Last chapters: The twins found out what Horcruxes are. Dumbledore concluded that Harry was turning evil after Harry told that he would go to the Grangers. Stanley Bates is finding more and more clues that Hermione and the Dursley's are in some kind of criminal network.
Note: Based on the review of Brian1972 I updated the last scene of chapter 8. The story should be understandable without reading the update though.
-= Quinn, 28 December 1991, 2 minutes to 11 O'clock=-
Quinn, the large Gargoyle was waiting for nothing in particular. It was boring but he had to proof that he, Quinn was the best Gargoyle guard on the British isles. Not that he had any idea how many gargoyles there were in the British isles, but that was beside the point.
From far, Quinn heard a slender man approach. The shoes made a soft tick that could be a few teachers which the most likely candidate being Severus Snape.
The gargoyle looked at him, and the black cloak and black hair looked like Severus Snape.
The rather dark man stopped in front of the statue revealing a distinct smell of unwashed hair. He definitely smelled like Severus Snape.
The castle magic revealed that his name was Severus Snape. He had the same dark signature on his left arm than Severus Snape usually had. The signature matched that of Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Severus Snape was on the white list so in principle he would be given access.
The signature that appeared to be from Tom Marvolo Riddle was another issue. Even though it was a signature and not an actual soul, the white-list system would be used. However, he would have to check two white-lists. First the white-list for enchanters and then the white-list for checking whether people have access.
Tom Marvolo Riddle was not on the white-list for recognized enchanters. That list was relatively small since no person had been placed on in in the last seven hundred years. Tom Marvolo Riddle did appear on the white-list for people having access to the headmasters office. Therefore the enchantment was allowed and he did not need to dispel the magic in the dark signature on the left arm. Not that it would have been too difficult to do it.
He went to step two of the protocol and erupted a silencing field around them.
The man who was most likely Severus Snape uttered the word "Cheese Muffin".
As that was the current correct password, Quinn gently stepped aside.
-= Severus Snape =-
"Come in" the headmaster called just before he wanted to open the door.
Severus Snape walked into the familiar office of the headmaster.
His eye met the phoenix who was busy picking his feathers. Each time it's head brushed against a feather, a shower of sparks came free. He observed the remarkable sight, careful not to get burned in the process. When properly collected phoenix sparks could be a valuable potion ingredient. In most cases, the phoenixes didn't care about this. It would be so much easier if the creatures would allow the sparks to be collected without being tricked. On the other hand, the ingredient would be vastly cheaper as well.
The bird didn't seem to like him. Not that he blamed the bird. He had dabbled a lot in dark magic and the phoenix seemed to sense it.
"Lemon Drop?" the headmaster offered him. Shouldn't the old man know by now that he didn't like sweets? "No thanks"
He hoped the headmaster would be clear in his intentions, this time. He still hadn't forgiven the old man for the time when he had ordered him to tell the Carrows the location of the Dudleys. The wards didn't work as the old man said they would work.
He asked three times if he was sure that the wards would hold the attacks of any death eater, and three times he heard that the attackers wouldn't have a chance.
How the old man could have made such a big mistake, he didn't know. Whether it was overconfidence, old age or just some missing information, He would try to find it out. It didn't matter either. The old man had failed and endangered Lily's last offspring in the process. He would not easily forgive him.
Not that the brat needed to know that. He had such a Gryffindor behaviour, much like his father. On the other hand, he didn't seem to have a natural talent for plotting. There was always the chance that a master-plotter would not be detected but he sometimes wondered if the hat had made a mistake.
Not that anyone would know it. He had strengthened his occlumency barriers in the last months and was sure he would sooner die from versivatium poisoning than to tell anything about any of this.
"You may be wondering why I summoned you."
"Yes" Snape said "Although I doubt it will be because Fawkes is giving sparks again." He had to focus on something irrelevant in case the headmaster would try to use Legilimency. His days as spy thought him that, it always seemed more natural in that way.
