The Ruined Peoples

by Pascal in Quebec

A very young Harry gets help from age 6 to fight against the cruel imprisonment he suffers at the Dursley's house. He sets out to earn his freedom by any means, at any costs, while trying to not lose too much of himself to the various beings, magicks and situations he will encounter. His ultimate goal is revenge against Dumbledore and making a new country of free magicals.

2. Chapter 2

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read this story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, the Torchlight games, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators, broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

THE RUINED PEOPLES

second chapter: childhood of pains

Summer vacations 1987

(Harry Potter - theme)

July & August 1987

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Little 7 year old Harry Potter's summer vacations had begun with the sad events that concluded in the burial of his most precious friend and ally, the young house-elf Dryskholl. He was now alone in this life, devoid of true friends or social contacts to sustain him through the depressive period of grief and loss. As such, he lacked both emotional uplift and moral boundaries required to guide his way through the process of accepting and surpassing the loss in a healthy manner.

Poor Harry alternated between hiding away inside Lily's dimensional trunk or haunting the empty streets around Surrey, self-medicating his depression with cigarettes of cheap tobacco, hemp or hashish and equally cheap booze, anything the local back-alley pusher had to sell.

The sight of the very small, prepubescent boy being slightly buzzed so that he was swaying unsteadily on his legs had attracted the bad sort of attention. Several times Harry had to resort to small knives hidden in his sleeves or pockets to fight off perverts, leaving most with scars on their hands, arms and faces. On two occasions he had to pull out from a holster spelled invisible with elf wards the cal.38 Saturday Night Special revolver he always carried, even inside school. The summer of 1987 saw the unresolved deaths of three men of high economic standing, all found in the area of Surrey, south of London, shot in the crotch and left to bleed to death in dank, filthy alleys.

The police never allowed any information to circulate on what the media had dubbed "The Pedo Eunuchefier of Surrey" no matter what pressures the community tried. Among the underground networks of pedophiles, perverts and pimps, the news was going around fast that the county was turning against their trade, and the people in the business needed to be more careful. Pimps became less flashy, less visible, and hired bodyguards. Brothels reinforced their buildings and hired more guards, also forcing clients to leave their weapons at the vestibule when they entered to purchase their vices. But still, before September of 1987 came, another two roaming pervs who were from out of town were found shot in the pubes, and left to bleed out in dark places.

While the cops looked like incompetent rubes, and the higher castes of the economic and political powers of Britain were starting to feel threatened in their sacro-sanct right to exert said power to their whims, the ordinary population felt satisfaction that -somebody- was doing the job as it should get done at long last. Without ever giving any official public notice, the hierarchy of the national constabulary in London sent down an order to the Surrey precincts that this seditious felon who was killing their "Good and noble fellow Englishmen" had to be put down like a rabid cur as soon as he was spotted, and sooner if it was a woman rebelling against men.

Harry, of course, didn't really know about this because it had been Dryskholl that had insisted he read the papers of muggle and magical Britain every morning with breakfast. He had explained that a proper House Lord needed fresh information to make enlightened decisions, adding that only Dumbledore would want Harry to be ignorant or cut-off from the public medias. The child usually read the papers or listened to the radio and TV with pleasure, but now that he was alone doing so seemed to only remind him of what he lost, so he didn't remember what he saw or heard. He stopped watching the soap operas that the elfling had found so amusing and captivating because it wasn't fun watching them alone. Half the pleasure of watching those had been Dryskholl's reactions to the plot twists, a bit like the elf laughed at Harry's fan-boy attitude towards English sports teams. It would take well into November before that mental state was rectified.

Inside Lily's trunk, Harry plunged himself to the point of drowning in the subjects of muggle and magical studies his mum had left behind, in prevision of her masteries training. Harry found out just how attached to modernizing the mystical side of society his late mother had been, as she planned on being a combination of apothecary & pharmacist as well as surgeon and healer. Not lacking in ambition or drive to succeed, she had aimed for the equivalent of two university doctorates and three magical masteries before she was twenty-five years old. The masteries could be helped along with several powerful potions that she was learning to brew herself to cut down costs, as the brewer's skills and work time accounted for ¾ of the price.

One of those potions she had already finished and made several doses that she was selling 'under the table' to people who had not attended Hogwarts because they were not from influential families, or muggle-born under the protection of Dumbledore and the Royal Edict on the Right to Magical Education of 1002ad. It warmed Harry's heart to see that his mother had as little care for the laws of Welsh Wiccan society as he did, when he realized she had become a potion-pusher since the end of her fourth year in magical school. The potion she had prepared was one of the first permanent boosters that Harry would ingest. It taught the user the language and basic skills for Ancient Runes, similar to the class taught at Hogwarts, but of a performance caliber in tune with the ICW exams and diplomas, thus justifying the 150 Galleons Lily asked for each set of vials.

It was important to understand that an ordinary student from a working-class family would probably have an allowance of 1 or 2 Galleons per month for personal expenditures in years one through four, then about 4 or 5 Galleons per month from fifth year on. It took a good chance at a solid result from a spell or potion for most families to fork over 150 Galleons, especially to a kit bought from an unlicensed child. On the other hand, the same potion sold in a certified apothecary would set them back by nearly 800 Galleons, so it was a clear choice of having a chance at improving their kid's life or going without. And Lily's reputation as brewer and hedge-witch was solidly established, a fact proven by the client list, order tickets and accounting books left in the study of the trunk. His mother had been making a net profit of nearly 200 Galleon per month throughout third and fourth year by using old equipment in an unused classroom. When she began to use new devices and fresh components, the performance of her brews increased so much that she was netting around 350 Galleons monthly in fifth year. That was almost the same as the British Wizarding World's minimum salary for full-time adult workers in boutiques! And she still performed in her classes in the top 1% of the entire school, all years confounded.

Harry was proud of the woman's accomplishments, and trusted her brewing skills just like the hundreds of people in her list did. He took the first potion gladly, as it gave him a piece of his parents that nobody would ever be able to remove from him. It would take a month to get the full effects, by drinking one vial each night for thirty days, then the entire foundation for the Runes up to NEWT grade would be installed in his mind. Lily's notes said clearly that you could only use a single set of knowledge per month unless you were a trained mind-mage or psionicist who had developed the skill multi-tracked-mind to process parallel installations. That was something that his mother's notes discouraged before at least age 11, due to the fact it could damage the brains natural growth and innate wiring, thusly stopping or nullifying Talents and Gifts he was supposed to inherit from his ancestors. Harry did the Runes in July, and a course on English literature & medias in August to help shore up his capacity to express himself when speaking with the Goblins or listening to the radio and TV.

Second school year; 1987-88

(Harry Potter - theme)

1987-88

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

The start of the new school year at Van Uttebatten primary academy was quite a shock from the last time. For one thing, the teachers and custodians didn't each openly carry a wicked rattan cane in hand as crude demonstration of power over their charges. Which, incidentally, also committed a public show of weakness from adults, terrified of little children stealing said power out of their hands. Instead, it was announced that the county would be enforcing the national rules that stated only the principal could cane a student, and only over clothing, with at least one teacher or custodian present as witness. The days of several men violently dragging the kids to a locked basement room to molest & injure them were well and truly behind them. Now, conventional detentions and an occasional bout of cleaning the edifices or schoolyard were the punishments to be expected.

The second change was of a visible nature too. Instead of having custodians and janitors chosen for being taller than 6' 6" and weighing above 250 pounds to intimidate the kids through simple presentation, all the support personnel were now shorter than 5' 9" and under 200 pounds. They had also been vetted by the county's superintendent, and the local police station, to make certain perverts and thieves no longer laired inside their school. Another very different aspect was that a quarter of the new hires were women fresh from Uni, instead of angry old men kicked out of the police or army for a variety of misconducts. The other jarring novelty was that three of the newly hired staff were not white skinned, but instead two immigrants from the Indies and one descendant of homeland slaves brought in from Jamaica in the 1700's. The new employees' lack of aggressivity and gut roiling anger was almost visible in their body language and facial expressions, as they placidly watched the lines of children sit down in the assembly hall for the Beginning Address of the new school year.

Harry wasn't stupid, and he had varied sources of information, too. He knew that three more of the old teachers had been replaced during the summer break. Two were gone to retirement to hide graver incidents nobody in the county admins wanted to admit in public. Another was a simple transfer that had been requested for nigh on five years already, and finally the paperwork got passed the teachers' union and admins, thus clearing the way for the person's departure to a different sector of the UK.

Harry's mundane classes were simple because they weren't magical, but they weren't boring, if simply because they implied contact with living people instead of the 'unseen servant' dweomer that did the cleaning and cooking in the trunk. The boy simply didn't have the emotional stability to hire anew house-elf, even if Gringotts could have found him one in a few weeks. It did force Harry to sober up from his acquired taste for hard gin and cooking Sherry, or the costlier Gnomish Calvados his dad preferred. And he also had to lay off smoking his antique meerschaum pipe, or the bigger yet equally antiquated glass & copper nargileh, lest the odors cling to his person or clothes, making the teachers ask very uncomfortable questions about his habits or worse, his nonexistent home life. Which was a right shame as the boy liked having a good, slow smoke with his small drink of alcohol as he read through the diaries and almanac's of the Houses he belonged to each evening, as he learned where he came from and what he should aim for, besides destroying Dumbledore.

{ HP } - { Have a life, why don't you? } - { HP }

However, Harry's enforced sobriety regimen had a good side-effect since he needed something to pass the nervous energy from his small bout of withdrawal. The child began to visit the school's playground more assiduously, thus making the first human friends he ever had. Playing hopscotch or marbles may seem like a babyish waste of time and effort when compared to what the Potter 'Blood Compact' had left in his head, but they were in fact vital developmental activities for children to be healthy.

Harry also tried to have peaceful walks around the neighborhood in the evening or early mornings to air out his mind from living so tightly confined to the trunk or school all the time. He went to the small, forlorn pawn shop a few streets over at least once a week, mostly to have a chat and share a cuppa with the old lady that owned the place. Marigold Thismeh had no family left, and the business wasn't going so well, as the new giant stores like Tesco were pumping out more and more non-durable items that couldn't be repaired or reused, just thrown to the bin and replaced by the year's new model. The economy of consumption was well upon them, and small shops that did repairs, exchanges and crafted new devices on commission were becoming a thing of the past. Since she had less clients than ever, Harry's Saturday visits were pretty much the only reason she bothered to open the boutique on that day anymore, so it gave both a little something to look forward to, and a kind person to speak with over warm tea.

It was also the reason Harry started putting efforts into learning to cook and bake. According to The Old Ways, he had to bring a small food item as tithe of gratitude for the host granting him haven during his travels. Technically, the 'Unseen Servant' could do a very good job indeed, but it felt like he was cheating the moral point of the cultural Tradition when he did that. If he bought a box at a baker's shop, then it would be obvious yet acceptable as everything was above board. So, driven by one of the rare positive emotional impulses he had of late, he put his mind to read recipe books and cooking guides, while programming the 'Servant' dweomer to act as a tutor. Harry eventually managed to produce cookies, muffins, scones and assorted small breads that he wasn't ashamed to present to another being for sharing. This small gesture of compassion and friendship made Marigold even more happy with opening the shop on Saturday, as she wasn't the best baker. She would supply the tea and fixings while her juvenile guest brought the solids.

{ HP } - { Young minds need feeding } - { HP }

Another small but happy change was that Harry could now use the school's renovated library, which had been found and unlocked. The previous managers had decided that children between ages six and eleven needed firm discipline and correction to walk the narrow path of morality, not all the lefty brain-rotting pipe-dreams printed in books and newspapers. Therefore, during a summer break, they had put thick curtains over the windows and laid drywall sheets over the doors, covering everything with plaster and paint to make the library disappear, like a bad dream come morning light. The new administrators had been appalled at this, and so had the county's people, so the decrepit old room was found, unlocked and renovated until it was usable safely by anybody. Harry hadn't been truly convinced about the changed situation, but he visited the place in its third week of open services.

The young boy found brand new collections of leisure texts in the Fantasy and Science-Fiction styles that made his mind explode with wonder, excitement and ingenuity. He particularly liked to read the Fantasy, Dystopian and Utopian kinds of worlds because they related so much to his life. In particular, he asked the librarian about Messiahs, Saviors, Prophecies and Quest Heroes, because he wanted to know if there existed books on how to analyze & predict how those stories were told. The young man, a Pakistani immigrant barely twenty-three and just out of Uni, laughed kindly at the heavy-handed approach to literature the diminutive boy wanted to undertake. Still chuckling, he guided Harry through the stacks towards the section for advanced literary studies and textual analytics, which Harry looked at rapidly, dismissing three books out of hand, stating "I know those already", so he grabbed a pile of other manuals then sat to read through all six quite quickly. Despite his amusement at the child's proclivities, the young employee was always helpful, and cheerful, whenever the boy asked his opinion or just wanted to chat when he brought back the books he had loaned for the week. The relationship would be solidly set by the Christmas vacations, so much that Harry baked the young man a Yule Log to bring home to his family, event that had the school staff gossiping amusedly for days.

{ HP } - { Community outreach } - { HP }

The most troubling, yet helpful, change to overcome Van Uttebatten academy was that the county had looked over the statistics for the clienteles that attended the school, and found out about how many were chronically poor, underfed, unable to get healed right, or victimized at home but not enough for CPS to have the right to remove them or intervene fully in the house. The admins even found that nearly 17 kids were in a situation similar to Harry's, being on the cusp of homelessness or living in a youth shelter run by the Anglican church, five streets away. That made the county execs decide to get radical; they ordered the school to be opened from 8:00am till 6:00pm every day of the week, including week-ends and holidays around the year. The goal was to give the kids a place to eat, shower and be given basic social services to keep them off the streets as much as possible, and without implicating adults that could get violent if their dirty secrets were exposed by their young victims.

Because the county had to do so much structural renovations and clean-up in the campus, and open longer hours seven days per week, plus the new teachers, custodians and janitors, made that the budgets were not balancing. To be honest, the situation at Van Uttebatten had put the county's schooling division in the red, punching a hole in the year's financial predictions. This meant that they could not rectify the pressing problem of complying with national standards about having an infirmary & nurse on campus at each hour of open services. The temporary solution was to establish a formal agreement with the paupers' clinic a few streets away, to handle the worse cases by bringing the child over to them, as had been the method up to date. In the coming years, the school would receive the money to refurbish the old infirmary suite located next to the reception desk in the admin edifice. They would also be able to hire some retired nurses to work four hour shifts in rotations to cover all the open hours throughout the year. And, as these were short shifts spread out with very little traffic in the infirmary to deal with anyways, the people working part-time wouldn't get worn out so much they couldn't function, even if they were elderly and a bit slower than usual.

While the new constant traffic of people around the school sometimes got on Harry's nerves compared to the old way of having the entire campus to himself half the time, it did do a great deal of good towards healing his damaged soul, mind and temper. Having to be around other kids also meant that he was less depressive, therefore less prone to self-medicating with alcohol or smoking herbs in his pipes. By the time Christmas came, the child had reduced his consumption of alcohol to a quarter ounce of excellent quality Gnomish Calavados or Halfling Sherry as complement to a late evening dessert, just before going to bed. He had also stopped smoking so much, passing from two or three pipes per day, down to one slow smoke on Saturday evening, as he sipped warm tea while watching the week-end movie on television, as a way to rest from the stresses of the school week.

{ HP } - { Crafty brat } - { HP }

One of the small durable projects that Harry gave himself for the year was to modify the aesthetics of the Nazi dagger & pistol he had stolen from his uncle's secret stash, when he left the house a year ago. Using the 'shaping fingertips' taught him by Dryskholl as well as the tools in the trunk, the child stripped off the offending iconography easily, but blocked when came time to replace it with the crest of House Potter and his personal glyph as it currently was in his Soul Aura. His attempts showed him that his artistic talents and manual abilities were somewhat lacking, so he looked for what he could do to change the situation. The solution was simple; he looked in the books of spells and techniques left by his mother all over the trunk. He had seen dozens of books in the workshop itself, surely some were about crafting, smithing and other artisanal pursuits?

The child was quite right, given that Lily had been stuck with exactly the same problems as he got when she decided to merge magical and mundane ways together. On the muggle side, she didn't have the diplomas or permits to purchase equipments that were reserved for the medical professions. Unless she had a license and was listed in a syndicate or professional order, she couldn't get so much as glass beakers for her laboratory. In the wizarding community, they also had laws about permits and licenses, but those could be gone around if you had a big family name or the 'Universal Key', meaning a pile of money. But still, even if she could have paid for all the magical healing stuff, nobody in the established wizard workshops wanted to waste time at crafting anything that looked the least bit muggle. And the professional healer's tools were dreadfully expensive on their own, too! So, she came to the inescapable conclusion that she had to craft the pieces and devices herself, thus leading her to assemble a small library dedicated to all the artisanal activities, mundane and magical alike.

Harry was wide-eyed as he contemplated the books on such varied subjects as gardening, farming and ranching to know how fresh and reliable parts of plants or animals were before wasting time and efforts on crafting an item that would break, or burn, as soon as it was used. This was complemented by a selection of spell-books for basic crafts, carpentry and heavy woodworks, up to and including carts, edifices, and sea ships. Likewise, there were books on prospecting the topsoil and underground, to find stones, gems, crystals or metals for smithing anything from kitchen utensils to enchanted protection amulets. There books on making diverse types of glass, pottery or ceramics for the panoply of vials, jars and tubes that any brewer, apothecary or alchemist needed in their lab. Then Harry found some books on gemology, stone lore, crystal evaluation plus magical crystallurgy, even the severely monitored Ember-smithing!

For his immediate needs, Harry followed the opinions of the family portraits, going back to the study to locate a book of beginner's spell-lists. He soon found the thick tome in the reference section next to the main desk. Flipping through, he put in colored paper tags to mark 'Prosaics; Archivistics' and 'Prosaics; Library Mastery' as the first two lists he should learn. They both related to producing or acquiring data in any form or medium, and processing said data for a report, graph or map. Archivistics was short and could all be learned in one go, but Library Mastery was a longer list, that Harry could only learn safely the first few spells. Having learned those two set of spells up to his energetic and mental capacity would immediately come in quite handy when he would learn the other spell-lists, later on in the year.

After a few months of efforts at part-time in the evenings, he had passed through the two admin spell-lists and was now able to discretely use them to hasten his school work or leisure reading. Which of course meant that any magical studies he did would now progress at a fair clip, making him feel like a born-scholar instead of the unwanted wildling he had lived as for six years.

Now mentally equipped for much better mental processing, little Harry went to the workshop to find and learn 'Prosaics; Structure Law' followed by 'Prosaics; Forging Mastery'. He had thought to limit himself to those but read 'Prosaics; Warrior Law' thus seeing that it included a few crude crafting or maintenance spells too. Above all though, the Warrior Law had spells that could help directly in a fight or survival situation, like if he had to run away to a rural zone, so he took the time to learn that too before taking up his crafting project. The results he got would certainly prove his choice right.

When Harry worked on the blade and gun, he changed their colors by bathing the items in simple potions from his mum's folios, adjusting the sheaths to match. He didn't bless the items in the name of Hades yet, as he didn't feel ready for such an important step in his religious path. He removed all icons or serial numbers from the Nazi regime, made the wood black and the steel lavender-purple, with white scriptworkes to anchor the elf-wards against detection, perception and theft or losing the items. These two were more symbolic than utilitary, so he preferred to leave them in the trunk as they could be 'called' to his hands when needed.

Harry used one of the empty warehouses of the dimensional trunk as makeshift shooting gallery to practice with all the types of low-powered pistols and hunting rifles that Dryskholl had collected during his short freedom. The human child's hands were still too small or weak for the bigger models or army-grade shells, but the small cal.38 revolver was nice, as were the single-shot Derringers and old World War II Liberator. As long as Harry stayed in caliber .22 or .38, he didn't hurt his fingers or wrists, and could practice safely enough since nobody bothered him where he did his training. A few quick spells set up papers targets on wooden posts, and he had his range ready. For the knives, he used his new crafting spells to build a few almost-dummies that he had seen in films on television. These were vertical wooden poles that were allowed to swivel so that they emulated the retaliation strikes of an enemy. Hit one limb and the force you put in makes the whole pole swing just as hard towards your opposite side, so you have to either block, parry or evade. Yes, it wasn't a very quick movement, and there was never any variation to the response pattern, but it was all that Harry had, and it was far better than any street urchin or young thug would ever have access to. Some cheap self-training is better than none at all.

Summer vacations 1988

(Harry Potter - theme)

1988

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Following the child growth chart that his mother had written, Harry only used potions to bolster his mind or skill-sets during the summer months, when he wasn't being crammed full by the school's official tuition plans. As soon as July came and school let out, he began to drink the potion to learn Latin in its pigdin, mercantile and Clerical versions, to be able to understand and cast the wizarding spells common in Britannia, Europa, Slavia and most of the Mediterranean.

This was followed in August by the potion for Mathematics, Geometry, Volumetry, Calculus, Statistics and Arithmancy. This entire system of lores and skills was almost a quarter of the entire scriptural magicks domain, a vital learning for managing his money, estate and businesses, and fundamental to all exact branches of magicks. One simply didn't go into potions or alchemy without being able to count or extrapolate correctly, and all of transfiguration, transmutation and transmogrification depended on geometry & volumetry for their functioning. Taking that potion would do wonders for his aptitudes at higher learning, giving him an incredible edge that few could dare to contemplate. And again, at 188 Galleons per set, this batch was expensive for bootleg stuff, but Man!, was it ever worth every Knut his mom put in it!

Continuing his foray into magical self-education, Harry decided to see why his mother made such a fuss about hedge-craft, potions, alchemy and healing. He could understand muggle medicine well enough as it was shown in the newspapers and TV often enough that it wasn't much of a mystery, but the magical counterpart wasn't something he'd witnessed much of. As it was, Lily's portrait gave him the advice to read a few lore manuals for starters, to get a feel for the fields of concepts and skills before he took on the spells. Her image told him that every person who planned to live part-time or more in the magical world needed to learn herbology, potions and hedge-craft until at least OWL level to be functionally autonomous. Going all the way to NEWT's was preferred, and following the ICW standards was the only way to be taken seriously as the British testing & licensing system had degenerated into a bad joke over the last two centuries. While Lily was always ready to blame Albus for all the ills of the planet, this debacle was something he inherited, then gleefully continued because he wanted the same result; idiots who always perform at levels inferior to himself.

So, Harry took a trip to the infirmary. Mostly just by walking through a door in the central corridor of his trunk, eh, eh, eh... Harry had only rarely visited this imposing, intimidating hall because he had suffered enough pain, injuries and shame in his young life that imagining the ugly, bloody work happening in this suite of rooms gave him jitters and goosebumps. Still, needs must and all that rot...

The boy read the preparatory guides and manuals destined for children or young mothers and serious hedge-wizards, then found a few spell-lists to match his curiosity. He took up the very basic 'Prosaics; Helpful Magicks' because it was generic everyday stuff that could help him find objects or move heavy things and repair better than his Childish dweomers could. Then he started learning the first few levels of 'Prosaics; Sampling Ways' to be able to harvest, prepare and accurately measure the components of any crafting or potion he wanted to do. This finally led Harry to his premier goal, the 'Prosaics; Healing Touch' which he could learn the beginning levels without risk. In fact, this list was conceived with shortened incantations and reduced gestures not only to help the rescue-wizard waste less time, but also to make it easier for semi-spell-users or complete mundanes to learn and use.

{ HP } - { The Revelation to End all magical governments } - { HP }

As he read through the three spell-lists he had chosen for the duration of this summer, Harry began to have a nasty feeling in the back of his mind. The further he read, the more uneasy he became, until he saw with his own eyes the declaration that made him want to vomit his lunch atop the offending pages of delirium.

Purely, utterly, born-as-it muggles could learn to employ ACTIVE magicks.

Mere, unimportant, lesser life-form muggles could CAST spells or EMPOWER runes.

The book with the basic family medicine spell-list was rather definitive about it, too. Anybody who knew how to speak, count, read & write and sing, should make the effort to establish contact with the minuscule core of magick inside their body and soul to render it 'Awake', even if they never raise above the level of a Squib, which is actually the name given to "muggles who have an active core but lack capacity for a fully magical profession or artistry" according to the authors. Anybody with better access to their core able to pass the magick saturation & replenishment rate tests are considered 'semi-user' of one Realm of magic, with capacity ranks going up to semi-multi, pure-user, hybrid, archmage-class, arcane-class, and High Harkys classes at the very top.

Being in training to become Anti-Champion of Hades, Harry was classed as 'Pure-user of one Realm (channeling)' but his biological ancestry and activated Blood-Law made him from birth a 'Pure-user of one Realm (essence)'. Together, both capacities forcibly made him into a hybrid user of two Realms, and he still had some partial psionics abilities he could unlock at some point in the future.

Blinking in utter amazement, Harry realized that all the magical or wizarding governments in function, and most churches too, lied to the people spuriously about how magick existed and who could learn it. Then the conclusion hit the child like a freight train going downhill without brakes to control its path. It wasn't about who 'could' learn magick, but about who 'could be controlled' once they had it inside them, and who 'could be reliable' to help the Powerful of society remain in those places of Power they had obtained or trafficked out of the population. Like the way Albus Dumbledore had usurped his way through every stratum of society from a very poor birthing as a half-blood, all the way up to Headmaster of Hogwarts, Chief Warlock of the British Wizengamot, and Supreme Mugwump (what a dumbly childish title!) of the International Confederation of Warlocks.

That was why groups like the Welsh Wiccan Ministry, the White Council, the Watchers and the Librarians all agreed to keep magic a secret from the muggles! They presently had something inside of them that was SPECIAL, that made them feel above and beyond the mere barbarians who wallowed in muck at their feet, the MUGGLES. Laying his head back into the chair, Harry realized that the logic behind this planetary lie was the same as the Nazis. Some poor, miserable wannabees without capacities or talents or their own decided to use the one thing they had since birth that couldn't be stolen or copied, the color of their skin, and mounted a doomsday cult on that sole premise. Once the racial bigotry was enshrined as the reason for their superiority, just as all of Europa had done since the 1400's to justify enslaving Africans or Arabs, then they added to the list of inferiors anything that threatened their place of authority, like any other religion or philosophy. The Nazis had just copied the prevalent psychological movance of the societies around them, not the other way around. The populations were already racist, sexist and ageist for centuries, so adding a cleavage based on magical abilities or ancestry at some point of history would have been easy-peasy for those who enacted the system.

The magicals of Britannia, Europa, Slavia and most of the Mediterranean watershed had been strongly influenced by the Roman Empire, who were avowed bigots, cruel conquerors, enslavers and exterminators of anything they couldn't control. And even if they did control you, if you were too dissimilar to what happened in Rome, or existed in Italy, the Empire would probably go and 'pacify' your deviance by pillaging, burning and salting the land where you dwelt, leaving thousands of crucified corpses in their wake. It was the Roman 'wizemen' who taught, then imposed, the arts & uses of 'Bastonnis' foci to the colonies and conquered victims of the Imperial armies. It was by Roman Law that wands replaced cauldrons, fetishes, runestones and cromlech as the -STANDARD- tool of modern, well educated spell-casting, until it became the only acceptable form of focus, lest one get a governmental license to do otherwise. Good English magicals were now only sorcerers who used wands bought at a licensed wand-crafter's shop, and anybody else was either a menial hedge-wizard unworthy of attention, or a great philosopher that needed costly and esoteric foci to plumb the tumultuous depths of the Magyck Weaves.

It was all about nothing else than CONTROL and being able to favor those who kept the elites in power, as long as their fragile egos and vapid neuroses were caressed appropriately. The bigotry that wizards felt towards muggles wasn't about being superior to magicless inferiors, it was about hiding their fear that their one and only distinctive characteristic could one day no longer be exclusive to their small, tightly policed sectarian groupuscule.

Harry did end up vomiting his lunch in the bin next to the desk, and then spent the rest of the week-end abed with a fever as his poor brain tried to cogitate all of the high-level philosophy, politics, civics, laws and religious history that he had just put in his head the wrong way, and without any sorts of warning ahead of the act.

"It hurts, dammit! It hurts so damned much!" the boy whined piteously from under his sheets, despite the anti-migraine potion he took.

Alas, poor child; such was the price asked for knowledge of Truth and Reality.

Change, adaptation and growth of self, or else implosion and self-destruction.

Harry would learn, evolve and grow, and be better as a person for it all.

{ HP } - { Small criminal matters } - { HP }

The constabulary's dreaded nightmare, 'The Pedo Eunuchefier of Surrey', was back in business this year, living up to his name by leaving a wake of four dead men, two dead women, and seven handicapped sods. Nobody knew what the crimes they committed were, as the murderous felon who judged and punished them left the surviving victims in brain-damaged comas. It was widely suspected though that these were not sexual perverts, but instead adults who had committed violence on children under the guise of 'discipline' since they were not shot in the crotch, when the proven pedos were all bled to death via destroyed genitals. The media were having a field day again, the Ministry of the Interior in London was denying everything en-masse as usual, and the local town council was being torn apart between those wanting to enact vigilance patrols by armed civilians, versus those wanting to thank the killer for cleaning their town at last.

This time though, Harry did listen to the radio and TV, and read the mundane and magical papers assiduously each day. He was even subscribed under fake names by Dryskholl to several international periodicals that carried bilingual editions aimed at the English nations. The Europeans were hysterical with laughter at the plight of England suffering the reincarnation of Jack-the-Ripper, while the Americans were practically cheering the killer in his choice of victims and punishments for their sins. The Russians were being bearish (and boorish) towards everybody, while the French snobbishly reminded everybody that such events did not occur in France. The response to French medias by the Germans and Hungarians gave Harry a fit of giggles that lasted long into the evening that day, as they pointed to French serial killers that emerged since WW-II.

{ HP } - { Scholastic betterment } - { HP }

One good thing about having the school opened all day, all year long, was that they had to have custodians, cooks and one librarian present at all times. The teachers and admins did the regular class-time schedule only, with longer hours to close the year's reports and budgets. This meant that Harry could now go in the cafeteria for a snack when he wanted, and could sit in the great room with his new friends to play cards or board games without being bothered by anybody with foul intentions, unlike the public parks.

