Chapter 9
The modern Prometheus
11:15 am 1st September, Hogwarts express.
Harry was seated in a compartment on the express reading an ancient Sumerian book on the nature of soul.
There was a knock on the door of his compartment, and then the door was promptly opened to reveal two girls, a blonde with blue eyes, and a redheaded girl with brown eyes, who looked like first years, in a soft voice the redhead began "hello, my name is Ginny, Ginny Weasley and this is Luna Lovegood, the other carriages are full, may we sit here?"
Harry nodded at her once and they took seat across him, the blonde took out a magazine titled Quibbler and began reading it, while the redhead was reading the charms book, soon the train departed the station.
For a while, around half an hour, all were busy indulging in their respective activities, then all of a sudden Ginny spoke, "Those bloody idiots!"
At first Harry hadn't paid any attention to her words, but when he heard screams he couldn't ignore it anymore. He looked up from his book and saw that she and her friend were staring out of the train somewhere, he followed their line of sight and saw Weasley and Longbottom from his class, in a car, that was flying adjacent to the hogwarts express, he promptly sent a wave of his magic at the car, subtly of course, and when he found the magics applied on the car to be stable, though he couldn't understand some of it, chalking it off as family magic, he decided to carry out what he considered to be the best plan of action, and returned to reading his book, ignoring any further screaming coming from the girls or from further down the train which sounded very much like Granger and Bones.
He was reading a part of the book where it stated, that the general sumerian magics were more receptive to pain, especially pain of loss, he didn't understood what that meant, the last time he had felt any pain was when he conducted his Fiendfyre experiment, that too for a short time, he hadn't felt any other overt pain since the time he was 7 and uncle Vernon had kept him in the tank of acid for a week, his body had adapted, the constant regeneration from the damage that acid had caused, resulted in an evolution in his regenerative abilities, his body learned to block pain, absolutely, the only reason the experiment had caused him any pain at all was because how the magic of his Fiendfyre fought against his regenerational abilities to corrode it, to nullify it, though the prospect was quite hard for the inferno as it was trying to conquer that to which it owned it's existence, and eventually it failed in the task it had set itself upon, though the end result was what satisfied the young wizard for it not only increased his general magical power, but also further evolved his regeneration capabilities.
Snapping out of his thoughts he saw the blonde girl had went back to reading her magazine, while the redhead was again reading her charms book, so he to went back to reading his book.
It was almost night when they reached hogsmeade, and the girls went off their way to join the other first years following the groundskeeper and reaching the school via the lake route, he unlike them didn't go to meet up with his peers, instead simply preferring to teleport to the waiting chambers, from there he ran a detection sweep for the castle to search for three people One, Voldemort, which turned out to be negative, and Two, Headmaster Dumbledore, who was as it seemed coming down from his office with professor Snape, and three Professor Mcgonagall who apparently was just behind the chamber doors probably waiting for the first years to arrive, he quickly entered beyond the said door, closing it behind him, to approach his Head of the house who had her back turned towards the door, seeing this he bagned on the door once, loudly, with a start she whirled around and hissed "mr Potter what on earth are you doing here?"
He wrote to her, "i was looking for you professor, i wanted to inform you that i have arrived at the school but i have no intention of attending the opening feast, so i ask you to excuse my absence at it".
Her lips set in a thin line, and for a few moments Harry though that she wasn't going to permit him from evading the feast, then she took a heavy sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose and began, "honestly Potter! For the love of magic, first off don't sneak up on people, secondly, unless an emergency, don't come to the castle alone without your peers, and on that note how did you even manage to reach here so fast? to the best of my knowledge the Hogwarts Express arrived at Hogsmeade just a few minutes ago".
Minerva saw the expression on his face was the same blank mask that he always wore, and years of dealing with pranksters, including this young man's father, was giving her the feeling that her words were being heard but not heeded, and the only reason he was waiting so patiently here was because she hadn't given him what he wanted.
