded at the gathering. "I thank you for the invitation, Granger. You in the audience may not have heard how this talk came to be. Last summer, after I heard something about this lecture series, I reached out to Granger. I said I should like to speak about investing. She agreed and invited me. Then I needed to get permission from Gringotts itself. My superiors needed to approve what precisely I would say. I hope you learn from this talk as it has been a long time brewing, most of a year."
And Bloodsmile had only turned up after a incapacitated Minister Nott had finally been replaced, then passed away. The new Minister, or the end to Fudge and Nott, probably had something to do with Gringotts allowing a goblin to appear in the wizarding world, at Hogwarts.
"Let me talk for a moment about why my superiors were so leery about me coming to speak. First, wizards and goblins have not always had good relations."
Harry agreed with that, especially considering Professor Binns' obsession with recounting goblin rebellions.
"We had great difficulties in the 1960s and 1970s with certain wizards. I shall not say their leader's name, as some wizards react poorly to it, but you know who I'm speaking about. Thankfully he is no longer of concern, even if some of his ideas still have proponents."
Harry wondered how the goblins were so sure he was gone. Had they figured out Riddle's horcrux trick? Had the madman stashed one in Gringotts? Oh, boy…
But the imprisoned Tom Riddle knew that all his horcuxes were destroyed. Somehow the Unspeakables, the goblins, or both had gotten at whatever Riddle hid in Gringotts. This was giving Harry a headache.
"Second, we at Gringotts are very limited by treaty over what kind of investments we can offer to wizards and witches. We invest for ourselves, of course, without restriction. But I persuaded my bosses that if we ever wanted to change this situation we needed to help educate witches and wizards over what opportunities there are and why everyone should be able to make use of them."
So the goblins were trying to get some old treaties voided so they could offer more investment services to wizards?
This might turn out to be interesting after all. Or at least something very different.
"Let me talk about two portfolios. One available to a goblin. One available at Gringotts to a wizard. Perhaps you will understand why we want all of you to thirst after these options."
"A typical goblin at Gringotts saves half their ransom proceeds, gambling winnings, salaries, bonuses, smuggling profits, victory purses from the fighting pits, bribe receipts, graft intakes, and other miscellaneous income."
Smuggling… Fighting pits… Ransom proceeds… Graft! What exactly was going on, Harry wondered. Was all of this just normal goblin society?
"We can live to be three hundred so most of us plan to work for a hundred fifty to two hundred years. Let's say Goblin A wants to invest what he is saving, not just stick it into a vault. Over the course of many years he'll come to own part of one of the mineral-rich mountains we bought off muggles. And a fraction of the muggle-run mining operations we own in secret. He may own buildings in several muggle cities and ownership shares of several muggle companies. Plus whatever investments he likes in the wizard world and in the goblin one. He'll be a wealthy goblin when he's too old to steal or fight in the pits and too blind to work on ledgers at the bank."
The room was quiet, save for a few people who were baffled by fighting pits which had been mentioned a second time.
"Now a wizard, by our reckoning, saves little. Most of what is saved goes into a vault where it collects no interest and isn't invested. Why, you ask? Very little gets invested because there is little to invest in. The wizard world has no stock market. You have many businesses, but most of them are owned within families. Land and other property is owned within families and sells infrequently, if ever. Gringotts cannot help witches or wizards to invest in the muggle world because of various treaties. So I hope you will see that Wizard A, who lives more than one hundred years, will have a very poor retirement after he gets too old to sell quills to people visiting his shop front."
Harry knew about shares, but not much. He knew there were ways to find out more.
"Many of you come from families who could do well investing with the muggles. Hopefully you will take this advice with you and convince them of it. The more wizards who do this, the easier a time goblins will have ending some terrible provisions in treaties. It's fear of muggles that keeps things as they are. We can all do much to reduce that fear."
The goblin looked out at the group then smiled a very toothy smile. "Questions?"
Harry found he had plenty, but the sea of hands that rose into air said he wasn't alone. Harry let the others go first as he continued to listen.