It also meant that the school was taken a bit out-of-sorts this year because nobody understood just how popular the new open hours and services would be, especially with the children themselves. Then again, the types of disfavored clienteles implicated should have told them from the start this would happen. So, the county informed the families of students that, starting next year, there would be thematic summer camps held by the Boy Scouts of England, arts & crafts groups, and amateur sports leagues. Harry was now excited to see what would be offered, and how he could get enrolled without the Dursley's being involved. He hadn't seen or heard from them in almost two full years by this point, and didn't miss them at all.

Third school year; 1988-89

(Harry Potter - theme)

1988-89

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Harry Potter was happy like a clam in the sand on a warm beach. He had just passed the newly instated mandatory health check by one of the school's freshly hired elderly nurses. Why was he happy? Because he had finally caught up to the weight & height averages for his age group. He wasn't the runty cur of the year anymore; that disgrace fell to a poor boy from the other side of the district.

His third year was going to be interesting, to say the least.

The school had modified the programs for the physical education classes to include more training in calisthenics and athletics rather than just playing ball games, track running and swimming for beginners. The coaches now had to get the kids through several standardized exercise routines that even included throwing discus and javelins like in the Olympics. Basic track runs had been replaced by Parkours with mobile obstacles that got changed every week to keep it varied and demanding on the children. The pool now served for water polo and tag-relay speed swimming. This led to a bunch of happily exhausted but refreshed and healthy kids, for a change.

Likewise, the school had changed the very basic and drab arts class into full-out wood and pottery crafting with artisanal manual tools, plus some cloth and leather artistry too. From third year up, it was workshop training with stationary powered drills, saws, planers and grinders and working with glass or plastics. Those in the last year of elementary would learn to use acetylene torches and MIG welders on metal pieces to create small statues or repair junk devices back to function. That was a whole lot different than just coloring sheets barely fit for kindergarten babies, back thirty years ago! Now, the kids got to try things that would help them to decide in what kinds of secondary classes they wanted to progress, and if a specialized trade-school would be a better fit than the local public high school that was only a generalist formation.

Given the two boosting potions for literacy and mathematics he had drunk over the last two years, plus the research & administration spell-lists he learned, Harry was performing well ahead of his age peers, but only he knew of it. He continued his system of displaying only an average intellect, character and abilities so as to make certain that anybody who looked only at the written report cards and disciplinary records would see nothing that spoke of skills, Powers, Talents or Gifts that could threaten their secret, illegal plans.

However, third year was also the first year that he had standard tests at the end. So, Harry did his usual average, then gave his best on the tests to give the impression that he was able to grasp the subject matter easily, just not interested in making any efforts on regular work during the year. His report card showed that he had literally aced all the government tests, thus skewing upwards his grade-point average rather amazingly high for such an ordinary child.

{ HP } - { The spies who hate me } - { HP }

Harry had become aware that there were two sets of watchers lurking around the county of Surrey at present, and neither meant well for his life and welfare.

There were three elderly squib ladies who lived alone in borderline poverty in small cottages that they toiled to upkeep cleanly. They were put in place by Dumbledore as a back-up to his wards and illegal taps into the Wizarding Ministry's sensor grid. These houses and people were easy to identify & avoid as they were located near the Dursley house, not the school campus. In fact, Dumbledore's laziness and preconceived notions played against him as he thought that the muggle curriculum had barely changed since before WW-II. He truly believed such lacking program of schooling was too idiotic to instruct Harry into ways or abilities that could threaten his masterfully wrought plans. Harry could not possibly become intelligent or autonomous enough to take on adult wizards and win, not if he had just that kind of handicapped education, so he let it be without supervision beyond the squib hirelings.

The second group of watchers was much more direct, and far less illegal, than what the old goat fucker had put in place. Due to Harry's less than savory incidents over the last two years, the authorities in London had begun to panic rather hard. Having one murder or suspicious death per decade was the usual norm for the entirety of Surrey county, not a handful per annum in one small sector. The fact that the method and reasons for killing were almost identical, thus creating a 'signature' from the criminal, had the coppers on the look-out for suspicious activities or persons that could lead to clues about the dastardly killer. What Harry quickly deduced was that the Ministry of the Interior had dispatched officers from no less than Scotland Yard to find and apprehend the so-called "Pedo Eunuchefier of Surrey" by putting the men undercover in bars and alleys, posing as pervs looking for a kid to exploit cheaply.

Luckily for Harry, the bobbies had no Earthly idea they were hunting for an eight year old kid, nor did they understand that Harry never went hunting for victims willingly. It was just sheer, dumb, bad luck that, whenever he tried to walk alone in the evening to fetch stuff at the grocery store or smaller convenience shop, he got accosted forcefully by some damned child rapist who wouldn't accept that Harry wasn't rentable by the hour like any other whore in the sector. Harry had never killed as the primary attacker nor initiated conflict in any of the cases he was concerned; it was always reactive defense. But the cops wouldn't care, not with a firearm used, and not since two of the men from last year had been "Good, loyal, upstanding servants of the nation" who worked for Parliament in London. With people close to the PM's office biting the dirt in a mess of immorality and prurient depravity with kids, the hunt would only get more intense, for a long while.

But it wasn't like Harry could control these damned things! Dammit all to Hell and back!

Summer vacations 1989

(Harry Potter - theme)

1989

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Well, this year's vacations were better than the ones before. Harry managed to not kill anybody, even though it was no decision of his, just better luck than before. That and he had decided to use some of the house-elf tricks Dryskholl had taught him about being unnoticed and untraceable.

Why hadn't he thought to use those before? Damn, but he was a dumb human!

Anyways, as promised by the school, they stayed open every day this summer too, and the new kids' camps were in place as well. Each camp happened in a rural area, in an old camping ground that had been used for such activities before they shut down when the owner died childless. The county's school administrators had bought the antique, dilapidated camp facilities and paid a small amount to have the basics reinstalled like plumbing and electricity in each bunkhouse, and the telephone lines for the admin, infirmary, garage and monitor barracks. The camping spot was on the shore of a small lake where narrow boats ferrying coal to London and the outlying burghs went through, as it was integrated to the network of canals and water-locks from last century.

Harry enjoyed every one of the camps offered as he managed to register without any parental permission required. The mentality behind those camps was to help kids with bad situations, and keep them off the streets in case the CPS could not intervene in the home. Because he fit exactly the profile of child they were targeting, Harry passed through without any problems in school or in his ex-home that no longer mattered.

Whatever the theme of the week was, the camp was held from Monday morning to Sunday evening, all in the same grounds. The only change was that the organizers had assigned one bunkhouse for each style of camp group, so the kids ate breakfast, played and slept side-by-side but did the specialized activities in their bunkhouse, or at one of the external spots with a big bonfire in the middle for hot noon meals and evening fun.

Harry particularly enjoyed the sports and survival training of the Scouts, quickly earning some of the 'Amateur' merit badges that had been offered. They were colored differently than the genuine Scout badges, but had the same ranks and requirements to achieve. The young human performed well in the Parkours and endurance swimming challenges, then aced the knife and hatchet throwing competitions for all ages. The Scout groups were taught how to start & manage a crude wood fire safely, how to check food packages for expiration date & edibility, how to shelter safely if caught out in a rainstorm or snowfall, and how to stay warm & dry if they had no immediate shelter.

When he tried the arts & crafts camp, Harry liked the first time so much he decided to alternate between one week of Scouts and one of A & C until the end of summer.

The artisans taught the children many basic skills at identifying safe, useful materials out of junk or obsolete things, then assemble them in a practical configuration. Without being obvious about it, the coaches were showing the kids how to repair their worn clothing and old shoes by patching them with decorative elements sewn or tacked atop the holes or cracks. Then they showed them how to fix little problems with furniture like uneven legs, rickety chairs, wobbly tables, crooked lamps, and so on. Eventually they started using more useful tools like pliers, hammer, screwdriver, chisel or box-cutter. For those kids who attended the last week of A & C, they were given basic instructions on how to shut-off a junction box to change glass fuses or flip breakers, how to cut-off water lines if there was a leak and how to patch it with tape & glue, how to patch cracked windows or put cardboard sheets with tape if the pane fell out, etc... Plus, they were taught the safety basics about handheld power tools that any home needed, like the drill, reciprocating saw, block sander and rotary tool with changeable heads.

All in all, the day activities of the camp went a long way to make Harry feel like a full person instead of just a defective freak that nobody wanted. He got to play with kids in a way that didn't make him feel as he were wasting precious study time, and got to learn valuable life skills while doing it. Plus, with his shrunken trunk hanging from an invisible locket at his neck, just like Lily had planned, he had his true home right at hand all the time. Because he used 'Shaping Fingertips' on the wooden frame of his bunk on each bed he was given, he always had a rune scheme that emitted an aura of absence & un-presence throughout the night. That allowed him to sleep safely in his own grand bed inside his trunk, and not share a rather primitive bathroom at night with 23 other kids that he didn't know all that well.

The true benefit of lugging his trunk and having unfettered access to it was that he could take a new set of potions in July and August as he had done before. The choice of learning booster for July was the old Welsh language which would help in learning English history and culture better, and give him an alternate tongue for casting and locking wards. Almost nobody spoke magical Welsh anymore, not even inside Dumbledore's self-named Welsh Wiccan sect, the bloody fools. The poison he chose for August (irony, that) was from the Cult of Hades. He had received a dream at night from his deity, granting him the power to Bless a series of 30 vials with godly effluves so as to imbue them with Thanatos, the Lingua Esspiritu Mortis, the tongue of Death and official governing language of Hadenshire. Harry would thereafter be able to speak the Holy Tongue to converse with Tenebrous Pioneers or other entities he could summon from the cult. It would also give him yet another exotic method of casting or locking spells that nobody could undo for very few outside the Hadean church ever learned it as fully as he would receive.

An unforeseen side-effect of learning Thanatos via holy unction rather than the classic, neutral, alchemical draughts his mother made, was that he absorbed a great divine blessing deeply into his mind and soul during the month. Not only did he obtain one of the most ancient and revered Celestial tongues next to Angelic Nephilim or the demonic Common of the Lower Planes, he also became calmer, more at peace with himself and existence. The reason for this was that the potions and curses Dumbledore placed on him to insure he was impatient and prone to anger were slowly eroded and 'died' from prolonged contact with the Will of Hades to support and bolster his new faithful, on his path towards priesthood. The effects of such calmness upon his learning abilities and entire life would be profound, as would be the death-blow to the nefarious plans that had been set against him, as they all depended on his being unable to control himself.

{ HP } - { The fun side of magick } - { HP }

During his vacations, Harry wanted to learn new spell lists but the camps' day & evening activities took away almost 75% of each day, so that limited his efforts to things that didn't ask for a lot of concentration. He looked through his trunk's study to find stuff he could read and practice as he walked or swam, or was just sitting during a toilet break away from the groups.

He settled on two short lists of easy dweomers that could actually help in his every day life on top of being fun to use. First was the 'Prosaics; Tricks of the Trade' that had a lot of the classic and cliché effects that people associate with fair grounds magicians and cartoon villains. It went from the very useful 'detections' to the just amusing glowing eyes and artificial smells to scare away people. The list was mostly to help kids practice the beginner's techniques and skills, with a handful of practicality so they could help around the house or shop as well. The second list was 'Prosaics; Circus Act' which had a lot of instant body boosters, spectacular acrobatics, and a few spells to help appease animals to work with them. The good sides of this list was that the spells would help Harry with his generalized health and sports activities while also giving him a better aptitude with the living animals inside his trunk, that he kept for food and zoo-therapy as suggested by his parents.

The fact that the little tricks of both lists could be combined with 'Prosaics; Warrior Law' to give him an edge during a fight, even with a mage or priest, was something that he thought about later on, when he was nearing the end of summer. Realizing that his personal defensive capacity were pretty much shitty, the child resolved to work on this during the coming year. He wouldn't make much of a Anti-Champion of Death if he didn't get serious about being lethal in combat. Reading theology treatises wouldn't help when the other guy had a gun or a Wand of Bolts.

Fourth school year; 1989-90

(Harry Potter - theme)

1989-90

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Whelp, there was no two ways about it; the bobbies were all a-twitter with worries and bile as the much reputed (and dreaded) "Pedo Eunuchefier of Surrey" had not claimed a single kill or maiming over the entire summer. The Ministry of the Interior was frothing at the mouth at the thought the killer could have moved out of town or gone silent after his inner impulse had been satiated because that meant the entire investigation was going to get scuppered. Scotland Yard were hard-pressed to justify their undercover agents' expenses for the period since they caught nobody, and didn't even have a probable suspect in sight. The local bobbies were split between anger at being undone by a criminal, and yet happy to see a dozen pervs taken off their streets.

None of that brouhaha mattered to nine year old Harry Potter as he walked into Van Uttebatten academy for the fourth year in a row. The teachers were still competent and nice like the last two years, and the services were still offered every day of the year, so he lucked out and he knew it.

The classes for the year had been slightly adjusted from last, but only to update the textbooks to more modern versions since the old ones were rather dated, especially those on world history and the recent technologies. Due to the Internet becoming publicly accessible without fuss, television was no longer the benchmark for learning and fresh news bulletins. The BBC report at 6:00pm on the telly was a nice thing to accompany dinner, but being able to visit other channels from diverse parts of the country, or even the world, without special and costly subscriptions was a good addition to his daily routine for staying informed.

That was also the one true change for everybody in the campus; the addition of mandatory typing, computer usage and Internet search classes. Each week, the students were given a short lecture on the machines themselves, then had the second period to search for a series of predetermined subjects. Once they had found the few websites on those subjects, they had a sheet with form-questions to answer to prove they had really researched the problem tasked. Harry quite accidentally excelled at the skills required because it worked a lot like the enchanted typewriter and self-indexing books his mother had left in her trunk.

Maybe wizards were modern after all, and it was the muggles who were copying them?

Who knew the multiverse could be so weird, anyways?

{ HP } - { Divine Quest; first } - { HP }

Harry Potter hadn't wanted to become a murder at nine years old, except that he did pledge his heart, magic, mind and soul to the Cult of Hades, the church of Death. Somewhere, somehow, he should have guessed that it wouldn't just be his own enemies that he would kill, and it wouldn't be clean-cut cases of obvious guilt versus transparent innocence all around. Warfare was crass business; nobody came out of its bloody trenches civilized or clean, all the history books and anecdotal reports from old soldiers said it clearly. So did the few segments of battlefield medicine Harry had read while learning his apothecary spells.

Still, he really should have thought about it more.

But the choices were made, and his God demanded results on the task set. If Harry wanted to prove that he was more than just an accidental novice without potential, he had to gird his loins and get his hands to it. He would never get promoted to acolyte or full priesthood if he balked every time a little death-dealing was in the works.

Thankfully, the actual acts themselves were not some great titanesque conflagration like the epics in the Fantasy novels he read as entertainment. His God wanted the woman dead, but the how was entirely up to Harry's own devices, as long as she passed before the first of November, at noon sharp. The child had not been told why that date and time, and it didn't matter anyways.

Death was never late nor early, never rushed nor slovenly, but always at the appointed Time.

Such was the creed of the Faith. So would it be for this woman.

Harry didn't know her crimes or sins, nor did he know if she was innocent or noble hearted.

She was scheduled to die. End of story.

Therefore, on the evening of Tuesday, October 31st, the All Hallow's Eve of the Pagans and Wiccan, the Samhain of druids and witches, Harry Potter committed his first cold blooded kill.

He walked up to the house of the young mother of three infant children dressed in a banal Halloween costume that represented the classic Death; the grand black robes with a fake plastic scythe and a cheap black-colored tin lantern with a battery-powered light inside. The Tenebrous Pioneer who tended his greenhouse and food animals almost ululated himself into a tizzy at the sight of his summoner dressed, essentially, in drag. From his deathly perspective, at least. Now that Harry spoke Thanatos fluently, he got the cultural references easily, and got the joke as well. It really was funny, too, if you could see the context for what it was.

Standing on the front porch of the completely unknown woman, Harry accepted the candy with a gentle smile, and gave the woman a blessing in soft-spoken Welsh that left her stunned for a minute before she closed the door. As Harry walked away and activated the house-elf scripts of invisibility and un-presence sewn into his cheap cotton robes, the 'Childish; Trickeries' spell he had used on the woman took hold. His Welsh verse had been a camouflage for casting 'Poisoned Dart' at the woman's exposed throat, but softly pushed, without causing any injury, just delivering the vegetal toxin atop the skin. The perfectly mundane plant venom would react with her skin to become a rash, her airways would swell shut, then she would enter neural shock to finally die, in 23 seconds flat.

Harry had not even reached the end of the street when he FELT the woman's soul leave her body, and thus learned the lesson his deity wanted to teach him. For the truly faithful of Hades, there was no such thing as a wasted or useless death, and ALL mortal or Celestial souls were judged equitably in the End of Things.

Later that night, Harry celebrated his Halloween commemoration for those beings he had effigies of in his shrine. Hades rewarded him by sending the Shade of Dryskholl for an hour. The child and elf were incredibly happy to commune so, especially when Harry received confirmation that house-elves did in fact have a soul and got judged by Hades as fairly as others. The elfling had received a reward such has he truly deserved; he had been tasked to serve the ancestors of House Potter in their own places of Felicity until such Time as Harry himself would arrive for his own afterlife. And so, Dryskholl finally received in Death what menials and criminals had denied him during his ailing life, a good family that cared for him.

From that moment onward, Harry doubted less and less the motives of his chosen deity, and felt far less moral qualms about escorting souls unto the Path of Beyond.

"Requiesce in Pacem, Esspiritu Sancti. Id Mote Est." Harry whispered as he left.

Summer vacations 1990

(Harry Potter - theme)

1990

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

On the summer of his tenth birthday, Harry Potter was greatly amused by the foolishness of the adults around him. The squibs that watched over Privet Drive were still as useless and clueless about his lifestyle and conditions as ever, and never bothered to come ring the Dursley's doorbell to ask. The child was well aware of this because he had periodically returned to his ex-residence to place discrete elf scripts that anchored detection and divination wards over the household. Since he had several divinations texts in his possession, little Harry had begun to practice scrying and remote sensings two years back, as an added layer of security. He wasn't even truly surprised that Dumbledore and the Ministry never came calling at the house to insure he was still present.

In accordance to his mother's notes on magical society, having that much power that produces that much instantaneous effect on reality played havoc with people's sense of urgency and basal morality. A great many wizards and priests had the mindset that if Magyck flowed from your wand to empower the dweomer you cast, then you had every right to cast the spell, and all laws or justice be damned. After all, the Wizarding Ministry's motto was "Magic is Might" and they never bothered to hide it, regardless of how fascist it was. The White Council wasn't any better, what with their Wardens going around murdering people without any formal trial or even just a publicly logged Act of Accusation the population could be aware of.

No, one of the great problems of the magical societies seemed to be that all the governments, churches and guilds were all geared towards shutting down public debates, quelling any intellectual gatherings, and above all censuring or banning multiple segments of lore, know-how, technique, science, occultism, arcana and esoterism in favor of having the dumbest, most limitedly educated population that could possibly still make enough tradable goods to be taxed. That was the inescapable conclusion that any geopolitical and historical analysis came up with. The so-called 'White' and 'Light' and 'Pure Goodness' groups were all a sham front that hid the common agenda of all rich elites, magical or muggle alike; stay on top, no matter who it hurts or destroys. This conclusion gave Harry the impetus to read again through the books on insurgency, anarchy, political resistance and 'Sovereign Citizenship' that Dryskholl had gotten him. While the child's gut feeling was that some positions expressed were cooky or flat-out delirious, some of the underlying concepts weren't that crazy either. He may not want to have a civil war or crash a country, but Dumbledore was both head of Wizarding Britain and the magical UN at the same time, so it wasn't like he had a choice, not if he wanted his freedom.

Suffice it to say that Harry was both amused at the easy con he was pulling upon hundreds of wand-waving fools, and yet he was also truly disdainful of their collective incompetence. If they could lose trace of a child despite all their sensors and soldiers, what did it say about their self-styled elites? That it was the supposed "The Boy Who Lived" and killer of the greatest dark lord of Britannia, Europa and Slavia in several centuries, who had vanished into the Ether without leaving traces or anybody caring to look; what did that say about this Welsh Wiccan society?

His mother's commentary on the endemic lack of logic and forethought was apparently quite on-point. If the individuals already thought in a certain way, they would have been far less capable of the structured thought and rationality necessary to detect invasion of their Inner-World by curses and potions, and so would not have whelmed defenses in time. Plus, they were culturally indoctrinated to believe that the most powerful spell-caster had inherent rights and 'authority' over other magicals simply because he had a bigger core or stronger spells. It was almost like dogs sniffing each other's ass to smell who had the strongest odor to determine the leader of the pack. Her evaluation about Dumbledore's potions and curses passing so easily through people's minds because they were already predisposed to believe anything about Britain's greatest magick wielder were now making a whole lot of sense in the boy's eyes.

In any case, Harry read the magical papers with a nasty, superior smirk as he saw the fake images of their supposed "Boy Savior" representing a bespectacled, small, stunted and underfed pauper dressed in worn rags that was pretty much how he had looked at age 6. Somehow, the reporters or editors got their hands on an old still photo of him and did some sort of extrapolation to age him by four years to match the date. The 'simulacrum' looked close enough that if he still dressed like that, with a mess of short spiky hair that exposed his forehead scar and the ugly round glasses, then yes, anybody in Diagon Alley would recognize him without effort.

It was too bad for Dumbledore that he had in fact changed his body and his aesthetics long ago, when the Awakening Rite had blasted through a great many things. Then, helped by Dryskholl, he had fixed or changed his out-worn clothing, fixed his hair so it was longer but much more manageable, and taken nutrient potions to correct the previous five years of starvation. Getting his wizarding vaccines and food supplements diluted in each plate he ate also helped, something that he had kept up to this date, thus explaining why he now stood amongst the tallest of his year group and sported a good, lean, athletic muscle mass compared to the other kids. Bookworm he may be, and proud of it, but he wasn't a slouch or lazy bum either. He liked sports and camping with a tent and wood fire in the out-country, something he had taken to doing at least once a month throughout the year, regardless of the weather.

{ HP } - { Camping fun } - { HP }

Being able to ask the Tenebrous Pioneer to cast a Hadean Gate to reach his favorite spot inside of mere seconds was a great incitement to get up and move. Being able to just drop himself in a forest and run, jump, climb or swim without reproach or stupid limits from stodgy adults certainly helped to keep him fit and spry. It also allowed him to practice the limited fishing, trapping and hunting skills the Scout camps from last vacations had taught the kids. This year he would be with a more advanced group as they started splitting the students by capacities and merit badges earned.

Again, Harry split his time half & half between the Scouts and crafting groups. He liked the outdoors and team sports of the Scouts, but needed to learn the manual trades and crafting skills to insure his long term survival if he ever got separated from civilization or lost his magic. Also, the dimensional trunk he hid at his neck could in fact be found and stolen, it just took specialty spells that the master aurors and Unspeakables all had as part of their jobs, like their uniform and badges. Harry could not EVER take for granted that the trunk would always stay with him, or never get broken into, especially if Dumbledore detected its existence.

This year, Harry's Scout group was introduced to the wonderful device called a crossbow. A very old and simple idea that had been discovered by humans some 7,000 years back in China, the wood and rope contraption made hunting and defending MUCH easier. Especially when the eager young female coach showed them the other variant, the stone-bow, made with a small thread basket attached to the bow string to hold stones, pellets or other small projectiles instead of being limited to the classic arrows. It had less range, true, but the same punching power within the distance that it did cover. Plus, it was able to kill a small animal without damaging the pelts or tradable organs, thus preserving the best monetary value of each catch.

Nobody was surprised that Harry and several others chose to use their time in the crafting group to carve, sculpt, polish and test their own stone-bows. It was both a practical test of what they had learned, and in some cases the only protection they would have back home when they returned to Surrey. Harry was particularly proud that his bow tested as the strongest hitter and the longest reach. He had also talked with the hunting coach and the crafters until he had managed to make a string-basket with enough diameter so that he could still use regular arrows to benefit from the maximum range the bow could shoot accurately, at almost 500 feet far. The testing of the weapon allowed Harry to center the new wooden sights he added, a small wood cylinder at the back and a round crosshairs made of wood and thin thread at the front. He got four different merit badges for his product at the camp's Leaving Feast.

Harry kept up his yearly tradition of drinking two sets of potions to increase or bolster his mind, just as his mother had planned. Unlike most members of the Welsh Wiccan sect, Lily had known the value of speaking 'creature' languages, especially for those with scholarly dispositions. If a poor human wanted to increase his magic and fortunes, learning the traditions and methods of neighboring species and sects was the easiest, most direct route. Therefore, she had managed to acquire the pensieved memories of several young students from Hogwarts and other, smaller schools not belonging to the Welsh Wiccan, to compile two useful draughts. This year, Harry would be learning Dethek, the tongue of the Dwarven populations, and Peeptalk, the animal speech common to all birds and were-avians. Once he was done, he could appreciate the Dwarves' affinity and aptitude with minerals and forging as their language had hundreds of terms or phrases dedicated to the metallurgic arts. Likewise, Peeptalk was odd at first, but in the end just as easy to process and use as Parseltongue, which he practiced regularly.

{ HP } - { The Ophidiomancers of Hedgerow Terrace } - { HP }

Speaking of which, Harry was now in a good enough place emotionally that he began to practice not only the language of Parsel, but also the magic aspects of this art. After doing some research on the ancient magick, he found what he needed on a not-so-recommended map of Magical Britannia normally restricted for aurors. It was an old thing from his grand-father Charlus' belongings that Lily had copied when she became aware of it; explaining why many of her components' sources or clients were indicated on the colored map.

Going in the late evening after the camp's curfew started, Harry used house-elf glamours and muggle make-up to change his appearance, with elf wards stitched into his clothing as well, then passed through the floo in the trunk to access the public arrival floo in Diagon Alley. He ventured down Knockturn Alley fearlessly with his weapons openly displayed just like the locals, all the way to the end of the district filled with sicklies, whores and criminals. There he reached the much disparaged Hedgerow Terrace, a neighborhood filled with squibs, weak semi-spell-users, and poor disowned wizards who couldn't find jobs anymore despite being magically capable because their old families had black-listed them in the Ministry. This area was the place for people looking into original Celtic, Welsh or even Viking practices & traditions. Almost everybody here was Of The Darkes, and carried out The Old Ways in their daily lives, something Dumbledore and the Ministry he commanded decried in the Daily Prophet often. But, for Harry and hundreds of others, it was Heaven on Earth as all the best gardens and greenhouses, farms and ranches, and many food producers or apothecaries were located in this vast pastoral enclave.

And it was VAST; you just had to love space expansion enchantments and religious Fidelius wards that hid an entire faubourg the size of Little Whining right next to Diagon District and Knockturn District without being perceivable from there. At almost two miles long by a mile wide, the Hedgerow Terrace was literally the lung and liver of magical London, no matter what the fools in the Ministry or Hogwarts said in a vain effort to protect their ill-gotten powers.

The Terrace was a nice clean design, inspired by druidic and elvish glens of old, that was several oval plateaus that became smaller as they sunk in the middle, thus creating both lateral and vertical space to let in the sunlight and fresh air. There were four levels then the bottom floor, plus a wide ring of flat greenery around the dug-out zone. The large plantations, farms and ranches of livestock were all on the surface, in the perimeter's green fields. Each property had plots of land that varied from 500 x 500 feet going up to 2,000 x 2,000 feet, all bordered by a double row of trees with bushes in between and a small ditch of running water that created the homestead threshold to anchor the wards. The small streams flowed under permanent one-arch bridges made of field stones to link together into a larger district ward that added a second bubble of protection to repel diseases, vermin and detections from the overall zone.

At the very outer perimeter of the green fields was a single long coursive boulevard that had narrow townhouses of three and four floors, old-style Victorian lodging houses and low-end boutiques stacked high with tenements atop them, on both sides of the thoroughfare. This long curving merchant road served as the geographic border for Hedgerow Terrace, and made a living wall to protect the green space from being encroached or damaged by the rest of London or Wizarding Britannia. The poorer and less magically able citizens lived in the renting rooms or cheap tenements while the shop owners and few professionals had the townhouses or the odd ramshackle homes. It was a teeming mass of sentients of dozens of species that easily equaled all of Diagon and Knockturn together.

On each level of the Terrace Proper, the public street was located on the very lip of each step, with low-gradient earthworks & field stone ramps spaced out regularly to allow passage of mule carts between all elevations without problems. In the center of the bottom floor was an antique druid cromlech that stood two levels high topped by dozens of bronze braziers, creating a sacred space for communal prayers and special rituals. The Season Market was there, in the deepest middle of things, functioning all year long with only the thematic decorations being changed to match the religious events on the Wheel of days or the Natural cycle.

Amusingly from Harry's view of things, there were houses built as two-level dwellings dug-out of the stone & soil inside the risers of the plateaus, while their roofs served as the gardens for the house above. The overall look was like the mythical Shire of Tolkien, where the Hobbits lived. Neighbors were set apart by hedges of boxwood, cedar, or other types of trees that grew tall and firm, up to the level of the plateau above. To maximize illumination, nobody in the Terrace put trees or walls in front of their plot of land, only on the left & right sides up to the public street, with occasionally a thin, short fence made of wood or animal bones to keep the traffic off their land. Most of the Nature cultists and high quality artisans of the Hedgerow Terrace lived in the sunken zone as the homes were all designed with the same floor-plan that included a showroom, workshop and warehouse on the ground and spacious living quarters for eight people the elevated floor. Another thing unique to the Terrace homes was that all of them used their garden plot to grow herbs or spices, recreational weeds and several highly magical potions components.

Harry marched vigorously towards the sunken zone, smiling under his make-up as he took in the amazing sights of such openly living and working magicks, all being done regardless of the diktats of gormless bureaucratic drones who actually feared the magic in their own core so much that they tried to erase the Powers of others by paperwork. Humming a slow funeral dirge under his breath, the young Hadean cultist followed the narrow avenue down to the very bottom of the Terrace to reach the small kiosks that composed the permanent Market. His Goblin account manager had told him that the best option for him would be here; the sect of the British Ophidiomancers. They could possibly help him unlock his full Affinity and find a magical serpent with which to Bond, thus allowing him to practice Parselmagic and Ophidiomancy at higher caliber than the basic cantrips he had been limited to without a live snake.

