Harry's Life and Secret…

"You knew?" Gillyflower asked. "How could you have found out?"

"Lucky guess" Harry said. "That and a look inside the memories of Dean" and the Auror simply nodded in defeat and tossed his wand away – thinking he would never use it again.

"I will not allow a filthy halfblood and mudblood to accuse me!" Fleur yelled and started firing deadly spells at everybody she could see. She transformed into her full Veela self and flung fireballs all over the courtroom with most people taking cover.

"I want that bitch alive" Dean growled.

"So do I" Harry casting a shield in front of him. "Nyssa, stay here. If you look to be in danger, use your Portkey" and the two wizards jumped over the table they had been covering behind and started attacking Fleur with spell after spell. The Auror guard and the cadets tried to help, but the French witch was almost too powerful and she lay most of them down with massive injuries. Only Harry, Dean and Susan still stood and they combined their attacks in order to subdue her. Fleur had almost managed to get an escape when the doors to the courtroom opened and another Veela, this one a little smaller, walked in and stared at her.

"Hello sister" Gabrielle Delacour said and slugged her to the side of the head – sending Fleur to the stone floor like a sack of potatoes. "Have you missed me?"

"Gabby" Harry nodded as he panted from lack of breath, "Good to see you"

"I wish it was under better circumstances" the younger Veela slid back into her preferred human form and looked down at her sister. "I bring official notice from the Ministry of my country" she said. "They say 'That bitch is all yours'… She is banned from entering France and is exiled from the French Veela groups" and she looked up to gaze at Dean sadly. "Sir, I am sorry for the loss of your wife and the shame that it has brought upon my family and of all Veela. Is there anything we can do to try and wash the shame away?"

"Yeah" Dean said, "Tell me how much truth serum can that slag actually hold…?"

#

"Sit down, Weasley" the goblin said. Bill Weasley sat down in the only other chair in the office and try not to show the nerves he had from being dragged from his office at the bank to meet the Bank manager and leader of the British Goblins.

"What is the matter?"

"Did you know what your wife has done in regards to Mr Dean Thomas and his family?" asked Ragnock.

"How do you mean?" blinked Bill.

"Your wife aided the rape, torture and murder of Thomas's wife and children along with an Auror"

"Oh" Bill shrugged, "I thought she might have got away with that" and there was an angry yell from behind and he glanced over his shoulder to see Dean break his nose with a left hook.

"YOU BASTARD!" he yelled and he had to be restrained before he waded in and ripped Bill to shreds.

"No" Harry said, "Let the Aurors take him for interrogation… I am sure they will want to find out their own sweet methods"

"If they do not" said one of the Goblins, "Then we will"

"Thank you" said Dean and gave Bill a swift kick in the ribs.

"We will hold him until the Aurors arrive" Ragnock said. "We promise that he will be alive when it happens" and he looks at the groaning figure. "You're fired"

# # # # #

"I can't believe it" Harry sat down heavily in his living room. "I've stood beside the three of them in battle, I knew all of them well…" he shook his head.

"There was no way to know" Nyssa said gently.

"Maybe not with Fleur or Bill, but I should have guessed with Gillyflower – should have gutted that bastard after he raped you" he spat.

"I would have helped you" Dean said. "Susan, is this a matter for the Ministry or can I sue them in court privately?"

"Both, but you have better luck with your leaving it to us" the former Hufflepuff remarked. "The problem I have is what we do to them"

"Prosecute them and kill them?" Hermione arched an eyebrow.

"No, I mean to Gillyflower's children and the Weasley girl"

"Damn, forgot about that" Harry hung his head.

"What?" asked Nyssa.

"Under our laws, Nys, the entire family of the perpetrators are executed in front of them before sentence is carried out. Its barbaric, and that's why it was banned. Unfortunately, they carried out the attack six hours before the new law came into effect – the old law must be carried out" Harry sighed, gestured to a bottle of whiskey on the sideboard and pointed to several glasses.

"Is there any way out of it?" asked Nyssa.