What a strange talk.
What a head-ringing talk.
Harry didn't have to leave his family's wealth piled up as coinage. He could do something with it? Maybe Hermione's family knew some stockbrokers. Harry knew better than rely on anything that his aunt and uncle had ever told him, but he wouldn't have such a problem with Hermione's family. Or maybe Finch-Fletchley?
He wondered what Hermione would make of it all. Bloodsmile really hadn't talked about money management, other than 'go out and do it.' In fact, his entire talk was more political: get your families to invest in the muggle world so the fear goes away about rolling back some old treaties.
Harry suspected there was a lot more to all of this than Bloodsmile had said. But perhaps Padfoot would know or be able to find out.
Harry listened to the wild questions and the even wilder answers. Yes, Harry learned about fighting pits and ransoming strategies and how to receive bribes properly. Very useful stuff.
Harry thought just how wild it would be to live as a goblin. He knew better than to write anything like that on his upcoming history exam, though. He'd get a Troll for a sentiment like that.
X-X-X
Harry tossed and turned and finally gave up on sleep. He got dressed around five and made himself some breakfast. Padfoot was up a bit later.
"You didn't sleep at all?" Padfoot asked.
"Too excited. I'll crash tonight," Harry said.
"Well, we should be off soon. You have a bag ready?"
Harry nodded, then finished his breakfast.
By a quarter to seven, Harry and almost twenty other people were at the Ministry of Magic waiting for their portkey. Hogwarts had been out for three weeks, but today felt like the real first day of summer.
Padfoot was the only adult going, assuming he qualified as an adult at all. But families last summer had let their children camp out at the World Cup for a week or longer. Sending kids off for just five days must have seemed less intense somehow...
The group was let into the portkey office a few minutes before seven. All of those who planned to come were here. They were each wearing their bags.
One minute before seven they all grasped the rope enchanted as their portkey. Then they were off. The journey seemed to last forever, but it was only six minutes as measured by Harry's watch.
Harry looked more closely at his watch. It was just after four o'clock PM in Tokyo. From seven AM to 4 PM, almost a whole day had vanished on them.
"Everyone in need of coin, let's head to Gringotts to exchange. Then, dinner if you care to. The remains of the day are yours," Harry said, although all of them already knew. The excitement of the day might just have allowed a few of the more-eager ones to forget.
From there, the whole group went to dinner at a grilled chicken place in Tokyo's version of Diagon Alley, which Harry couldn't spell and dared not try to pronounce. It was the only meal they'd all share until they visited the Floating Castle in three days. The skewers of different chicken parts cooked over charcoal were amazing to Harry. This was one of the spots Madam Spurl had mentioned in a letter. The old lady knew her chicken.
Everyone already had the list of options compiled by the group, but Harry asked to make sure everyone still had a copy with them. People could and just might make last minute changes – or the weather might not cooperate with what people had originally planned to do.
Hermione and Neville were the first to leave the dinner, though they were heading to different places (a library and some public gardens, respectively).
Harry saw off most of the others before he left.
His first thing was something Madam Spurl had suggested and offered to arrange, an after-hours tour of Japan's Cursebreaking Guild. She wasn't a member, but she knew enough of them. His fame, plus her infamy, had made this possible.
Harry bought a portkey to Kyoto that would put him close to the headquarters.
He walked into the tiny storefront five minutes before his appointment. The inside of the building was vast. This is what space-expanding charms were all about. Harry didn't need to make Godric's Manor huge. The right charms and wards could do it all for him. He had never seen anything like it. Funny that Hogwarts didn't use anything like this, or the Ministry of Magic in London.
Harry saw that the Guild made good use of their expanded space, with a vast library which focused on that one topic, but looked to be nearly as large as Hogwarts' whole collection on all the topics it covered. Harry could see open doors to rooms that contained replicas of Japan's most famous protected, or formerly cursed, sites. Madam Spurl had written him that one room was temporarily set up with replicas of a number of the spaces in the Floating Castle.
