A/N: Did I catch everyone off guard with my upload significantly before midnight? More than half the people who visited the story were a day late! Not that I mind terribly, but that hasn't happened before. Although on second thought it could just be that more people got to the story the day it came out when given more than an hour or two to do so. At any rate, new chapter, get reading.
The modifications to the wards were currently undergoing their first field test.
"Oh come on," Harry muttered, before stuffing one last bite of eggs into his mouth and standing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Albus doing much the same thing.
"What's going on? Albus?" The witch who was still sitting at the table asked.
"Well, as Perry and I were just telling you, we made some modifications to the wards yesterday. The alarm currently sounding is in place specifically to indicate that those modifications are being tested. We had planned—" Harry missed the rest, already leaving the room and looking for the nearest north-facing window. If all went well, the intruders would be stunned and redirected just outside of the ward boundary near the entrance to the school. Finding a window, he looked out, casting a supersensory charm so that he could see all the way to the gates. Nothing was there. Great.
Turning, Harry saw Albus running towards him. "I don't think it worked, Albus, I can't see any redirected intruders."
"They may be invisible. After failing to apprehend you twice, caution would certainly be merited."
"I'll go out and check in person then; you find the headmaster and let anyone else you meet know that we may have invisible intruders. The headmaster should at least know where they entered, if nothing else." Nodding, Albus turned and ran off toward the headmaster's office. Pausing only to cast a few precautionary enchantments on his robes, Harry quickly vanished the glass in the window and jumped out. A stunt like that would only ever work from inside, but as he was on the first floor, in a hurry, and the nearest entrance was quite distant, it would do for now. Conjuring the glass back with hardly a rearward glance, Harry started running across the grounds to the entrance. Reflecting briefly that it would be simpler and easier, if a bit less secure, to transport the intruders inside the castle, Harry swiftly reached the gate. Pausing to catch his breath and listen, he tried to detect whether any intruders were outside of the gates, unconscious or not. He couldn't hear any breathing, smell anything other than the stones in the path and the tang of the gate, and obviously couldn't see out of the ordinary, despite the supersensory charm that was still active. Great.
Continuing just beyond the ward boundary to the exact spot that he, Albus, and the headmaster had set up the previous day, however, Harry nearly tripped over something invisible.
"Finite Incantatem!" Harry cast at whatever it was. The spell was visibly stopped about six inches off of the ground, but nothing suddenly popped into view, as one might have expected.
"Lovely." Remembering that the Egyptian Hylesion had worked the last time traditional methods had failed, Harry quickly ran over what he knew about that in his head. It worked in absolutes, catching magic that was designed not to interact with other magic, and detecting things designed to be completely undetectable. Or at least, that was what the spells he knew at the moment could do. Nonetheless, probably worth a shot.
"Ijhellatu jhame!" This time, when the spell impacted, the unconscious body of a young man suddenly appeared, as well as the sounds of breathing, and the smell of flesh. Oddly, his robes didn't look too much like the ones on the intruder's from the previous day, but Harry didn't have time to contemplate this. Harry had quite suddenly remembered a catch to Egyptian Hylesion. There was no halfway with the techniques, and whatever you were trying to do would be done as well as it could with the magical power you could provide. And as the wards which had knocked the man lying before him unconscious extended their influence just shy of where he lay, Harry had just woken the man up. Bugger.
Eyes snapping open, the man sat up with the suddenness of someone waking from a nightmare. "Wha-! Where—"
"Stupefy!"
That could have gone better. Oh well, at least he'd managed to confirm that the modifications had worked as desired. Focusing on a vision of his wedding day, Harry prepared to send a patronus to Albus, only to see a silvery form rushing towards him from the castle. Almost mistaking it for Albus's phoenix at first, he realized as it drew closer that this bird was actually slightly smaller, more like a raven. Now whose patronus could that be?
The silvery bird reached him and, landing on the ground in front of him, began to speak, "I found Armando, and he confirmed that the wards, while stressed, appear to have worked and rejected the intruders. We will join you shortly." The bird spoke, to Harry's amazement, in Albus' firm, not yet grandfatherly tone. Come to think of it, Harry had yet to see Fawkes in this time. Had Albus not acquired his familiar yet? When would he?