"I hope so – I don't want to murder children like they did" Dean sipped his drink.

"Maybe there is" a quiet voice from the back said. "I don't know how this would apply to the Weasley daughter, but there is a chance we can save the Gillyflower children. What if we used the old Head of House laws?" Lavender smirked with mischief at the thought of getting one over Hermione.

"Aren't they a wee bit young for that?" asked Hannah.

"Not really. Harry was the Head of his family from the moment his parents died"

"So how does that help us?" Dean asked.

"We declare that Gillyflower is no longer fit to lead his House. Control then passes to the next oldest down the line, although in this case they are twins. We ask the twins if they know how nasty their father has been and if he should be kicked out the family as a result" Hermione was seeing where Lavender was going.

"The net result is that we kick him out the family and save the lives of the kids – I like that idea" Harry nodded. "But first" his tome grew darker, "We'll have to resort to some very brutal techniques"

#

"I can tell you were holding something back when we all met" said Nyssa once the others had left.

"Yeah… Susan slipped me a copy of the autopsy done on Dean wife – she was expecting twins"

"My Lord" Nyssa crossed herself and muttered a short prayer under her breath. "I hope they burn in hell" she added.

"So do I… The full interrogations start tomorrow, I'm going along with the rest of my former command staff to oversee it all, but I want you to go to school as normal"

"Why?"

"Long story short, there are some things that you are not meant to see. I have accommodated every last request you have made of me, but this is something that I forbid you to view"

"I'm going" Nyssa insisted.

"Nyssa, I will have you stunned and bound if that's what it will take… Trust when I say that I can see such things but you should not"

"I'm almost grown up now, we're getting married and you want to keep this away from me?" Nyssa glared at him with folded arms.

"I know you had to go through it all with the aftermath of your rape, but that's nothing compared to what we're going to do later with the prisoners. We're not going to rape them, but we're going to do more than just magical torture" Harry explained it bluntly.

"Oh"

# # # # #

Whatever had been found, Harry kept it to himself as he rose in the early hours of the morning, dressed, picked up his kit and made his way outside to the car. He'd been made a driver on local workings around the docks and a few short freights which had pleased Harry greatly. Arriving at the shed, he signed on and checked the late notice case which told of a section of single line working between Knapford Harbour and Knapford South Junction. He walked out to find he was going to be driving Thomas which lifted his spirits somewhat – he and the blue tank engine got along very well.

"Hello, Thomas"

"Hello, Harry… been up to anything wizardy?" the engine asked cheekily.

"Oh, just learning how to turn tank engines into mice"

"Of course you can…" snorted Thomas. Harry looked around and then transfigured the engine into a mouse for a second before setting him back to rights. "Okay, I believe you. It will be nice to do some simple freight runs today… I've been shunting a lot of coaches lately, so its good to stretch my wheels"

"There is something to be said for the simple life from time to time" Harry agreed as he walked around the engine.

"You seem bothered by something" Thomas said as Harry paused by his front.

"I am… Two people I thought I knew very well have betrayed me, Thomas, and done some very terrible things indeed"

"Oh" Thomas said and tried hard to think of something else to say. "Why don't you tell me about it and maybe I can help"

"I… Maybe later" Harry said as the fireman came up to them with a set of written instructions in a leather case.

"Light engine to Knapford South Junction, whistle for the wrong road and then caution for the down Harbour" the man said with a touch of Scots in his accent.

"Right – check the fire"

"Sure… I thought you might want to know because you're young"

"And what does that mean?"

"Well, the others think you must be bribing the old man to be a driver so quickly"

"You want to shut that mouth of your before I do it for you?" Harry growled.

"Like to see a young whipper snapper like you try it"

"Either you shut up or I get another fireman" Harry said. Thomas, for his part, stayed quiet and merely watched proceedings because he didn't want to be turned into a mouse again.

"Whatever" and the Fireman climbed up to the cab.

"Idiot" Harry muttered. He made the decision to give most of the work to the Fireman in order to teach him manners.