It took very little effort to find the kiosk as it was made of wood carved in the shapes of hundreds of different snakes. As he approached, Harry saw that upon each serpent was engraved Parselscript that described the snake, ecology, abilities and usages in magic. The kiosk itself was a veritable encyclopedia of snake lore, as well as a true crafting masterpiece, despite that it was too gauzy and tent-like for Harry's tastes. Once inside, he was quickly attended by a member of the guild by dint of asking the woman a question in Parseltongue. She shunted her neophyte client to an acolyte while she answered the 'specialist' for his delicate needs. After about two hours and several scans, Harry had obtained an alchemic elixir to finish breaking the illegal binds on his Affinity, and he had been sold a copy of the ritual to summon a serpent familiar. The happy child paid and returned to the summer camp via one-time portkey that dropped him in the small copse of trees he had marked with a homing dweomer just for that use.

Harry drunk the elixir at the end of the camping week, when he was supposedly sleeping at home before going out for another week of camp on the following Monday morning. The potion worked as declared, eroding and dismantling the bindings until his Ophidiomancy Affinity was completely unlocked, just atrophied from not being used for so long. Harry spent three full weeks to slowly learn and practice a few more spells relating to snakes and reptiles before he used the few days between the end of camp season and the return to school to enact the Familiar Ritual for a magical serpent.

And here little Harry made an innocent beginner's mistake.

If he had done the ritual in the open public park or in a rural area like the camp grounds after they closed to the public for their maintenance cycle, he would have gotten a simple yet friendly snake native to Britain's magical ecology. Instead, he used the ritual chamber inside the trunk, never fully realizing the boosting effects that it would give to his spell's effects, nor the reach it would have across the dimensional veils.

He got an answer from something truly marvelous.

Faye-Drakhol akr-Seelie, Stygian Faerie Drake, from the Styx River connective demi-plane.

Barely 24 inches from snout to tail tip, with 36 inch wingspan, the small dragon-kind was a sub-race of the Faerie Drake species, amongst the Nexfae races. The creature resembled a miniature european dragon in body type and head shape, but had wings like a butterfly rather than a bat, and was colored a deep charcoal black with purple eyes, tongue, horns, fangs and claws. It also had several dark sapphire-blue highlights in the wings and horns that shone occasionally.

The small being was actually as intelligent as any human could become, but had never been formally educated and was barely two centuries old, making it an infant for its sub-race. It was a pretty well known fact that Faerie Drake could live around three millenia if they weren't attacked or sickened in a way that sapped their magick or damaged their brain stem passed their capacity to use their innate healing abilities. The baby dragon was already named by its parents and Harry only had to understand its language to translate it to human speech, English in this case.

His new familiar was called "Rehz Ib Fettach" which had no real meaning in English until Harry could really comprehend the specific Draconic Dialect as well as the Reptilian Common, and then he had to learn the provincial style that Rehz was raised with.

The Stygian Faerie Drake had many natural capacities, including the ability to become invisible, dampen his heat signature, stop his smell, move without leaving traces, 'Blink' in Material Space up to 1,000 feet, 'Dimension Shift' into the Styx or the Border Ethereal several times per day, and he had permanent 'Shen Power Sight' as all Faerie Drakes did. Personally, he could breathe a small cone, 10' long x 3' wide, of concentrated mist that would stun, disorient and drug his victims with a powerful psychedelic toxin produced by glands in his throat. Or he could spit a wad of digestive acid, if he needed to reduce something for consumption. And yes, he could do it in a fight as it was an inborn defensive reflex that he had trained. His main weapon was no doubt his Horns, as he could charge them with magic until they emitted an aura of pure negative energy that would bypass most known defenses to attack the mind, magick and soul of living entities in the 25 feet radial area covered by the pulse.

Above all else, Rehz Ib Fettach was intelligent, with free will and the capacity to learn, to educate himself and eventually be a well civilized entity that matched his human companion.

When the goblin manager saw the Faerie Drake, he almost laughed himself into a heart attack, ah he had just made a good amount of silver on a bet with several colleagues about how exotic a familiar his client would Bond. It truly was a good day to collect debts.

{ HP } - { Bobbing bobbies a-bob } - { HP }

Back in Surrey county's muggle side of things, the police and civilian authorities were starting to calm down. It had been two years since their "Pedo Eunuchefier of Surrey" had struck, and nowhere in the UK or Commonwealth had anybody died of similar causes and methods. The blokes at the Ministry of the Interior in London were gnashing their teeth at the thought the bastard had evaded capture in such fashion that even The Yard and Interpol had no clue about any possible suspects. While it was true that the lack of dead bodies was the appropriate order of things in the Realm, the fact it came from the killer's decision rather than his imprisonment bode ill for the future. The investigation went on, but now at a reduced pace until more cadavers were uncovered, or an order from 10 Downing Street put them back on war footing.

Fifth school year; 1990-91

(Harry Potter - theme)

1990-91

Surrey county

The British Isles & Realms

Young Harry Potter couldn't be called little anymore, as he had grown like a weed as of late, thus passing the four foot height mark sometime during the summer. In the year-long health classes mandatory for 10 year old's, the teacher warned all the children about possible growth spurts, pains in the joints or nerves as their bodies worked overtime to prepare them for puberty, and adolescence after that. The descriptions of anatomic details, hairs, odors and other unmentionable stuff had turned all the poor kids fluorescent pink in the face as they wanted to hide under their desks. Or at least, Harry had, much to his further discomfort.

Thank Hades and Gaia that it wasn't Vernon or Petunia who told him these things!

Thoroughly embarrassed by that discussion, the boy made sure to read through his mother's notes about it all, just to insure he didn't skip on a ritual or potion that needed to be in his system for the phases of his growth to proceed correctly. This brought him to realize that he would soon arrive at the moment when the Potter 'Blood Compact' would download the Family's Charter into his mind for him to -accept- the ancient Blood-Law and become a fully functional, deciding member of the clanic group. This was the vital step to insuring his autonomy inside the magical communities, and the sine qua non caveat to any further inheritances from any magical Houses, Guilds, Churches or private contracts still in abeyance. If he refused the Charter of his birthright, then no Blood-Law or other Magical Concord would ever accept him until he was over the age of 21 and did the ritual to found his own lineage, independently from any other in existence.

Since Harry was initiated by the Cult of Hades in full novitiate, he knew far better than to think being the only living Potter meant he was alone in the family, or that his decisions affected only his small, limited person. The ancestors, heirlooms and portraits of all his Houses watched over him, even those he didn't physically own yet. Plus, he was never more than a spell or prayer away from contact with his kin, even if they resided in Hadenshire. Only those that had already passed into The Beyond were out of reach from all entities, including the Divines. So Harry understood that when his mind was mature enough, just a bit before age 11, the Potter Blood-Law would integrate to his memories, mind, magicks and soul, and he welcomed the holy event as it would seal his positions for ever. It would also free him magically from several more of Dumbledore's curses and potions, while also legally opening more rights in higher society.

The rights he would obtain through Gringotts' banking contracts with House Potter and House Black were among the first things he would set in motion to blockade the whiskered bastard's choke-hold on his life. Then he would reactivate House Peverell unto the wizarding world, and see how people reacted to that piece of news. After that, he would silently use his mother's many aliases to run business ventures and muggle-world investments under the wands of everybody, while also paying out bribes, gifts and contracts for criminal deeds to further loosen Dumbledore's hold, or just distract his minions away from him. When he came out as a practitioner of The Old Ways of Magyck, the geriatric wanker's beard would light on fire and burn off his nose! And the rest of his sect of faithless betrayers would follow after him, the very second they heard their precious little messiah had oathed himself to Hades, Arbiter of Passage.

Oh yes, the Light of Wizarding Britain's phallocentric, sorcerous cabal would wilt and wane, and blink out in a puff of inglorious shame and humiliation, when the public learned of how dark gray their wunderkind had turned out. And blessed by the darkest of all the gods, too!

However, there was still this bloody last year of primary school to live through. The curriculum demanded not just mandatory basic human health & biology classes, but also home maintenance & cooking, basic personal economics, and an innovation being spread throughout the kingdom called 'British laws & civility'. To accommodate the increased number of classes without shorting the existent courses in the schedule, the 5th years had days that started at 9:00am and finished at 5:00pm all week long. They also had teachers that asked for term papers in theoretical subjects while the manual skills classes had one or two projects to complete each month. All told, Harry enjoyed the fresh classes and faster paced tuition. Also, this year was also ended by standardized government tests, so he could lay low then end his entire primary schooling with a good showing, as long as he didn't go above straight A's. Getting a slew of A+ or extra credits would certainly have someone panic, if not Dumbledore then some cretin inside the Ministry of Magic who couldn't tolerate that the boy who killed the Dark Lord be that intelligent.

{ HP } - { A manual git, this boy } - { HP }

Harry decided that he had learned enough from sufficient sources to try his hand at creating a few items of hedge-craft besides just candles, incense, oils and some glyphs on his clothing to walk around undetected. The few wooden whittles he'd made were cute, but in a very folk-art way, which he liked and thought enough to do the job he asked of them. Now that he had Rehz helping him with counsels and fetching items during the process, it was far less lonely and he experienced less accidents.

His first creation was the classic 'wooden spoon' of the homestead's leader. Basically a two foot long piece of birch whittled clean with the last four inches shaped into a relatively flat oval spoon. The thing was engraved with scriptworkes and elf wards, then given a Blood Tithe directly from Harry's hands. The item was then let to steep in a shallow pottery pan filled with enchanting oil to seal in the runes and protect them from wear & tear for a few years of use. This was a good, generic focus for beginners to have in hand, especially for all household charms, herbology, potions and alchemy. For the rest, it was tolerable but gave no advantages.

The second item Harry created was a necrotic construct. Yes, he had begun to study the lesser necromancies as part of his training into the novitiate of Hades, and thought it was now time for him to work with bones and parts of animals, not just plants anymore. Harry was already used to slaughtering his own chickens and turkeys, or helping the Tenebrous Pioneer with the bigger livestock, so it wasn't such a drastic step for him to take. Plus, he had already killed in combat and murder so, again, not such a big difference. Besides, he wasn't animating anything or going into the Anathema of Magyck, just cobbling bones and stuff together. His goal was to create his own personalized Holy Sigil of Hades so he could begin to learn and cast prayers above the novice grade. It was in fact a milestone of apprenticeship that the postulant make his own Sigil before he was granted promotion, and Harry felt it was time to move onwards. Since the device was a simple flat pendant scrimshawed out of bones then set into a silver frame to dangle from a chain made of both bone and silver links, the artistic and mechanical complexity weren't all that great, but it was the thought that counted. Harry dyed the bones lavender-purple, keeping the silver its natural dull grey. He used the workshop's magnification table to engrave scriptworkes and elf wards into the pendant and chain, then gave his Blood Tithe and a good steep in holy oil the recipe for which had appeared to him in a dream the night before.

The pendant functioned well, and Harry could feel his Faith and Sorcery respond well to the addition into his aura. Bolstered by the event, Harry offered to make a similar pendant, but sized and fitted to Rehz so as to give them a link and the capacity for Harry to protect him remotely. The little Faerie Drake accepted gratefully, slowly realizing just how kind and caring his human was, compared all the others he'd seen in his 200 years of life. He also realized just how lonely and isolated Harry was. Despite making friends in the school, he could never ask them home as they could never know of the trunk or magic in general.

The third object Harry wanted was much more complex, and something he had been thinking about as he read some of the lore associated with the White Council of Edinburgh. He decided to make himself a Shillelagh, or druid's staff. The boy scoured several rural areas that the Tenebrous Pioneer could open gates to until he found the appropriate tree. It was an old English Oak that had been felled by lightning, a few weeks back. It was partially blackened and still had bits of cremated mistletoe fused to sections of the branches. Impressed by the size, strength and magic inherent to the mighty vegetal, Harry decided to render the tree's entire mass down to separate parts, except for the trunk that stayed in two long half-logs just as they had been sliced by the lightning strike. The Pioneer helped with cutting and transporting the bounty back to the trunk's warehouse since landscaping was its basic job description. Harry spent many days with Rehz drowning in old Welsh and Celtic texts about the druids, witches and animists of the epoch, until he decided what kind of staff he needed to craft. He wanted an item that would serve him during both his priesthood of Hades and Gaia, not be a specialized thing just for killing or molding Nature to human whims.

The finished product was an eight foot length of gnarly, burned bark and cremated mistletoe and mushrooms, the bark being dark emerald-green while the inclusions and incinerated additions were dark amethyst-purple. The top of the staff was actually shaped as a torch sconce, the limb being split into twelve slats to shape a bowl that held 'Spirit Flames' that Harry had been able to invoke for the first time of his life. The sconce bowl was reinforced with inch-thick triangular flanges of silver to give it the ability to strike like a mace. The foot of the staff ended in a boar-spear shaped head with a cross-bar for the same reason, also reinforced along the edges and fuller with silver to have a sharp edge. While silver was a bad choice for striking and slashing weapons because it was too soft and deformed easily under impact or torsion, his patron God Hades had revealed to him the recipe for Hadean Silver, which was smelted by adding the freely Tithed blood, magic and soul of the crafter. This silver always had dark ocher veins running through it, and could tolerate wear or hardships like dweomercrafted steel. This made the finished weapon just as good as if it were forged metal instead of carved wood. As completing touches, Harry added the crests of Hades and Gaia just beneath the sconce bowl, but on opposite sides, to properly Bless the item on top of all the scriptworkes and elf wards he had placed. The last step was to steep the staff in a tub of oils that were mixed from diverse plant saps, animal bloods, Nightsoil from the livestock pen, and Blood Tithes from Harry and Rehz.

The magical aura of the activated staff was breathtaking, and calming at the same time. When he first took the weapon in hand, Harry was reminded of good Bishop Gloutnay and his decades of service to Mystra. And so, his first official gesture with the staff was to carry out a private mass in the trunk's ecumenical shrine in the names of Hades, Gaia and Mystra, to thank them all, and the spirit of the noble oak, for allowing him to confect such a magnificent item of Faith.

Harry felt that a few things were missing from his fighting kit, but also felt that he wasn't ready to design or craft them yet. As age, experience and Divine Wisdom flowed through him, he had begun to truly trust in those small instincts that came when he was pondering important parts of his life, so he accepted the hint and waited for the proper time. Death, after all, cannot be late or miss an appointment, no matter what happens around it.

{ HP } - { And so we of Potter Blood are gathered } - { HP }

It happened to Harry as these things tend to happen since the last few years have come to pass, after he had succeeded his Awakening Rite. It was Wednesday, October 31st of 1990, the All Hallow's Eve, the Samhain of his Faith and tenth such season since his birth. As was his custom, he had done his morning exercises and showered, then had a breakfast composed of eggs, crepes, toasted bread with field fruit jam, bacon rashers and baked beans with brown gravy. Everything had been hand-made by himself in the previous week then stored in the pantry for the day of prayers and remembrance. He now stood serenely in prayer before the small ecumenical shrine he had built and consecrated for commemorating his gods, ancestors and friends four years ago. It now had a framed picture of Rehz Ib Fettach and small preserved twigs from the birch and oak he had used to craft his first important Faith items. He gazed in satisfied peacefulness at the grey candles that he had crafted with his own hands, smelling the bee's wax and holy herbs of the incense as they burned, bringing his prayers and good wishes through the Ether to those that deserved them.

The Tenebrous Pioneer that Harry had rented to tend his greenhouse and livestock barn stood by his side, whispering lowly in Thanatos the prayers and supplications of the season. He wished farewell to the departing Autumn that had granted his House bountiful harvests, and welcomed the ponderously slow Winter that would rest the Laand so that it may awaken full of life when the Wheel of Days pivoted anew unto Spring.

Harry went to his classes as regular then disappeared back into the hidden basement room, from where he entered his trunk and had a normal dinner at 6:00pm. It was as he did his evening prayers in preparation for communing with his departed ancestors and friends that the first symptoms manifested. The Potter 'Blood Compact' was activating automatically to download something into his memories, magick and mind.

As the clock struck 8:00pm, the human child felt the Veil thinning around himself, the partition between realities becoming permeable just enough for direct conversation and perception, but not passing objects or beings across. Sitting on stone thrones before him were now situated all of the Potter, Black and Peverell forebears, as they attended witness to his accession to the first adult step of the clanhold's leadership. Tonight, the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter would have its Magical Heir instated, and his position in the Charter would be unassailable by any mortal or Celestial, not even The Manipulator or his potioned puppets.

Sitting on the greatest throne in the middle of all the three noble Houses was the darkest, most powerful of all the witnesses; the Divine Hades, Lord of Hallowed Nepenthe, Sovereign of Hadenshire, God of Death, Arbiter of Passage, Guide of Beyond, Guardian of the Grand Gate of Reality. He was dressed in an armor composed of black padded base layer, dull grey chain mail hauberk and deep lavender-purple full-plate armoring on top. His great helmet covered his head entirely, the face being a smooth oval plate of shining, reflective silver that mirrored only Truth and Reality back at whomever looked into it. Or at least, it was one of the god's avatars or lesser images, since Harry didn't think little old him deserved or warranted so much attention as to have the Tenebrous One attend this private ritual in person.

The Shades of the three dead Patriarchs of the noble Houses stood from their thrones and walked forward one pace, so they were just behind the throne of the Divine Hades, before James Potter spoke aloud, his voice carrying through phonically as much as mentally.

"I am James Charleson Black Potter, the late Lord Potter emeritus, Scion of Black, Scion of Peverell, sire of the Heir of the Name, House and Family magicks of Potter. I present onto my son by Blooded birth and lawful marriage, magical and spiritual Heir of our kin, the Charter and Blood-Law of House Potter."

Next to Harry appeared a ghostly facsimile of the real scroll which was safely stored deep in the foundations of Potter Manor, well out of reach of enemies, climate or Time. Harry took the time to unfurl and read through the detailed but simple texts, understanding that once he put his personal Sigil on it, he would be bound by Blood, Mind, Magick and Soul to the ancient Creed and morality of his Family. Yes, he would have the chance to make changes or updates, as each Lord did, but the process was both heavy and slow, and it implicated the assent of the ghostly ancestors and heirlooms, but it was still feasible.

After reading through the much beloved Charter of his ancestry, Harry prayed to Hades and Gaia for the Tithe to be given freely from his body and magicks, that he be bound to his Family in the one way that truly mattered amongst the magical communities and churches. He was now Harold Jamieson Evans Potter, Head of Family, Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter, Earl of Claymoors of the Scottish Lowlands; Heir Ascendant of the Most Venerable and Greatly Spiritual House of Peverell, Heir Presumptive of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black; Peer of the Britannic Realms by Edict of the Crown and Throne of England, anointed of Hades, his God and Patron amongst the eddies of Faith and mortality.

In confirmation of the rite's validity, the Scion, Heir and Lord rings appeared on his hands in appropriate succession, then merged together by House until only the highest crest for each stayed visible. An antiquated medallion made of ceramic strung from a chain of porcelain beads appeared at his neck, dropping to hang over his heart. A set of old, ornate bronze keys manifested in empty air near his chair and slowly floated to rest on his lap, filling him with a sense of home and peace as he had never felt, even from his Awakening.

A powerful voice reverberated through the air and the minds of all assembled, be they alive or dead or between the Veils. "I am Hades, God of Death, Judge of Passage, Arbiter of The Beyond, and Guardian of the Grand Gate of Reality. I am the patron you have chosen freely for this part of your journey through the mortal planes, and patron deity of the House of Peverell, of whom you have accepted Heirship. I welcome you into the Halls of your honored ancestors, and offer you the fealty of the Family and House. May your reign be long and prosperous."

Standing from his throne, the Living God gestured for the three Shades of the Patriarchs to sit back so he could assume control of the ritual period. "I have come today, via my avatar, to bear witness to your acceptance of the Potter Charter, and was satisfied. Now I offer you the same for the Peverell Charter, regardless of what the fool Dumbledore has wrought. Will you assume the position that is yours by birthright and magick, of your own free will?"

Harry was completely besides himself with emotions, as his deity once again showed that he cared enough to get involved, and had solutions that could right the wrongs he had suffered all his meager life. Nodding silently, the child bowed from the waist, not uttering a word for fear of losing control of his already strained self-restraint.

The God raised his left hand, the armored palm facing up so that a large scroll made of gaseous soul-stuff that shined electric blue appeared in his grasp. With nary a thought, the phantom scroll floated gently towards the child, to alight in his own waiting, trembling hands. As before, he took the time to admire the scroll then unfurl it to read everything, trusting that Time moved differently in the ritual period so he could do everything needed in a short interval. After learning the sacred texts of the oldest House to sit in the British Wizengamot, Harry prayed his Gods for the Tithe to be given freely, in honest and glad acceptance of the new charge of trust and Family.

He was now Harold Jamieson Evans Potter, Head of Family, Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter, Earl of Claymoors of the Scottish Lowlands; Head of Family, Lord of the Most Venerable and Greatly Spiritual House of Peverell, Baron of All-Hallows and the Hoo Peninsula; Heir Ascendant of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, Magistrate of Zezetshire Cairnhills in the English Midlands; Peer of the Britannic Realms by Edict of the Crown and Throne of England; anointed ecclesiaste of Hades, his God and Patron amongst the eddies of Faith and mortality.

The child closed his eyes as his mind trod through the changes in titles, ranks and styles that getting the Peverell Charter signed had given him. He knew that the 'Blood Compact' of the Family would download into his memories, mind and magick over night as he slept, and then his occult affinities would change to incorporate the spiritual heritage of the almost obsolete House, before balancing everything inside of him into a functional whole. It would take a few days and nights of meditation and rest, but it would happen in due time.

So would it happen with the House of Black as well. The Charter had not appeared or been offered, probably because potions and curses still fettered some deep parts of his magick specifically against receiving anything from Sirius Black or his House. Even the Goblins had not been able to pass along parcels, mail or just verbal messages in the ten years since the man had been exiled. Dumbledore had well and truly muddied the legal and diplomatic waters, something which could be undone only if he died, if Harry left Britannic borders to go meet his godfather, or if the boy finally managed to pump enough magicks and willpower through his entire being to finish breaking the damned binds.

The voice of his God brought him out of introspection, as the deity declared with his cavernous voice that echoed through space, dimensions and Times "You have served me well, these passed four years. You have followed the terms of novitiate without pause or doubts that would have made myself or my higher council wonder of your devotion and dedication to our Faith, Creed and Cause. The Test of Murder was passed with simplicity and humanity, showing your soul and goals in life quite clearly. Cruelty and battle-rage will not be your Creed or method, not when a peaceful, dignified solution can be had. I applaud this, for death should not be something other than intensely private and solemn, though not lonely or desperate, not while I rule Nepenthe, in Hadenshire upon the Styx. After consulting with Jergal, Seneschal of Death, and the higher council of my church, I find reason to promote you to acolyte. You may now begin to read and learn the true holy texts of our Faith, not simply the common lores and laws available to all scholars and governments. I hope to receive your Faith and service for many long years yet, young one, for we have a long path to tread before I pass you unto Gaia's dominion."

Standing unsteadily from his chair, Harry bowed at the waist, honored beyond description that the Divine would send an avatar to assist his Oaths and grant him promotion when a simple mortal priest could have done the job easily. Without further adieu, the Fundamental God ceased to exist and so did his throne, as if they had never been present at all, in such a way that all the chairs of the honored ancestors were placed as if there had never been a higher ranking visitor in the middle of their phantom room. Again, the three Patriarchs stood, each in turn giving a blessing upon the child's life, health and magicks before the assembly dissipated into the Ether.

Harry cried honest, happy tears as the slight grey mists of Time and Reality receded from around him, releasing his person, familiar and shrine back into the Prime Material Plane. He would take a small late snack with a celebratory ounce of very fine Goblin wine and a long smoke of tobacco, hemp and calming herbs, before taking a long soothing shower and bed at midnight. He was exhausted physically, but mentally he felt as if he had lived and relived the same life five times in the same hour. Having no reserves left, the child permitted himself his small feast with Rehz Ib Fettach by his side, while the Tenebrous Pioneer went about his nightly duties in the greenhouse and livestock barn, now that his own prayers were done too.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to live well and happy with his elevation. Tonight, Harry Potter planned to lie as peaceful and tranquil as the honored dead, even if the bloody midget of the mists decided to till him into his mattress for fun. As long as he wasn't woken up, he'd handle it another day.

{ HP } - { Albus Dumbledore's heart attack } - { HP }

Despite being a sorcerer of great learning, erudition and occult abilities, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was actually rather ordinary when it came to his Faith, Creed and morality, no matter what cold shite he tried to peddle to the credulous masses. He had nothing of an actual Warlock, let alone an Atlantean-tradition Warlock, except the title that signified he had acquired the right to sit in the Wizengamot chamber as a voting member. Likewise, his title in the ICW was simply a reflection of the fact the Confederation was mostly of male wizards who were all named symbolically 'Warlock' when they achieved a seat inside their home nation's Gamot. It wasn't a reflection of studies or training pattern, just an honorific title with little true worth, given just how several nations had hereditary seats, some were elected by popularity, and yet others were bartered and sold between holders or governments like pints of ale in a tavern.

No, Albus Dumbledore was not the brightest candle in the chandelier, and yet he always managed to somehow blind himself with his own luminous splendor, no matter how dark his glow actually was. In this case, the moron had the gumption, the sheer hubris, to think he could interfere with the Blood-Law and inheritance rules of the Most Venerable and Greatly Spiritual House of Peverell, Barony of All-Hallows and the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, on England's lower eastern coast, not far from London-on-Thames. The House who had always had Hades, God of Death, the Styx River demi-plane and the Underworlds, as its only patron in recorded history.

An act of wisdom, this was not.

And even less an act of self-preservation.

So it wouldn't surprise anybody affiliated with the cult of Hades or the Church of Death that the foolish old crone suffered an unpredicted, and unblockable, heart infarction exactly on midnight of the Halloween night, at the height of Samhain, when the Veil was thin and the Divine Powers could pass easily from one reality to another. Nobody would ever know what Albus Dumbledore saw that night as he lay in bed, nor if it was in the room, his mind or his dreams, but the house-elves who found him and brought him to the castle's hospital wing for emergency treatment had never seen such a face of horror and despair on a human before, in their centuries of service.

Madam Poppy Pomphrey, the school medi-witch, did what she could and then some more, pushed as she was by the loyalty compulsions and potions flooding her body for the last forty years. Alas, it was all for nothing; Albus Dumbledore was alive, but in a coma that initially looked as if it was just his body breathing on without any soul inside. Then, 13 days after the event, the man's vitals started to Beep the sensor spells, showing that he was emerging from coma into normal healing slumber managed by his innate magicks. Another 13 days later, towards the end of November, he opened one single eye and tried to speak but could not articulate his thoughts aloud. The heart infarction had crippled the right side of his body, from the small toe to the top of his head, making his mouth and vocal chords work asymmetrically or not at all, thus making him incapable of any speech, even incoherent words or vocalizations of pain or despair. For the first time in is entire life, Dumbledore was mute from a cause that wasn't a quickly resolved 'Mutare Vocis' during a duel or back-alley fight.

Given his resulting status, Pomphrey was finally able to free herself of his standing orders that absolutely all health issues of the staff, children or house-elves be resolved by his own hirelings inside the castle walls, or at least the grounds under the wards. This was something that even the potions of Severus Snape couldn't repair or attenuate, so the medi-witch could finally appeal to St-Mungo's Hospital for an emergency recovery team to transfer the geriatric dictator to the hands of somebody else. It only took minutes for the trauma team of healers to arrive by Floo, and only seconds more for the hospital's dispatcher to have spread the news to a dozen papers and gossips who would pay a goodly number of Galleons for the fresh news about Dumbledore.

Nobody could find a reason for sudden heart failure, and even less for the massive damage that had killed tissues, nerves and veins all around the cardiac complex. The only way the healers were able to give Albus a menial semblance of health and mobility was by putting a permanent 'Organ Bypass' enchantment anchored to runes tattooed on his wrinkled chest to reestablish sufficient blood flow. The only recourse for his mobility was to have a tailor craft clothing that had thin but heavily ensorcelled wooden rods everywhere throughout to give the vestments the ability to follow his willpower to move his body for him, in those areas that brain influx or blood no longer flowed correctly. Muggles would call this system a "medical exoskeleton" and hail the sheer modernity of its conception, if they were aware it existed.

The great and mighty Chief Warlock of England was reduced to being a puppet with broken limbs dancing on twisted strings, just as he had inflicted on thousands of beings for a century.

Who says Hades has no sense of fairness?

Who says that Death had no sense of humor or irony, albeit dark ones?

No matter what potions, alchemies or surgeries he would try, Albus Dumbledore would never recover any usage at all of his right side, and only be able to speak or move because he wore animated cloth golems enchanted to emulate his human abilities. If ever that layer of powered vestment was removed or dispelled, he would immediately be an immobile, silent cripple who couldn't defend himself with anything other than legilimancy, and only from the left eye which cut off two-thirds of his total mind-magick for the rest of his life.

The immediate consequence was that Dumbledore ran afoul of the health & sanity clauses of the charters of the school, the British Wizengamot, and the ICW. You had to be demonstrably healthy and sane in order to hold any post of public authority, especially as a judge or Lord.

When the Hogwarts Board of Governors looked into his file, they found out that he had quite liberally rewritten his original file by stating his birth date and age as being a full twenty five years younger than true. He hadn't passed his NEWT's in 1914 on the start of the muggle's Great War, not if you counted backwards from today. He had spent 50 years as headmaster, 30 years as transfiguration professor and alchemy tutor, and spent almost 10 years before that on the road to complete his masteries in arithmancy, transfiguration & transmutation, and alchemy. That was 90 years at least, and there were doubts as to whether he took only ten years for his higher diplomas as those dates didn't mesh with the official reports in the guilds or Ministry schooling records. Furthermore, the Hogwarts Book of Souls had no Albus Dumbledore listed before 1873 as potential student, and he was the only 'Albus' named for that decade, and none came for a good twelve years before that.