Putting the matter aside, Harry turned back to the man at his feet. How many were there this time? Apparently whatever nondetection magic they were using prevented them from being heard, as well as smelled, though not felt. It couldn't prevent them from being solid. Feeling around, Harry soon found four more bodies on the ground. Casting the Egyptian counterspell and stunning each of them in quick succession, Harry was just beginning to wonder whether there was a better way of finding the invisible people than blundering into them when Albus and Dippet arrived.
"Ah, good work Perry, I see you found the intruders," Dippet said.
"Yeah, but I did have to use more Egyptian Hylesion to find them. Whatever they use to hide is just as complicated as everything else they do. I couldn't even smell them with a supersensory charm."
"Fascinating," Albus said, "Do you think that's part of their ability to circumvent the wards?"
"Well, it could be, although whatever it is that allows them to travel through time may just be complex enough on its own that the wards can't-or couldn't-handle it. I suspect that their spells are all some unknown discipline that we would have a hard time understanding, even if they were explained to us."
"Speaking of," Dippet said, "Shouldn't we get one of our friends here to talk about just who they are and what they are trying to do? If they have a time limit that will recall them back whence they came, we should get right to it, should we not?"
"Not a bad idea," Harry mused, "Albus, help me search this one, would you? If we're going to interrogate him, we should make sure he can't surprise us with any nasty tricks."
"Of course." With that, Harry and Albus began casting several complicated detection and modified summoning charms, attempting to remove any and all dangerous objects from his body. First, his wand flew into Albus's hand, while a few knives from either leg and a few interior pockets flew towards Harry, who stopped them, realizing he couldn't hold all of them at once, and vanished the lot. A few spells later, at a nod from Albus, Harry bent over the man, preparing to wake him. Remembering a certain paranoid auror made him pause, however, and he instead pulled open the man's robes. Wearing nothing but a simple black shirt and trousers underneath, the man didn't appear to have anything else to hide. The clothing was fairly loose; however, reminding him of something Hermione had once told him. Lightly patting the man's chest and sides, Harry felt a few suspect lumps under the man's shirt. Reaching underneath it, he found something quite surprising: grenades. Probably charmed in a similar manner to the man himself, these had escaped the magical search, and could easily have turned the tables in an interrogation setting. This man was prepared for anything.
"What are those?" Albus asked from behind him.
"These? These are grenades," Harry paused, "Do you have grenades yet?"
"Yes, we do, although they tend to be a bit bigger. More importantly, how did these escape our notice?"
"The same way these guys keep turning invisible. They can prevent magic, or most magic anyway, from detecting things, up to and including at least a human being." Vanishing the grenades as he said this, Harry patted down the man's legs as well. "The only way to find something they've hidden is to touch it, or nearly trip over it, like I did these guys. They can't prevent things from acting solid, at least. Aha!" He'd found another two knives sheathed by the man's ankles. Vanishing these as well, Harry stood back up. "At least muggle searches will still work. Now, shall we?"
Nodding, Albus said, "We should probably be a little more cautious, however, if our subject is so well prepared. Incarcerous!" Ropes appeared and bound the man's entire body.
Nodding his approval, Harry squatted down to arrange the man in a rough sitting position. Satisfied that the man at least wouldn't be laying on the ground and squirming, Harry pointed his wand and cast, "Enervate."
The man's eyes snapped open. Seeing Harry, his face bent in frustration, until he noticed Albus and Dippet standing behind him. Eyes widening in panic, the man said one word, "No…" before he promptly vanished, almost appearing to collapse in on himself. The others promptly did the same.
Left with his arm supporting a now nonexistent shoulder, Harry could really only come up with one thing to say.
"Well…great."
Harry's fingers tightened around his wand. Unable to determine much about the intruders, he, Albus, and Dippet had gone back up to the castle, where they were met with the defense professor from the previous day. She'd managed to guess what was going on, and after hearing what had happened, had decided that she was going to stick around for the summer, at least. Not that it would stop her from putting Harry through some "inquisitive training," as she put it. After discussing various points of Defense Against the Dark Arts with him, and deciding that he had a good head on his shoulders, apparently there was really only one thing to do. He couldn't really argue that the final test of one's defensive knowledge was to duel them and probe that knowledge yourself, he trained aurors in exactly the same way. That didn't make him less nervous about going up against the witch who had trained Albus Dumbledore and taught defense for 50 years. Or 43 at present, but that was still very impressive, and not likely a fraction of her resume.