"Last night I found Harry sitting before the mirror of Erised. From the conversation we had I fear he is more like Voldemort than I thought. He is already willing to perform dark rituals."
"What kind of rituals does he plan to use?" Severus asked, mentally cursing the headmaster always keeping information behind. Of course, the cursing was done behind many barriers of occlumency.
"I do not know for sure, but I found the book 'Secrets of the darkest arts' missing. It focuses of Horcruxes and other ways to cheat death. None of the ones I remember would be useful for him."
Snape reflected on the words the headmaster just told him. He of course knew the title of the book, not that he ever read it. Why was such a dark book kept at Hogwarts? Horcruxes were evil artifacts that not only split the soul but corrupted it as well. When creating one, you split your soul, making you mad in the process. Other rituals were likely just as dangerous. What did the headmaster think when keeping that book in a school of children? Does he want to breed other dark wizards and witches? He knew of several Slytherins and a few Ravenclaws that would like to lay their hands on such a book.
"You think Harry has it?" It was not one of the Slytherins that he expected to have interest in such a book. The boy seemed to show little Slytherin tendencies. He sometimes wondered why the boy was sorted in his house. It was also a NEWT level book so the boy needed to do a lot of research before being able to complete any of the rituals in that book.
The headmaster nodded. Did he really not consider all the alternatives? Or did he have some information that Snape did not have. Given Albus's personality it was most likely the second answer.
"And what do you think he wants to do?"
Snape saw the hesitation in Dumbledore's speech before saying "I am not sure."
He was sure that the headmaster had an idea, but didn't want to say it. This surprised him a bit. The headmaster called him but he didn't want to share that piece. But he would figure it out in his own time. He just had to put the clues together.
"I guess you want me to keep an eye on him? Anything special I need to look for?"
"Yes. Harry may have gotten some clues what's behind the third floor corridor. I don't know if the stone is involved in his plans, but should you find anything that makes you suspicious, please inform me directly."
"Yes, some of the traps are quite deadly." Snape agreed. "Will that be all?"
"Yes and good luck, Severus."
While walking outside, Snape was sure that the headmaster didn't told everything to him. In fact he believed that he was deliberately keeping a key piece of information behind.
And when the headmaster would keep a piece of information behind it was usually to change the behavior in the person he was telling it to. And he did not want to be manipulated again. That meant he had to get over his memory a couple of times. Luckily he was a master occlumens.
The headmaster told that the boy wanted to use dark magic, but things were not always clearly black or white. Magic had many, many different shades of grey and different wizards perceived these shades differently.
Cheating death was a dark area of magic, but the clue of the Mirror of Erised told him it had to be connected by some kind of desire. Most people feared death but the mirror didn't show what fears you wanted to conquer. What did the mirror show?
Then it hit him.
The mirror must have showed his parents. That was why Dumbledore didn't want to tell him. The boy wanted to try to resurrect Lily.
The question was how the boy was planning to do it and whether he could succeed. Till now nobody ever succeeded in truly resurrecting dead people. However, there was not a single theory why it would be impossible. In addition, partial results have been obtained. This meant that people would continue trying, despite the great cost at themselves. He himself had been researching the subject whenever he had found some time. It was a tricky matter, but maybe not as impossible as some light-sided wizards would say.
The next question is where the boy would have gotten these ideas. Knowledge about anything related to dark rituals would be closely guarded.
Could it be that someone was tricking the boy. Many dark wizards could deceive people believing these kind of lies. And Quirrell already tried to get to the stone once. What if the DADA professor tricked Harry in helping him in exchange for his dead parents. (Not that the man could give that). Yes that was what the headmaster feared.
He needed to find out more about the boy's plan. He needed to get the boy to trust him. Given how he reacted the first months this would be no easy task.
He also needed to help the boy. It doesn't matter how the boy knew it but if the boy would attempt to get the stone, the boy would die. He knew what kind of mean tricks were in the tasks to trick any attacker. He for example had made a challenge with seven bottles of poison and a useless riddle. After all, one does not play fair when fighting against Voldemort.