She heaved a great sigh and once again pinched the bridge of her nose, and then she began again, "Alright, Potter…. Harry, you may be excused from the welcome feast, but i want you to report to my office this sunday just after the breakfast, is that clear?"
Harry nodded once at her and gave a small curtsy, and promptly started to leave for wherever it was he was going, Minerva saw his disappearing back and sighed once again, this time quite softly, taking a deep breath she composed herself for the oncoming gaggle of first years.
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01:00 am 2nd September, underground hideout, Limerick, Ireland.
Harry calmly walked ahead in a barely lit corridor ignoring the dead bodies littered around, it was a gang of flesh traders, they called themselves Hoppers, made of Squibs, Muggles, and Magicals alike, they captured young muggle girls and put them under a variety of mind control magics then promptly sold them off to the highest bidders, the biggest problem in trying to capture this gang was that they left almost no trail behind, not to mention they never abducted girls from Ireland where they were based, and seldomly from rest of the UK, most of their abduction activities were carried out from cross continental areas like Detroit in America, Kashmir in India, and Pakistan occupied parts of it, Tibet, Afghanistan, Africa, and China, places where different kinds of factors often caused unrest and it wouldn't be uncommon for people, especially girls, to disappear under mysterious circumstances.
He too had come across information with regards them by an accident, while he was wiping out the Yáolán, the Cradle, they called themselves, stealing children from all over the world to be supplied as future criminal recruits for Drug, and Terror, organisations across asia, sleeper cells, drug handlers, name it and they had it, they even occasionally provided certain children, to a very specific clientele, though they weren't specifically in the business of sex trade, because as they put it, just wasn't their area interest or expertise.
That was three days ago.
His clothes had been ruined today, he was going to require more sets of clothing if he was going to make a habit of being hit, a flame Blade hex, the lann lasair hex, native to scotland, had hit him in the neck while he had been fighting the gang members, he had been practicing fighting without a wand ever since he had become a Shadow Hit Wizard as they were called, the legal term for government mercenaries, and today without a wand he had been too slow to cast any kind of shield just because he was fighting 10 on 1, the moment hex hit him half of his neck had been lacerated, his enemies had relaxed the moment they thought the fight to be over, he had used this belief of theirs to his advantage and threw out his own hexes without pause, catching them off guard while his body repaired itself, at a slow pace compared to before because the foreign magic of the hex - dark and full of malice - was impeding his usual speed, but had he not been who he was, he would have been dead, the wizard was strong enough to injure him despite the recent steps he had taken to make himself more magically resistant like magical creatures, though he had yet to achieve its full potential.
He reached the end of the corridor where there was a heavily fortified door, he thought but only for a second on how to deal with it, he summoned a blade that was lying behind among the dead bodies and sliced open his palms, and concentrated his magic around the wound in such a fashion that it wouldn't heal until he was done with it, and then quickly he drew a rune - the rune of fire in ancient hebrew - on the door, and placing his hands on the said rune he focused to use Fiendfyre, blood being a highly magically conductive substance gave his spell just the right amount of boost to melt the door like an ice cube without the need of the corporeal flames usually produced by the curse.
Stepping in the room he found the secondary target of his exploration with the gang members being primary, their victims.
Women, girls, and some young boys, the former two in the age range of 5 - 35, while the latter from 5 - 10, all lying down on different cots, he ran a scan on them and found that they were all magicked to the point that they didn't had any consciousness of the environment, probably trained to respond to verbal commands, he tested out his theory by placing his hand on his neck and speaking, "Get up", his voice was an emulation he produced via magic, mainly to copy that of the gang members he had heard, and as he had suspected, all of them instantly rose from their cots in a standing position.
Deeming them all beyond recovery, he went ahead to deal with them like he had with the victims beyond recovery, from his raids of other organisations he had found, raising his hands and clapping them once above his head he sent an omnidirectional wave of flames.
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11:00 am 2nd September, Charms Corridor, Hogwarts.