This was going to be an interesting duel. Albus Dumbledore himself was overseeing it.
"Wands at the ready!"
Harry held his wand at his side and widened his stance. Across from his, his opponent adopted a more traditional stance, almost like a fencing form. Harry saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and was moving even as Albus formed the word, "Begin!"
Harry wasn't really sure what the first spell that came toward him was, and it didn't matter. He bent nearly 90 degrees at the waist and it passed harmlessly over his head, even as his wand formed the motions of a simple firework hex. Aiming while looking away from an opponent is difficult, so he settled for a distraction. The spell shot off as he straightened, adjusting himself so that the follow up stunner didn't strike his body. Seeing that his spell was impacting a shield, Harry allowed himself a brief feeling of satisfaction, before pummeling the shield with seven spells in the space of three seconds. Each had its purpose, though the shield went down after the fifth and Harry's opponent leapt with surprising grace to the side, apparently recognizing the final two spells and their ability to surround a shield with water, before encasing it in ice, effectively trapping the target.
Harry very quickly lost track of events after that, he was so busy reacting to attacks and thinking of ways to slip past his opponents defenses. She was good. He wasn't sure he would win without a stroke of fortune; she appeared to have similar stamina to him. In a brief moment of reflection in between a stunner and the lightning he conjured in response to it, Harry thought that perhaps this job wasn't worth the trouble, before he had to leap to the side to prevent the lightning, redirected through some swiftly conjured metal, from frying him. After several more attacks, retaliations, and swift calculations in brief moments of respite, Harry finally saw his chance. A patch of ice he'd conjured earlier had knocked his opponent off balance, and as her wand arm flailed, he swiftly conjured a snake around her arm, where she would have a very difficult time getting the right angle to vanish it. Seizing the moment of distraction, he sent three stunners at his opponent, two on either side of her head and one squarely at her chest. Caught off guard by the spells not aimed to hit her, and the snake which she just managed to vanish by flipping her wand around in her hand, Galatea Merrythought was hit solidly by the stunner, and slumped to the ground, unconscious. Half a second later, a disarming charm sent her wand flying into Harry's hand. Keeping his wand trained on her, and keeping her well within his field of vision, Harry looked over at Albus, who was still busy clearing a stray bit of ice off of his dueling wards. The ice vanished in chunks, and as Albus looked out at the veritable battlefield, he raised his left hand, the one closer to Harry.
"Victor: Perry Hauter!" he cried, beginning to dismantle the wards that surrounded him. Relaxing, Harry lowered his wand. Looking around him, he took in the burn scars, the pit of conjured acid that was slowly eating away at the floor in between him and Galatea, and the various patches of ice and a few stranger conjurations that littered the arena. Well, he'd been right. That was a very interesting duel. Harry had learned at least three new ways to use spells that he'd not thought of before. One had nearly cost him the duel. He glanced again at the pit acid again, this time vanishing the liquid and conjuring the stone floor back where it had been. It was certainly on way to prevent your opponent from getting close. Harry had nearly fallen into the damn thing when Galatea had caught him off guard as he charged forward, firing spells the whole way. He wasn't even sure what the plan was should he have fallen into the pit. Perhaps it was a slow acting corrosive, and extraction would have been simple, if he was removed quickly enough. Oh well, running headlong into his own shield had prevented that unfortunate scenario. It had also hurt a rather lot.
Putting that memory far, far behind him, Harry walked over to the unconscious defense professor. Raising his own wand, and standing a few cautious feet away, Harry enervated her. And nothing happened. Figuring she was probably playing possum, Harry said, "Well, that was quite a fight. I don't think I've had a fight like that in years, at least. You've certainly earned your stripes as a talented defense professor."
Galatea lay still, breathing steadily.
Harry sighed. "You know, I was your opponent, I would have noticed any spells that a wakening charm wouldn't counter. I hit you a grand total of twice, and once was only with a conjured snake. I know you're awake."
Galatea continued breathing.