As if falsifying the dates in his school and employment files weren't enough, the second investigation caused by this discovery found something even more dark in progress. It averred that Albus Dumbledore had never been sworn-in as Headmaster of the school. He had signed in blood the contracts as staff and oaths as teacher for the first twenty-two years, then for some reason that wasn't written anywhere, the Headmaster of the day, Armando Dippet, had stopped forcing Dumbledore to sign in blood the contracts for his position, link to the castle wards and position of authority over the pupils. In essence, Dumbledore had been completely free to do as he pleased inside the grounds and edifices without any risks of being punished by Mother Magyck for his crimes or sins.

This made the bureaucrats panic and alert the aurors, but also the medias, and then St-Mungo's to check if the cause of the heart attack couldn't be some form of ward backlash or oath-breaking retribution. So, the entire investigation from the Board of Governors transferred over to the aurors, in the hands of Madam Amelia Bones, Regent of House Bones, head of the DMLE, the very worst event possible for Albus Dumbledore. She would NEVER stop digging into his dirty laundry and hidden crimes until she had enough to see him fed Squibbing Oil, then hanging him by the feet from the battlements of Azkaban Prison for a few days before letting the Dementors take his soul.

But no, things got worse from there anyways!

Because he had held a posting of public trust without being blood-oathed as stipulated by the school charter and British Law, then he was automatically dismissed from that post and forbidden from ever holding it anew in this life. This immediately freed the house-elves and portraits who wasted no time in demanding the attention of the aurors and Madam Bones to report the innumerable depravities they had witnessed Dumbledore commit inside Hogwarts, or plan in the castle and commit outside. This caused the immediate suspension of all school staff for an emergency medical evaluation and debriefing at St-Mungo's.

However, the loss in dishonorable circumstances of one oathed posting also meant that he was deemed as being an 'Oath-Breaker' just as if he had signed the pledge and broken the terms, thus incurring the wrath of Mystra. That meant an automatic dishonorable dismissal from the Wizengamot as both Chief Warlock and simple Warlock, no appeals or electoral recall process possible. It also opened all of his work files as Chief Warlock that he had sealed under the "Needs of national security" to become available for investigation by the aurors and Unspeakables separately. And that was when the authorities found that the lying bastard had not ever taken the Gamot blood-oath, not as proxy, not as seated Lord, not as Warlock and not as chief Warlock. Dumbledore had been sitting, presiding sessions or tribunals, and voting the Potter proxy for a decade, without ever having the legal or magical right to do so. Which triggered another investigation into his entire tenure in the Wizengamot chamber and offices, as well as his truly abusive wielding of the chief Warlock's capacity to seal files or make entire cases disappear into the tenebrous, bottomless mists of "National security" justifications without any checks or balance about it.

The British Department of Schooling, Department of Magical Law Enforcement and Wizengamot Services were all panicking about what had been uncovered while Dumbledore was in his first week of permanent infirmity, but it was only the beginning. The ICW began to receive reports from both its embassy in London and the British delegation in Basel, Switzerland, where the Great ICW Rotunda was located since founding. Because of the ICW charter and the Treaty that links it to member states, the very moment that Albus was dishonorably removed from his posting at Hogwarts, he was automatically put on probation at the ICW until a public trial under their venue and laws could be done. However, the moment it was discovered he was an 'Oath-Breaker' to the British Gamot, he was given an immediate dishonorable dismissal from the Chamber as both Supreme Mugwump and foreign representative for the Sovereign Magical Nation of England, Realms & colonies. This had the catastrophic consequence of removing the last diplomatic privileges he could use to hide from the aurors or Unspeakables, in England or abroad. Then the ICW Enforcers discovered that Albus never signed the blood-oaths for participation in the Assembly, nor those for holding an executive posting in the organization. He always used fake parchments covered in mundane texts and signed with a muggle fountain pen filled with house-elf blood to emulate the magicks of a Blood-Tithe to fool the auditors and diplomats each year, ever since he set foot in the ICW fifty years ago.

Now completely devoid of any public postings, governmental authorities or diplomatic privileges, without any nobility title or personal reputation, mister Albus Dumbledore, not noble and not rich, holder of no votes anywhere, with diplomas and guild memberships whose validity or legality were now being questioned, saw himself chucked into Ministry cells to await interrogation. He was cooling his heels in the drab grey, raw masonry room under the Gamot chamber's floor barely nine days after being transferred to St-Mungo's for treatment. He had received his golemized clothes only two days ago, and still wasn't used to moving in them, let alone relying on them for his autonomy or spell casting. Not that the last part would be a concern as the Elder Wand had disappeared from his hand as his dark, nightmarish visions of Death, an unending city of bones and great lines of tormented souls began, just before the heart attack struck. Neither house-elves, teachers or healers had found it since, and his original dragon heart-string wand had been seized upon arrest. They had wanted to put magic suppressors on him, but only the written report from the hospital stayed their merciless hands away from his person.

Then Albus heard what he had dreaded all the past decade, on the wizarding wireless that the auror sentry was listening to, since there was nothing to do in the small antechamber next to the locked cell. The news of his decheance and arrest was making the rounds of the entire planet, fast enough that Sirius Orion Black III, Head of Family, the Lord Black, was already beginning proceedings to have his entire case before the ICW used to push Britannia into granting him his day in front of the Wizengamot or Royal Throne at long last. The loss of control over both the Potter and Longbottom boys was now consumed in full, as was the loss of dominance over the broken lordship of Black.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had nothing left in life except regrets, memories of the broken plans he had fomented for The Greater Good, and his brother Aberforth's eternal contempt, which he was given freely forever.

{ HP } - { The Goblin king's vengeance } - { HP }

One could never say that Ragnok Backsnapper, head of clan Gutspiked, 471st king of the British Goblins, was a creature of benevolence and mercy. Not unless you had partaken of the Halfling Sherry a bit much for the entire week beforehand, and smoked some interesting recreational herbs too.

Yet, in this period of Yule 1990-91, he found himself smiling and humming an old religious Drow chant normally used in sacrifices of victims on the Altar of Lloth, their Spider Queen that dwelt in the Abyss. He sat happily by the side of the blazing hearth in his office, slowly honing and oiling a spiked scourge with many strands in prevision of applying it most generously unto the back of a hairy mongrel cur that had escaped Lady Justice for far too long. The monarch was almost finished with one instrument and gazing indolently upon the pile of others that needed some maintenance before being put to 'good' uses, when his secretary called him urgently.

"M'lord!" the breathless voice sounded through the crystal intercom on the desk, "The Gamot has just voted Dumbledore out of the assembly on proof of 'Statutory Oath-Breaking' via denying and falsifying of blood-oaths demanded by law and treaties." The poor secretary took an audible gulp of water before continuing "He has been remanded to the high security wing of Azkaban Prison pending a full trial, but the ICW have already deposited in full chamber their official request for extradition to Basel. Apparently, he pulled the same bullcock trickeries on them as he did here."

Smiling widely for the happy turn of events, he snapped a small spark of magic at the crystal to switch on his microphone to order "Get me the Potter account manager in this office the moment he's able to present himself with all his client's files on Potter and Peverell, plus the Black Heirship since it hasn't been rescinded and Sirius Orion Black has no children in sight. And have the floor's kitchen send up a banquet for a dozen people. I want all the assistants and the Black manager with his team too. We're going to war over this, and I'm not letting go till I get me some hairy wizard's noggin on a spike!"

"By your will, majesty!" the secretary replied, full of violence and bile for the bearded fool who had done so much damages to the reputation and relations of Gringotts with its human neighbors all over the planet. The young goblin would be sharpening his ax and arrowheads as he sent out the messages, hoping that his mighty and generous king would let him punish the human a small bit, between his own turns at the felon's oily, stinking hide. This really was shaping up to be an incredible Yule season, after all.

A few very joyful days later, the Goblins of Gringotts were given the rare pleasure of receiving, for the first time of his life, the young Harold Potter inside their hallowed halls under the city of London. Due to the cursed bindings on his magical core, Harry could not enter the bank or Goblin lands in person as long as Albus Dumbledore had any pretensions of being his legal & magical guardian. He had emitted a 'decree' in the Wizengamot chamber that he was not certain Lord Voldemort's magic hadn't damaged the boy's mind. In light of such doubts, the felon had ordered that any and all banking correspondence or decisions be given to him alone for disposal, unless the child initiated contact - from afar - or reached the age of 11. Since Dumbledore had also committed the legalistic tracasseries to bar anybody from accessing the Potter accounts and vaults unless they presented in person for an Identity or Inheritance Blood-Tithe Ritual, it was in essence a catch-22 permanent block on Harry ever gaining access to anything in this life.

Until he found a house-elf who ferried the necessary documents between Gringotts and Harry.

The Manipulator had blocked the Potter, Peverell and Black accounts but never knew anything about those that Lily Evans had under her many legal names and pseudonyms. This was the very first fatal mistake he had made concerning the woman, and it would be the last he ever did.

The Goblins were motivated to follow the very narrow letter of the illegal decrees just enough to avoid a genuine war, but still grant the child the basic services he should have at his age and capacity. The small diplomatic snit they had in public was just a bit of a warm-up in preparation for what came to fruition now. And it really was a menial little paperwork snit, as no honor duels had been declared and no pass of arms was fought in the field. That said snit netted the Goblin Nation further civil rights, commercial benefits, and more freedom of movement on the surface for their non-titled citizens was just that much more fun for everybody inside Gringotts.

Now, the bearded Manipulator was finally cast aside like a bad batch of mushroom lager that even the goblin-hounds didn't want to sniff, and for cause! That meant that just as with the Gamot and ICW, the good King Ragnok was now able to order audits and investigations into each and every act that Dumbledore had done inside his sovereign lands since the decrepit human was born. And boy did they find plenty of crapulence to expose in the public medias or courtrooms all across Britannia, Europa, Slavia and the Mediterranean shores!

Albus had been silently piling up a trove of stolen monies and artifacts by committing Line-Theft at least once a decade since he had passed his OWL's with somewhat ordinary results. The man would study all the muggle-borns in his vicinity then pick one who should be related to a Pureblood wizarding lineage through an affair or rape that had been hidden. Once he managed to steal a few drops of blood to power his genealogical divinations, he would decide if this was the target he wanted. When he had settled on a choice, he cornered the person and used a bevvy of compulsions and potions to make the helpless victim sign over all their worldly possessions in both magical and muggle societies with a falsified blood-bound contract. Then he compelled the person to go home, write a suicide letter and use a 'Dark Cutting Curse' to open their throat all the way to the spine. A few days after the death was discovered by the aurors, Albus sent his solicitors into Gringotts to deposit the contracts and begin the transfers into personal vaults under fake names.

Since the year 1889 when he sat his OWL's to this day, covering 101 years of felonies, Albus had managed to steal no less than fourteen family inheritances, and insured the End-of-Line of five families who could have survived, even if the manner it happened was crass. In any ways, the revelation of this was the door that slammed on the kneazle's tail, making everybody inside the jurisdiction of the ICW, and especially Britain, take to the streets in massive riots, from the lowest peasant or vagrant to the highest lords and diplomats, all chanting for Dumbledore to be given the worse sentence imaginable to wizard-kind.

Poisoning with Squibbing Oil followed by obliviating his decades of occult studies, surgically destroying his vocal chords and hand tendons, then finally abandoning him in a muggle asylum for the insane. He would always have a vague echo of his magicks and powers, but never truly remember them, only feel the soul-deep loss, which he could never explain to anyone.

Chances of such cruelty being done, however, were thin. The population might be screaming for his death, but it was not in any ways sure they would tolerate that it be done in this manner, mostly because it meant that somebody else could be sentenced to similar as well. With the way that corruption and unnaturality had stalked the halls of the Wizengamot for nearly a century, you would be hard-pressed to find a single citizen who would trust the tribunals or aurors with this kind of power over the life of anybody in the country, even against non-humans.

Such was the good news that young Harry Potter was explained by King Ragnok in person, as he showed the juvenile Lord the sights of Diagon Alley ablaze with torch-bearing rioters from the window of his office, high in the upper floors of Gringotts' façade. With the portly, and extremely afraid, Minister of Magic Cornelius Oswald Fudge standing on a hastily conjured platform, just before the white marble steps of the bank, to appease the crowds, the Goblin monarch was finally able to give the boy the audience and rituals he should have undergone since the deaths of his kindred. With the powerful confidentiality and security wards keeping the noises from the busy commercial street out of the room, the Potter, Peverell and Black account teams began the long and tedious job of getting their client up to speed on his estates, businesses and legal standing.

At the same time, one of the Goblin Nation's senior ambassadors walked out of the massive front doors to go deliver to Cornelius Fudge the Goblin Nation's ultimatum. Ragnok demanded that the Treaty dispositions be applied in full; because he had falsified contracts, inheritances and legacies through the bank, and that most of his crimes were against under-age persons to boot, Albus Dumbledore was to be handed over immediately for trial and sentencing. In recognition of the great torts and depredations the man had inflicted upon all organizations he had been a part of, Ragnok graciously offered to delay the application of sentence for up to a full calendar year so that all governments, churches, guilds, schools and chartered Families, could interrogate him while under the effects of the Goblin's version of Veritaserum. Of course, any and all new crimes discovered and proven would be added to the appropriate charge sheets, and the monarch offered the use of his dungeons and executioners to apply the compiled and structured sentences of everybody so the geriatric con-artist couldn't reduce, deflect or escape his due punishment.

Cornelius Fudge was usually a methodical waffler of the first order. Today though, seeing a veritable tidal-wave of support for the Goblin proposal offered out loud in public coming from all walks of life, politics, economy and Faiths, made the decision easy and quick. For the first time in over 75 years, the British Ministry acquiesced the Goblin Nation's prerogative in holding, judging, sentencing and processing the suspect, as long as each implicated organization or Family victimized was allowed a turn at the man's mind to extract his secrets. For the first time in recorded history of the Wizengamot elections, Cornelius Oswald Fudge saw his popular approval ratings climb above the 92% bar and stay there for three weeks when Ragnok published a photo of Dumbledore chained in a Goblin oubliette with four goblin-hounds lurking outside his door, salivating at the thought of his pain and misery.

It was now a good time to be a Goblin, or just a Gringotts employee for other species.

Harry Potter couldn't be any happier, especially since his Heirships and Lordships had been officially recognized by Gringotts' inheritance and ritual departments, and Ragnok himself upon viewing the pensieve memory with the department heads and account managers. The parchments were sent to the Wizarding Ministry of the Welsh Wiccan, and also the White Council, Watchers and Librarians, just to be certain Harry wasn't accosted or hassled without due cause. He may be a child but he had two active lordships on him, a third lordship pending, plus he was Peer of the Realms Britannic as confirmed by Buckingham Palace, so the aurors, hit wizards, Wardens and ICW Enforcers had to be made aware of what they were dicking with, to avoid a diplomatic or judicial incident. Especially since Harry, being an under-age child, had the right to nominate a Goblin warrior as his Champion in case honor duels were asked of him. A small privilege which he immediately accepted and enacted from a list of candidates Ragnok had vetted himself.

Pity the fool who tried that tactic to steal his Lines and Heritages!

With all the accounts and vaults opened up to what was allowed for his age under the Potter and Peverell charters and Gringotts client conventions, Harry could now visit and use most of what he had inherited. If certain objects were still barred from removal from the Family's vault, he could simply pay the bank to make a functioning copy to keep in his trunk, a favorite alternative for precious books that several ministries or councils would want to seize or destroy.

Young Harry was also, in the last week of June, able to have a first video-conference with his blood-oathed godfather, Sirius Orion Black III, the Lord Black, by using the enchanted mirror in the private Master's vault of his trunk. Several of the legal, political and diplomatic chicaneries surrounding Albus Dumbledore had begun to unravel at a fast clip since his transfer to the Goblin cells, so the two relatives were finally able to start exchanging letters via the Gringotts secured mailboxes, and then through the communications mirrors on a fixed schedule. A first live meeting should happen during the summer, at the Great ICW Rotunda in Basel in July, to celebrate Harry's 11th birthday properly, with living family instead of just honored spirits.

Christmas break 1990-91

(Harry Potter - theme)

December 1990 – January 1991

Multiple locations

The British Isles & Europa

Harry didn't know yet just how different his Yule season celebrations would be from the past years. And he certainly didn't know how catastrophic the upheaval that would shake the entirety of Magical Britannia, Europa, Slavia and the rest of the ICW members would be. It was like a tremor shook the entire planet all at once because the magnetic poles were resetting and a new Ice Age was dropping on them, all together without warning signs.

The first shock to the system was the public declaration by the Magical Ministry of the Welsh Wiccan community that Albus Dumbledore had taken gravely ill from a heart infarction and all current prognostics were dire. In fact, he was fully crippled all over the right side and not expected to ever recover his mobility or autonomy. Even his right eye and side of mouth were non-functional, thus severely handicapping his spell-casting abilities and legilimancy skills.

The news was published in the Daily Prophet and a live interview with Minister of Magic of the Welsh Wiccan community, Cornelius Oswald Fudge, passed on the Wizarding Wireless. He was accompanied by the Head of Staff for St-Mungo's hospital and Madam Bones of DMLE. What they were saying was rather bland, as in medical reports and the beginnings of an investigation into why Hogwarts staff waited 26 days before asking for outside help when Dumbledore was found by the house-elves, on the 26th of November. Also, the preliminary questioning of the medi-witch and Heads of Houses at the school were raising severe concerns which had just triggered a very large and far-reaching audit of the castle by DMLE and Ministry officials.

On the more useful side of things, his muggle relatives were spontaneously confined by DMLE agents, then scanned & interrogated by senior aurors to find the extension of Dumbledore's manipulations, frauds, abuses and Line-Theft attempts against himself and his Houses. This unavoidably led to the aurors discovering that he spent the last four years of his life as semi-homeless, with his trunk being his portable residence. It was only because he had inherited the trunk through a Gringotts account with all paperwork from his mother, married Lady Potter, on file that the DMLE was prevented from seizing the item or forcing their way into the rooms to search & seize whatever they wanted. Some pink-clad bitch named Dolores Umbridge, who wasn't part of either the DMLE, aurors, Unspeakables or wizarding CPS, suddenly appeared on the premises. She then proceeded to try to verbally bully the child and aurors with fake laws and falsified Ministry documents into confiscating the trunk, or at least letting her have some sort of preponderant authority over what was allowed inside in the name of keeping the country's blood and culture pure and wizardly.

It never had a chance to work, especially not when the goblin account manager and House Potter's newly hired human solicitors arrived during her racially offensive diatribe.

Umbridge was publicly forced to back off in great painful surprise when Harry's solicitor presented the boy's memory in the Wizengamot's projection pensieve, along with a formal complaint for attempted breach of Chartered Family heirloom & residence, plus attempt at theft and censorship of Noble Family Library, and blatant attempt to use powers & authority never assigned to her posting or job description. Harry was immensely gratified to be seated in the Gamot chamber as the memory was played and the case argued, so that he could stand up and ask her to her face if she thought she was doing Dumbledore's mugwumpish bidding, or trying to take over at abusing children from him now that the spot was open.

The uproar of outrage the Warlocks and proxies shouted at the witch was nearly enough for the Chief-Witch, Madam Griselda Marchbanks, to have the meeting vacated and the chamber evacuated by the aurors on sentry duty. In the end of the short trial, the felonious witch was fined 10,000 Galleons, suspended without pay for a month, and lost three years of seniority, which decreased her salary & benefits, but most importantly rendered her unable to hold any 'senior' position in the Ministry or national institutions for at least five years to come.

Minister Fudge was so ill-at-ease to explain why a person purporting to be his particular senior under-secretary and chief of staff for his cabinet had thought it was a good idea to inflict such treatment on any young heir of any house, let alone think it was legal, especially after the recent revelation of serial Line-Theft and assassinations by Dumbledore. Fudge was in such hot water over his ex-subordinate that he had no choice but to dismiss her completely from the Ministry in disgrace, lest he himself become a victim of the seated Warlocks' retaliations. The elections were coming up soon, and any popularity he had garnered by handing Dumbledore over to the Goblins was already dissipated like morning dew in the sunlight. He could not afford any scandals our doubts to his fitness for office, specifically not his morality and sanity. The pink-obsessed witch disappeared from public sight, but would reappear shortly, nastier than ever.

{ HP } - { Hogwarts is burning! } - { HP }

The most deplorable situation that Harry had to deal with in July was the emergency meeting of the Wizengamot requested by the Hogwarts Board of Governors, through its chairman Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, Head of Family, Lord Malfoy, Baronet of Wiltshire. The board was to submit its written update on the investigations currently going on inside the venerable castle-school, and make proposals to palliate the mess that the collapse of the administrative and teaching staff had caused.

Unfortunately for Harry, everything seemed to conspire to make him miss the closed-door session, despite that he had an entitled right to sit and vote regardless of age or blood status, due to being the Lord of House Peverell. When your chartered Family is called "Most Venerable" and "Greatly Spiritual" by the legal texts of the nation, you get privileges unlike any other. And when that house is mentioned directly in the constitution of the Wizengamot as being older than the legal existence of Britain as a sovereign country recognized by its neighbors, you get more privileges. One such privilege was that ANY Peverell by Blood-Law inheritance had the right to be present inside the Gamot chamber and speak upon any matters. Further, unlike recently created Families who were less than 1,000 years old, the Peverell had no minimal age limit to receive status as Scion, Heir or Lord, and no voted statute, regular or emergency, could keep the Seated Peverell Lord from voting in the chamber for ALL proposals and matters.

Lets just say a lot of people tried very hard to forget those laws, and make others do too.

That state of mind was the reason why -somebody- lost Harry's summons to the emergency meeting, and then the auror on sentry duty tried desperately to block him from entering the chamber, despite the fact the same man had controlled his identity and let him in just last week for the trial against Umbridge. When reminded forcibly of the facts about the trial's outcome, the man had winced in misery as he realized the power and legal authority the 10 year old wielded through lawyers, Gringotts and his legally, magically empowered titles.

Once seated in the Peverell's historical chair, Harry had to get into a shouting match with the room's junior scribe to be accounted present and voting, since the newbie had never been confronted to the antiquated laws and privileges of Venerable Houses, nor the Peerage of the Realms Britannic despite the plethora of Peers present. All the others were over 21 year of age already, son the scribe had never bothered to control them passed their visible characteristics and presence. It was only the arrival of the Gamot's senior scribe, who knew both Harry's situation and the obsolete laws enacted by his multiple lordships, that prevented the mess from escalating into another trial about Royal Peerage, Entitled Nobility and Blood-Law rights. Now fully seated and named in the scrolls for calling quorum and votes, the honorific 'Warlock' child was trying to relax when he saw something that made him want to throw Hadean pain prayers at the crowd.

Dolores -fucking- Umbridge, dressed as girly-pink as ever, was sitting in all her bactracian glory next to the delegation from the Board of Governors, at the private solicitors' table. In fact, she was giggling like a prepubescent schoolgirl as she tried to stage-whisper something to an elderly Board member that Harry didn't know personally, but recognized from the portfolio his account managers had prepared. Lord Myzere wasn't a noble or member of the rich elites, but he was Pureblood from a respected Wizarding House. He had been close to the Death Eaters until Voldemort went off the rails in the late 1970's, when he distanced himself publicly. Harry could respect the High Traditionalist mindset as he shared it, but racism and incestuous retardedness he would not even contemplate. This man was at least an adversary, if not an outright enemy.

Chief-witch Griselda Marchbanks had been the head of the Wizarding Department of Schooling until Albus Dumbledore had been declared medically unfit for service. She had been the first to put in practice the new laws recently voted just after Dumbledore's first arrest that stated nobody could hold multiple elected, nominative, judicial or governmental postings alongside other bureaucratic or corporate jobs. When you have one charge of public trust, you devote yourself to that one task and nothing else, except your Chartered Family obligations. So Madam Marchbanks was now solely the chief-witch of the Wizengamot, and several dozen other postings had so been vacated and refilled in the months since last November. Banging her gavel with alacrity and severity as she called for order and decorum, the elderly woman showed clearly why she deserved the post rather than anybody else.

Once the chamber was seated at rest and accounted, the Hogwarts Board of Governors began to submit its findings, and it was a hecatomb that scared many with how far-reaching things went. Only the fact that most in the chamber had been cursed or poisoned with loyalty elixirs by Dumbledore to go against their conscience and self-interest kept anybody from wishing for a Time-Turner to go back before the revelations, when events and life were so much simpler. It was a good thing that all voting members had been scanned and vetted by the Department of Mysteries as being autonomous of free will at last, and that they all wore their Familial sigil ring. The protections on those artifacts should protect the parliamentarians against further attempts at manipulating their minds and actions, for now.

The report about the situation at the school was such;

x-x

Professor Minerva McGonagall would not be able to return to teaching in September, because she was too traumatized and emotionally destroyed to make a stable administrator. She had been mind-raped repeatedly, had compulsions implanted in her mind via Imperius, had been obliviated hundreds of times over decades, and been severely drugged for obedience, loyalty, subservience, ignoring violence done to children, ignoring bullying and tolerating the abuses of authority that Dumbledore and 'high officials' did in the name of their jobs. Also, the healers from St-Mungo's determined that the blood-bound loyalty potions in her system would take nearly a full year to finish metabolizing, so putting her in authority over children or any sort of teaching job was not a good idea. What she would decide to do with her life when that year was done was still very much unknown, even by her.

x-x

Professor Pomona Sprout was lucky she had been deemed inoffensive and unimportant by Dumbledore who was as bigoted against Hufflepuffs, and generally self-blinded as they came. He had only poisoned her with small doses of weak loyalty elixir to make sure she never called him out on his tolerance of bullying and violence towards those students he himself was targeting for long-term exploitation. Her mind and body were already clear, and she was fit for full duties. She would be back at Hogwarts in September, but as a teacher only.

x-x

Professor Filius Flitwick could thank his bi-racial parentage and goblin ancestors for having been left mostly alone. He had received small amounts of loyalty, befuddlement and forgetfulness elixirs over the last forty years, but had metabolized all of it so fast that Dumbledore had to lay back for fear of his manipulations becoming visible to the half-goblin. Further, his links with the Goblin Nation and Gringotts bank were dangerous in a way that the aurors would never be, so the old magus had to be extra careful and distant towards the charms expert. When he realized his potions were no longer working beyond half duration and one third of strength, he had to let it go and work around the part-goblin lest he be discovered. Flitwick would be able to return in September, but as a teacher only.

x-x

Potion master Severus Tobias Snape, Lord-Elect Prince, was being kept in St-Mungo's Janus Thickey ward for long-term spell damage victims, and would not be able to work anywhere but his room for the foreseeable future. The man had been quite literally enslaved since he was eleven years old, when he first set foot in Hogwarts. Dumbledore had used an unholy mixture of alchemies, curses, legilimancy attacks to reprogram his Inner-World and Identity, had obliviated hundreds of his memories, and confounded hundreds more.

He used the young man's emotional instability and social loneliness to commit Line-Theft when he told him that his grand-parents, the Lord and Lady of House Prince, had disinherited him then Cast him Out of the Family due to his half-blood status and recommendations from James, Heir of Potter, and Sirius, Heir of Black. When young 15 year old Severus signed with a blood quill the Gringotts parchment that stated he understood the terms of his disownment, it was actually a fake crafted by Dumbledore who dispelled the phantom text to let the real document become visible to present at the Ministry via lawyers. It was actually a fraud contract declaring that Severus acknowledged unspecified debts, towards a confidential Pureblood patron. It declared that because he had not been able to fulfill the terms of patronage, and thus reimbursed the debts by handing over the entire Prince legacy that wasn't bound by Blood-Law or inheritance ritual, like the actual title or the land plots.

The potion master was mentally broken and emotionally destroyed, and then his magicks were unstable because Dumbledore had manipulated him into pronouncing a magical vow that was now proven to be unrealizable, so he was suffering Oath-Breaking backlash. The only way to save his life and sanity was to keep him charmed comatose, with an automated dialysis perfusion of 0,001% Squibbing Oil given by intravenous line, directly into the liver, until the backlashes were finished passing. At this point, not a single healer, mind healer or apothecary wanted to declare any prognostic about his chances of living, let alone coming out sane, functional or magically able. This also had the problem of putting the Prince heritage in abeyance until an Heir could be found or declared.

x-x

Medi-witch Poppy Pomphrey would be kept in the hospital for the foreseeable future as she had several curses and compulsions buried deeply in her psyche, besides a stronger variant of loyalty elixir. She was awake, aware and functional, but severely depressive and had tried to self-injure several times already.

It was thought to be a mechanism Dumbledore put into his compulsions to destroy her credibility by looking insane in case she was called to testify against him. Another troubling situation was that each time the healers had asked her opinion about the other teachers in the beds near her, she had either spoken nonsense, lied flat out, or told them to ask Dumbledore because he was an alchemist, not her.

Even when she was asked about children's basic health issues that she encountered every year for decades, she had been indecisive or given answers that were just slightly off-kilter. Another troubling find was that she had been mentally programmed to give different qualities of attention and care according to the Hogwarts House the person had been sorted in during their school years, and to treat non-Hogwarts educated people with about 75% of what optimal care was supposed to be. She was made to pamper Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs like they were fragile jewels, treat Ravenclaws at par, and treat Slytherins at 66% or less of normal, and to be rude about it.

As time went on, the mind-healers were finding more and deeper layers to the compulsions and damages done to her Inner-World and Identity. She was clearly not fit for any job or posting, especially any school or child healing tasks.

x-x

Librarian Irma Pince was one of the worse cases of direct, repeated Imperius victimization that the aurors and mind-healers had witnessed in their lives, including the Blood Purity War and the troops of Gellert Grindelwald during the muggle World War II. Irma Pince was also the only human to have been so thoroughly mentally programmed that the compulsions, obliviations and false memories were spread throughout her Identity, Dreamscape and Inner-World, to the extent that nobody was able to figure out where the person ended and the heuristics matrix took over.

She was like a superbly configured flesh golem or homonculus; visibly indistinguishable from normal humans, but the mind, memories and magicks were under enslavement at 85%., leaving her only 15% of free will for her daily routines. She had particularly strong loyalty, obedience, subservience, willpower erosion, temper worsening and patience limitation alchemic elixirs still percolating inside as she had been dosed every month, despite the fact these could last up to a year with how strong they were prepared. Dumbledore absolutely wanted NOTHING about the magical communities outside of Wizarding Britain to pollute Hogwarts' library, and even less about hybrid or non-human species being intelligent enough to be treated as more than just creatures.

