Chapter Ten: Plans and Foundations
I need power. This was the first thought that entered Harry's mind when he started thinking of ways to deal with his huge (though thankfully not too numerous) problems. He was well aware of just how dangerous a thought it was. History textbooks and the odd fictional novel was enough to teach him that. But that didn't change the truth of the statement.
In order to fight against people like Dumbledore and a huge army full of reality-bending extremists (Ex: The Chevaliers), it was necessary to acquire some power of his own. One does not pick a fight with a dragon while carrying nothing but a toothpick, after all. That was what Harry figured it would he like if he made an offensive move on his enemies right now.
Personally, Harry didn't want a large group of loyal followers. He just wasn't a social kind of person and would probably lose quite a few of them in the long run. However, he did need at least some more people. No matter how powerful he and Aurore and Hermione (maybe Hermione) were individually, they wouldn't be able to fight an army of competent magic-users on their own.
Harry supposed that the compromise was to gather a smaller group of people who were more individually powerful (whether in magic or other areas) than most. Of course, that would he difficult to tell among pre-teen and teenage students in a school. So Harry would have to find an efficient way of locating people with higher potential.
Unfortunately, people with high potential don't display it unless they're idiots. Otherwise they become separated invisibly from everyone else, which was something most people want to avoid at almost any cost. Harry knew that firsthand. And he didn't want idiots in his little group. What he needed was a way to tempt any people with abilities that they hid to use those abilities and then record it.
But in order to do that, Harry needed to know what motivated those people beforehand. What was something that motivated all people with high potential to do something? A challenge! Everyone who knows (or believes) that they're more skilled at something than most other people will want to put that skill to the test, even if it's subconscious. Of course, there were also those people with high potential who didn't know that they had high potential. Those would be harder to sniff out, but that could come later.
Harry let a sly grin cross his features that had any teachers seen, they would immediately begin to worry what terrible thing was about to befall them. Harry could be quite creative.
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Rumor had spread very quickly among the students about the 'golden room'. Nobody was quite sure exactly what it was, but there were a few key details that were clear. There was a door somewhere in the castle made entirely out of pure gold. Inside, there were all sorts of traps and dangers, but the rewards at the end were almost unimaginable.
Just about everyone from first to third year believed completely in the rumors, while the majority of those in fourth to seventh year disregarded the rumors as childish imaginations gone wild. What none of them knew was that Harry Potter had began the rumor, and purposefully too.
The point of it was rather simple. There was a room with a door that looked like it was made of gold hidden in the castle. Anyone clever enough to find the door (or lucky enough to stumble upon it) and brave enough (or motivated enough by the possibility of reward) to go through them in spite of the 'dangerous traps' that were rumored to lies at the end would find themselves facing a series of increasingly difficult challenges. The system was based on the defenses he'd programmed around his house (though these were significantly less dangerous).
The entire place was covered by a camera-like spell that actually recorded everything in 3D and displayed it like a hologram. It was activated when any motion was detected inside. Altogether, it had taken Harry about a week to put it all together. Then all he'd had to do was begin the rumor.
Three weeks later, five people had made it through the door, but none of them had managed to get very far through the challenges. Later, when they told their friends the secret of how to get inside, they had found that it no longer worked at all. Not only that, but the door would move locations as well.
Harry was beginning to get impatient with his results. It both reminded him fondly of the frustration he'd felt years ago when he'd started experimenting with magic and agitated him immensely. Three weeks hadn't yielded much results at all, and that was three weeks where Dumbledore could further his plans while Harry was just sitting around and doing nothing.
Well, technically he hadn't been doing 'nothing' since he had continued to spar with Aurore and program more spells for himself, but that routine now. He was sure his plan would show more results given time, since the people who actually made it in kept the rumors about it fresh and interesting, but what could he do in the meantime?
Harry was pondering this conundrum while wandering the halls when he came across a familiar and distasteful sight. Three boys (two of which were rather generously sized) surrounded a smaller boy who looked very eager to get out of the situation he was currently in. Harry vaguely recognized the smallest of the three surrounding him as the same blonde idiot who'd gotten into a fight with someone before the sorting ceremony.
He couldn't hear exactly what words were being exchanged, but he did take notice when the two larger boys pushed the kid they were surrounding to the ground. It brought back unpleasant memories of another boy, much younger, who was always getting pushed to the ground by his cousin and surrounded by his cousin's friends.
"Stop!" Harry called before he could stop himself. It looked like it was one of those times when his voice had different intentions from his mind. Whatever anyone might say, it most certainly wasn't a saving people thing.
"Oh, look, if it isn't famous little bookworm Potter?" The blonde (and seemingly also the ringleader of the idiot-trio) called back as he saw Harry rushing towards him. "What is it? Come here to save your stupid oaf of a friend, have you? And they say Ravenclaws are smart." The idiot-leader guffawed to his friends who both adopted very goldfish-like expressions.
"I wasn't here when this little incident started, but even I can tell exactly what's going on." Harry began in a deceptively neutral tone.
"Oh? Then why don't you tell us, what is going on?" The blonde boy interrupted.
"Two buffoons and their idiot-leader are trying to sound much more powerful than they actually are by surrounding someone who's obviously better than themselves." Harry quipped without missing a beat.
He had to admit that it was a bit childish, but sometimes he needed to indulge himself. He also wasn't sure that whoever they were bullying was 'better' than them, but it sounded like the kind of things that a group of bullies wouldn't want to hear.