"Fine! I'll leave you here and do all the hard cleaning work myself," Harry exclaimed in frustration, before adding under his breath, "You lazy bum." He then proceeded to cast restorative charms on his surroundings, fixing the various burns, vanishing conjurations, and always keeping aware that his opponent was still lying on the ground, pretending to be unconscious. As he crossed the room to deal with his initial icy spheroid attack that had ended up splattering quite impressively on the wall, Harry saw Albus, finally done dismantling the complex dueling mediator's wards; bend over to check on the "unconscious" professor. His suspicions were further reinforced when Albus simply stood, turned, and left the room. He was on his way to inform the headmaster of the duel, and its results, no doubt.
Nearly done cleaning up, Harry noticed an odd hole in the wall that ran parallel to the roughly defined 'lane' that he had been dueling in. It appeared to have been gouged out by some extreme magic, leaving a hole roughly the size of a human torso. Whatever spell had done this certainly wasn't a pretty one, that was for sure. He was trying to recall a moment in the duel when such a spell would have been warranted, but his memory was still mostly a blur of indecipherable action. Then it hit him; he'd conjured an acromantula, secretly enchanted to be highly spellproof. Whatever curse had made this hole must have bounced off of a fang or something, because if it had hit a fleshy bit, enchantment or no, the acromantula would have been history. Thinking back to the odd lightish blue smear with hairy, arachnid legs he'd cleaned up just a few minutes earlier, Galatea had probably hit something fleshy with a very similar spell, or even the exact same one. The only problem was that the hole in the wall wasn't an easy fix. He'd tried basic repairing charms, and even conjuring a chunk of stone into the hole, but it refused to fuse with the surrounding stone, probably because of the residual magic. Throwing up his hands in frustration, Harry walked back over to the unconscious form on the floor.
"Well, you have my congratulations, professor; you've exceeded my repairing capabilities. Whatever you hit that acromantula with also made a hole in the wall, and I can't figure out how to fix it. Now I could use some help, and you would probably at least know something about how to fix whatever you cast."
Harry could swear that Galatea's lips twitched towards a smile, but he couldn't be sure.
"All right then, you want to play that way? Let's play." Levicorpus! The professor's body was jerked suddenly into the air by the ankle. Her eyes finally shot open in surprise, and a short yelp escaped her lips.
"Are you more willing to talk now, Professor?" Harry asked?
"Yes, yes, I submit! My goodness, I thought you might let down your guard and try to prod me awake, not yank me up by my ankle!"
"I once had a teacher who, among other things, was obscenely paranoid, and liked pointing out just how useful that was in daily life, especially with as many enemies as he had. I may not have made as many enemies as he did, but I certainly do subscribe to his mantra: Constant Vigilance!" Harry shouted the last bit, just for effect.
"…I see. Now could you perhaps let me down? It will be a bit hard to think with all the blood rushing to my head." Harry obligingly let her down, gently. "Right, now let's take a look at this hole then."
Following the professor over to the hole, Harry quietly waited for the realization.
"Hmm…you wouldn't happen to have confiscated my wand, would you?" Galatea asked, turning to face him.
Smirking a bit, Harry simply said, "Constant vigilance," as he reached into his robes and offered the wand in question.
"Indeed," she mused, turning back to the hole she'd made. "Ah, the Greek excavation charm. Reworked a tad for combat there's not a whole lot this thing can't get through. One drawback, as you've noticed, is that the combat version, a class three dark curse, is a bit hard to clean up after, and even to defend against. When even this bounced off of your spider, I was quite sure I was done for until a second managed to deal with it." Turning, Galatea gave Harry a bit of a questioning glance.
"Well, the acromantula was a special conjuration, designed by a friend of mine. There were several magic-resistant enchantments woven into its form, and I think you probably hit a hard bit of the carapace, or a fang, and the additional hardness of the natural armor reinforced the enchantments enough that the spell was mostly deflected. I'll admit, I was surprised when I realized what magnitude of spell had bounced off of the beast as well, as you discovered, one good hit was quite adequate to take it down."
"Mmm. Well, the trick to fixing spell damage like this is to be the one who cast it. The residue that's interfering with magic is tuned to my own, so I can simply," she waved her wand, leaving an unassuming stretch of wall behind, "wave my wand and fix it."