The only non-human species who were still present in the library were the Goblins, the mermen of Black Lake at the foot of the school, and Veela since a few of England's wizarding families had intermarried with some, in the distant past. Every other species was declared a 'dark' or 'grey' creature to be feared and avoided, with precious few exceptions like the phoenix and unicorn who were deemed 'Of the Light' because Dumbledore had a phoenix familiar, and the Forbidden Forest had unicorns right next to the children. The equines were one of the five basic wand cores used by humanity, so forbidding children to learn about them would be truly ludicrous. That, and the Ollivander Family would scalp his beard, braid it into a whip and flog some common sense into him if he ever tried to harm or speak ill of unicorns, let alone bar knowledge of them.

Amongst the many crimes Dumbledore had done was to use Irma Pince as unpaid labor to evaluate and repair any books or scrolls he brought her, then have her be his anonymous intermediary in the black markets for antiquities where those texts he didn't want were sold. This was how the school's library slowly lost nearly 40% of its total collection in the last 63 years, since the process began the first year that Pince began to work. As she was new, nobody was familiar with her temperament therefore Albus was free to modify her drastically without fear of revelation. He had exploited and abused her since.

x-x

Keeper of Grounds and Keys Rubeus Hagrid was found to be a victim of serial mind-rape, had severe limitations on his personality, memories, mind and magicks installed deeply into his Identity, and had been dosed weekly with loyalty, obedience, docility and subservience elixirs for most of his life since he entered Hogwarts in 1938.

Unlike any other staffer, he had also been implanted micro-wands made mundane spider chitin tubes filled with Dumbledore's beard-hair filaments soaked in house-elf blood to prevent from triggering the wards of the buildings Hagrid would visit during his life. This extraordinary step was necessary because Hagrid's physiology had the strength and endurance to metabolize Dumbledore's best alchemies in one tenth of the time it took the humans, or roughly half the time it took Flitwick to do the same. Also, as a half-giant, Rubeus was naturally extremely resistant to most forms of wand-cast mind-magicks or controls, thus requiring a truly esoteric method to leash him into slavery.

Because he was both afraid and jealous of his many great strengths, Dumbledore targeted him from childhood for binding and limiting so that he not become a threat to the almight and authority of himself. That was why Albus took the drastic action of manipulating Armando Dippet into expulsing Hagrid even though he knew for a fact that fifth year Prefect Tom Riddle had not seen anything that linked Hagrid's -illegal- acromantula pet to the death of Myrtle Warren. Seeing him expelled, wand snapped and penniless in the street was the first step of the half-giant's life-long enslavement to appease the paranoid fears of Dumbledore.

The complex set of mental programs, poisons and implants had been too much drain upon his magick and life-force to survive the removal and weaning process at St-Mungo's. Hagrid died in service of Wizarding Britannia and was given a simple but serene funeral by those professors and ex-students able to attend him.

x-x

Caretaker Argus Filtch was never going to return to work in any job whatsoever. The poor old man was found to have been a semi-spell-user of Essence specializing in scriptworkes and hedge-crafting that Dumbledore had rendered squib during his first Line-Theft, a century ago. He was initially a Scion from the House of Ahronnack who got all of his monetary and estate legacy not bound by Blood-Law or rituals stolen by Albus when the felon was only fifteen years old.

Over the decades, Dumbledore had kept Filtch at hand as some sort of living trophy, and as a lab rat to test his alchemies until they were properly attuned for the victim of the moment. It so averred that the part-Kneazle Misses Norris was actually his familiar bonded under The Old Ways, and she had been victimized by Dumbledore as well. He used the cat hybrid as lab test subject, put several repulsion and compulsion curses on her to make the students malign and harm her, and severely bound the magical link between Argus and her so they couldn't draw strength from each other to fight off his curses and potions.

The man was presently in the Janus Thickey ward, in a medically maintained coma because he had stopped breathing when Albus Dumbledore was read the Act of Accusation for Line-Theft against House Ahronnack. It was probably a hidden oath or contingency against court testimony that Dumbledore had put in him long ago. No healer wanted to risk their career by speaking aloud a prognostic on the matter, nor about if he would awaken. The cat had fallen ill along her master but had not survived, which worsened the human's condition immediately as he felt he death and Passage. He had nothing left to live for, and nobody thought he'd ever awaken.

x-x

The most egregious case of malfeasance from Dumbledore was Quirinus Quirrell who was victim of a possession by a malevolent specter picked up during his vacations in Albania. The castle wards against such events should have triggered and isolated the poor man so that he was given help. However, most of the wardstones were so badly maimed or rewritten by Dumbledore's inept attempts at invisible dominance that less than 15% of the functions still worked at all. Most of the venerable wards that had made the school's reputation for safety were off-line or destroyed when Dumbledore realized he would never control them, and he also needed to sign the blood-oath to have sufficient access the modify the settings, which he would never willingly do in his life. He preferred to de-power or destroy the schemes he wasn't able to hijack to his will, leaving the venerable institution almost bare of shields or detectors.

As such, Quirrell's health issues were spotted by the healers during his preliminary screening interrogation with the aurors. The specter inside him fought to get away and actually tried to posses two different people before being chased out of the castle grounds, instead of being contained and exorcised by the wards, as they had been designed to do when they were built.

As a result of this criminally depraved act against the common health and safety of Hogwarts, professor Quirrell, junior auror Malice Irene Selwyn, Lady-Elect of House Selwyn, and master medi-wizard Horace Thespis Delson, have died in service to Wizarding Britannia. They were brought to the DMLE morgue for secured autopsies by the Unspeakables, and given honorable funeral rites by their families, for those who had any left.

x-x

Professor Sybill Trelawney was both a criminal fraud and a victim in the circumstance.

She had been near homelessness as she was deeply indebted but without gainful employ. She saw and advert in the Daily Prophet about Hogwarts searching for a Divinations professor, to replace the person going to retirement. She had no Third-Eye opened, and not much skill in divinatory arts at all to be frankly honest, but she had an ancestor who was famous at it; Cassandra Trelawney, an Oracle of confirmed Gift who served the Church of Cosme.

So, she obtained an interview with Albus Dumbledore in his brother Aberforth's dingy bar, in the early evening just after dinner. She presented herself in her most Bohemian clothes, embalmed in incense smoke and herb oils to affect an air of mysticism and esoterism that old men of Dumbledore's generation have always fallen for like the superstitious suckers they are.

She gave a false prophecy.

She acted like a Pinewood Studios pro in a classic James Bond movie.

She did like the Oracle woman played by Jane Seymour, in 'Live and Let Die', from her youth in 1973. That was her role model, when she was doing an audition for a job. She put on her atours and glamours, colored bead shawl and tinted round glasses with sparkling runes in the lenses, and perfumed herself with diluted confounding and emotionality elixirs to manipulate the senses of the audience seated within ten feet of her stage.

And that fateful evening, Albus Dumbledore was her exclusive audience at a private séance. She read the Tarot to predict for England great turmoils and dark mists of desperate loss, before could be found a Beacon of Pure Light in the far: Dumbledore himself. She had used cards marked with invisible sigils that only the charmed lenses in her glasses could see so she could use some basic sleigh-of-hands to shuffle and pass the cards to her needs for the Future she wanted to pronounce. It was always vital to cater to the specific desires of the audience seated before you, if you wanted to get paid and have return customers in your boudoir.

After that, she had faked reading floating holy glyphs in the smoke of the censer she had brought, when it fact they were simple illusions she had programmed to react only to her aura so that it wouldn't trigger by accident. She had put in five different patterns, and the false prayer she chanted triggered the pattern fitting what she saw the customer desired to hear.

Then, the job not cinched yet, she had pulled the Full Monty out of her wand. She had done the biggest fake of her life of con-artistery; she managed to fake the pronouncement of a Prophecy.

Given the Blood Purity War in progress at time, and the fact she was great friends -secretly- with Rita Skeeter who was at the beginning of her journalistic career, she had heard a lot of juicy gossip, privileged Ministry informations, and frankly illegal classified auror reports, from her old childhood friend. Sybill had used a conglomeration of three dozen sources to manufacture the utterly falsified "Prophecy of the Savior Child" that would defeat Lord Voldemort, if he were properly guided by the Powers, Magicks and Authority of a wise mentor; Albus Dumbledore.

The poor deluded fraudster could never have divined in her life the true nature of Dumbledore as the worse predator and killer to ever disgrace Wizarding Britain, not even to save herself.

Albus immediately and without warning or forethought attacked her with legilimancy, but not to verify her honesty or find hidden details of her Prophetic Gift. No, she had tagged him quite well, when she profiled his mindset in preparation for her con. He was a superstitious, credulous fool who believed dearly that the Multiverse and Pantheons of the Divines had -something- of great and extraordinary portents in store for him, and his devout followers. The moment the false tale of Prophetic do-gooding had left her lips, the vainglorious, vapidly narcissistic old cretin had jumped on the one chance to prove his mentally deluded beliefs of superiority to everybody.

So he immediately attacked her mind not to verify, but to establish an external mind-magic lock that was coded to respond only to his Blood and Magic signatures. Her Prophetic Gift and masterful Talents at the divinatory arts and techniques would never again serve anybody but Albus 'The New Merlyn, Regent Archmagus of Britannia' Dumbledore, no matter what came. He also made her sign the cheapskate contract he had prepared in case the job applicant proved just good enough to pass by the Board of Governors, but pliable enough to not need too much of his overstretched attention and schedule.

The morning after, when she presented herself to Hogwarts to prepare the new school year as she had been programmed to do, he began to dose her with particularly strong, Blood-bound elixirs to insure her silence, docility, obedience and limit her magical Talents and Gifts before any audience other than himself. To further her isolation and make certain nobody ever tried to steal his pet Seer, he Imperiused her to drink cheap muggle cooking Sherry by the bottle every day, and used a psychic curse to make her suffer pains equal to a low but constant Cruciatus whenever she was less than 50% drunk on the specified alcohol.

From that point on, she was made to 'Channel' Prophecies or Divine portents at least once a year, because Dumbledore was a needy, tetchy little bitch of a eunuch that absolutely had to have his ego stroked and be confirmed as the biggest, baddest and magikest Warlock in the land. In the years he had hired her, he never saw through her lies and frauds, and never stopped believing that some poor child born at the end of July would be the prophesied 'Savior of Wizarding Light in Britannia, Europa and Slavia' from the foul clutches of the Dreaded Lord of the Darkes, Heir of Slytherin, Voldemort.

Sybill's mind may have been churned to mulch over the years, but she was still remarkably lucid as Dumbledore believed that a true Seer, Oracle or Prophet never controlled when it was that the Divines channeled their message through them, and that the person remembered nothing. All he needed to feel safe, and in sufficient control of her, was to limit her magicks and social exposure so that she didn't wander out of his grasp, or attract the attention of enemies or aurors. Due to this lucidity, she was able to remember several fragments of self-deluded deblaterations that Albus uttered before her, when he needed a human presence to hear and appreciate the truly mind-warping complexities of his schemes and machinations to keep himself at the top of everything magical, political or economical in England and Europe.

It was how she remembered his supposed discovery of Lord Voldemort making 'Horcruxes' when he attacked the Potters, as Albus had planned. He believed it so hard because little Harry and Neville Longbottom were both born on the end of July and came from proven Light Wizarding noble Families, which Albus had somehow imagined was a prerequisite for the Savior Child to be worthy of becoming his apprentice and Martyr of England. Sybill never gave him names or details other than "a child born at the end of July", without saying any gender or what year or epoch they would be born in. Dumbledore imagined everything else on his own, and then fomented the devastation of two Lineages without external prompting.

So, the aurors and DMLE now had in hand a very thick addition to the already massive folio concerning the investigations of Dumbledore's crimes against Harold Jamieson Evans Potter, newly minted Lord Peverell, Lord Potter, and Heir Ascendant of Black, Peer of the Realms.

It was also why the Unspeakables wanted to speak to Harry in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, preferably without lawyers and certainly no Goblins, so he would be completely at their mercy as they charted the course for "Britain's Greater Good". Thankfully, the Goblins and none of the titled noble Houses had let that abuse of power and station in the Ministry pass by unchallenged. The Unspeakables were told, and shown, with Umbridge's trial that Harry would NOT be anybody's pet victim again in his life. Plus the fact that Harry's famous scar had been examined, surgically emptied of cursed wooden residues from the exploding nursery room furniture, and healed in a way that left no scars at all. There had never been any horcrux in the boy's face, just some splinters contaminated by negative energy that struck him when the dresser detonated from the backlash of the protections Lady Potter had placed around the crib. According to the Soul Stones inside Gringotts, the Dread Lord Voldemort, born as Tom Marvolo Riddle Jr, was well and truly dead, not in suspended animation, not a wraith, and not coming back. Well, unless he had hidden a phylactery while turning himself into a lich or lich-lord, but those things could not be scanned from afar, and the soul stone would go dark if it was done.

Whether Harry's hard-earned peace and safety from harmful tests and rites stayed true remained to be seen, as the Unspeakables were secretly plotting dastardly and frankly... Well... Unspeakable things, yes. That's what they were plotting. And, they weren't alone in wanting ill luck and plagues upon the combined Houses of Harry Potter, so Time alone would tell.

x-x

Professor Rolanda Hooch who taught flight and refereed Quidditch had been potioned for loyalty and a very low level of attention and reaction towards violence, bullying and children being injured. She had also been programmed to be sullen, distant and uninterested in the lives and welfare of anybody but her own family, most of which had died during the Blood Purity War. She would be fine come September, and since her responsibilities and authority had always been limited, the healers saw no problems with sending her back to work.

x-x

The other teachers were victims of lazy efforts at control spread out over decades, being given loyalty, befuddlement or forgetfulness elixirs according to whatever Dumbledore thought needed to be hidden from the aurors and open public. Most of them had already metabolized the drugs for more than fourteen months by now, and were not showing symptoms of active programming, although each had been mind-raped repeatedly, from their time as students and throughout their careers. Those who would not return in September had made the choice for themselves, not because of medical advice or pressures from the Board.

Charity Burbage of Muggle Studies chose to leave for other employment, preferably in private tutoring rather than a public or group setting. Given how out of date he curriculum was, and that she hadn't seen a muggle since she had visited a squib aunt in Manchester at age 13, it wasn't seen as a damaging choice. She would have been replaced come September 1991 anyways.

Septima Vector of Arithmancy, Bathsheda Babbling of Ancient Runes, Aurora Sinistra of Astronomy and Sylvanus Kettleburn of Care of Magical Creatures, chose to return to their posts in September 1991, but only with conditions and assurances about the castle getting new wards that would actually function, and the true salaries and benefits that their contracts stipulated, with all arrears and legal fees covered by the school. The requests had already been accepted by the Board and the Ministry's Department of Schooling.

x-x

It had taken two hours for the Board of Governors to submit and read abstracts of the report from the partial investigations. Multiple deaths, multiple comas and handicapped victims that would never recover fully. Several professors who were seen as heroes in their fields were compromised to the point they could barely function as muggle teachers for a regular high school class. Most of the non-academic staff was decimated, except for Rolanda Hooch who had never been all that active or important in the school anyways, so a pitiful victory that was.

{ HP } - { Help! Hogwarts is still ablaze! } - { HP }

And then there were all the collateral discoveries that worsened the case even more.

All the mess about Harry's scar and -NO!- it wasn't a horcrux, or phylactery, or whatever the Hells you thought it was. He didn't even have a damned scar anymore! It had just been contaminated grime that shrapnelized when Voldemort got vaporized by Lily's booby trap. Or James', the aurors hadn't been sure than and still weren't. But the boy didn't have a Dark Lord embryo in his cranium, so all the fucking shyte that Albus "I know everything!" Dumbledore put him through was for a big fat nothing.

Rubeus Hagrid had been hiding and helping a growing colony of Amazonian Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest since 1943, or 48 years. The worse part was that Dumbledore had known full well, but used the health and safety of his pet's brood to emotionally blackmail Hagrid into cooperating when the alchemies were wearing out too fast to be safely reapplied. If the grounds keeper wanted to keep his arachnid friends alive and happy, then he had to cooperate with Albus for everything asked. The truly evil part of this was that Acromantulas may be able to speak with humans and other species, that didn't make their mindset any less alien. They were both incestuous and unattached to their kindred. They were predatory in a way that was murderous and cannibalistic without consideration or remorse, and they admitted it openly as they saw no trouble or immorality in this way of feeding. In their five decades of presence, the spiders had killed-off half the unicorns, a quarter of the centaurs, and exterminated approximately thirty-two species of animals, while endangering fifty-seven others and forcing nearly three hundred types of creatures to migrate out of the forest to keep their kinds alive.

One of the further crimes of Albus Dumbledore discovered was that he forced Hagrid to collect the excess silk from the Acromantulas' secondary nests and aerial roadways to be brought back to Hogwarts. Inside the castle's lower dungeons, he had tasked several of the oldest and least mobile house-elves with steeping, cleaning, spinning and weaving the silk into commercial rolls of 200 pounds that he sold at a good profit on the black market. He dodged the permits and taxes on sales and revenues, and it all went into his pockets as he never gave the school, forest preservation fund or Hagrid anything of the proceeds.

Besides this abomination of an environmental hecatomb that threatened the reliable provisioning of food markets and apothecaries all over Britain and the world in coming years, it also created an imbalance in the magicks of the Laand that was in desperate need of druids and geomancers to correct. It would take a Grand Ritual of Antiquity to set right what was damaged, or else the diseases and cursed magicks would continue to spread through the forest and out into the rest of Scotland by traveling through the three Ley Lines under Hogwarts. The purulent tumor that Dumbledore had accidentally let happen was a genuine threat to the magical and ecological balance of the entire planet, if given three or four centuries to degenerate further.

Then, of course, were the Centaurs who could decide to stop being isolationists long enough to drag Wizarding Britain before the ICW Assembly to have them tried for accidental genocide and warfare through criminal negligence in their stewardship of Hogwarts, plus of course the utter lack of supervision and oversight where Dumbledore was concerned. As he had been Headmaster, Chief Warlock of the Gamot, and British representative as well as Supreme Mugwump at the ICW, that could become quite the kettle of fish to fry. For once, the Board of Governors had managed to bypass their usual disdain for part-humans and non-humans by inviting the leader of the Centaur Herd at the first submission of the draft report, to show good will and try to find remedies without dragging the ICW Enforcers into it. Except for the accursed Acromantula colony; everybody in the Gamot chamber was of the opinion that the heavily armed and armored Enforcers and their trained Battle-Basilisk familiars would do a better and faster job than the British aurors and hit wizards put together.

x-x

It was discovered, during a thorough search of his personal living quarters, that the old bastard had been stealing the research product of several professors by obliviating and confounding them to forget they had done the work. He made them think he had done most of everything and they only served as revision committee when they were free. Thusly, he put nearly four hundred discoveries in transfiguration, transmutation, potions, alchemy and arithmancy to his name by depositing the patents at the Wizarding Ministry without contest by the real authors. Severus Snape had seen nearly two-thirds of his life's work defrauded and extorted from his hands in this manner since he set foot in Hogwarts. The same could be said for Minerva McGonagall, Pomona Sprout and Septima Vector.

On top of damaging the ecology and stealing their studies from the professors, he was also systematically underpaying everybody by ungodly percentages and pocketing wholesale the salaries of Cuthbert Binns and Rubeus Hagrid without telling them.

Professor Binns was a ghost, an honored dead for several decades since before Albus set foot in the castle, so he wasn't supposed to be paid anything but mysteriously got paid a full salary with benefits and pension in the accounting books. Nobody had figured out where the monies went.

Hagrid was to be enslaved and kept poor and destitute at all costs, so Dumbledore fudged his hiring contract by making the gentle giant-kin believe that the small hut and food he got from the castle were an alms for his "unnecessary but appreciated service" to the school's community. Since he was forcibly made to believe his choices were this menial labor, homeless vagrancy or prison in Azkaban, Hagrid had agreed without being mentally able to look further.

Severus Snape and Poppy Pomphrey had spent thousands of hours at preparing potions vials that disappeared to be sold on the black market, just as Pomona Sprout had worked her fingers to the bones in the greenhouses and fields to produce high quality herbs that were also absconded for resell in back-alleys and dank sewer chambers.

x-x

By pure accident, the Unspeakables that were helping with breaking the illegal wards around Dumbledore's office and quarters found his poor Fire Phoenix, held captive inside a stasis bubble crafted out of Laen volcanic glass. The magical crystalline material was weird in that it became super-enduring at any level of heat or flames, but became brittle like eggshell in sub-zero temperature. The perfect prison to keep a phoenix between bouts of poisoning it with alchemies, implanting the Imperius in its mind via legilimancy, and using micro-wands like those found in Hagrid to insure control over long ranges and anchor permanent Dark blood-wards against divinations and scrying.

This gave Albus the perfect vehicle for instantly sending or fetching illegal parcels, sending booby trapped mail to unsuspecting people, and he had even trained the bird to listen to his mental imagery to find and steal small objects for him. In many cases where a person had lost a family heirloom left out of their wall safe for a few minutes, or an important letter had been misplaced, it was actually Fawkes stealing things while Dumbledore piloted him remotely like an animated flesh puppet.

The poor magical entity was in St-Mungo's research lab, being treated as a VMW (Very Magickal Warlock) with all the regards due to entitled nobility. Nobody knew if he would awaken, nor what state he'd be in if he ever did. For that crime alone, the desecration of a creature of Pure Goodness, its enslavement by Dark means, plus forcing it to commit legally punishable crimes, Dumbledore was already facing three death penalties right there.

x-x

The goals of Albus Dumbledore were always to make money and dodge all aurors or regulatory departments, so that the unlawful and immoral profits ended in his pockets. Ever since he had been born as a pauper's second son in a rural farmstead, and a half-blood at that, Albus had been obsessed with becoming rich, famous and powerful above everyone he could perceive or become aware of by reputation. And like all con-men, his criminalities and depravities in the name of money and self-importance knew no bounds in this world or the next.

{ HP } - { Is it over yet? / No, it is not. } - { HP }

After five long hours of reporting, the entire Wizengamot chamber sat in stunned silence, as if someone had dropped a sleep drug grenade in the middle of the floor to knock-out everybody, all at once. Only the animated dicta-quills were still making noise but were unheard as they toiled under silencing wards to not bother the Warlocks and Ladies in their deliberations.

Chief-Witch Marchbanks took in a deep steadying breath, before asking of Lord Malfoy, "What is the status of the school as it stands? And will it be able to reopen at all or partially, come the new year? We need to know now, so that the families can find other institutions or hire at-home tutors until this is all resolved, physically, legally and magically."

Lucius Malfoy stood from his chair at the Board's table and responded in measured words, wearing a grave expression on his face. "We honestly don't know if operating Hogwarts for the coming year is either safe, feasible or even desirable, with the limited staff on hand. Firstly, we have measured the workload of all administrators, heads of Houses and teachers, to figure out by how much they were being overworked or underpaid. On average, each employee was being made to produce three to five times what their list of tasks & responsibilities officially required, while at the same time being paid between 85% and 65% of what the -unmodified- contracts for a single job stipulate. In this, Dumbledore milked them like cows, by all four teats, and left nothing for them or the students after that."

Gesturing carefully and decoratively with his gloved hands, the Chairman of the Board explained in detail; "Minerva McGonagall was exploited shamelessly for decades as sole teacher of transfiguration, master developer of alterative magicks, Head of Gryffindor, and Deputy Headmaster, but paid only 85% of the base salary of a regular professor, with all benefits and her pension fund halved, and most patents or copyrights stolen. Severus Snape was teacher of potions, resident master brewer, resident apothecary, master alchemical developer, Head of Slytherin, and Deputy of financial affairs to Gringotts. He was paid only 85% of the base salary, all benefits and pension halved, 90% of patents and copyrights stolen, and 98% of his apothecary production was stolen for black market resell. Plus, of course, Dumbledore used him as his spy inside the Dark Lord's ranks during the Blood Purity War, without a copper Knut for his sacrifices. Pomona Sprout was teacher of herbology, master developer of herbology techniques, master breeder of new magical plants, manager of the greenhouses, responsible for stocking the vegetal potions components warehouses, responsible for half of the foodstuffs used daily, and Head of Hufflepuff. She was paid only 85% of the base salary of a regular professor, with all benefits and her pension fund halved, and 90% of patents or copyrights stolen. Filius Flitwick was teacher of charms and Head of Ravenclaw, paid at 75% of the regular salary, with all benefits and pension fund limited at 33% of expected. For the others, their workloads are just a bit worse than written in their contracts, or else Dumbledore deemed they were useless to his plans so they got paid 65% of what should have been, with no benefits or pension allocated."

Making a wider, more expansive gesture of his left hand, Lord Malfoy spoke through tight lips and clenched features. "For those who ignore it, and in the spirit of open declaration of vested interests of my Family, the celebrated master of Potions, Alchemy and Apothecary Arts, professor Severus Tobias Snape, the Lord-Elect Prince in Abeyance, is the godfather of my only son, the Heir Presumptive of House Malfoy. I am personally aggrieved by the crimes, depravities, seditions and treasons committed by Albus Dumbledore, but I am trying to function objectively nonetheless. It is in this objective, arithmantic approach to the situation, that we have come to the following conclusions about the internal workings of the school. Please peruse the following charts and itemized lists, passed by the Board's official solicitors."

Once everybody had a stapled folio in hand, Lord Malfoy affected as dignified a pose as he could, then explained the reality of what remained of Hogwarts today. "While the investigations are still ongoing at the DMLE, ICW and Gringotts, we can already surmise the following problems to overcome. We need a Headmaster that can be trusted and relied upon, and a method to insure that the contracts and oaths are never again bypassed. We need a Deputy Headmaster who will have conditions, contracts and oaths exactly similar to the Headmaster. We need a Deputy Accountant delegated to Gringotts, bound as the first two. We need a medi-witch or healer that is qualified and bound with oaths that cannot be perverted or bypassed by the person or external forces. We will need a dedicated apothecary to produce the potions for internal uses, as well as manage the outside sales that are supposed to happen. Likewise with a dedicated farmer or rancher to handle the vegetation crops and livestock's to be sold outside. We absolutely need four distinct Heads of Houses that are not admins or teachers, or infirmary personnel, or cooks, or custodians, or anything else than Head of House, responsible for the welfare of the students and relations with their families."

Taking a sip of cold water from his goblet, Lord Malfoy pursued; "We would need to have a few more house-elves, but do not need people to be kitchen staff, serving staff, custodian, disciplinarian or grounds-keeper, since these functions were never written in the Hogwarts Charter, and were never necessary. Firstly, corporal punishment was historically carried out by the Heads of House or Headmaster, but never any other personnel, thus a dedicated disciplinarian is a nonsense and should not be employed. Also, historically, detentions were supervised by the teachers who gave them to avoid kicking students out of class to dump them on others without personal involvement. We strongly recommend this becomes the norm again. The other tasks have always been the province of the house-elves who take tremendous joy and pride in feeding the future of our nation and partner countries that send their children here. I see no reason to alter this proven method, nor to asperse insults upon the elves by taking away their tasks and usefulness, which few among us would have the amount of daily magicks needed to do."

The white-blond haired lord finished the demoralizing report "As you can see, we need several people, on average three, to replace each professor we are losing, plus a few more permanent employees to equilibrate the workloads equitably amongst the entire staff. And that is to say nothing of the costs and delays implied by the analysis, retro-engineering and integral replacement of the entire ward scheme, from the monoliths up, because of centuries of idiotic Headmasters trying to configure the ward layers to permit, bolster or ignore their pet projects of the moment. Already, the Unspeakables are talking about de-powering the grid by blocking the Mana Source under the school's Power Sink. Be aware that the ward-masters of Gringotts, contracted as second opinion to validate the analysis, have agreed with this prevision because of the enormous difficulties in repairing the damaged stones and channels, and the non-viable financial montage that would result from renovating instead of creating from scratch."

Chief-witch Marchbanks asked in hesitant tones, "I can see that the new personnel and job allocations will multiply the yearly budgets, but will the revenues suffice or will we have to raise tuition, or even install a new support tax? And what are the price estimates for the wards?"

Shaking his head negatively, Lord Malfoy replied carefully "The tuition should not need to be adjusted since several irregularities were found in the accounts by the Board, DMLE and Gringotts who are all still hard at work, digging through the morass. However, king Ragnok has given us a tentatively posited opinion that if the hundreds of frauds and thefts perpetrated by Dumbledore had not pauperized the school so, the revenues from the percentage taken on all patents and copyrights resulting from research would be a considerable yearly intake. Plus the sales of raw or processed herbs, potions & apothecary craftings, rare components harvested from the Forbidden Forest with great care, and legally certified copies of the library's exclusive books, all delivered by house-elf to stay fresh/hot and on time, would make a small fortune every year. Technically, king Ragnok and his accountants do not understand HOW or WHY the school should be insolvent, nor unable of material autonomy. It was built on the model of Catholic walled abbeys prevalent in the epoch, a millenia ago, so that production of foods, medicines, weapons, clothes and erudition were all done inside the safety of the castle. The Hogwarts designed by the Four Founders and given the Royal Writ in 1002ad is not the Hogwarts we have known for the last three hundred years. But, to answer your other question, it is on the last sheet of the folio."

Madam Marchbanks and the seated Ladies, Lords and Proxies turned the sheets until they had the ward rebuilding projects' draft estimates in sight. The immediate gasps of fear or outrage rang out the moment the people could intellectualize the magnitude of the numbers lined up.

Old Warlock Tiberius Ogden, Head of Family, Lord of Ogden, put his wand to the crest engraved in the wooden banister in front of his chair to signal the Chief-Witch that he wished to address the subject at hand. Given the permission, he whispered harshly in the dead silence that filled the chamber. "Are these valid? Can we trust these numbers or will they suddenly grow like Devil's Snare in a dark cellar? Because I don't think that we could have that much money in our hands unless we sold six Noble Houses at auction for at least 66% of their book-worth."