"'Better'?" The blonde asked incredulously as though the mere thought of being inferior to anyone was inconceivable. "You think Longbottom is better than me, a Malfoy? Ridiculous! How were you ever sorted into Ravenclaw?"
"You seem to be in the habit of asking lots of rhetorical questions." Harry noted. "That isn't a very good habit. People might get frustrated with you. In fact, I'm feeling quite frustrated with you right now. Would you please do me a favor and remove yourself from my presence before I get even more frustrated?" Harry's tone was friendly and passive, but it seemed the idiot missed Harry's do-not-mess-with-me look.
"You half-blood little- how dare you talk to a Malfoy like that?!" He demanded angrily.
Not bothering to continue a verbal argument that obviously was never going to end, Harry instead focused on activating a silent spell. It wasn't too power-consuming. All it did was use his magical power to exert a slight pressure over a select target, causing people to feel like they're being forced to the ground and having difficulty breathing. Coupled with a good glare, it made almost anything look intimidating.
Malfoy shrank away from him alongside his two goons. Keeping a stoic facade to hide his irritation with the blonde idiot, Harry stepped forward and the clacking of his shoes echoed ominously throughout the stone corridor. Malfoy seemed to decide that a hasty retreat would be the wisest course of action and his two friends tagged along behind him.
"Sorry about them," Harry smiled apologetically. "Some people are just like that. I'm Harry."
"N-Neville Longbottom." The boy on the floor stammered. Now that he was closer, Harry could get a better analysis on him. Pudgy face, slightly overweight, nervous glances around, the kid practically screamed confidence issues. He was also a Gryffindor, according to his badge.
"Were you going somewhere, Neville?" Harry inquired. It was more for the sake of politeness than actual interest.
"I was heading to the Library." Neville mumbled the last word quietly, but Harry was still able to make it out just barely.
"Really, do you have an interest in books too, then?" Harry asked. He covered up a frown. He could've just said 'alright, enjoy yourself' and then left, but he'd continued the conversation. He wasn't actually taking an interest in this person, was he?
"Oh yes, I love books, especially the ones about herbology." Neville perked up a little when he realized Harry wasn't going to shun him for liking to read. "I just finished Rare Plants and Fungi of the Amazon and I was going to return it." He brought out a thick tome that looked like it had seen better days.
"Wow, that must have a lot of pages." Harry commented.
"One thousand three hundred and twenty six." He agreed proudly. "I actually read a lot of books that long, maybe fourteen every two months. That would... eighteen thousand five hundred and sixty four."
Harry blinked. Pulling his handy fx-7000G graphing calculator out of his robes (it was very necessary for his programming to have a calculator, so he ways had it on him) and punched in: 1364x14. The small pixilated screen showed 18564. What?
"What are you doing?" The Gryffindor wondered at the muggle device.
"You're right..." Harry murmured. "You're actually right."
"Err, right about what?" Neville asked confusedly.
"One thousand six hundred four times fourteen is eighteen thousand five hundred sixty four." Harry clarified. "But how could you calculate that so quickly? Is it some kind of spell?" A spell that allowed for that level of calculation was a must-have for someone like him.
"Err, no, I guess I've just always been good at numbers." The Gryffindor seemed to grow very interested in his shoes.
"Good?" Harry asked incredulously. "That's not 'good', that's- that is genius!"
"No one's ever said that before..." Neville trailed off uncertainly. Suddenly an idea sprang into Harry's mind. Mathematical genius was something that he was looking for but didn't even hope to find at Hogwarts...
"Neville, would you like to have a nice chat after you return that book of yours?" Harry requested with a polite smile. "There are some things I'd like to talk with you about."
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Sitting in a comfortably fluffy armchair behind a cluttered desk, Albus Dumbledore popped a lemon drop into his mouth and savored the sweet and sour taste as he pondered. The subject of his musings was none other than Harry Potter, dubbed by the public as the Boy-Who-Lived.
The headmaster knew that the young Potter did not trust him. The boy couldn't have been more obvious if he'd announced it to the entire school. Dumbledore didn't pretend to know exactly why Harry was so distrustful of him, it could have been because of bad experiences with someone who Dumbledore reminded him of, but the 'why' wasn't what he was focusing on.
What Dumbledore was focusing on was how Harry had acted during their last meeting: angry, hateful, spiteful, but all contained behind polite respect. It was disturbingly similar to how a certain boy had acted around him many years ago: specifically, Tom Marvolo Riddle. Dumbledore had considered before the possibility that the boy-Who-Lived might follow in the footsteps of the one he'd vanquished.
But then Dumbledore smiled fondly as he recalled something that separated the two quite thoroughly. Harry had been very protective of the little girl he'd introduced as 'Emily Grantz', but who apparently went by the name 'Aurore' now. He'd been defensive towards Hermione as well. As far as Dumbledore could discern (and he could discern quite a lot), it wasn't out of a sense of possessiveness, but out of companionship. In other words, love.
So long as Harry didn't stray from his companions, Dumbledore didn't think he would have to fear another Dark Lord. If only he could gain the boy's trust... Working together, they were far more likely to succeed, and success was absolutely critical. Thousands could depend on it. Somehow he had to get Harry to see that they were not enemies.
Taking another lemon drop in his mouth, the aged headmaster hummed contemplatively to himself.
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(A/N): Sorry the chapter was a bit short compared to the last two. I've been feeling rather sick lately and school does take priority, so I didn't get a chance for much writing. I hope the eventfulness of the chapter was enough to keep you entertained, though. Next time I promise a very interesting chappy, so stay tuned.