"I see. That's a neat trick, where'd you learn it?"
Galatea sighed. "Basic auror training, year three. It was quite some time ago, and even with a war on they don't teach it anymore. It's simply too powerful, and it was classified as a dangerous dark curse. Like most powerful magic, it's only truly dark because of its lack of uses other than in combat, and its sheer capacity to maim. The original charm is far better in nearly every application, but it just takes too long to cast for combat."
"You were an auror?" Harry was mildly surprised; aurors didn't commonly end up teaching, especially without the curse on the defense position.
"Yes, I was fully fledged for a year before my predecessor was killed in an unfortunate accident. I'd always taken a shine to the class, and Headmaster Black thought that a young auror with a fresh perspective would make a lovely defense professor, so he hired me. I like to think he had good judgment, even if it was a bit touch and go at first."
Harry was fascinated with how much of Hogwarts' history he was learning. Being in the past was definitely a factor, but he was finding out things he'd never really thought about before, things that normally wouldn't affect him. Of course, this latest nugget of information meant a little more to him, because he'd just found that his predecessor had a very similar background to him. He'd been an active auror for longer, to be sure, and in a very different time under different circumstances, but he'd ended up back at Hogwarts just like she had. He almost asked for advice from a fellow auror, before remembering that for the sake of caution regarding the timeline, only Albus, who had deduced the truth, and Dippet, who had been present to hear it, knew his true history. To everyone else, he was simply a talented man with a vague history.
It was almost as frustrating as being the bloody boy-who-lived.
Breaking him out of his thoughts, Galatea said, "That was quite the fight though."
Harry huffed out a short laugh, "Tell me about it. It's still mostly a blur of trying very desperately not to get hit, and devise some way to actually trip you up. I thought I was pretty good, but you've got moves."
"Why thank you. I could say the same about you though, where did you come up with all those techniques?"
Harry hesitated only the briefest of moments before saying, "On the frontlines of a war." It wasn't really a lie, the daily life of an auror felt a whole lot like that of a soldier, from Harry's experience.
"Oh? You've been fighting on the mainland then?"
Well now he nearly had to lie. Grimacing a bit, Harry simply said, "Yes, a bit." He hadn't been to mainland Europe very much in his life, though he had gotten in a few petty scuffles when visiting. Harry placed the blame entirely on Ron for most of them. The man simply wasn't a very subtle drunk.
"I see," Galatea said, "well that should give you a good background when you start teaching the youngsters how to defend themselves." She offered him a smile that seemed a bit reassuring.
Returning the smile, Harry replied, "Well, as long as I don't scare the sock off of them. I remember one teacher I had in particular who could strike fear into the heart of the most grizzled veteran. Effective, but hardly appropriate for a school."
"Well, as long as you keep that in mind, I certainly don't have any problem with you succeeding me as defense professor. You'll make a fine teacher, and you really know your stuff." Galatea extended her hand towards him to shake, "Congratulations, Professor Hauter,"
A/N:What's this? An early chapter upload? And it's even pretty damn long (at least compared to my other chapters, nearly all of which are shorter by at least 1,000 words)? Well, I had a bunch of spare time, and about the same amount of inspiration, so you people get a special treat today. Tonight. Whichever it ends up being. Anyway, time to talk about interesting things that happened in the chapter, or perhaps are yet to come (heehehee).
Did you know that whence actually means from what place, from which, or from where? I didn't until I decided that Dippet should use the word. It does add new meaning to the classical "Back to/from whence you came!" that fictional characters are fond of spouting. Put that way, there's an implied repeated from, or an awkward "to from" that makes no grammatical sense. Anyway, the real point here is that I'm trying to make the characters from the 20th century speak a bit more formally and old timey, in contrast to Harry's very modern vernacular. The difference wouldn't be too jarring, as wizarding society is fairly insular, but I am trying to interject it subtly in a few places.
Oh, and anyone who knows or figures out why Harry is specifically in 1938 gets a free (and totally not imaginary) cookie. You have all the information you need to figure out what would have drawn him to that specific year. Harry will remain blissfully unaware of the reason until he's completely blindsided by it, but you, my internet citizens, have a distinct advantage or three over him. Have fun!
Best of wishes,
feauxen