Harry checked in at the desk while using one of the translation charms he'd learned, but the welcome witch spoke very good English.
"Your tour will begin a few minutes late. The previous group arrived late."
Harry just nodded.
"Perhaps you'd like to visit our library?" she asked.
"Could I?" Harry asked.
"Be respectful of the researchers. Many of them are out of the field trying to solve problems before returning to the field."
"I'll be as quiet as a mouse."
"It'll close before long, but your tour should be ready by then."
Harry took the pass she offered, then promised to return within thirty minutes.
A quick stroll inside confirmed that the library was incredible and covered dozens of languages, not just Japanese. Harry decided he'd have to learn more languages if he ever wanted to practice warding or cursebreaking because the resources weren't limited to any one language.
Harry realized he wouldn't have time to read more than section titles and a few books that had obviously English titles so he spoke to a librarian if they had any recommendation lists available in English. Thankfully, they had pamphlets containing recommended books for various sub-topics, also in varied languages. Harry took a copy of each one in English, French, German, and Japanese.
Harry knew he had some excellent candidates to acquire for his own collection.
He was seriously turning into a book-monster like Hermione. He'd be sure not to mention this library to her, as she wouldn't be able to get in without someone calling in a favor. He didn't want to hear the tantrum.
Harry was back soon enough at the welcome desk to return his pass, then his guide turned up.
The youngish man, with dark hair, introduced himself as Tsuyoi Kokoro. He spoke excellent English. Harry was wondering if this was a superior translation charm or perhaps actual knowledge. So, this time, he stopped wondering and just asked.
"I studied for a muggle degree in California a few decades ago. I learned English the hard way." Mr. Tsuyoi offered a smile, but it seemed insincere. "Since you have the tour to yourself, perhaps you can tell me your interests. We can spend more time in some places, less elsewhere."
"Well, I'm seeing the Floating Castle in a few days. I also have tickets for her flight to New Zealand."
"I will still show you the models, then. They are a marvel on their own, but we can spend more time elsewhere."
"Good," Harry said. "I am interested right now in houses, residences. I helped demolish a magical estate last summer and found it fascinating."
Harry seemed to improve in Mr. Tsuyoi's estimation. He actually had some interest in this field. He wasn't just a famous person flexing his fame.
"Perhaps the rooms we have from our excavation of the first and second Imperial Palaces will be of interest? The runes and spells can be determined, but the spells are quite old."
This didn't sound quite like what Harry wanted, but he didn't know enough about anything to be too critical right now.
Yes, Harry was here to learn. "What kind of cursebreaking do you specialize in?" Harry asked.
"When I'm not doing my service to the guild, like with private tours here, I specialize in sunken islands, finding them, investigating them, restoring the wards to keep them intact."
Like Atlantis? Harry remembered the 'joke' that Luna Lovegood had told him about visiting all the Wonders, all the Greater Magics.
"Are there that many?" Harry asked.
"Well, a few hundred known ones that need maintenance. Plus rumors of others that haven't yet been rediscovered."
"Why did anyone sink them?" Harry asked.
"That's part of why it's considered cursebreaking. Some were natural islands where warfare occurred that sunk them. Some were wizard-made but the spells or enchantments failed."
"Where I'm from we have stories of Atlantis, possibly Avalon and others."
Harry's guide smiled at that. "We have similar ones over here. Some think Shangri-La is in the mountains. Some think it myth. There are a few of us who think it was a mountainous island, purely magical."
"So that's what you're looking for?" Harry asked.
"It'll be another few months before my group sets out again. We're scouring what maps we can find of the underseas."
"The muggles have done a lot of mapping."
The guide nodded. "But even muggle techniques can be fooled if there is any magic remaining. We have compared what muggle maps we can get against our own, the known sites we maintain. Very few of the known sites have ever been detected by muggles. All of those have been repowered and are hidden again."
Harry was glad he'd let Madam Spurl talk him into coming on this tour. He realized it was her way of getting him to try on the idea of becoming a cursebreaker. She was a subtle one when she wanted to be, also very patient.