Nodding forlornly, Lord Malfoy sighed deeply as he declared "No, I can't give you that guarantee, Lord Ogden. As previously stated, these are only preliminary estimates done by eye, not even actual first drafts after divinations, geomancy and scriptworkes engineering were done. It says, and I sadly quote, 'A best guess of 19 million Galleons over three years to build new, or above 27 million Galleons over seven years for a renovation of the original Ember monoliths and Mana source channels respecting historic accuracy and emulating the traditional crafting style' as Head Unspeakable Saul Croaker said."

Madam Bones glared through her heavily enspelled monocle as she wanded the calling crest, then harshly questioned Malfoy; "And why, pray tell, is the price difference so large? Is it not the same space being utilized, and in the same manner?"

Shaking his head, Lord Malfoy countered "From what the Unspeakables and Gringotts have explained to us, if they build new, they can use modern techniques that use less space and channel Powers more efficiently in small crystal tubes, instead of wide masonry pipes that spread around liquid Primal Essaence as the ancient system does. Repairing the old system however, would mean cutting the castle horizontally to lift it off the foundations where most of the devices, meaning the fabled mythalar pillars, power sink and mithril lances, were buried without physical access. This was done to keep the tremendous radiations and acidic vapors of condensed Primal Essaence limited to the chambers and channels of the ward control grid. And also to keep thieves and idiots from damaging the ward matrix, which obviously failed anyways. Still, rebuilding the original means using the original methods, tools, materials and staying inside the alchemical and energy limits of such techniques, which I remind you are a millenia out of date. Thus the wildly different prices."

Several in the chamber held their forehead or put their face in both hands as the whispers of prayers to the Divines abounded around the debate hall.

{ HP } - { Are you fucking kidding me, you accursed twits? } - { HP }

As the murmurs of anguish and distress abated across the debate hall, Harry Potter touched his wooden spoon to the signal crest in front of him, much to the amusement, or scorn, of the Warlocks in neighboring chairs. Being recognized by the Chief-Witch, he asked his question, to the great interest of the assembly.

"My Lord Malfoy, cousin by alliance of my Black Blood-Law, could you explain to us HOW the successive headmasters were able to usurp or damage the ward scheme and devices, if they were sealed away in foundation levels that had no physical access? I seem to find a logical impossibility, in this report. Did they apparate or gate inside the spaces? Or have a house-elf deliver their nefarious tools to remote control them afterwards?"

Lucius Malfoy appeared to ignore the plebeian whispers about his family affairs coming from all over the chamber while at the same time studiously observing and memorizing the reactions caused by the juvenile Lord's speech. He had just recognized the familial standing and alliance that had been wrought between their Houses in a manner of The Old Ways, in abidance of the Pureblood and High Traditionalist Darkes cultures. The tizzy emanating from select parts of the assembly were a balm on his wounded heart that helped to regain strength enough to face the rest of the crimes and personal offenses suffered from the sapping of Hogwarts by Dumbledore.

Bowing at the waist with his left hand at his left hip and his right hand resting atop his serpent-headed cane in the manner of High Lords of Magick, Lucius replied Harry politely with a small, knowing smirk that made even more whispers pass around the Light and Neutral factions of the political spectrum, while the Darke and Darkness groups were wondering about the shift.

"Your question is neither amusing nor amateurish, My Lord Peverell, Lord Potter, and Heir Ascendant Black, cousin by alliance to my House of Malfoy. In truth of fact, all the methods that you stated were used by several parties at some point in history. Firstly, the power sink where sit the mythalar pillars was not fully airtight or watertight as the liquid Primal Essaence had to flow and circulate around the stonework plumbing to irrigate the mithril lances which were the active emitters of the ward scheme. This meant that when the wards were commanded by the keystone hidden in the war-room atop the Turris Magnus, in the small lantern above the headmaster's office and quarters, they could make the hyper-dense fluid recede to the sink. Once the pipes were dry, they could crawl through the ducts to access the hidden foundations. This was done by physically scratching off the runes and figures on several of the crystal segments that compose the keystone to change the program into new configurations. The original coding had been optimized for the Ley Line junction and an epoch of great warfare, but several wanted to reduce the wards down to a 'peace' or 'civilian' setting, that permitted more active modifications to the castle structure, resident populace or allowed visitors. As such, when the masonry ducts were breached, all the other methods slowly became feasible, as they sent an elf to crawl through the pipes with a portkey beacon that allowed the wizards to then go down directly to the power sink's floor, and eventually gaze upon the Mana Source itself. But, it was done over centuries, by dozens of inept or felonious cretins, none of whom knew what damages they wrought upon the school and grounds."

Madam Bones interfered in the explanation by asking "And that is the reason they want to bisect the castle across the ankles, and lift it in the air by four full floors? Because the original structure was never meant to be accessed or modified unless the castle was sacked and demolished in war by the enemy forces?"

Nodding in genuine sadness, Lord Malfoy confirmed the simple facts. "The architecture of the day was grandiose when they crafted stone and wood, but their abilities with utilities like plumbing and drainage devices made of metals or crystals was quite primitive. Everything relied solely on gravity, evaporation or the tidal action of the Black Lake to flush and remove the offal from the cesspits sunken in the base of Hogwarts, just above the sealed layers. These were no doubts masterful creations of genius for their day, but we have evolved beyond these methods. It would be far less costly, and much quicker, to build a new system that will not need to bisect the castle for levitation, just surgically boring through a few floors and walls to pass the requisite crystal piping to connect the existing devices. And while I am proud of being a High Traditionalist of the Darkes, even our philosophy understands that life brings changes and adaptations to us all. The new construction is what the Board favors for solution. Thank you."

Madam Marchbanks pounded lightly the gavel-wand of Magistrature upon the small wooden wooden block shaped like the first Wizengamot Grimoire to sound-off her demand for attention as further points were forthcoming. "Alright, ye scurrilous bunch o' daft males! There are two Board members who have voted against the report their committee has just deposed before us, and they have come with their own solicitors and scribes to make presentation of their arguments to the Gamot in this emergency session. Lord Prudent Myzere, Head of House Myzere, you have the floor open for your dissenting presentation."

Standing up slowly, the elderly wizard used a long mahogany cane capped by a dog-head pommel to stay upright on his feet, at visibly great efforts. Skin pale and sallow, with a sheen of sweat over his brow that would soon drip into his barely focused eyes, the ancient Warlock tried to speak clearly despite a slight stutter every twenty words or so. "Ladies, Warlocks and Proxies of the British Wizengamot, thank you for allowing the presentation of our minority brief. While I have served the Hogwarts Board for nigh on eight decades as my father and grand-father before me, the House of Myzere can no longer remain silent at what has caused this debacle, and the cascade of threats to our society that has been unleashed in result."

Sitting back at his chair at the Board's table, he was right next to Dolores Umbridge who was in the very first chair of the private solicitors' table on that side of the Governors. The frog-like smirk on the witch's face set many at ill-ease, and her overall bactracian mien did nothing to set minds or magicks at peace in the room.

Lord Myzere pursued in his slow pace; "Albus Dumbledore was a criminal and a tyrant with little morality of humanity, but then again he was a half-blood from a poor, peasant family whose name had not been valued for centuries before his elevation. He was defrauded by a half-blood witch who had made a career out of conspuating and degrading the most sacred of our esoteric arts, Talents and Gifts as if it were muggle Burlesque for skit on the stage! All of these depraved seditions and treasons of Britain can be squarely laid at the feet of half-bloods, mudbloods and muggle-lovers who repeatedly assail our culture, our institutions and the very magick in our bodies and souls, to steal it from us! I think that the solution is as simple as it will no doubt set the bleeding-heart lefties of this chamber a-twitter with great ejaculations of bombast."

Taking a steadying breath, Lord Myzere gestured magnanimously to Dolores Umbridge as he presented her to the Warlocks. "Our minority of the Hogwarts Governors have retained the gracious professional services of Madam Dolores Jane Umbridge, esquire, Heiress Presumptive of House Selwyn, certified notary, licensed solicitor and barrister of the Gamot. She has used her lengthy work experience inside the halls of the Ministry of Magic to assist us in our august task of righting the immoral wrongs, repairing the cultural damages, and safeguarding our bodies and souls from further encroachment by these foreign, non-wizardly menaces. Dolores, please."

Umbridge stood up from her subaltern chair to make her lengthy, vapid, self-serving speech about repelling half-bloods, mudbloods and muggle-influenced fools out of their halls of power and schools, while purging by wand-fire the creatures and monsters like Goblins and Centaurs,who pretended to have the same value as humans. She was fully enraptured in her two seconds of glory inside her own mind's eye, only to crash to reality in excruciating pain and emotional distress when that hated voice of the BOY resounded across the debate hall.

"Point of Order, madam Chief-Witch! The Houses of Peverell, Potter and Black challenge the rights of presentation and debate of this being inside these august walls!" Harry Potter shouted to be heard over the din of disapproval that had already begun just as Lord Myzere was finishing his reasons for holding a minority presentation against the Board's general consensus.

Gaveling her bock most vigorously, Madam Marchbanks ordered the chamber to decorum and peace, unless they wanted to evacuate and reconvene another day. "By entitled rights of the Most Venerable and Greatly Spiritual Houses of the Britannic Realms, Colonies and Commonwealth, you have the floor in priority, Lord Peverell and Potter. Depose your point of order."

Standing from his ancestral chair, Harry Potter whelmed all five feet of his height to appear as impressive as any Warlock seated in the room. His black robes with purple highlights and details were sumptuous, and his purple gloves thin and supple, showing his dexterity and contrasting with his many sigil rings of title, rank and style. The suddenly visible presence of Rehz Ib Fettach upon his left shoulder left many stunned as the senior scribe announced loudly the identity and lawful presence of the familiar bound by the High Traditions of The Old Ways.

"Madam Chief-Witch Marchbanks, my fellow Ladies, Warlocks and Proxies, honorable members of the Board of Governors, thank you for hearing my interruption to your debates, for I assure you it is of primordial importance." Pointing his be-ringed right index at Umbridge, the child accused firmly "I refuse to act like a Dumbledore potioned puppet any longer, or to claim Imperius when staying inert whilst depravities occur before my eyes! Not a week ago, this witch stood in chains inside this very chamber of parliament, accused of frauds, interference in DMLE investigations, attempted breach & seizure of hereditary Noble residence and heirlooms, attempt at censuring or destroying the Family Libraries of multiple Noble Houses, passing false orders to the aurors from an office holding no such authority or privileges, and attempted Line-Theft. She was fined a paltry 10,000 Galleons, sentenced to loss of three years of seniority and forbidden from holding any position of 'senior-level' authority, in either legislative, judicial or bureaucratic branches of our nation's government and institutions. Minister Fudge sacked her in fear for his own seat, not because he actually wanted to as he had tried to minimize her sentencing as much as the laws allowed him to. He most certainly showed neither decency nor good taste when he did so, in full view of this hallowed chamber. And now, today, we see why that decision was badly reflected and shouldn't have happened."

Harry leaned forward, putting both jeweled hands on the banister to grip it fiercely to keep from casting pain and mind-warping curses at the error of Nature that so aggrieved him yet again.

"Therefore; what is she doing inside this chamber during an emergency session, which is the very definition of senior-level authority and decision-making? And what is she doing attempting to influence the discussions about the future and management of Hogwarts, one of our national institutions, thusly usurping for herself a great swathe of authority and power over the lives of thousands of our citizens and foreign students? And why in the names of Hades, Gaia, Cosme and Mystra, is this rabid bitch allowed to pretend so scurrilously that she is the heiress of any house at all? And Selwyn? Really? She tried that very line in her trial a week back, and both the House Selwyn solicitors and Gringotts rebuffed her lies as yet another attempt at Line-Theft and Line-Graft! She should have been put in chains and carted off to Azkaban for that, and yet she's here, at it again! Why is this tolerated, madam Bones and Madam Marchbanks? My fellow Warlocks? Why must we suffer this obscene spectacle of horrors, hypocrisies and perjuries, without any protests? Answer me, you damned daft twits! Wake the fucks up and do something, ye knaves!"

Despite all her protestations, Dolores Umbridge was made to attest of her links to House Selwyn by Blood-Law, adoption or marriage and present the proofs she had for declaring herself Heiress of the House while the last known member in the direct line of heredity had just died a few weeks ago during the investigations inside Hogwarts. When asked if she had the Heritage Ritual documentation from Gringotts, the woman replied that she would never let those foul sub-human under-beings touch her Blood or Magick to steal and submit her soul to their fell arts. She was Selwyn because she said so, and her word as witch should suffice, unless they were half-bloods and blood-traitors like the Weasleys.

Smiling just as toothily as Rehz, Harry stunned the chamber by standing up and declaring loudly like a scandal once in a while was good clean fun; "Whelp, that helps things along! I'm a half-blood! My titled noble Pureblood father married my pauper muggle-born mother in lawful and magical matrimony before the Prelate at the Temple of the Moon, in Diagon Alley. Therefore, fulfilling your exacting criteria for investigative requests, I ask anew: where is the damned Heritage Ritual report? Where is the proof that Gringotts recognizes your claims to the Seat of Selwyn in this Hall and in Society? Depose your proofs or be sentenced for Line-Theft, ye scurvy cad!"

The explosive tizzy of outrage and invectives that followed was as noisy as the morning rising tides in the wharves, while the scribes were going insane at trying to make sure the dicta-quills didn't skip of miss any of the events unfolding in the august deliberation hall.

Madam Amelia Bones, Head of the DMLE and auror corps, was congratulating herself for having the instinct of setting her 'Monocle of Doom', gifted to her by her late husband Edgar when she attained the rank of Senior Auror, to its panoramic view & recording. That wide angled perspective would complement well the auto-pensiever that was linked to her psyche since birth, as was usually the case in the titled and noble houses that were not sworn to Dumbledore and his 'Light of Wizarding Britain' in the last six decades. It was now obvious WHY he had tried repeatedly to have the ancestral protection devices disconnected or even seized by DMLE, as the numerous Line-Thefts, murders and enslavement's proved. Only those who were properly linked to their Family's heirlooms or auto-pensiever could have resisted the mind-rapes and control potions of Dumbledore, if only because when their families or Gringotts accountants detected disparities, they would have looked at the memories stored safely in the vaults and seen the crimes immediately. It also explained WHY Albus always hit victims who were just entering Hogwarts; their personalities were in a period of flux that would be worsened by new friends or enemies, schoolwork stresses and the dreaded puberty changes. The parents and goblins never really paid attention to the attitude changes or fluctuations in kids that age, so the child-predator had a chattel of captive preys to chose from at his leisure. Well, Amelia was pretty sure that auto-pensievers would be quite the raging fashion in the coming months, and so would recording jewelry and eyewear like her beloved, and lethal, monocle.

Several of the 'Light' or 'Good' faction members had no idea what to think or believe anymore, with the massive, steady rock that had been Albus Dumbledore removed from their daily lives, and now one of the preeminent 'Light' Houses going full-on Traditional Darkes like the boy's parents had never oathed to Albus in the first place. While it was a clear truth that Umbridge was evil and perjurious, and an openly avowed specist bigot and blood-purist of the most fanatical sort, many in the left side of the Gamot's spectrum didn't know that they wanted to kick her out without an audience. Not if it meant giving this presumptuous child and his wildly different, unpredictable policies a venue without adversaries to forcibly make him spell out his goals. And, for some of the elderly members of the sectarian parliament, letting any younger arrival that was so clearly let in only on the force of his titles, ranks and styles, rather than their perfunctory confirmation vote, was an emotionally hurtful reality.

Many of Dumbledore's elderly contemporaries born in the 1800's still sat in the hall, holding on for dear life to their lordships and proxies far passed the capacity of their bodies or minds to tolerate the workload of sitting in deliberation or voting through protocols & procedures. This meant that even if Dolores Umbridge was painfully, visibly, an abhorrent creature who should be tried, sentenced and cast to Azkaban hence-with, many who were officially 'In the Light' were not clamoring for her interrogation, nor did they support Harry Potter's lawful point. In fact, many of the so-called 'Good' geriatric Warlocks would vote to repudiate the point of order if it was ever put to the question docket, although anything objected by a 'Most Venerable' or 'Greatly Spiritual' House would no doubt be declared 'Standing Gamot Protocol' and see the woman at the very least kicked out and fined for interfering in an emergency session. Whether she was arrested by the aurors or just made to formally prove her House affiliation was also up in the air, and the ancient magi knew full well that the times when they could have affected the outcome of such processes were far gone, like their health or mental accuity.

Therefore, it wasn't a very great surprise, even it if disappointed or disgruntled many, when Madam Marchbanks banged vigorously the Epic Small Mallet of Loving Corrections on the wooden Portable Epitome of Serene Sagesse with a gusto that exuded lustful desire for a good, hard fight on the chamber floor. Who knew the decrepit biddy still had it in her, at the ripe old age of 169? She had been lead-proctor at Dumbledore's OWL's and NEWT's, and worked in education all of her adult life. Maybe she wanted a bit of excitement before retiring back in her native rural village?

Bang! Bang! And BANG! The wooden artifact noisily struck the other wooden artifact, creating a shower of magical sparks and faerie fires that splashed all around the debate hall, surprising most out of their torrid word-wars with their neighbors. A few had to be injuncted directly by the Chief-Witch, who did the task with visible glee and joy as she made the mallet activate, creating a five foot long warhammer that weighed like a quill feather but hit like a dozen angry vikings.

"Now hear ye this, ya lots of mangy curs and bitches! I said TO ORDER THE ROOM! Not ignore me cuz I'm a wrinkled, useless old mule!" Marchbanks' rural accent was coming back with alacrity as she cast aspersions and vitriol on the family lines and parentages of the few hard-headed fools who hadn't sat back at peace yet. Squinting her eyes and her lips pursed like a miser's coin bag in front of a niffler, she mentally trigered another function in the mallet as she administered an 'epic loving correction' to the skinny backside of a geriatric warlock with a giant-sized ghostly hand that smacked the obstinate man spectacularly and resoundingly, right off his feet and face-first into the hard wooden pews in front of him.

A wave of nervous, tittering laughter coursed through the hall as many let out the overload of stress and anxiety, all the while hoping that Griselda would reign in her Irish temper before things got really handsy between them. As he got to his feet and then his chair, the old crone was heard to complain "Damn it, woman! I know it's been a while we got together for a tryst, but you could give a poor bloke gentler hints! My bones are fragile at my age!" he whined like a spoiled brat, making many think the Chief-Witch had probably used the only method the old wizard could understand or follow in reasonable delays. This of course set off another bout of nervous laughter by the assembly as his neighboring Warlock on the right used a few Episkey's to heal his bruises from getting knocked about. The helpful old gentleman had troubles keeping his wand straight as he was bubbling with bombastic humor spasms at his friend's predicament too.

Madam Marchbanks took advantage of the pseudo-pause to declare in a darkly menacing tone of voice as she caressed the wooden mallet "Dannonvale! You mannerless cad! See me in my office after Gamot is out! You obviously need a reminder of manners and decorum. Since your poor late parents can't attend you, I will! Now sit, while you still can!" She aimed a powerfully charged glare at the old wizard who crumbled in his chair, pink in the face from embarrassment as the audience howled with liberating laughter again.

"Now, now! Peace and decorum in this Gamot or ya'll be evacuated! We have ourselves a point of order on the docket, and since the person intimated by said point has indeed a proven and adjudicated history of perjuries, falsifications, abuse of & hijacking of authority, trying to pass herself off as law enforcement, and just skated-by on Attempted Line-Theft, I find that there is indeed enough matter to be asking her for genuine, material proofs in the convened manners. Madam Dolores Jane Umbridge, esquire, where are the Heritage Blood-Tithe Ritual reports from Gringotts' Wizarding Bank, or any other magical bank, or chartered conclave or Living God church? You have many options under the Law of the Land to prove your claims without any injurious burdens or demeanment to your person and magicks. So, then? Them parchments?"

Seeing as Umbridge had not gone to Gringotts or anywhere else to get blood-tested for House affiliations, the senior scribe used the Gamot's self-updating registers to find her date of birth and schooling records, but disregarded her Ministry employment file as it was proved and adjudicated she had forged and falsified many details in it. Finding his quarry, he exclaimed aloud "I have it, Madam Chief-Witch! Yon Dolores Jane Umbridge, pure user of one Realm in the wizardly arts, styled 'witch' in the Welsh Wiccan traditions. Her parents were a low-bred blue collar Pureblood from an untitled Family and the fourth daughter of the then already deceased Lord Merrymack Elvar Selwyn. The Lord of House at her birth never accepted her into the main Family, nor the extended House. Nor have any of his successors since. She may have a small parcel of Selwyn biology in her, but magically and legally, she counts as a half-blood by the way the legal and cultural definitions are written. Also, the last person to hold the title of Lord Selwyn, however briefly, was the poor late junior auror Malice Irene Selwyn, Lady-Elect, who hadn't even had the time to go pass the full rituals when she got killed at Hogwarts by the specter possessing Professor Quirrell. In her preliminary documentation filed with both Gringotts and the Ministry clerks, she had formally written her desire to enact terminal disownment by magic of all the dead or illegitimate branches of the Family and House. Dolores Umbridge's name is in the list of people to be formally removed from the Selwyn Blood-Law and grimoire."

The order came from Madam Bones faster than Madam Marchbanks could pound her gavel for order; "Aurors! Seize the Line-Thief! Search her person and effects, now! Put suppression cuffs on her and drag her to the interrogation cells in DMLE, now! And why we're at it, get me her wand and any other focus you find. I want to cast some Priori Incantato charms on those before she leaves the room. I want to make sure she didn't pull a Dumbledore on us already."

The Gamot members were in a frothing rage as the results from the divinations on her primary wand, second wand hidden in her sleeve, and two kitten shaped amulets in her hair. She had anchored Imperius curses to the cat fetishes, and the magical threads linked to the auror at the door that had tried to block Harry from entering until he was threatened with a public report, and the junior scribe who had tried to refuse Harry's right to sit in council with the Warlocks due to his age and not having the summons parchment in hand. It was soon proven that the young man had been ordered by Umbridge to destroy Harry's summons and erase his name from the register of active members as if the titles and lordships of Peverell and Potter had never been attributed.

The wand hidden in her right sleeve was emitting a low-powered compulsion towards Lord Myzere to make him think it was his idea to hire Dolores as private notary and barrister to present his dissenting memorandum to the Gamot assembly. He had done the 'research' and redaction all by himself and planned to present it alone when Umbridge told him that at least one other member of the Board agreed with his findings, but had not known how to present them in such an articulated and credible manner. It averred the second Board Member was being coerced by Umbridge through blackmail about his homosexual trysts with several minor-aged boys whom he had drugged or spelled during his employ as live-in private tutor. His position as Head of the Private Tutors' guild of Wizarding Britain was immediately terminated, as were his teaching permit and private tutoring license, then he was carted off to the cells with Umbridge.

The brouhaha in the Gamot after that was truly memorable, to the point that even the innumerable camera flashes from the press gallery didn't diminish the dint or quell the querulous displays of the seated Ladies, Lords and Proxies. Out of options, and well passed dinner anyways, Madam Marchbanks struck the Epic Mallet so forcibly on the wooden booklet that it flew off the bench, across the chamber floor, to 'gift' it's Sagesse unto a witch getting into fisticuffs with a younger Warlock. The resplendently noisesome impact of the effigial book was heard over everything as it struck hard enough to make the poor witch spin around a virtual axis located at waist-height like a hotel's revolving door, only to land face-first into the wooden benches with her arse up in the air and her skirts and robes draping all around her inverted torso and arms. She stayed there, legs splayed like a wilting flower, while everybody got a good look at the hot pink with yellow dots muggle spandex yoga shorts she wore under her Wiccan wardrobe.

The highly emotional "Ahrgh! Me poor eyes! They burn! Make it stop!" from old Lord Ogden got the whole room into yet another row that Griselda was wise enough to let loose steam on its own, this time. Maybe the aurors could handle the evacuation on their own after all.

Summer vacations 1991

(Harry Potter - theme)

July 1991

Multiple locations

The British Isles & Europa

Harry Potter was smiling as he contemplated the drab grey concrete buildings of the Vice-Archiduke Ulyrance Van Uttebatten - GCVO public elementary academy for what should be the last time of his life. He had finished writing the mandatory governmental tests for 5th year students and done as good as he possibly could, given that he needn't hide his mind and skills anymore. Well, not on the muggle side anyways. Until he moved around Hogwarts itself, he had no real idea of just what kind of environment it would be, or what decisions he would be obliged to make and live with.

One of the downsides of finishing primary was that he no longer had the right to attend their summer camps, not that it did much change in his schedule. Because of the officially recognized lordships and heirships, he had to meet tutors at Gringotts several days per week to receive concentrated classes on estate management, general business, contract laws, church & religious laws, politics, international diplomacy, travel & border laws, nobility civics and High Traditional etiquette. This led to a charged calendar, with a few necessary pauses set throughout the two months before high school began.

{ HP } - { Liquid folly & tears } - { HP }

"You aren't nearly as funny as you think, old man!" poor and much maligned Harry Potter griped at his oath-bound godfather through the enchanted mirror placed on the desk, in the Master's vault inside Lily's trunk. The device was a god-sent gift, yes, but right now he could do without such a piece of charms-craft if it allowed him to tune out his relative's barking canine laughter. The migraine he had wasn't getting any better, but he couldn't get drunk or take a healing draft because he had a language potion to drink tonight, as he always did for summer vacations. It wasn't because the plebes got lazy under the sun that he had to follow suit, especially when studying and self-improvement was as easy as quaffing a draught when he lay down for the night.

This year it was Orushkeh-Tegh, the language common to all Kobolds, Goblinoids, Orcoids, Ogrin and Troll-kin, for the month of July. He would finally be able to interact politely with his account managers to the point where they weren't afraid to see him face-to-face inside Gringotts when doing regular business. August would see him partake of the Cyrillic Alphabet and the tongues deriving from ancient Greek onwards, so he could understand the Latin tongues and their derivatives even better than the potion from three years ago had given him.

Sirius kept on chuckling anyways, not any more inclined towards tact or maturity than when he was mates with James and their schooldays crowd. Sitting back in his lounge chair, the 31 year old male looked far too pleased with himself and the situation to not deserve being smacked upside the head like a moron. It was just too bad that Harry was stuck in Surrey while the ultra rich and stupidly dandyish Lord Black was in France, waiting for his trial date to cross into England at long last. The Potter Lord promised himself to learn more about mirroromancy to be able to send spells and psionics through the mirrorscape next time the man-child pissed him off.

"Well, look at it this way," Sirius quipped with a bullshitting smirk, "At least now people know you can play the game by the rules that were set in place, and make them work for you. The bad thing, however, means that they'll now see you as a real threat and try to neuter you, or take you off the field. Make it look like a rogue bludger, I'll wager, or a new spell gone bad."

Snorting in dark amusement, the 10 year old replied "Good luck with that, since I don't play any quidditch, and I never try to learn spells alone. I learned my lesson about over-casting or trying stuff above my level at an early age. Watching a brand new book burn because I thought I could cast a Blue-Bell Flame on it to keep my fingers warm while I read it wasn't the cleverest thing I ever did, but I learned no to try things on myself or stuff I need to stay alive."

Snorting in mirth at his godson's ancient history, the older male shook his head to fluff his long silky black hair, like a dog shaking itself. Gazing at Harry through the mirror, he said in a rather crude attempt at being sly; "You know, if you aren't interested in suffering through all this crap from the Wizengamot, Ministry and bureaucracy, you could just name a Steward for House Potter and let the hireling plow through the offal in your stead. Given how you're headed to Hogwarts in a month, that would be the wise thing to do. Especially since I'm pretty sure that the teachers will be a lot different than they were when I was there. Without potions and curses in them, they just might actually teach up to ICW standards, or better, and that'll take a lot of your time and effort to perform up to par." With a negligent gesture of his left hand that almost sloshed his rum & coke out of the goblet, he said in a disdainful tone that wasn't particularly subtle anymore "Let the grown-ups to their jobs, for a change. You should have from the start."

Harry suddenly became so rigidly stiff that even his magical aura seemed to freeze, giving Rehz a raw feel of the boy's nastier side. Making an incredible effort at staying calm and collected to not give the pseudo-adult bastard the satisfaction of seeing him out of control, Harry baited him in a sickly sweet tone. "Tell me then, dear lordly uncle of mine, who could possibly be educated, reliable and trustworthy enough to handle all of my convoluted affairs? I don't know that many people, and most of them I wouldn't trust that much. Maybe with my health and keeping the doctors on a leash when I'm in the hospital for surgery, but not with my Families." the child told in a nonchalant manner as he buttered his bread roll with short, swift strokes of the knife.

Sirius Black wasn't subtle by nature, and that also extended to his limited capacity for picking up on micro-expressions and higher, snobbier linguistics. Even the part of his dog animagus' senses that transferred to his human form didn't help him to read people better, especially when he let his deluded hubris and self-importance run-off with his common sense. It was the biggest reason he had gone for hit-wizard training rather than auror or DMLE inspector; he had never really gotten past the flash-bang type of magicks, or reasoning. That was also the main reason why he didn't pick up on the physical and verbal cues that were coming off his godson pretty clearly.

"Well, your old, mature, uncle Remus is available. He's always available, as it is." The older man replied in tart attitude, after a long pull of his cheap, low-class boozy drink.

Sirius didn't like sobriety when he was younger, and liked it less after his short stint in Azkaban, under Dumbledore's betrayals. Now that he was rich, independent and above the common plebes' usual petty concerns, he had no intention of being sober if he could avoid it. And since he could pay some goblin and human hirelings to handle everything for him, Sirius felt no qualms about slowly burning off the Black fortune on muggle casinos, whores, drugs and booze during a permanent vacation, slumming across Europa and Slavia. He was high enough in the pecking order of politics and economics that he didn't have to give a wank about whatever opinions the nay-sayers and do-gooders had about his habits.

"Well that's funny," replied Harry in a studiously neutral tone between bites of his dinner, "I don't recall having any uncle named Remus in the Blood-Law of either Houses that I belong to, so you'll have to be more descriptive. A color photo would help, like his passport or driver's license. Just to be sure. Who knows? Maybe Dumbledore obliviated him out of my head, like he did with dozens of things since I was born." he declared in a bored tone that his uncle wasn't able to read through due to being already passed half-drunk despite the early hour.