#

They ran light engine to collect their trucks, ran to the sidings and waited for an hour while they were all loaded with cement, planks of wood, nails, stone and a lot of tools needed to repair the Harbour's walls which had been damaged in a storm a few weeks previously. Once delivered, they returned light engine back up to the junction where they were asked to work a short passenger train from Knapford to Elsbridge because Duck had failed with a stuck injector. After ensuring that that was as far as they were going to go, as Harry did not sign the line past that station, Harry backed Thomas onto the two coaches and waited for the signal to start. While he was waiting, he allowed his thoughts to mull over the interrogations and the extent of what Fleur and Gillyflower had planned to do together. The betrayal of the Auror hurt Harry a lot because of the second chance he had given him, but that of Fleur had wounded him deeply because they had been friends and stood together in war. Although in theory subject to Goblin law, they'd taken one look at Harry and let the Ministry have all responsibility for her. After a rather painful and gruelling questioning, it had turned out that although Bill Weasley had not taken part in the attacks, he knew of them and had not stopped them or alerted the Aurors. As a result, he was fined every last coin in his account, had it shut down and then stripped naked and dumped in a certain club in Soho after being fired.

Harry sometimes wondered about the sanity of the Goblin people…

"Are we going to take a return service?" Thomas's question confused him for a moment as he came back to reality.

"I don't know" Harry replied, rubbing his chin in thought.

"It would be nice to pull a passenger train after all this work on the rebuilding" the tank engine sighed wistfully.

"You just want to get back to Annie and Clarabelle" Harry chuckled.

"Of course. I know Percy will look after them, but I'd rather look after them myself. They are my very best friends" Thomas added proudly.

"I am sure they are fine… I saw them yesterday and they seemed happy enough" Harry shrugged and tapped a gauge and inspected the reading. "Hmm… Steam pressure is a little low – how do you feel?"

"Like I could beat Gordon with the express"

"Well no speed trials please" Harry cautioned him. Thomas, for his part, knew his driver was worried about him and treated the reply seriously.

"Yes, Sir… I will take very great care. Maybe, though, its due to all the slow running I have been doing"

"Maybe" Harry agreed, "But then again it could also be a faulty gauge"

"If its faulty, shouldn't I be a failed engine?"

"Ah" Harry said wisely, "We only suspect it of being faulty. You just shout out if you feel unwell" and he tapped the glass again before shrugging to himself.

"What sort of fire do you want?" asked the rude Fireman as he climbed up into Thomas's cab.

"Just give me the normal sort, but don't push it… We have a suspect glass and I don't know if its just a bit of low pressure in the pipes or if we're a failed engine"

"Regulations say we have to fail if you are in doubt"

"It could also be a result of not having enough water – something I said to take care of" and Harry was furious to see the Fireman suddenly turn as white as a sheet.

"Oh my God… I knew there was something I'd forgotten"

"I'll deal with this later… Get on the platform and bring that hose over and shove it in the water tank quickly" Harry ordered as he cast a wordless spell to make the water go faster.

"Right" and the man scrambled down to do his task.

#

By the time they got to Elsbridge, Harry and Thomas's suspicisions were correct and the gauge read quite normal. He still intended to report the matter to the Running Foreman when they got back to the shed, but, for now, he waited until they were uncoupled before going into the headshunt and waiting for the points to switch so they could run around their train and head for Knapford and home. As they watched other trains passing by, Thomas wondered if Harry was going to be alright. Whatever was bothering the Wizard, it had to be a really big upset to make him moody at times. The engine couldn't think of a time that he had been betrayed by a friend, but he imagined that he would be very upset indeed.

"Do you know if we're running back in service or ECS?" Thomas asked as Harry walked up from where he had been talking to the Elsbridge stationmaster.