Now that Lily's son could be trying to obtain the stone, he had to find a way to make sure the boy survived. The headmaster ordered everyone to make challenges where the obvious solution was trapped. His challenge for example was a simple riddle and seven deadly poisons. Solving the riddle would trick the user in drinking the poison. He would never forgive himself if he accidentally killed Lily's son, when the said son tried to resurrect his mother, whatever brat the boy was at the moment.
-= Stanley Bates, 6 January 1992 =-
The old office he worked in, had collected some dust over the Christmas vacation. He had work to do.
He would do a routine check on these two families if only to satisfy his curiosity. The Grangers and the Dursley's would be checked before his lunch break.
He started his computer. It showed some text on the screen and made some simple beeps before showing the familiar command line:
C:/
He started the database application and searched to the word 'Granger' in various categories.
No crimes involved in this family. Only two parking tickets. He looked in a few different tables, and found something on the Grangers. They had a business. They were dentists. An address and phone number were included.
On a piece of paper, he wrote the registration numbers. He could use that later to find out what amounts of money was going through that business. It could be a front business for some criminal organization.
Then he switched to the Dursley's expecting some similar dull list of incidents. He was however surprised by the content returned.
He found a list of five reports of suspected child abuse of a boy called Harry Potter. With renewed interest, he looked through the list of complains.
Three were filed by primary school teachers who were concerned. One was filed by a neighbour.
The first note had a note with the text: 'Teacher that filed complaint forgot about the crime', which was quite strange as later she filed another complaint.
The other notes had similar notes and were closed for questionable reasons. In one, it was mentioned that they would search the house with a warrant the next day. However, no mention was done what they found in the house. This was a breach in the protocol.
This was really becoming strange. What was going on at that house?
The last one was filed by a nine year old girl. He instantly recognised the name. It was Hermione Granger. Interesting: This confirmed there was some kind of connection between the two families even before she went to Smelting.
He opened the file and the content didn't make any sense at all. It had a very descriptive content what happened with the boy. Hermione quoted it in words that sounded almost like it had happened to herself, but was absolutely clear that it happened to the boy.
If this report was to be believed, he was called names, beaten, locked up in a closet under the stairs and being denied basic human rights like food. At one point it mentioned a broken leg without bringing the boy to a Hospital at all. If this was true, it would have been a wonder that the boy would have survived.
Like the other reports, not much was done with this report. It was however for a different reason. Their parents stated that Hermione never met the boy. When Hermione was questioned, she could not give an adequate explanation how they met. Some stuff about reading each other's mind, which was, frankly unbelievable.
Then it turned to a short investigation into the Granger family. After all, it would have been possible that the girl wanted to give a subtle hint that she was abused.
Another thing worried him more. Someone was keeping this quiet. There was no way five cases get closed like this without someone putting pressure on people.
He had to do this careful. If he asked the wrong questions to the wrong person, he could anger them. If it was an internal corruption, he may be fired. Worse, if it was a criminal gang, they may threaten his family. It would be best to not letting them, whoever they are, know he was investigating this. It would be slower, but he would figure it out.
-= Harry Potter, 16 January 1992 =-
That bastard of a Snape kicked him out of the class, 20 minutes before the end of the lesson. Not that the man told him a good reason.
Being tired was not a good reason to send someone out of their class. This was especially true because the teachers scheduled the astronomy lesson yesterday evening.
After that he couldn't really fall asleep. His skin seemed to itch every time he turned himself.
When he came back, the beds were already cleaned. On his bed was a small package. He looked at it surprised. Who had send him the package?
No name except an accompanying letter addressed to 'Lily's son Harry' in a typewriters font.
That was a strange way to address a letter or a package. The writer clearly focused on his mother and not on his father. In addition, he didn't know of many wizards who used typewriters.