Sirius grumbled nasty stuff about Dumbledore, then elaborated in slow, careful phrases as he needed to pay more attention to the conversation than he really wanted to anymore. Man, was this kid a burden to carry! James was never this intense, and never all the time like that. Even that poser bint Lily had finally gotten slacker passed fourth year. Sirius really hoped the boy wouldn't end up as uptight and high-strung as his mother had been in the beginning. Having a few muddies every five generations to refresh the family tree might be wise, but man were halfers and their kids hard on his nerves! The sooner the little bastard was shipped off to Hoggy Hoggy old Hogwarts to be kept in line and silent 10 months a year, the better off Sirius' life would be. He was only doing as much as he did because of James' memory, not because he cared that much after ten years of not seeing the kid or having any relations with him.

"Well, he's the third guy amongst us Marauders, the team of boys that was the Guardian Light of Hogwarts, against them damned Slytherin bastards. SLURP! All Death Eaters in training, the lot of them slimy snakes were. Not a single one that ever ended well. Not a one! Just look at that tosser Snivellius Snape! If ever there was a stereotype for greasy haired loser of a back-alley vagrant, it was him they based it on! SLURP!" Sirius expounded quite strongly, despite noisily guzzling his alcoholic beverage as if the bar would close before he could order another. "But we gave as good, and better!, than those poison spitting vipers ever did! We Marauded them off to Timbuktu and they stayed there! Ah ah ah! SLURP!"

Laying back in his lounger, Sirius dropped the empty goblet on the side-table, folding his hands on his belly to make his case for Remus Lupin being hired. Not that he thought he had that much of a case to do, anyways. HE was the adult, so the kid would obey him, just like he would have obeyed James, Charlus or Fleamont. Period.

In that reasoning, Sirius Orion Black III made the same stupid mistake as Albus Dumbledore and Dolores Umbridge had done before him. It would end just as well, too.

"Remus John Lupin was prefect for three years, in the top 3% of his year each year, and never lower than the top 5% grade stratum in his entire schooling. And that was despite all the numerous detentions we got because of all the pranks, Marauding and fun stuff we did. He got himself four masteries since he graduated, and all at ICW standards, too. Lemme think, they were: history of the magical world; history of the muggle world; duel, combat & defense for professionals; then finally teaching kids & tutoring professionals."

Then, slurring in a disdainful tone, Sirius added in a tipsy way "The guy is the worst bookworm ever, but he has a good head on him. If I remember right, He's finishing another mastery part-time. In bloody magical artistry & restauration of enchanted antiques, no less! And he's doing it just for fun! Well, he also said it would combine with his combat diploma to earn him a curse-breaker license so he could take freelance contracts from Gringotts, at some point. Maybe. I don't really remember what he said all that well. He talks a lot, anyways. He's like you, in fact. Or more you're like him, cuz he's older and came before you, otherwise you'd be the Marauder instead of him. But you both talk too damned much for anybody with taste's common sense. Damn but he's such a fucking nerd, that guy! No wonder he's still single after all this time spent sucking-off books instead of cunts!"

Harry set aside his empty potage bowl to concentrate on his main dish while the 'Unseen Servant' dweomer cleared away the soiled dishes. Rehz sat on the table on a ventral couch that Harry had custom-built for him to be able to eat at the same level as him and any guests they had. He had eaten his meals with Dryskholl as equals, and had no intention of doing differently with his familiar, especially given how sociable and intelligent he was. And right now, Harry thought he'd rather go talk about Nightsoil's alchemical properties with the Tenebrous Pioneer than sit here and be insulted to his face, the way this conversation was turning.

Harry asked snidely "If he was so damned good at helping out kids and teaching any age group, why wasn't he helping ME, his erstwhile nephew, in those ten damned years? More specifically, why was I living in the basement of my damned primary school, if I had an honorary uncle that was so competent he has multiple masteries at ICW standings? I would like to know that, first."

Sirius shrugged it off indolently as he signaled the fearful house-elf for another rum & coke from his position of debauched laziness. He was in a private VMW room in a wizarding 5-star resort in Calais, on the shores of The Channel, facing Dover in Britain. He could have seen the ferries crossing if he bothered to sit up to look over the balcony banister, but that would have demanded that he be paying attention to the world, and he didn't want to. He wanted to be buzzed-out again. He told the elf to flush the drink and just bring a new, full bottle of rum so he could drink straight out of it. The dreams about the Dementors and abandoning James to die had haunted him fiercely again last night, and he needed this conversation to be over so he could get back to drinking and forgetting.

Sighing loudly like a spoiled brat who was told to clean his room for the hundredth time, Sirius shrugged absently as he took the bottle and slurped from it like a wild dog. After chugging several ounces, he deigned to answer the impudent, indocile child. "Well, that was all old Albus Dumbledore's fault, just like a lot of things, back in those days. First he set the blood-wards around your aunt's house to repel any wizards that weren't himself or you. Then he added dark-repulsion against lycans to the set. So that meant that Remus would have had to meet you over a klick away from home to do anything. If he had ever gotten the bearded old goat's permission. In fact, Albus could have given him an amulet to go through the wards, if had wanted to permit him access. But as you can guess, he just didn't want anybody to get to you. Not me, not Remus, not anybody. So then, a few years back, he let some minging bint called Umbridge get hired in the Ministry where she pushed anti-creature laws, especially weres. So Remus had to leave merry old England about six years ago. Not just to find a job, but to survive since the bitch tried to have all lycans declared on par with grindylows or ettercaps; wild dark creature that must be exterminated when they are close to wizarding dwellings or businesses. So he left England, and took jobs here or there. When I got out of Jail and England, I was in a bad shape for a couple of years, getting weaned off Dumbledore's potions, and he joined me to help my recovery."

Harry nodded minutely at the information Sirius told him, as it fit with what his account team at Gringotts had dug up about both men. In fact, while Sirius was getting drunker than a barrel of ale, Remus was probably in the hotel's library or upper salon, reading some of the rarer books that his normal socioeconomic status would prevent him from accessing. Sirius was blasting the Black's hereditary fortune not just on frivolities or follies, but on wasteful bummery of the basest kind. And his supposed friend had decided to just let him busy himself at his vices whilst he took advantage of the tenuous emotional link to suck-off funds, status, access and a lifestyle while the money was still flowing good. And Sirius wanted him to feed his parasite now, but why? Harry had doubts, but he wanted proof before deciding his reaction.

Ignoring the mannerless slurping of yet more rum, Harry asked carefully "And what could he possibly do for me that I can't do myself? I have sat in assembly and voted in the Wizengamot as a titled Lord and Warlock of the Britannic Realms, colonies and Commonwealth, so I fail to see what he could do in my stead so much better than me." And there he was; that bait should be obvious enough that the slovenly drunkard would see it and react.

And indeed, Sirius didn't wait to react.

With an obviously affected frown that was more childish moue than adult disagreement, Sirius tried to use a louder, more frightening voice to cow the child to his lordly adult whims. "Well, it's a good thing that I've been a bloody lord for longer than you, then! I can tell you what Remus can do better than you, but I'll do better than that! I'll tell him directly what to do, and you'll just shut the fuck up and listen, like kids are supposed to do when adults speak! You were brought up wild by muggle animals when even magical savages in the African Savannah would have done better, so I can't really blame you. But now, now you know about your heritage! The Potter 'Blood Compact' has activated, so you have no excuses anymore! You'll do what I say and name Remus as Potter steward willingly or I'll use my magical authority as godfather to make him the Regent over you until you're 27, and then keep it that way until you're 39 years old!"

Sirius shook his entire body in a way that could be like a wet dog, or a sickness shiver from having drunk too much alcohol in the last decade. There was no way to know, but his voice and demeanor were still easy to read clearly; he was in a strop and not hiding it. "See if I don't do it, you little cunt-dropping! Your uppity mudblood of a mother always thought she was better and higher than everybody else, and you sure take after her! Well, I won't stand for it! Wizards take after their fathers like real men! Only girls and sissies and defectives take after women in this world! You'll honor my will as if I were James, cuz you sure ain't him! You'll never be him! My mate James wan'nt no damn bookworm or sissy mama's boy! He was a man! A real wizard! I saw him in quidditch robes and in the locker showers after matches! I can swear on my magicks and life that he was more of a man than you'll ever be, you worthless little turdcake!"

Closing his eyes in misery at the new rejection, with his heart clenching at what he knew he must do to insure his survival and freedom from this drunken, violently destructive mongrel, Harry took the one step that would immediately set him free of all binds or attachments, at the cost of any relationship with the man or his allies. It was what Sirius would have called "A slimy snake, dark wizard, Slytherin move" but it would do the job enough to count right away.

Laying his palms flat on each side of his magically warmed plate to keep them from shaking in fear and raw, seething rage at having yet another drunken, aggressive traitor as uncle, Harry made the poisonous suggestion in a softly challenging voice.

"Do it then," he baited clearly, "Do it where I can see it. Claim on your magicks and your life that James Charleson Potter was a better wizard and man than I'll ever be in this life or the next." Harry spelled out his terms at length, adding as many caveats as he could, but also to make it seem like an emotional child wanting to be vindicated about his parent's love and his own worth, to entrap the intoxicated fool into his own delusion of an epoch he would never live again. "If you do that oath and still have your magicks intact inside you, I'll make Remus the Regent of all my Houses and titles right there in front of you. I have a second mirror for priority calls with Gringotts or the Wizengamot Services, so you'll be able to hear everything in person. No funny business."

Nodding violently like a demented bobble-head doll stuck in a tempest, the drunken, mentally ill man fumbled his wand out of its holster and, looking at the child suspiciously through the magic mirror, decided all on his own to make the oath even more binding, just to make the filthy little mudblood's halfer procreate know once and for all his place in life, Magyck and society. Cutting his left palm open to the bones with a quick -unsanctified- cantrip, the deluded male put the tip of his wand into the injury, thus making it a Blood-Oath upon his Identity and Blood-Law, as when he had made the godfather's oath all those years ago.

"I Sirius Orion Black III, Head of House, the reigning Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, regent Duke of the Zezetshire Cairnhills, Peer of the Realms Britannic, do so solemnly swear upon my Blood, Magicks and Life that my mate, my one true friend and chum, James Charleson Potter, reigning Lord of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Potter, was and forever will be more of a wizard and man than this filthy little cum-stain of a boy who is not the son or wizard that he deserved to have, and sacrificed is life for. In Mystra Mother of all Magycks do I attest, so mote it be!"

Sirius never realized the full depths of what errors, or evils, he had done.

Firstly, he had done a blood-oath in direct contrary to an already established blood-oath, so he was now Oath-Breaker.

Secondly, he had reneged on his sacred duties as oath-bound godfather to protect and cherish the young child he was attached to, turning instead against him with intentions of violence and domination, no matter that it was the alcohol stripping away his filters and manners. In that moment of drunkenness he had spoken the truth hidden in the depths of his heart; Harry was not James and would never replace him.

Thirdly, the dog-like loyalty and pack mentality that Sirius suffered from was because he used to stay as a dog for several days at a time in Azkaban to survive the dementors with a modicum of sanity and health. Unfortunately, Sirius had never been very good at mind-magicks or occlumancy as Dumbledore had potioned and spelled him to destroy those innate Talents he may have had. That meant that when Sirius transformed, he became a slight bit less human and stayed a bit more dog at each switch.

Sirius was thusly imprinted upon James so strongly that he was essentially the other man's bitch, for lack of a more human or civilized phrase. This also meant that Sirius would never look at any other wizard or male of any species with respect or consideration, as his hard-wired canine mind would see this as betraying the pack leader and symbolically emasculating his best friend's memory.

Fourthly there was all the sexist, racist and blood-purist bigotry that had finally revealed itself from where Sirius usually kept it hidden from public scrutiny. He may have acted all chummy with Lily Evans in public, but in private he had always thought that James deserved better than a mudblood, especially given how close her, Snape and several snakes had been in the two first years at Hogwarts. If the stupid muggle-born didn't realize that these murderous bastards wanted her dead like Hitler killed jews, then she didn't deserve to live, to have magic inside her, and she certainly didn't deserve his best mate's true love. So, given a chance to speak in private that was fueled by more alcohol than his empty stomach and sickly dispositions could accept, he let out all that he really believed about the Order of Things in Nature, Magic and Society.

He broke his godfather's blood-oath.

He betrayed a sworn House-ally.

He betrayed the memory of his best mate.

He betrayed the trust of three houses together in one fell act.

He demonstrated to Nature and Magic that he was unworthy to be the child's godfather.

And Mystra, Mother of Magyck, judged him for his sins, regardless of alcohol or depression.

Sirius Orion Black III felt his magicks ebb out of his sickly, drunken body, his mind fighting against the sudden torpor that was invading it, showing him the lip of a yawning black Void that was absolute nothingness as far as magically boosted senses could perceive. He felt his core collapse on itself in his torso, then implode in his mind and soul, leaving him with the same feeling as when he wore magic-suppression cuffs to travel from the Ministry cells to Azkaban, or on the way back for his sham trial by the Unspeakables. Then he felt his eyes droop half closed, the sights losing color like when he transformed into a Grim, his animagus shape. Except this time, the vision wasn't sharp but blurry, and he didn't smell more or better, and his hearing seemed to be gone to the dogs too.

Eh eh eh! He made a funny, there. Gone to the dogs...

Sirius Orion Black III, the late Lord of House Black, was found dead in his lounge chair with a plethora of empty boozy drinks goblets in hand's reach on the side-table. The aurors had been called by the distraught house-elf who had wanted to call the hotel's medi-wizard but the young man had died too quickly for anybody to do anything to prevent the mess. The two first aurors on the scene had found the high quality Gringotts comms mirror on the table near the corpse and confirmed with the elf that the deceased had been speaking of Family Business with his godson in England for almost an hour, since dinner had started. They were each eating at the same time, or at least the 10 year old boy was, while his wastrel bum of an uncle got drunk faster than usual.

The French magical Gendarmerie Baguettière's medical examiner performed a local analysis and very quickly concluded to a blood-oath gone wrong, with an Oath-Breaking backlash occurring in the same instant, or near enough to not make a difference. The formal autopsy and divinations would tell, but it wouldn't matter. By the absolute lack of any residual magicks in the cadaver, the man had been mugglified, not squibbed, but fully mugglified by the consequences of whatever he had done to himself. There were no signs of presence other than the hotel's house-elf, and its testimony was offered freely, even to the point of accepting a field-dose of a light truth serum, as a preliminary. When they searched the body before transport to the morgue, they found that his wand had burned from the inside so badly that it was essentially fossilized by heat, and his Lord's sigil ring was gone, leaving a gray-purple burn mark similar to bad frostbite on his finger. The mark of a Family heirloom judging the bearer unworthy and leaving to find a better, more worthy Heir to hold the reigning title of the House.

Tentatively, the French aurors wrote the case as a "suspected defilement of self, magicks, Family and House so bad that the Blood-Law and heirlooms had judged the deceased and punished him to the depths of his crimes, sins, seditions and treasons, as per the Decree of Mystra." It would not take much time for the news to hit the magical governments and institutions of the planet, and then Gringotts confirmed what had been suspected all along.

Harry Jamieson Potter, Lord of Peverell and Potter, was now the Lord Black-elect, and only had to reach the bank to perform the Heritage Blood-Tithe Ritual for it to be official. Less than three hours after Sirius Black had been dissected and divined by the French pathologist, and the cause of death confirmed, young Harold Potter became the reigning Lord of a third titled noble House.

In Mystra nomine sancti, id mote est.

{ HP } - { Work is the best cure for wrecked vacations } - { HP }

Harry spent the best part of the next week with his nose buried in new books that he had found in several small bookshops, kiosks or chapels around the British Realms. Thanks to his Tenebrous Pioneer employee, he was able to gate to a location when he wanted, then use a Hadean prayer to contact the Pioneer to open the way back home, straight into the trunk. This allowed the child to finally put some attention into the new level of studies as an acolyte of Hades that he had been granted last All Hallow's Eve by his divinity. Plus, he now had the Black 'Blood Compact' active inside his mind, integrating itself slowly into the crowded space of his intellect and memories.

Harry had been able to get his hands on a generic teaching bible that was normally employed in formal novitiate and acolyte training in monasteries. It may be a bit old, as in four centuries back, but it was in good repair, and written in perfectly legible Welsh, which he spoke and read fluently thanks to his mother's excellent potions. The large book was two feet tall by a foot wide and about a foot thick. It was what experts considered an 'altar bible' because it wasn't meant to be moved out of the temple's protected areas. It was heavily illuminated with lettrines, floral motifs and celestials creatures on each page, sometimes as visual aid, and sometimes just for the beauty of the craftsmanship. The actual Welsh text was hand-made penmanship as almost nobody could produce anymore. It truly was well worth the 35 Galleons he had paid the used books seller for this treasure.

This bible held the basic spells lists for the generic training of any priest or cleric of any church that was either 'good' or 'Neutral' aligned. For 'darkness' or 'evil' priests, a completely different bible was needed, and Harry was looking for it, to know his enemies and be prepared for them. The book held a lot of lore on the historic methods, functions and uses of priests in communities that depended on them for practically all leadership and succor. The spells lists that were part of the cleric bases were; Repulsions, Protections, Channels of Purity, Summons, Communal Ways, Life Mastery and Holy Champion. All these were in the Power Realm of Channeling and depended upon a God or Celestial to work. However, they were a lot easier to learn and practice than regular wizardry since the deity's influence tended to smooth out a lot of the problems.

Harry had also found an old Latin spell-book from the Renaissance era that had served to form the French Gendarmerie Baguettière before muskets and gunpowder became standard equipment, a practice that British Welsh Wiccan morons had always refused. The worn and damaged old book held the base lists for the Warrior-Mage training pattern, a half-brute and half-wizard mercenary who specialized in combat, warfare and general wild lands expeditions. The book had some interesting lore about how a merchant caravan works, how a corps of troops is managed and deployed in battle, how individual soldiers are trained and expected to behave for efficient strikes or long-haul traveling. The base spells lists were; Adventurous Dweomers, Warfaring Magicks, Battlestaff, Mind's Touch, Highriding and Elemental Ways. Once repaired by being tilled in Nightsoil by the Tenebrous Pioneer, the book proved to be a very well written and concise army manual for training magical troops at a steady rhythm, and making sure they had a well rounded education in both mundane and occult fighting methods.

While most of these sorceries would be far too damaging to use inside a building or formal duel ring, they did have a few things that were immediately usable, especially the Mind's Touch list. It would help Harry learn all the basics of organizing his mind, managing the flows of data and creating filters between the layers and zones to avoid being drowned in free-floating factum. It would also make him far more resistant to any mental intrusion while teaching him the basics of active empathy and telepathy so he could do his own mind-delving, when absolutely needed.

The second most useful would be Battlestaff, even though it meant he would have to undo his existing item to rebuild it with the dweomers embedded inside. The trade-off in functionality and defensive potential was well worth the mess and time that would be invested in the process. The staff would now be linked to his person as if it were another bonded familiar, and have a small amount of mobility because he would change the shape to add limbs to serve as legs and arms with humanoid extremities. Harry would also make a vaguely humanoid head underneath the bowl that held the flames, as the enchantments would make the staff able to move and pivot its joints and limbs almost like a normal humanoid. The funny thing was that while the device could extend its limbs to help Harry or Rehz, it would usually stay it its pure 'staff' form, indolently floating on invisible eddies of magick besides the boy. It would also now be able to serve as a sentry when he slept or concentrated on a priority project, like healing his injuries or brewing a potion. All in all, his Battlestaff upgrade was well worth the 11 Galleons he had paid for the old book at the flea market.

Because he still wasn't truly over what had happened with Sirius Black, Harry had used his prerogative as the Lord-Elect to have he reading of the testament pushed back to the first week-end of October. He told the goblins that he needed to get over all the changes that formal connection with Wizarding Britain had brought to his life, the pile of lordships, and what happened to Hogwarts on top of everything else. And now this. He needed time to process things emotionally and intellectually before the public will reading at the bank, and then meeting the rest of the Black relatives. Given the impression Sirius had given him, he wasn't expecting much from them, not anymore.

Hogwarts year I; 1991-92

(Harry Potter - theme)

1991-92

Hogwarts

Scottish Higlands

September 1 had finally arrived and it was time for Harry to make his way to King's Cross Station to embark the Hogwarts express to Scotland. While Harry could have just grabbed his trunk and passed the floo at the small country inn where he resided since the end of elementary school, it was deemed a rite of passage to ride the express. The obvious goal was to make contacts with new kids to establish whom were age and social peers, and start networking early to help along one's school career. Harry being already the reigning Lord of three titled noble Houses was well above and beyond such pedestrian necessities. He knew what his future career and jobs would be, he didn't need to network or get job placement advice, unlike others, especially those new-bloods that the Welsh Wiccan wizarding Ministry had tagged and brought in to help renew the bloodlines of their waning sectarian group.

Harry, well inured to the mundane side of England by now thanks to the summer camps, walked in the streets to King's Cross, entered the cavernous station with nary a doubt, and proceeded to find himself a small bistro to grab a sit-down breakfast while he did some people-watching to refresh his instincts and evaluations of muggle society. After an hour of easy to digest food, he strolled quietly to the mentioned pillars between quays 9 and 10, his magic senses guiding him easily to detect the muggle repelling wards and illusion that covered the portal as bricks. He passed through the portal without issue, entering into a zone of London that was a throwback to yesteryear, when steam trains, top hats, frock coats, crinoline skirts, parasols and private butlers were the staples of well bred, rich and educated persons of power in British society.

Sniffing the air that was heavy with wet water-based steam and coal ash from the mighty red engine standing in the only berth the quay served, Harry could distinguish the particular smell of magical fire, specifically a salamander's nest. Having practiced some basic summonings through August, the child was now aware of a few easy to control creatures that wizards and priests had used for centuries to boil water, fire kilns or smelt metals in crucibles. The humble lizards from the elemental plane of fire was about the size of a small adult human, not very aggressive as long as it was fed properly, and really enjoyed letting out flames. If you gave it plenty of food and stuff to incinerate, it would turn the blaze into a magical one that would impart special properties to whatever was reacting in the vessel over the pyre. Some wizards and alchemists kept salamanders as trained pets or even familiars for just that purpose.

So, the Express runs its boilers with a nest of salamanders. Cute. And a cheap way to keep the system's mobile manatites energized so that the bevvy of repulsion and non-detection wards don't give out along the way. Given the train was bright red and rather large, it wouldn't take the muggles long to see it and ask questions. The Statute of Secrecy wouldn't last long after that.

The train left at 11:00am but Harry had wanted to arrive at 9:30am to have his choice of position since the kitsch gold foil ticket didn't assign any fixed seating or cabin. So, he walked along the outside of the venerable train, from the caboose at the rear to the peacefully smoking engine at the front then came back towards a compartment he felt would be well situated, just three down from the locomotive. If ever he felt like having a conversation with the conductors, he wouldn't have long to walk, and he was right to the wagon's public restroom as well.

In his cabin, Harry set his floating Battlestaff in the corner near the window and Rehz Ib Fettach wasted no time in blinking from the trunk to the back of the seat, then climbed into the Spirit Flame torch atop the staff. The dark Faerie Drake enjoyed the energies and soothing massage of the ghostly flames against his scales and wings, and tended to curl up like a cat inside the sconce when he had nothing pressing to do. Harry cast a few charms at the seat immediately next to the window to insure a cushy, warm and bump-free ride so he could read or write at peace. He had registered for a remote muggle secondary course program by mail, and he may need to fill out a few forms or preliminary work sheets to help with his placement in the program's competency qualification ladder. They would then allow him a choice of classes and specific tutors that would be appropriate to his level of erudition and autonomy according to their standards. His ultimate goal was to do like his mother, have diplomas in both mundane and magical worlds so that he could be recognized and valued in both.

Being titled nobility or having a hereditary fortune to sit on were no longer the panacea that they had been, up to about fifty years ago. The passage of World War II with the advent of industrialization had changed people's view of wealth, and the emergence of computers with the Internet Age starting made the ancient notions of social classes and educational hardships obsolete. There were teenaged kids starting businesses in the garage or basement of their parents that earned more than their father, despite that the man was a VP or Director after 25 plus years of service in the same company. Truly, Harry had to get with the times or he would be left behind like the nicely decorative but ultimately useless trinkets in the museums. And his Houses had suffered setbacks, betrayals and crimes enough without having to suffer through a dumb lazy bum as Lord, on top of everything else.

{ HP } - { Family found at long last } - { HP }

The young inheritor of the storied Peverell, Potter and Black (pending) fortunes was sitting in peaceful quietude with a massive tome of ritual lore of the Hadean cult on a small wooden lectern that he had brought from the trunk along with his pastime. There was nobody who would willingly keep that 25 pound beast on their lap if they could avoid it. On the funny side, it did put a great deal of truth in the expression "The weight of knowledge" that the ancient monks were so fond of.

At 10:25am, somebody knocked on his cabin door politely, making him speak aloud softly the parseltongue counter to the locking charm & redirection ward he had cast on it. Only people who were kin or House-allies could see through the wards to find the door, or else they were disinterested in all the stupid "Boy-Who-Lived" crap set up by Dumbledore so they might be worth giving them a chance at direct contact before arriving at school.

The door opened to reveal the form of a young girl with flaming red hair tied in twin pigtails who was wearing ordinary Wiccan summer robes, but of a higher cut and material than usual. She had the crest of her House embroidered on the left breast of the robes, indicating that she was the Heiress Presumptive of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Bones. She was laterally third-degree cousin to Harry via his great-grand-mother, Euphemia Bones.

Standing up as was proper for a gentleman greeting a Lady for the first time, Harry bowed at the waist with both hands on his hips near the sheaths for his permanent weapons, a hatchet on the left and dagger on the right. He always kept a small cal.22 pistol in an undetectable sheath at the small of his back and another on the left ankle, with his set of lock-picks on the right ankle. He gave the young girl the chance to present herself then replied in kind, politely as he wanted to make a good impression on what happened to be one of the few biological relatives he had still alive in the world.

Susan Bones was a young, bubbly, excited girl, but not in a way that aggravated Harry or made him regret welcoming her in his cabin. They quickly set to speak of the recent events that had happened in the Welsh Wiccan community, and Magical Britannia at large. Just before entering a conversation about Hogwarts proper, there was a discrete knock at the door, which Harry again unlocked just long enough to admit the newcomer.

He was a young, slightly rounded boy with blond hair and watery blue eyes, whose white skin was actually tanned by long hours spent outside of buildings in open air. As he bowed and shook Harry's hand, he revealed that he also had the strong, calloused hands of a child who had begun to work in the fields and greenhouses for prolonged periods at an early age. Neville Franklin Longbottom, Heir of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Longbottom, had been supposed to be Harry's god-brother, until Albus Dumbledore tried to break their families to further his evil machinations. The young boy was shy, to the point of maladive timidity, but he warmed up quickly enough to the two other children, especially given how welcoming Harry was with both of them. Neville showed them his precious toad Trevor, with whom he had managed to establish Rapport. The amphibian wasn't his familiar yet, but it was a good first step for a child whose family had always believed he had been squibbed during the attack on his parents, a decade back.

It was near 10:42am that another knock disturbed the cabin, more imperious and assured than the two previous guests. When Harry slid the door open, he faced two very different persons, and yet there were similarities in their facial traits that spoke of close cousins. Letting them in, Harry learned that they were Draconnis Lucius Malfoy, Heir of the Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy, and Heir secondary of House Black via his mother, Narcissa Black Malfoy. The second person was a young woman entering her seventh year at school, Nymphadora Tonks, the sole daughter of Andromeda Black Tonks, disinherited from the Family Black, but not cast out by magic. It was glaringly obvious that Draco disdained Nymphadora for her mother getting kicked out (incompletely) of House, her muggle-born father, and their lesser financial status. The girl, however, didn't seem to put much stock in those things, replying snidely that money couldn't be eaten or cast out of a wand to keep you fed and warm, unlike magic, training and knowledge.

Harry put an end to the sibling-like nasty bickering before it got nastier, and more personal, than the initial posturing for status that seemed the usual method of Purebloods and Titled Nobles when engaging in social meetings with a crowd of witnesses. Since all four of his guests already knew each other from social events they had attended for Family affairs and read about their parents' businesses in the Daily Prophet often enough, Harry didn't have much to do in terms of official presentations.

Young Harry also established clearly that he had no intention to tolerate bigotry, racist and blood-purity nonsense in his presence. He knew for a proven fact that all these things were based only in ignorance, fear bred by ignorance, or rabid envy to dominate others like Dumbledore. The child Lord would tolerate no expression or action that would instate or legitimize such things, and would actively fight against them. They were all Family, and should bloody well act like it, especially in public like the train and school. With that mindset firmly settled, the five young persons were about to start talking about the changes committed to the school when a shy, tentative knock at the door interrupted them, just 5 minutes before the train rolled out.

Frowning, Harry stood to open the door politely, wondering if he had forgotten any relatives that should be visiting him on the trip. He was aware of only the four already inside, so who could it be? The panel slid aside to reveal a first year girl, crying hard, with a huge amount of curly, fritzed-out brown hair and several bruises showing through the tears in her thin summer muggle blouse. She was holding a damaged messenger bag in both arms and had a brand new student trunk by her side that was also damaged. Immediately putting on his Wizengamot face, Harry asked the young girl what had happened to her while helping her to sit on the last free chair, next to the door, besides Nymphadora. The older girl took the occasion to take out a shiny silver badge and pin it to her muggle leather jacket, to show she was a Hogwarts prefect this year.

The young girl was named Hermione Jean Granger, sole daughter of two career dentists, who were in fact world renowned maxillofacial surgeons with a small chain of cabinets across England, Ireland and Scotland. Her father had served in the British paratroopers as field medic before going into civil practice, following in the footsteps of his father and grand-father. Her mother had been born into a family of doctors, nurses and chemists, so she had studied for dentistry and surgery all the way from high school. Hermione was thus from a well-off, very bourgeois setting, used to nannies, governesses, live-in tutors, and never seeing her parents except for mandatory social holidays. They traveled together all year long, going around their 17 clinics for the truly important patients, some of which could require up to three weeks of intensive care before the Grangers felt it safe to leave the recovery in the hands of local staff.