Harry had just left from his first charms of the year, and just like last year he had started to proceed towards an empty corridor of the castle, but unlike before he simply intended to teleport from one end to the other, and just as he was about to he spotted the car Weasley and Longbottom and it was seemingly cruising around without anyone actually driving it, to be able to give an inanimate item like a car such sentience, it was life in a sense but only a parody, when the magics applied on the car ran out it would cease functioning, that is not he wanted for his goals, snapping out of his thoughts as he heard the other students making way near him, he teleported outside the room of requirements.
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01:09 pm 2nd September, The Great Hall, Hogwarts.
"What were you two idiots thinking!" hissed Hermione to her two male friends, who were seated in front of her, she hadn't been able to give them a piece of her mind yesterday or at the breakfast in the morning. "You could have Died! Or worse!..."
"Expelled!"chorused the Moronic Male Duo as Susan had dubbed them, interrupting Hermione, and the glare Hermione gave them made them belatedly realize the depth of the pit they had dug for themselves, and the fact that the brunette wasn't lecturing them anymore but had her lips set in a thin line, glaring at them, with her nostrils flaring, made it worse. Much worse.
Susan who had been seated next to Hermione was giving the two of them a deadpan expression which said, "you two idiots did this to yourself, expect no help from me". She looked around the great hall and noticed that nearly everyone was present there, of course except their enigmatic prodigy of a classmate, and she commented on the same, "huh, he's not going to make an appearance this year either is he?"
"What?" questioned Hermione, now distracted from the Moronic Male Duo.
"Harry Potter i mean, he hasn't been seen in the great hall since our sorting last year, he wasn't here last night or today morning either," she commented while looking around to see if he was seated at any other house's table like she was, though she doubted, the gossip would have been noticeable.
At this Ron blinked once and he too started looking around the hall, Hermione's right eye started to twitch furiously, and Neville had a mischievous look on his face, as if he knew something they didn't, though knowing him, Susan - rightly so - assumed he was mainly having a lot of fun with the whole situation, and she called him on it "Longbottom spill already!"
At this Ron looked between both of them with a look of confusion on his face, while Hermione's eyes narrowed towards the sandy haired blond.
"Okay, so remember when we were returning from the staff room after we were lectured for yesterday's….. Unforeseen incident?" he began to which he received three different reactions, Ronald winced, Susan snorted, and Hermione's nostrils flared again.
Picking up his pace to avoid another stare of death from the bushy haired witch he continued, "So when we left, i accidently forgot my remembrall," at this all three of his friends face palmed, he flushed a little at this but continued his tale, "I kind of went back to the staff room get it".
"You mean when you told me you needed to go to the bathroom?" Ron interrupted with a deadpan expression on his face.
"Err… yeah, kind of, any way so i overheard Mcgonagall," he began not wanting to go on the topic of his ever misplaced remembrall.
"Professor Mcgonagall!" Hermione interrupted correcting him.
"Yeah, so apparently he went to her to get excused from attending the feast yesterday," he continued.
"Wait when did he do that? I mean i never saw him even entering the castle let alone speaking to the professor," interrupted Susan, while both Ron and Hermione nodded to affirm this.
Neville sighed getting a little tired of being interrupted again and again, then continued "that's the kicker, he appeared in the castle a few minutes after the express arrived to Hogsmeade, without anyone".
"But how could he? Not to mention what Professor Mcgonagall did, that's favouritism, that's…." Hermione started ranting.
"Hermione shut up!" Neville interrupted her triade in an uncharacteristic display of steel in his voice which took back all three of his friends, especially the girls because he was usually quite hard to anger and always went with the flow.
"But Neville!" Hermione protested.
"No Hermione i won't budge on this, even if i could, i wouldn't," here he raised his hand to stop his friends from interrupting, and closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then he looks Hermione in the eyes, and with an expression full of steel along with the voice, he continued "Hermione remember the Rain man movie, you had us watch? Remember how the protagonist in it was specially abled? Just like that our fellow Gryffindor is specially abled, yes his behaviour is abnormal and it does at times create problems for everyone, but that does not mean that you can be so rude about it, yes the teachers grant him a certain amount of leeway - yes way more than for any other student in most common circumstances - but they need to be made, from everything i have heard children as strong as him cannot control their strength consciously and to be able to do that they develop unique personalities, Hermione, i'll say this just once, don't push me on this".