He opened the letter, looking whether it contained more information. It said in the same font:
Dear Harry
Enclosed in the package you will find a vial. I do not know what your plan is. But it may lead you to the third floor corridor. I overheard some teachers about it. There are many traps in that area and I will not encourage you to go there. Should you find yourself there anyway and you survived the other traps, you could encounter a wall of fire. The vial in this package makes you immune to the flames. The vial is charmed to be unbreakable.
As a warning, I will also explain the trap. In the challenge you will see a table with seven bottles. A riddle tells what is in every vial but the true content of the vials is poison. To get passed the trap, you need to brew your own potion. I expect similar traps for the other challenges. Again, I discourage you going there.
For the safety of both of us, it is important that you tell nobody about this letter. Do not look the headmaster or your potions master in the eyes. They may use legilimancy. This is a self-destructing letter.
Kind regards,
A friend.
While the letter burned up in flames, he thought what kind of strange text it was. It mentioned that he had a plan, of which he knew nothing. Why would he go to the corridor? He had not the faintest clue who had send him the letter (1) so he couldn't ask that person anything. In the package, he found a small vial of purple liquid.
He put the vial in his cloak and prepared for the next lesson.
-= Harry Potter, 25 March 1991 =-
Harry and the twins were looking through old newspapers collected in Hogwarts. They had an amazing collection of daily prophets. It was tedious to look through them, but they hoped to find information on Tom in this way.
The first few months really took long. They read every article, looking for the name Riddle. As this resulted in nothing, they began to look for a faster way.
They found a couple of spells that could help them. The 'Verba Candentio' spell highlighted specific words or phrases in the newspaper. For example when saying 'Verba Candentio Riddle' it would light up all instances of the world 'Riddle', not much unlike someone went over it with a permanent marker. The biggest difference was that they were not permanent.
Although this already made the work a lot faster, a second spell cut the work even further. The 'Candentio Praesentia' spell indicated whether a newspaper had such highlighted words. If there were those words, the wand lit up in green light and if no words were present, the wand lit up in a red color.
It wasn't as much light as a lumos charm and to be honest harry was glad with it. The spells took a lot of toll on your magical reserve. It wasn't as if using a single spell used a lot of energy, but to successfully go through a year you had to cast over seven-hundred spells. Because of the huge amount of spellcasting, they limited the number of papers they went through to two months per day per person. In addition, they would only do this on the weekends.
In addition to the lumos charm, they did read the headings on the front page. After all, they had to take the papers anyway and maybe they would find some information on Riddle or some other juicy details on the wizarding world as well.
If they found an interesting article, they would copy it, by reading it aloud to a dictation quill. In that way, they could always find the articles back.
The three decided to use Verba Candentio to reveal the last name Riddle which gave remarkable few false positives. (2)
Today, they were reading through the articles in the spring-term of 1943. In the first few months, they didn't find any article matching the name. It wasn't until Fred (or George) picked up a newspaper from june and cast the spells that he found something. His wand lit up in a green color.
With renewed interest they started to look over the paper. Fred flipped pages until he found the article.
"Is the dictation quill ready?"
"Yes"
"Okay, I'll start"
14 June 1944
Student died by half-giants spider.
Earlier today, Rubeus Hagrid was arrested by four aurors. He has been connected with the murder of Myrtle Warren. She was found yesterday, dead in a girl's lavatory at Hogwarts. The murder used to pose a mystery until a student provided the school with the necessary clue.
Slytherin prefect Tom Marvolo Riddle told us "Rubeus Hagrid is breeding dangerous creatures. I found out that he has a giant spider in his dorm which I told the Headmaster. I regret not informing the authorities earlier but I expected Hagrid to take my warnings seriously. He doesn't seem to understand that XXXXX creatures are dangerous. Looking back, I regret giving him time to correct the problem himself. I mean, if I told the teachers immediately, Myrtle would probably be alive right now."
According to the aurors, the clue from Mr Riddle was vital in the arrest of Mr Hagrid.
We from the daily prophet regret that Mr Riddle didn't tell us sooner, but want to thank him anyway. Thanks to his work, a murderer was found and Hogwarts will likely stay open next year.