Mr. Tsuyoi started their tour with their special room for the Floating Castle. It was amazing, as it could switch out one model of the Castle's rooms for another just by touching a rune on the wall. Harry wouldn't forget this room anytime soon, but they didn't linger. Harry was due to see the real thing soon enough.
The guide then took Harry to the many rooms devoted to the oldest Imperial Palaces. The Imperial Palaces had always been built with at least some magical features and protections.
"Here are models of the earliest spirit traps we've found anywhere in Japan," Mr. Tsuyoi said.
"Spirits, like ghosts?"
"Yes. The culture of Japan is more encouraging of ghosts. But even centuries ago we did not want the muggle emperor overwhelmed with magical ghosts. So we devised these traps..."
The description didn't exactly match what Harry and Old Spencer had done to Dumbledore, Peeves, and Tom Marvolo Riddle, but the idea was a not-too-distant cousin.
Harry would need to make a note to look into the concept. Maybe their methods were superior to what Old Spencer had worked out under severe time pressure?
"How did they prevent magical attacks on the emperor?" Harry asked.
"There were guards, of course, inserted close to the emperor. But that mainly covered when he was traveling. If he was at the palace, the wards covered the situation."
"What kind?"
"It has changed over time, but in Japan we prefer trap-style wards for dwellings."
"I'm not familiar with the term," Harry said.
"They're easy to enter up to a certain point, allowing dangerous people in, but deny a person of ill-intent the chance to leave. Anyone inside them has limited ability to cast spells, also."
"Are they still used today?" Harry asked. This was something else to explore further.
"Somewhat."
Harry didn't think that answer was the complete answer. "Have they been replaced by something better?"
"Specific wards now are better than those in the past. But the idea is still a fine one. They are just very difficult to emplace, expensive."
"I see."
Mr. Tsuyoi smiled. "There is a reason Magical Japan has never been successfully invaded, let alone conquered. It is also the reason we did not participate in the nastiness that the muggles got up to while you had Grindelwald running around Europe."
He implied, 'Unlike so many elsewhere...'
So he was very proud of his home, to the point of rudeness. Harry said nothing. He was here to learn everything he could rather than argue.
The tour of the Cursebreaking Guild took more than three hours and Harry hadn't even seen everything.
He did get more information from Mr. Tsuyoi on the better resources he knew of in English. Harry would be busy in the used book stores once he got back to Britain given he needed to track down the recommended books from Mr. Tsuyoi and the pamphlets from their library.
Harry turned up in the village they were staying late that night. He took his time walking to the little inn as he could see the Floating Castle, all lit up, in the distance. Amazing.
Once he arrived at the inn, Harry listened to stories of shopping and climbing one of Japan's volcanos and much else. He just said he'd been on a tour of some historic sites, which was true and also a complete disservice to what he'd seen.
Harry had paid extra for a small room to himself. Sirius had taken a suite. The others had mostly gone in two or three to a room to keep the overall cost down.
He went to bed early because they were departing for the Himitsu Magical Creature Preserve early tomorrow. Almost everyone was going on that part of the trip.
The complicated schedule had made everyone happy, leaving no one feeling like they were wasting their time doing unappealing things.
X-X-X
The morning had finally come.
The entire group stumbled out of the inn just as dawn broke. They walked to the grounds that the Floating Castle called home.
Even tethered to the ground, the castle was taller than Hogwarts. It was wider than the Black Lake. Harry just had no words for it, none at all, seeing it this close.
Hermione had stopped talking of the various book shops, libraries, and book printers she had visited. She was that in awe.
Harry handed over the tickets for the group, making sure to note that he, Padfoot, Neville, and a woman called Carin Smithson all had tickets in two days to do the journey to New Zealand.
Neville and Carin had competed hard in the spell competition Harry had designed and no one else in the group seemed to still be unhappy that they'd lost out. After all, now that they knew about this place, they could put in for tickets in the future.