"We're to wait until the fast train has passed through and then we follow as a relief" he replied as he gripped the poles on the side of Thomas's cab and hauled himself up inside. "I shouldn't think we'll be that full, but we might get a few late people" he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine"

"Good… I've phoned ahead and found out we'll to dispose of the coaches ourselves and then go on the engine siding as standby engine" Harry said. "Bobby will give us the signal in a minute to go onto the train" and, as he spoke, the signal changed and allowed them to move around the coaches and then back onto the train. They waited for the Guard's whistle before Harry eased the brakes off and moved the regulator forward to allow Thomas to start back. They puffed along the line on a beautiful sunny afternoon, keeping an eye out for a sudden change in signals or an obstruction on the line, but finding none as they journeyed towards Toryreck.

"Hullo, driver, had a word from the signal box for you to call him on the SPT when you got in" one of the platform staff said as she passed by with some parcels.

"Right-o" Harry sighed, thinking it was going to be one of those days. He walked along the platform and picked up the phone to talk to the signaller. "Hello, signaller… Driver of Two Zulu Zero One standing at your Tango Romeo One One signal"

"Hello Driver of Two Zulu Zero One standing at my Tango Romeo One One signal" came the surprising voice of a female signaller. It wasn't that Harry was sexist at all, but knew there weren't all that many women working in boxes. "What's happened is that the fast train has broken down after hitting something placed on the track. The train is only a few miles up the line and I want to know if you would move forward and assist from the rear"

"Depends on what the problem is – I'm hauling two coaches with a tank engine"

"They said the rods have been badly damaged. They have managed to get them both off, but can't move without another engine to tow them in. Normally, we'd wait for the standby engine to come from Knapford, but it's a charter for orphaned and disadvantaged kids and it will take at least an hour to arrive"

"Alright" Harry said instantly, "I'll go to the assistance of the failed unit. I understand that I have permission from the Toryreck signaller to run on the down line with another train in the section. Driver out" and he hung up the phone and closed the door to the SPT before walking back to the train. "The fast has been failed because of an object put on the track. They have got the rods off, but need us to push it to Dryaw where a couple of buses will get the children back to Knapford" he said.

"That will take them ages" the Fireman said.

"What if we pushed our coaches to the back of the failed train, ran round and then towed it all the way to Knapford?" suggested Thomas. "We might be late with our own train, but we could just drop them off at the junction if Toby could meet us there for the last mile"

"Are you up for it?" asked Harry.

"Yes – I don't want to let the children down. That would cause…"

"Confusion and delay" the two humans said together.

"Right, well you go tell the passengers what is happening and I will go speak to the signaller about the change of plans"

#

"Thomas is late arriving with his relief train… What has happened to him?" asked the Fat Controller.

"Him and his crew were asked to assist a train that had broken down because something was put on the track in front of it. It damaged the engine pulling the special fast and that's why, Sir" said the Knapford stationmaster.

"Why didn't they just ask for buses at Dryaw?" wondered the Fat Controller.

"I don't know, Sir, but I can try and find out for you" the man said. The Fat Controller nodded and was just about to turn back to his paperwork when a quiet cheer sounded on the platforms. Underneath the cries, the two men could hear a steam engine panting hard at work with what sounded like a heavy load. They dashed outside to see Thomas wheezing, moaning, groaning, panting and wheeshing his way into Platform 1 hauling James, Henry, a rake of express coaches and two secondary line coaches at the rear. As the slow train moved under the canopy, Thomas let out a tired but triumphant series of whistles before coming to a halt at the end of the platform – everybody could see that there was no way that Thomas could move another inch under his own steam after such a feat for a tank engine.

"What has happened here?" asked the Fat Controller as he walked up to Thomas's cab side to speak to the engine and his crew.

"We were asked to assist a failed engine when we were coming back with a relief train, Sir" Harry replied as he gulped down an ice cold drink somebody shoved into his hands. "When we got to Dryaw, we were told that the standby engine was already out on a call and that the buses were on strike. After a discussion with Thomas, we decided we couldn't let the children down and made the choice to keep going. We were not doing too badly until we found James stuck further along the line with a broken reverser stuck in neutral. We shunted him in front of Henry and hauled the train all the way here, Sir, so the children could get home without being too late at all"

"I see… Thomas, you and your crew have been really useful even if it has been in an unconventional way. You have brought not only your train home again, but rescued two failed engines and a failed train" the Fat Controller praised him.