Both Susan and Ron understood where Neville was coming from, but they felt sympathetic to their bushy haired friend too, who was looking like on the the verge of crying.
Hermione took a deep breath, and blinked away the tears that had been forming in her eyes, then she began, "I'm sorry, i guess i'm just a little not used to these things still".
Neville gave her a short nod and said "apology accepted in the spirit it was given".
Hermione understood that this simply meant that she was being excused but the offense still counted, then really carefully hoping that she didn't made the matters worse, but believing that the moment was opportune she began, "what did you meant by wouldn't even if you could?"
Neville released an explosive breath and closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again his visage was somewhat back to his usual jovial mood, "his family and mine have been allied for centuries, we stand for and with each other, his mother was my godmother and mine his, in case you forgot or didn't know, they died together, they were at the potter's place when everything went down"
By the time Neville was done speaking his mood had grown sombre and they couldn't fault him for it, and now Hermione who was really contrite couldn't look her friend in the eyes and began again "I'm really sorry Neville…."
Neville again raised his hand to stop her and said "what's done is done, lets stop this here and now," and soon the bell indicating the end of the lunch break rang to which he started packing his things and said, "let's go or we'll be late for defense".
At this the other three were able to nothing more than helplessly nod and follow his lead, both Ron and Susan thankful for the bell interrupting the awkward situation.
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02:47 am 5th September, Room of Requirements, Hogwarts.
Harry was overlooking a few experiments he had conceptualized earlier in the summer, in front of him there were several large tanks, around 500, that looked like common pots found in any house holds kitchen, except they were bigger than most of the said houses, notably they were being heated by flames that originated from the base of each tank, and each one of these tanks held a crimson red liquid that was whirling at a high speed bubbling and frothing.
Harry had found that he could configure the room in such a manner that he could leave quite a lot of long term experiments to be completed, not to mention safe from being discovered even by accident, he simply had to set up a password, that he would present to the dor each time he entered, and every time he left his experiments would be stored in a pocket dimension of sorts, a simple yet difficult piece of magic that used the undetectable extension charm as the basis.
The simple parts were the mechanism of the charm itself, the difficult, storing his experiments in the said dimension without being influenced by the excess energy that was attached to the dimension charm, unused yet unavoidable.
He snapped out of his recollection as he encountered his current problem, by the means of all the notes he kept, his lack of information on dark magics, the information that he had received from the flamel' stone was in abundance, but they rarely were of subjects that could truly be called dark magics, so he would need to make some arrangements to close this hole in his knowledge, after all, magic was magic, and he didn't wanted his plans to meet ruins just because of lack of knowledge.
Plans would need to be made.
Arranging his notes back on how they were, he once again looked around the room to give his experiments a thorough inspection, aside from the tanks, there were multiple other potions currently being prepared in different cauldrons.
Satisfied with the results he sat down at the center of the room and began meditating, and his magic slowly started to visibly flare out and surround him like a Brown Mist , pulsing and moving in a very peculiar pattern. Static Magic, that's what he'd named it, he had observed the difference between Human magic and Animal Magic, he had observed how every magically strong animal was also resistant to it, to varying degrees of course, but resistant nonetheless, unlike humans who had little magical resistance, he had came to hypothesize that animals possessed a very Static form of magic which armed them with some generic, and some specific abilities, ranging from magical resistance as an example of the former, to the power to Kill with a stare, Be reborn after being killed, or control storms being a few examples of the latter. While he was sure he couldn't copy their species specific abilities without creating specific spells that emulated them, he was sure that he could make himself more resistant to magic by copying them, without needing to devise an actual spell to do so, the process was quite simple, he let his magic, human magic which he termed as dynamic magic envelop his body and reinforce it, like layers of steel sheets being bonded on wooden cabins to reinforce them, of course time, or sufficient pressure would wear even the steel down unless regularly renovated.