Their three hour tour featured three periods where the castle floated up, and floated back down again. It wasn't even close to enough time to see what there was or how it all worked. There were a hundred key rooms filled with essential runes, plus thousands more that were for housing or shops, back when an entire magical country moved into it and left whatever land they had come from.
Harry used his first visit to write notes to ask about during the voyage. He did ask about which rooms would be open and available for viewing during the trip. Many of the larger rune-areas would actually be in use during the trip, so the visitors could make of them as there would be staff inside already.
Harry spent a good deal of time after his first visit in the little gift shop erected in a large tent on the grounds. There were very few guides in English available there, but Harry did get another list of which books had been published on the Floating Castle. More things to search out in the second hand shops.
Somewhere in those three hours Harry got, and couldn't get rid of, the silly idea that Godric's Hall should float. Not fly around, but float above the ground, perhaps over an artificial lake on the grounds. Silly, childish, but it just seemed right.
Padfoot laughed when Harry mentioned it as a joke.
But it wouldn't leave Harry's head.
He knew he wouldn't do it for the main house… but a floating vacation home, now that felt very, very right. Very wizard.
X-X-X
Twenty hours into the flight to New Zealand some huge wave of energy ripped through the Floating Castle.
Harry dropped the bowl of ramen he'd bought from a stand, turned, and began running.
He didn't know why or how he picked the direction he did. But he eventually saw other people converging on one of the main control rooms. There was apparently a door in the room that had previously been just a bit of wall. That reminded Harry a bit of Hogwarts, with its trick stairwells and walls changing into doors. But this seemed a lot more urgent.
It seemed likely that the researchers on board with Madam Spurl had touched something that they probably shouldn't have.
For one, Harry could finally tell that the Floating Castle was no longer moving. It was still, just floating, out over the ocean.
Tiny, ancient Madam Spurl pushed her way into the scrum of people surrounding the door. "Back. Back, everyone. Some strange magic and you all want to gawk at it. Any sense? Or did you check it into your baggage. Potter, eh, I should have expected you to show up for trouble. You get back, too."
So Harry did move back from the door. But he didn't leave the main room.
It was still shocking to him that level of magic. And how little of this structure was well understood. And that people were still flying around in something that they didn't actually understand. All of a sudden this trip seemed a lot less of a wonder and more of a worry.
More staff gathered around Madam Spurl and they cast all kinds of spells on the door and near it. "I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of doors on this wall, all with the same kind of hiding magic, but only this one is visible now. We're going to have to open it," Spurl said.
No one stopped her.
Harry could see in the next room a little. It was small, a mere fraction of the size of this main room. But it was covered in runes Harry couldn't make out. He was too far away. But he could listen, as someone had thought to magnify the voices inside the new space.
"That's the invisibility symbol used here," a young woman said.
"That one is for landing. But what's this other one?" an old man said.
It all broke down into shouting. Then it all went silent. Someone had canceled the 'sonorous.'
Another flood of magic almost brought Harry to his knees.
Whatever they had done… Harry saw another hidden door, just to the side, but this one was made mostly of glass and showed the outside. He could see ocean and clouds and… Harry walked to it and it opened for him.
Harry stepped outside onto one of the ring balconies he had seen when looking up at the Floating Castle, but he hadn't known how to access them.
There, in the distance, Harry could see another Floating Castle.
It wasn't identical. It was far dirtier, for one, and its stone was of a different base color. It had fewer towers, but each of them seemed to have more floors. It had more green areas or maybe they were just so overgrown that they seemed more common over there.
There were definitely two of these castles. There was the possibility of many, many more.
The other tower was coming closer and closer to the one Harry was on. It was...docking? Like two ships meeting up in the middle of the ocean?
Yeah, one of those researchers had definitely done something unexpected during their poking and prodding.
Padfoot eventually found Harry. Harry also chatted to some of the researchers and to Neville. He hadn't seen much of Carin since the Floating Castle departed Japan.
Harry didn't really leave that balcony until they arrived in New Zealand. He'd been watching the reseachers cross over to the other castle and start exploring it. He couldn't see that much, but it was enough to hold his interest.