"I thought pushing Bear and Spam Can was tough enough for me" Henry said with disbelief edging into his voice, "But for Thomas to do all this is nothing short of amazing. I think he just about burst his pipes with all the effort of doing the best he could…"

"May he go to the works in front of us?" James added. "We don't mind waiting a few days until he's fixed"

"I shall send for Percy to tow you to the sheds, Thomas, and then I will send you to the Works in the morning"

"Actually… I… want… to… go… myself" the little tank engine managed to say through the aches and pains he was suffering. The fireman had uncoupled him from the extended train, got back on the footplate and Thomas whistled away, oozing steam out of many joints and valves, to the sheds where he could be safely disposed of after as much water as he could handle. As he painfully made his way there, other engines offered to push or pull him to the shed, but Thomas gamely and valiantly refused all offers until his wheels touched the buffers at the water siding.

#

The next morning, Thomas was loaded onto a special wagon and taken on the back of a goods train to the Works where he would be sorted out and be as good as new. Harry, though, had the day off from work so he made sure to have a filling breakfast before he had to go to the Ministry and see what else had been discovered from the questioning of Fleur and Gillyflower. Apart from that, Nyssa had repeated her request to be put under two of the Unforgivables which had set Harry off into a blind rage and made the girl back off and call Hermione, Susan and Hannah to explain it all to her. It took some effort, but they understood that Harry, uniquely, had been put under all three of them during his lifetime and would never cast them on another human being to cause pain and suffering. Nyssa, after reading some books and reports they had slipped her, couldn't help but wonder how on earth he was still alive. She decided to drop the matter and helped Harry to prepare for his meeting whilst she was at school. Harry was reading through the reports when the others arrived in his office – the best furnished out of the whole lot. He looked at Dean who seemed to have aged thirty years since his family was tortured, raped and murdered and noted he looked especially depressed.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Those bastards have lodged not guilty pleas and so the DMLE won't release the bodies incase they want to perform tests" Dean said hollowly. "Why can't they just let me bury my wife and children?"

"They know they are going to be sent down for death, so they want to cause as much pain as possible" Hermione shrugged. "Of course, you could return the favour by hurting his children"

"Whatever those bastards have done to me, I will not stoop to their level by harming children" Dean shook his head.

"Well they are yours to deal with now" Hannah said.

"Actually, its Harry's – I sort of became a vassal House thingie-ma-bob so that I would be protected by him. We all know what its like to be black around here"

"I think Gringotts are looking after them due to the entire forfeiture of the pair's accounts and items" Harry shrugged. "The main thing is to see if we can get them a speedy one day trial as everything has been revealed"

"It might not be easy" Susan commented.

"Tell them that if they don't get a one day trial, I will personally rip the arms out of each and every one of them"

"Will you?"

"Maybe" Harry said simply. "Who do you have planned to be your lawyer?" he asked Dean.

"Well that's the other problem" he said. "I can't seem to find one that will not charge the earth… Even if it is a sure case anyway" and Dean looked up. "Would you do it for me?" he asked Hermione.

"Sure…" the woman replied.

"I'll go and deal with the Goblins" Harry said. "They owe me a great many number of favours"

"You would they were reaching the limit of those" Dean remarked.

"They have a debt that can never be repaid, Dean… Not while I draw breath"

"One of these days, Harry, you're going to have to tell me what you have over them" Hermione sighed and sipped the tea in front of her.

# # # # #

"I didn't think you would be back before me" Nyssa said that evening as she came home from an after school activity – Harry was sat with a half full bottle of whiskey in the living room with a triple measure of it in a glass before him.

"I had to visit somebody after I met at the Ministry" Harry didn't sound drunk, but he didn't sound sober either. As she stepped closer, Nyssa saw he had been crying at some point in time.