The difference was that while animals did it quite subconsciously and raised its abilities with age, humans couldn't, hence why he had started to consciously copy them and was determined to master this technique, to the point where he no longer needed any conscious effort to make his magic constantly reinforce his body. He had even started to develop physical enhancements such has increased strength, senses, and speed, though they weren't a particular priority.
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11:00 am 5th September, Minerva Mcgonagall's office, Hogwarts.
It had been some time since the breakfast had ended and as promised Harry had appeared outside his head of the house's office to meet her. She invited him in as soon as he knocked on her door as he was the the only person she had been anticipating today
As soon as he was seated she began, "So Harry, how was your vacation?"
He replied by writing as usual, but unlike other times his answer while still being monosyllabic - unless he felt the need to elaborate, which was rare - was not yes or no, "Productive."
Minerva blinked once, and then once again, that was new…., then shaking her head she began, "so Harry, do you like it? Living with the Law's i mean?"
"Yes," was his reply.
'Ah, we're back to yes or no, well it was good while it lasted,' "I have been in touch with ms Lane and from what she tells me you are quite close to your charge young John".
Much to Minerva's surprise the boy didn't answer her question but returned a question of his own by tilting his head to indicate his confusion as he had before, as if asking her what she meant.
Taking a moment to gather her thoughts she began, "I meant you apparently usually put in more effort than what is expected of you to, and your charge too looks up to you"
Then he wrote to her, "did i do something wrong?"
Blinking once, Minerva replied, "no, not at all, i was just merely making an observation".
At that statement Harry simply stared at her for a minute and then nodded once, after that he wrote to her, "will that be all professor?"
Minerva stared at the new note given to her by her enigmatic student, his replies had already cut off any venues of discussion for her to pry in, and for a second she was wondering how on earth had this boy not ended up in Slytherin, then she remembered how he had dealt with the troll last year, not to mention that while any competent slytherin - mostly 7th years - could come up with a rudimentary plan to out trick her, none would actually have the courage to give it a go, mainly because the consequences of failing wouldn't be worth it, with a dry voice she said, "yes mr Potter you may leave".
As soon as Minerva was done speaking Harry got up and left at a pace that would have offended anyone else, Minerva on the other hand just sighed thinking, 'baby steps minne, baby steps'.
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12:22 am 8th September, Top Cell, Nurmengard Castle, Austria.
It hadn't been a difficult job to sneak in here, the security had been lax, no one had thought anyone could breach the anti apparation and portkey wards, at least without alerting the security, he simply teleported to Grindelwald's cell, to get what he wanted.
The defeated dark lord was sitting in a corner of his cell, whistling to himself, dressed in ragged prison clothing, and the moment he spotted Harry materializing in the room, he gave him a small smile and said, "hmm i had been waiting for this, mr what is your name?"
Harry had heard that Grindelwald was a seer whose caliber was matched by few, so this was well within his calculations, the wizard was more experienced than him, and peerless in his knowledge of dark arts, especially from what he had seen in Flamel's memories of him, so he grabbed the man by the collar and brought his face close to his own, and peered in the man's eyes.
Most wouldn't even think that any twelve year old boy could possibly try to use Legilimency on the former Dark Lord to get a crash course of all the dark magic he had learned, but that was what exactly was going on here, and the whole process had lasted only a minute, when he was done he softly let the man go and let him get settled again in his cell, turning his back on the dark lord, something for which most, especially Alastor Moody, would call him a fool for he left back teleporting to Hogwarts.
But not before the man said something to him.
"Go my Modern Prometheus! Go!"
A/n : That's it for today folks, this was more or less a filler chapter though it had some key elements i intend to use in future, the title was in reference to both the Greek Mythological figure of Prometheus the god credited for the Creation of men, and granting them fire, again future reference to be explained in time, and the Frankenstein novel, which too will be explained in future.
Thanks for reading, see you later.
Till then ciao.