"Wow, that is a shocking article." Harry answered truthfully "Never knew that Hagrid had been involved in a murder."
"Neither did we." the twins said. "The correct term though is manslaughter."
"What?" Harry asked.
"It is only Murder if you intend to kill someone." George told him "Manslaughter is when you cause someone else's death without intending it."
"Still, Hagrid bringing in a dangerous spider to Hogwarts." Harry started
"Is exactly something Hagrid would do." The twins completed for him.
"But?"
"Well, you told us about Fluffy. Let's say, this is not the first pet of Hagrid we have experience with, unfortunately."
"I wonder why Hagrid is currently a member of the staff of Hogwarts. After all, if Hagrid was really guilty of manslaughter, how could he be here? Wouldn't he form a danger to the students?"
"I guess it will have something to do with Albus Dumbledore. He allows the strangest people in his staff." the twins said "I mean, a ghost for History of magic. He is so boring."
"Well, he may be boring" Harry argued "but Binns knows what he is talking about. I doubt you will find someone else with literally hundreds of years of experience"
"Well, maybe Hagrid has something else where he is useful for. I mean, there are dangerous creatures in the forbidden forest."
"And how do you two know that?"
"Trade secret" they said in union.
With a feeling that he missed something, Harry read through the article again and found what he was looking for.
"The article says that Tom was a Slytherin student and became a prefect." Harry said. "Is Riddle a pureblood name?"
"Not that I know. Why?"
"Well, from what I have heard, it is difficult for a halfblood to get status in my house." Harry said. "Still, Tom succeeded in it. That means he must be really special in some ways."
"I guess so." The twins said.
"Let's look further." Harry said "Maybe we can find another article today."
Indeed, ten minutes later, Harry discovered another article.
"I found one." He said in a slightly harder voice than he meant. "Is the quill ready?"
"Yeah"
13 July 1944
Morfin Gaunt attacks muggle family.
Yesterday evening, in Little Hangleton, Morfin Gaunt was arrested for using the killing curse on a muggle family. Three people were killed.
This was not the first time, Mr Gaunt attacked the muggle family. He and his late father had spend time in Azkaban before for attacking the same family.
Together with the information from the Priori Incantato spell, this was sufficient evidence for the aurors to arrest him. Under versivatium he told them that he attacked the Riddle family for what they had done to his sister. Tom Riddle and Merope Gaunt were a married couple. He left her, despite being bound to her by marriage. Merope Gaunt was died, five months after the event.
According to some muggles, from the same village, the Riddle family was an awful family and will not be missed.
"Strange article." George commented.
"Very strange indeed." Fred added to his brother so comment.
"So Tom killed Merope and Morfin killed Tom and his family out of revenge?" Harry concluded.
"The article doesn't say that."
"It makes the reader conclude that Tom killed Gaunt …"
"… without literally telling the reader …"
"… which most likely means they didn't have enough evidence to link Tom to the death of Merope …"
"… and wanted to avoid any claims of libel."
"And, this is the end of our search for Tom Riddle?" Harry concluded. "Both Tom, his parents and Morfin is dead."
"I have the feeling there is more going on."
"Lets look in the library as well. From the books he borrowed, we may find a better image what kind of character Tom Riddle was."
"Is." Harry corrected "We already know that Tom didn't really die that day."
Author Notes:
(1): I don't know how many of you have guesses it, but the letter is written by Severus Snape. He did add a few lies in the letter to avoid being detected by Albus Dumbledore. After all, a double-spy like Snape picked up some tricks of the trade.
(2): The amount of false positives is so low because the magic is intent based. The intent is to look for the surname Riddle, not to look for the noun, riddle.
I added a poll to give your opinion who Harry's guardians should become. There are several plots going on that may change the guardianship of Harry. Depending on the order of events it can play out in wildly different ways. Although I have my plans how it plays out, I would like to know if the community has a vastly different favorites.