"I'm guessing it wasn't a good thing"

"No… I went to school with this person for years, she took part in the Battle of Hogwarts, never got the recognition she deserved and then was killed in one of the most horrific ways possible – even by magical standards"

"I'm… Sorry?" she didn't intend to make it sound like a question.

"How she died is one of the main reasons I won't put the Imperio on you no matter how much you ask" Harry drained his glass and filled it to the brim. "It happened three years ago. I had been seeing her for a while despite the fact I was engaged to marry Ginny Weasley. We… We were intimate for a while and then she suddenly seemed to change and said she couldn't see me anymore. The next day, we got a report of a group of idiots trying to restart the Death Eaters in the Sussex countryside, so I gathered all the Aurors I could find and headed there to take care of the problem"

"Was she there?"

"Oh yes…" Harry seemed to have more tears in his eyes. "The place was old, very old, and we found most of them in the dungeons torturing Muggles and Muggle Born into insanity and death. It wasn't just adults either – babies and children were being done just as easily. We came upon a massive oak door that ended up being demolished by blasting hexes and we found the senior Death Eaters with a group of Goblins living up to their name"

"I don't understand" Nyssa said, though an unsettling feeling was forming in her stomach.

"No…" Harry shook his head sadly, "You really don't, do you? They had a couple of people laying on tables and they were feasting on their flesh"

"Cannibals" Nyssa suddenly felt a little sick.

"Yeah – but not in the traditional way. The people they were eating were still alive… Their magic prevented them dying until the heart was ripped out which was the last thing to do. Imagine the pain and suffering they went through during it, double it, double it again and you'd still never understand it, Nyssa… The most senior of the senior circle was eating Sue. When I saw what they had done to her, I got a little upset"

"How… How upset?"

"After I was done, they had to bring in magic aware Muggles to do a DNA test on the blood" Harry had another drink, thought about it, then flicked his fingers and a glass of the stuff appeared in front of Nyssa. "You look as if you could do with it. Those unfortunate to survive were questioned with truth serum and it turned out that each of the victims was put under multiple spells to amuse their captors. The ones 'chosen' to be eaten alive were put under the Imperio spell and made to carve their own flesh off and serve it on silver platters. By the time I got to Sue, it was fair too late to help her except to ease her suffering"

"You euthanized her" Nyssa said. She felt awkward in that it was the right thing to do, but her religion forbid it and she made a note to visit the Father in the morning and ask for advice on the subject.

"It was the only thing I could do, Nys, and I know how that sits with you and the big guy in the Vatican" Harry looked at the bottle of whiskey before tapping it. Nyssa watched as the bottle floated up and into the kitchen. "Afterwards, I got back with Ginny and thought things were going perfectly until Shaklebolt tried his game, I quit being the head Auror and DMLE chief and came here"

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Will you tell me more about this Sue? I mean it can't be Susan because I know she is alive"

"Sure" Harry shrugged. "Sue was small, slightly delicate, but damned powerful in a fight. She had the blackest hair that you could imagine, and, even after she graduated Hogwarts, looked smoking hot in her uniform. She was half Chinese you know – her father had come here during the back end of Mao's leadership and settled with a British witch and had just her. Most people forgot that she existed at all, but she could talk like the devil when she got going. Everything she did was done with grace, style, passion and control – not a breath was wasted if she could help it. Despite her training as a formidable warrior for the Light, she was a damned gentle soul and I loved spending time with her… You might blush at this, but we used to go camping with a tent charmed like the ceiling in the Great Hall at Hogwarts so you could see the sky outside. We used to make love under the stars and then lay naked as it rained – she used to call it the washing away of Mankind's sins for another day…" and Nyssa gave him an encouraging smile as he sat back and told her everything long into the evening and on into the night.

A/N:

Sorry for the long breaks in uploading, but I've been suffering from writers block and this, maybe slightly rambling chapter, is what I have worked on for a few weeks now. I just hope that you enjoy another piece of life on the Island of Sodor and why Harry refuses to use Imperio on Nyssa…

As always, reviews please

Regards,

Pixel