When they landed in New Zealand they landed both Floating Castles. There was a huge crowd on the ground. Someone must have sent the news ahead about the mid-air discovery.
Madam Spurl was the one everyone wanted to talk with. Harry caught part of her statement as he deboarded. "Well, maybe we will find an entire Floating City in my lifetime… Wouldn't it be a hoot if we were looking for the sunken continent of Atlantis but we actually found a still-intact floating city instead? The runes inside the second castle suggest it definitely used to dock with something larger than it was..."
Harry looked over at Padfoot. They both must look a fright. It was amazing what they'd seen, but it was also quite terrifying for a while there.
"I think we're going to be answering questions, not hiking," Padfoot said. "We might still get to one of the larger magical villages, but the whole plan is..."
Harry just nodded. He wasn't too sure he wanted to leave this new, small village right away. Too much interesting stuff could happen here. If anyone worked out anything about this second Floating Castle, it would happen right here.
X-X-X
Several days later Padfoot sidealong-apparated Harry from the Ministry of Magic in London to Godric's Hallow.
"I need a vacation from that vacation," Padfoot said.
Harry didn't disagree. Things had gone a bit sideways, but the amazing kind of sideways. It was all still exhausting.
"Look," Harry said.
They hadn't been gone long, but long enough. Ministry workers had been clearing part of a hill to one side of Godric's Hollow before Harry and Padfoot left for Japan. Now construction had started on the new hospital, likely to be called Godric's Clinic or something like it.
Harry was glad to know how much of it would come from Lucius Malfoy's forced donation a few years ago, via feuding with Nicholas Flamel.
The building didn't look to be on multiple floors, for now at least. Perhaps a second or third floor was in the plans later.
"Minister Wood made good progress," Sirius said.
Harry just nodded.
Harry really hadn't wanted to come back, not when so much was uncertain in New Zealand. Was the Floating Castle and its sister actual proof that Atlantis existed somewhere as a floating city or continent?
He knew he should distract himself by organizing all the book title suggestions he'd picked up in Japan and New Zealand. Sometime soon he was going to be spending a lot of time in used bookstores.
For now, Harry could just enjoy remembering the highs and lows of that trip. All the planning, all the expectation, then what happened was actually more marvelous than he'd hoped.
"That first real adventure was a massive success," Harry said, smiling.
"I agree. Just pick something that won't stop my heart next time."
"Fine, fine."
"I'm off for two days of sleep. Wake me if my tent catches fire. You okay?" Padfoot asked.
"I'm all for sleep. But I'll go into the village shops and refresh our food first. I'll eventually be hungry."
"Smart thinking."
"Someone has to. You're getting old and mangy."
"Oi, I am not."
They both laughed at the frequent, terrible joke Harry kept retelling and that Sirius kept reacting to.
Harry surveyed his land before he ducked into his tent. So much to do. Wards to remake and repower. A house to rebuild. An entire family's reputation to rebuild. But Harry now believed it was all going to be great fun.
He could, and would, take his time with it.
He'd travel more, get more ideas, and really do all this up right. Maybe he'd get a job out of Hogwarts before he got serious with the rebuilding. Or he could follow what Cedric would do and continue his education by finding a master to study under. Lots of time to decide. A lot of the desperate speed Harry had been operating with had disappeared now. He no longer counted time, and living, a luxury.
Harry yawned.
He was running on fumes for now.
He needed to gather some food, then he'd go to sleep. The rest would keep even if the ideas were working and tumbling and demanding his attention. Harry couldn't shout them down. So he enjoyed them as he dropped his bag inside his tent and changed into more Muggle clothes. Then off he went on his errands.
What a wonderful summer it was so far. The world was so huge, so strange, and only getting better.
X-X-X
A/N: There is only the epilogue remaining.
I've spent most of my writing time this year on a trio of original mystery/science fiction novels, so I apologize for neglecting this story. In 2019, I will begin releasing them. If you'd like more information, please visit my FFN profile page.
X-X-X