Hermione was in this sorry state of abuse because she had dared to ask some older girls loitering on the quay for directions. She had been wondering if the first years were grouped together for some introduction seminar, or end-of-summer celebration before school began. When they realized they were facing a newbie, the teenaged girls, all snobby blood-purists from Slytherin and Ravenclaw, had scorned the muggle-born and cast minor pain and injury hexes at her as a kind of disgusting sports game. They went so far as to attribute each other scores for creativity and accuracy with their aim while their victim tried to dodge the six randomized attacks. After about fifteen minutes, they tired of her wailing for help and silenced her with a charm, sending her away after damaging her properties enough to matter, but not enough that the school staff would have reacted when the old administrators and teachers were in place. They were betting that the pain, shame and fear of worse over the coming year would keep the firstie quiet.

Contrary to what all the children in the cabin had believed would happen (except Harry who was still new to this), Draco Malfoy verbally declared himself offended by the way the girl was treated, but left it at that. He didn't give his reasons, but he had them and they were logical.

Firstly; she was of good breeding and proper education, as only such families could afford household staff and live-in tutors, let alone bother to hire them at all. Many rich people didn't actually care for their kids much, and it often showed quite easily. Draco had lost count of the number of teenagers he'd seen that drank and smoked like hardened hit-wizards by age 13.

Secondly; both parents had storied family traditions of service to the Crown and community through medicine, something no High Traditionalist of the Darkes would ever scorn. Healers were the first line of defense against parasites, or epidemics of Dragon Pox and Wizard Flu, so the Welsh Wiccan community put a premium on those professions, especially since they had only one truly well established hospital. And after Dumbledore had mind-raped and potioned several dozen of their best brewers or healers for a century, they were fatally short on qualified medical staff, so that harming one, or a future practitioner, was an overt attack on the entire congregation's survival.

Thirdly; the fact her parents had 17 clinics with clients that came from other countries for them specifically meant reputation, influence and media exposure, thusly 'soft' power. Perhaps even genuine political influence with the British Department of Health or the Professional Orders related to their medicinal specialties, just like the magical guilds regulating potioneers, apothecaries and medi-wizards. Not to mention the money involved, and that was 'hard' power.

All in all, this girl was a resource to be protected and helped along until she developed into an active asset, and maybe even a friend, since she wasn't so much lower than their own standing in society, except for ennobled titles. Besides, if Harry wanted to react, doing something in the same vein could position Draco and his parents well for the near future. Harry would be the Lord Black shortly, Draco had no illusions, so keeping him pleased was important for House Malfoy and his own health.

Standing from his bench, Draco asked Harry to be excused so he could fetch the senior Slytherin prefect to attend the uncouth behavior of the culprits. The teenager would then inform Ravenclaw of the situation so they could settle in-House on their side too. Harry nodded, opening the door for his exit, and asking the boy to bring the Head students if he encountered them on the way. He wanted to meet them, and to give his own displeasure too. Plus, they needed to see what had happened to Hermione for a report to the Heads of Houses, so that the parents were warned via letter. The school was supposed to have put back the policies against bullying, violence, bigotry, racism and blood-purism that Dumbledore had wrecked, and this would show if the job held or not.

It was a very relieved Draco Malfoy who trotted the Express corridor, congratulating himself on having read the room's players and moods correctly. Just last year, he might have been among those casting spells at the young girl for the same reasons. Now though, after their community had imploded so dramatically, he wouldn't be caught dead on those idiot's side of things. It didn't take him long to find the prefects as their carriage was right behind the locomotive, so two away from them. And most of the prefects were present, to review their patrol schedules for when the train was rolling, as well as practice enforcing the new behavior, decorum and etiquette required of the students and faculty. In a departure from the Dumbledorian mentality, prefects were now held to a higher standard of conduct, and would be punished more severely for infractions, which included writing their parents a detailed monthly report and a letter for each detention or those times the cane would be applied.

The prefects were trying to wrap their heads around the new rules booklet, which was a chore compared to the single-sided sheet that had been standard for the last 50 years under the traitor's rule over the castle. Whelp, needs must, and the benefits of having free will and clean bodies was well worth the trouble of memorizing a thirty-odd page manual. Given the size of the font and the images, it wasn't that much of a job either. One of the novelties was that each prefect or head student badge had been charmed to serve as a conditional homing & portkey beacon and as a communication device, by pressing small colored runes on the surface. An idea inspired by the mirrors Gringotts rented to its rich clients. This would make reports between the prefects, teachers, heads of houses and administrators much more rapid and efficient, especially for medical reasons or cases of violence.

The prefects were most certainly not amused that the damned train was barely sounding its whistle for departure that they already had a complaint for violence by a group against a new-blood witch. And the complaint came from the son of the Chairman of the Board of Governors, no less! "Somebody was gonna get their arse reamed the moment they reached school!", the head girl swore with creative vehemence, causing diverse reactions from the students in the room. It was the two head students and two 7th year prefects from the two houses involved that marched to the compartment to take the poor girl's complaint and then hunt the culprits. By the new rules, they would journey to school in shame, isolated one person per room in a new disciplinary wagon that the train was enchanted to generate as needed. The engineer was being warned to trigger the mechanism so that the wagon would come out of its dimensional storage, just before the caboose at the end of the convoy. The wagon had sixteen small cells, two rows of eight, so they wouldn't need another one any time soon, especially when the head boy announced on the PA system what had happened, and what consequences the girls faced once arrived.

Twelve strokes of the rattan cane on bare buttocks, before the assembled school, at dinner.

Corporal punishment was back in force, since most of the student populace wouldn't be getting doped or Imperiused into being blindly obedient slaves anymore. The Board and Ministry expected Hogwarts to get back to the same normal routines that all the other small village and parochial schools experienced with children or teens, so the Board had recommended going back to tried & true basics. However, the application would be severely monitored and never occur without parental approval at each event. Nobody would have the right to give the school blanket permissions. Nor could any teacher or staffer involve an 'exception of major force' to bypass the rules and protocols surrounding the punishment's safeguards. The children would be corrected, forcibly so, but not beaten, injured or damaged by brutes who couldn't control themselves.

That was seen as a bad news for most of the kids, but not all. Some saw it as the just rewards for bullies, bigots and those who tried to use their upper society status to violate the younger or less fortunate members of the school population. There had even been cases of students with rich or titled families trying to intimidate teachers into giving them better grades, or else they would make false complaints to their parents to have their career destroyed. No more would such things occur in Hogwarts, not without publicly seen and felt consequences at least.

Hermione was impressed far more, and far more positively, by the strong, quick reaction of the student prefecture than she had been by her assailants and their much vaunted Pureblood roots. She planned to speak of it with the head of whichever House she ended in tonight, at sorting. She was even more impressed that the very son of the Board's chairman had taken the lead in things, not a common event in her awareness of such matters.

The rest of the trip was passed in peace as the potential delinquents had seen first hand what awaited those who flaunted the rules like stubborn mules, or snobbish wannabees. Harry had invited Hermione to sit in the safety of his compartment for the voyage, to make certain nobody sought retaliation against her for her courage to denounce the attack. She spent the rest of the way in pensive quiet, as she got quite the upper-level education in the civics, politics, religion and Family affairs of the Magical World. When she heard that the so-called Wizarding Britain was only the Welsh Wiccan sect, a very small group of humans drowned amongst the vast rest of all other magical groups, sects and species, she didn't know what to think. That wasn't how things had been presented to her last year, when she had been approached by McGonagall.

{ HP } - { Not so festive Sorting feast } - { HP }

Headmaster Daxit Jasper Deridex, a half-blood without named House, was most importuned by the report the Head Students had filed just as the Hogwarts Express was leaving the station. Already a muggle-born girl had been attacked by six girls, on grounds of blood-purism and being supposedly a poor bint without a Galleon to her name.

Well, that wouldn't do.

Looking at his deputy headmistress, Jacynthe Clemencia, another half-blood but from the wizarding House of Radner by alliance, he saw her pursed lips and dangerous glare as she read the notice. The small memorandum had appeared in the secured Gringotts mailbox that linked the school administrators' offices with the prefects' compartment on the train, an innovation suggested by Lord Peverell – Potter. The simplicity of the system and its reliability just showed how corrupt and criminal Dumbledore was to have resisted its implementation for decades.

The school's new financial comptroller and deputy to Gringotts affairs, Malcolm Sandhurst, a pureblood (second son) from the minor wizarding House of Sandhurst, read the letter with obvious disdain. He was from a 'Light' oriented house that had resisted the Darkness in both magicks and politics for nearly nine generations. The teenaged girls' behavior was abhorrent to him, and a symptom of what had gone wrong under Dumbledore's regime of endless chances and active sympathy for bullies, if they kissed the tip of his wand in the prescribed manner. Malcolm had no desire to see that felonious depravity repeated, not after all the harm that he had caused across their society, so this attack would have to get quashed hard.

The rules were clear enough, the kids would just have to live with them or ask their parents to get them educated elsewhere than Hogwarts.

The rest of the day was spent in preparing the badly damaged but still serviceable castle and grounds into shape for the coming students. The house-elves now numbered 140, up from 95 before the investigations began. The green-skinned servile beings were all a-twitter with glee at having so much work and efforts to produce the results asked by the Board and Ministry, plus the new administrators, new teachers and new healers... All those many new people to help! Yes, the elves were in an Earthly version of Paradise, especially since now they would have the right to interact openly with the students or their visiting kin, unlike the previous policy that ordered them to be invisible at all times.

When the express arrived, the school was deemed functional and ready; not perfect and not even optimal, but workable for the purposes required. The more complex tasks like the wards would need several years just to plan properly, let alone implement, so the entire community had no choice but to have patience and faith that things would get better, some day in the near future.

The students were given the traditional welcome; the old ones traveled by small coaches pulled by thestrals while the first years got to see the castle from the antique wooden dories as they crossed the Black Lake. The firsties were all placed in the foyer next to the great hall, waiting for their sorting feast as it had been done for ten centuries. As usual, the deputy headmistress came to fetch them and present them to the assembled school population. The Sorting Hat was resting on a small pouf upholstered in heavy brocade that represented all the House colors. It looked more inviting and comfortable than the rickety old three-legged stool from previous years.

The Sorting Hat amazed the new students by animating itself and singing an inspiring canticle about faith, community and mutual support, before announcing it was ready for the year to begin.

As Madam Clemencia read aloud their names, the children went to sit on the pouf to be sorted by House into Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin. Then they were grouped by Ward of Hogwarts, scholarship, regular student, noble (scion, heir or lord), titled nobility (scion, heir or Lord), and finally the possible categories of guild membership; apprentice (acolyte), yeoman (journeyman) or mastery candidate. The old students were watching carefully as they too would be undergoing the Sorting Hat anew to gain their missing classifications to guide them towards formal study help or career paths.

Susan Bones was sorted into Hufflepuff, titled nobility heir, but no guild affiliation. She was however declared to be aimed towards combat & defense and divinations for a possible career in DMLE or the aurors like her aunt. Alternatively, an internship in the Wizarding Ministry of Magic could also be a fitting career for the voluble, well connected young girl.

Hermione Granger was sorted into Ravenclaw, status unclear as the Hat recommended she pass a Heritage Ritual before completing that part. She was offered apprenticeships in the guilds for arithmancers, rune crafters, scribes & accountants, scholars or educators. She could also petition for an internship at the Wizarding Ministry of Magic, for her legalistic outlook would help the community greatly to modernize in the coming decades, if she assisted the Wizengamot directly.

Neville Longbottom was sorted into Hufflepuff, titled nobility heir, apprenticeships available with the guilds of herbologists, apothecaries or landscapers, at his choice. The Sorting Hat also mentioned that Neville should look into druid conclaves for a possible novice or acolyte status.

Draco Malfoy was sorted into Slytherin, titled nobility heir, apprenticeships available with the guilds of apothecaries or potion brewers, at his choice. Alternatively, he could prefer to have yeoman training with the guild for scribes & accountants to work in the Ministry's fiscal department.

Harold Potter, Black & Peverell was sorted into Slytherin, titled nobility reigning Lord, and offered yeoman training in combat & defense, divinations, scriptworkes, herbology, potions, alchemy and healing. He was also offered special tutorship for his Parselmagic. The tutor would have to be found and paid separately from the rest of the school's tuition fees, since Harry would probably be his only trainee this year.

All the sortings of Harry Potter's relatives and friend made the crowd react, even some of the staff at the long central table, on the raised platform. An uncouth lout of a first year boy with rust red hair and absolutely no manners jumped up after Harry's sorting, screaming so hard he was blue in the face from the effort. He was yelling at Harry that he was a Dark wizard, an apostle of evil, a demon worshiper, a slimy snake who spoke to other snakes about their slime, to stay away from his family and especially his sister Ginny, and much more until it descended into threats and pulling out his old, battered wand to aim at Harry's face. The boy had no chance to cast anything as his Head of House had descended upon him like a thunderstorm, grabbing his arm to aim the dangerous tool at the ceiling then yank the offending device out of his weak, indecisive grasp. Taking hold of the squirming boy's left ear in a merciless grip, the woman frog-marched the young delinquent to the front of the great hall where she forced him to kneel on the cold hard flagstone floor, with his nose against the riser of the platform.

A few minutes later, and the boy in question was made to sit on the pouf to be sorted. He was named Ronald Bilius Weasley, got placed into Gryffindor, scholarship student, with the Hat strongly recommending an apprenticeship in the guild of farmers and ranchers. Supposedly, they knew how to handle bucking and biting young colts, to break them into usable beasts. Upon which comment, he was sent to sit on a long wooden bench at the very front of the hall, next to the door to the teacher's antechamber where they sometimes held meetings, with students or each other, when they needed a private space. The six girls from the train were already there.

After the sorting closed, Headmaster Deridex stood at the podium of the golden owl to address the students. He gave them an overview of the important rules that had been implemented, and especially about bullying, violence, armed assault with wands, bigotry, racism and blood-purism that would no longer be tolerated as 'laddishness'. Upon which he motioned for the seven students sitting aside the rest to come stand before the platform for judgment.

The man elocuted the accusations, investigation method and proof against all the six teenaged girls, concluding with their sentence. It was hard to say if the girls paled so much because they feared the promised pain, the shame of being bared in front of the crowd, or the letter that would be going home immediately after the Feast. If their parents accepted the conclusions, the girls would be caned tomorrow just before dinner, but if they refused the punishment or the conclusion of the process, they would be suspended at home until matters were solved between adults. In which case, their victim may want to involve the aurors.

Ronald Weasley was not so lucky. He had insulted the person, blood-status, Family, titles, ranks and styles, mancies, occult practices, Faith and good name of a new student. That said student was a sitting Warlock of the Wizengamot seemed to have escaped the rabid child's delusions of what 'Good Gryffindor Light wizards' were supposed to be. And that was another problem; the boy was a hard-core devotee of Dumbledore who thought that Harry Potter had brought low the old Headmaster to be able to corrupt the 'Light' into going dark and evil. The child was thusly suspended at home immediately, and would be sent back via Floo network for a meeting with his parents to determine what happened next. If he came back, it would be to a severe public caning and multiple restrictions, especially on his right to have a wand or focus only under supervision.

The entire student body cringed in phantom pain at that idea. Canings were bad but pretty much ordinary in the Welsh Wiccan wizarding community. But ordering a wizard to only have his wand when somebody was there to control what he did with it was almost as bad as the potions or compulsions that Dumbledore had used. Clearly, the Board of Governors and the Wizengamot weren't playing the fools with their population's best school anymore.

The rest of the feast was done in peace, with the culprits being made to eat in isolation in the antechamber. They would also be kept apart from the general population in a disciplinary dormitory next to the infirmary until their parents made their decisions, including for the entire class day tomorrow. That policy of separating the trouble makers and delinquents from the good kids would now be applied to any case that involved caning, suspension, expulsion or the involvement of DMLE and aurors. And Mystra help the poor fool who got the Unspeakables to visit the school because of Anathema or Unspeakable Acts. They would be expelled, have their wand broken, and be tried before the full Wizengamot to see if Azkaban or the Veil were necessary to remedy the crimes committed.

{ HP } - { Beginning life as Hogwarts students } - { HP }

The first day was rough for a lot of people. The new teachers were stiff as boards and almost afraid of their students at times. Given that several of them now had the full uses of their nobility and peerage privileges, and a few were actually reigning Lord of their Houses, it could be understood. Hogwarts had become a veritable political and social minefield, with some kids having more weight on their shoulders than the school's newly hired career administrators.

One of the first changes was that the Heads of Houses were no longer professors or teachers, but only administrators and resource personnel for the students and their families. They didn't teach anything, but had office hours in the evening and kept watch all through the night to enforce curfew and safety bounds firmly. Something that the Weasley twins found out at their pained expenses right in the first week, when they tried to go out to the Forbidden Forest to collect rare components for their experimental joke products. That caning was seen by all staff and most students as three years in the making, and well deserved by both delinquents. What wasn't expected was for their father to come to school three days later to put them over his knee one after the other, right in the middle of their common room because of the utter stupidity they showed in disregarding their own safety by wanting to gallivant in the forest at night. With two bare-bottom spankings in them before the second week of class was done, the twins got the message right quick that things were no longer in their favor. Their usual routine of being the playful freckled clowns wasn't an asset anymore, just a pain in their arses, so they stopped.

Fancy that notion? Peaceful Weasley twins that didn't bother anybody.

Miracles do happen, if you work for them hard enough; magic doesn't do everything on its own.

Besides that, the importance and resources for the classes had been changed.

Ancient Runes was changed into "scriptworkes and artistic medias" that would serve to teach the students the art of calligraphy, drawing figures or entities, writing a text in a logical fashion, and how to read or write runic sequences for basic temporary charms or wards. This would be done all of first year with ink on paper or scrap leather. Then the second years would progress to molding runes in wet clay or wood scraps, and try to produce standard sequences, like the silencing ward normally used on beds in the dorms. By third year, they would follow the ICW standards as the Ministry had acquiesced the Board's opinion to just use the international tests and scores to harmonize with everybody. This course was elaborated with help from the scribes & accountants' guild, as well as the rune-masters' guild

Arithmancy was merged with muggle mathematics and been brought back as a vital class taught from the first year up. It would show the students the bases of regular arithmetic, geometry, volumetry, weights, distances, chronology, algebra and statistics. This course was elaborated in concert with the scribes & accountants' guild to help groom future members properly.

With Trelawney gone and Dumbledore no longer influencing the decisions, the Divinations class was back into being a primary and vital course. It concerned all the spells and techniques to acquire or produce information, triage it, manage it, and produce reports. This class covered basics like the 'Point-Me' charm, the 'Itemic Lore' charm, and harder spells like the lesser necromancy 'History of Death' charm used by aurors in investigations. Prophecies, Oracles and such wild Gifts were discussed as generic knowledge but the Sorting Hat hadn't pointed out anybody with Seer potential, so no tutor for the subject was sought out by the school.

The old Defense class was revamped into two distinct groups; the basic "Student Self-Defense" and the professional grade "Duel, Combat & Warfare". This was to help the Ministry pre-screen candidates for the DMLE, auror and hit-wizard training programs post-Hogwarts. A formal Dueling club was put in place, led by Professor Flitwick who had changed classes to lead the upper-strength fighting classes instead of charms as he used to.

Herbology and charms were merged to become a consolidated class of hedge-craft under the tutelage of Professor Sprout, who felt it was good to return to the traditional witchcraft of yore. This position was a bit hard to swallow for the male dominated Gamot, but had received the support from most of the Board and the majority of parents. Children would thusly learn about gardening for food, spices, medicinal herbs, and recreational herbs, farming & ranching, while also getting homestead charms with basic wards & enchanting too. The course included a lot of Do-it-yourself know-how to maintain and repair one's equipment for dwelling or work. The class would approach the ancestral Faiths of the Welsh Wiccan sect and other groups, as well as teach the bases of Ritual Magicks to steer kids away from dangerous things they shouldn't try without adult supervision.

The Potions class was completely revamped, to become a consolidated fermenting & distillery, potions brewing and alchemic sciences course, with modules of each at each year of progression. The class was to teach the best and most efficient way to use basic raw ingredients and prepare them for the maximal effect on a limited schedule. This would now also include spells to wash the equipments, portion components and shield the cauldron from contaminants. Basic spells like stasis, filtration, refining, purification and quality controller would be mandatory as of first year. It was a clear difference from preceding years, especially since the class was moved to the seventh floor to have skylights opened to vent out fumes or explosions, instead of spreading the mess through the dungeons.

The newly established class for basic homestead healing and apothecary arts would prove to be a wild success with the kids. It replaced the not-at-all lamented 'health module' in the potions class that had been taught by Professor Snape. The man had enjoyed it even less than his charges, but the new version was much more oriented towards practical applications of traditional remedies and techniques, as well as modern ones, but not so much theory as before since the hedge-craft and potions classes would take care of most of that. The healing course amusingly covered potential familiars and farm animals as much as humans, house-elves and other common species of the greater magical world. One of the basic and most important lessons of the first year was to teach students how to recognize the signs of mental manipulations in a being's attitude, then how to use spells to check for potions, compulsions or mind-rape. It also covered recreational potions and herbs, drunkenness and accidental overdoses of prescribed/self medication the same way.

Astronomy was now given in the day in a classroom converted to have the walls and ceilings show the segment of the night sky to examine. The equipment was just slightly modernized, but not much. It was still traditional for true astronomers to buy a very basic telescope or sextant and personally customize the devices to suit their particular needs and mancies. Nobody complained about it when it was explained correctly, for once in a century.

The old history of magic class was revamped entirely and was now consolidated into "History of the Magical Worlds" to have all magical species of Earth, and certain chosen sectors of the connective demi-planes covered properly. The class would also have frank examination of religions, faiths, occult movances, sects and guilds, and several types of magical practices that had disappeared or were still used only in forlorn corners of the planet.

The old muggle studies class was revoked and replaced entirely by the British national history curriculum from Eton college. Once informed properly of what Eton was, and what the criteria for a successful student career at the school were, none of the Gamot's Warlocks wanted to oppose the idea, and neither did the Board members. The difference was that now that course would be offered from first year on as a vital core class too.

The options from third year on were being slated as; estate & business management, generic secretarial & clerkship, magical artistry, prospection & mining techniques, curse-breaking, ward-laying, advanced crafting & embedding, scholarly research technician, aide-nurse (orderly), restaurant chef (butchering, cooking, baking, etc...), and factory-scaled food transformation (dry-packed, brined, canned, spell-frozen and fresh/stasis-packed).

Every student could see easily the overwhelming influence of the professional trades, and mercantile guilds in the new setup of the courses and curriculum. The switch over to ICW tests and scores across the school was welcome by the kids and their parents with a sigh of relief as it meant that the pupils no longer had to take a second set of exams in Basel or another foreign testing center to have their diplomas recognized as valid across all the ICW jurisdiction. British diplomas had become so meaningless in the last 100 years that the OWL's were not even counted as worth anything unless they were passed under ICW control, an infamous distinction that not even the worse, least civilized countries of the organization had ever suffered from.

Yes, the work & business focus was a bit upsetting to certain fringe students who wanted to have a generic, no frills schooling to have plenty of time for socializing and taking life easy before their Family or House duties settled on them, but they were minority. Likewise, the other fringe that liked having a very loose and airy schedule with weak teachers were upset because all the self-studying and external tutoring they had wanted their parents to pay would no longer fit in the new, much heavier calendar, with much stronger, standardized education methods throughout.

In the vast majority however, the changes in classes were satisfying. The changes of staff were also well seen, despite a few outliers who would never be satisfied with anything, mostly because their capacity to bully or snob others had been removed. Which might explain why the student body at large viewed these novelties as appropriate and desirable in such a short time, no matter the uglier sides like fewer personal liberty and public punishments in the great hall.

{ HP } - { High & low points of the year } - { HP }

For many students who were born or raised in wizarding households, the better parts were the renewed history course, the use of High Traditional calendar days and markers for the festivities, and the respect given to their Families who had endured for centuries to build this congregation.

Their low points were that new-bloods (muggle-born) were given just as much respect and rights if their birthing and social status was 'comparable' in the muggle side of things. This also brought in the reality that white skinned men no longer held sway over the British Empire as they did for four hundred years, nor could they crush and demean women anymore. The addition of specism as yet another punishable crime was really grinding on some nerves, but the history classes now showed them just how deeply deluded their notions of superiority to goblins, dwarves or Fae had been for so long. At least, they weren't being compared to Illithids, Githyanki, or Beholders for the purpose of evaluating societies. Then again, almost nobody knew anything about those populations, and the biological data were the scarce minimum obtained by visual encounters.

For those born or raised in the mundane side of England, the benefits were the clear effort put into matching and maintaining international standards as they had always thought in terms of being mobile to follow the jobs where they happened. The second best thing was that they were riding a wave of modernization that gave them access to magical subjects and teachings that were not even possible just a year before. Their education would be almost twice more dense and thrice more capable than their predecessors who had finished Hogwarts already. The best, most dramatic benefit was that each new-blood child was given the Awakening Rite in one of the ritual chambers of Hogwarts, thus augmenting and purifying their connection with their magic and lifeforce unlike their forebears ever had.

The downsides were that the anti-bullying rules and capacity to involve the authorities in cases of property or bodily damages resulting from racism or fanaticism meant that several rich or noble Purebloods tried to push the system to the breaking point. This was done by repeatedly attacking those students seen as the leading mudbloods, even when they were punished multiple times to the point of expulsion. Then they left for Durmstrang Institute where Headmaster Karkarof had put in place a blanket pardon policy for those that got kicked out of Hogwarts due to the "Repression of the innate nobility and superiority of Pureblood lines". Some twenty young men and nine young ladies had used that escape path after vicious, vindictive attacks on students who were not of their liking.

In three instances, half-blood or muggle-born teachers had been injured badly enough while defending the victims of bullying to warrant calling the aurors to apprehend the suspects as they were fleeing Britain, after leaving school without permission. This social movance was fueled by racial and religious fanatics with little to lose since they were geriatric, or so young they had no established life holding them back. They managed to cause a community-wide backlash against the modernization, and many tried to have the Wizengamot vote roll-backs of the rules and changes, to no avail yet.

Harry and his friends had a rather different view of events as they unfolded.

Firstly, Harry was in privately paid tutorship as much as he was in public classes, thus making for a very tight and loaded schedule six days per week. He had wisely chosen Saturday as his one day of the week that nothing short of an emergency Wizengamot meeting could encroach. Everything else was set back to Monday or Tuesday. Sunday was kept for religious and spiritual training in the Faith, Creed and Causes of the Hadean cult. Not because they valued that day, they weren't christians and had no use for one specific day of the week. No, Harry's reasoning was that his religious studies were mostly self-taught, at his own rhythm, and he could turn in early to be relatively healthy and good humored on the following Monday morning. Thankfully, the school had opted to keep a good number of snow days, holidays and seasonal festivals through the year to let the students and teachers blow off steam before things escalated to badly.

Harry still had to attend the Gamot once a month, and his Lordship duties towards his families were also sapping a lot of his time and reserves of patience on a daily basis. Thankfully, he had managed to change his mindset about a few things inside of September or he'd have had a burnout right quick. Firstly, he finally gave in to Rehz's opinion about finding a new house-elf to take care of the trunk, errand and couriering. While Harry now ate most of the time in the great hall, he did have a private Lord's suite where he constantly received guests for political or economic reasons, as well as old allies of the Houses Potter and Black that wanted to see where it would all go. That meant having refreshments and snacks at hand, depending on how long the meeting would last, and if the goblins had to come for crafting and signing contracts. So, the child had finally let himself finish his grief over Dryskholl's cruel death and chosen a new elf from a list proposed by his account manager. Harry also maintained a series of twice weekly meetings with the five persons he had ridden the Express with, because they were extended family and because Hermione had a lot of potential as friend and House-ally in the near future.

{ HP } - { Heritages & threats } - { HP }

When the first week-end of October arrived, Harry and Hermione went to Gringotts together. She had booked a Heritage Blood-Tithe Ritual to figure out what the Sorting Hat had alluded at, while dreading what it could reveal about her ancestors. Harry needed to complete the procedures for the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, to obtain Lordship over the living members and estates concerned before frauds or government bureaucrats tried something like Umbridge.

Hermione was revealed to be the Heiress Presumptive of the Ancient and Noble House of Dagworth-Granger, which had produced some of the most reputed potioneers, apothecaries and healers that the Welsh Wiccan sect had seen. She was the 'Presumptive' Heiress instead of 'Lady-Elect' because she wasn't the only one alive in the House, adult members still existed around her, but she was the only one with active magicks that were confirmed. So the goblins had no qualms about processing her demand for the full Heritage Ritual to take on the title, rank and style of the dormant House. This implied that the girl now had to undergo the Awakening Rite like Harry had done, but much older, more mature, and with a vial of Given Blood put in stasis by Hector Dagworth-Granger at the height of his Powers and social preeminence. With Ancestral Blood confirming her origins and activating the sleeping 'Blood Compact' inside her genetic memory, the girl confirmed her position as 'Heiress Ascendant' then waited a few hours to complete the Heritage as Head of House, reigning Lady of Dagworth-Granger. It was a very changed, thoughtful girl that left Gringotts that evening.

Harry's business with the Lordship was quick and relatively simple, since none of the living Blacks or extended relations had any grounds to contest the elevation. Neither Narcissa, Lucius or Draco had deigned to protest or offer a Magical Heirship Challenge, much to the surprise of Andromeda Tonks and several watchers of British magical nobility and politics. In fact, the Malfoy Family was present at the ritual, to show openly their support and satisfaction with the new Master of the House.

The Welsh Wiccan Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, pushed by who knows what defective instincts or foul advice, had tried to intercept Harry in person, on the steps of Gringotts no less, to stop the ritual on the grounds that Sirius Black had not yet been exonerated by the Wizengamot or Crown. He claimed that the Black title, rank and style were locked in abeyance, along with the estate and businesses, until the Warlocks could deliberate and adjudicate the case in serenity. This could, of course, be hastened if Harry submitted to the Gamot for inspection and validation by open vote, regardless of the rank or seniority of the houses. Including the Ministry Department Heads in that vote would go a long way in appeasing the disdains, fears and angers, expressed by several venerable men of great status in Nature, Magyck and society. These old men were upset that a mere child held three Lordships when they, themselves, were available to accomplish the powerful tasks of these positions in his stead, as was right and proper for children to let go unto men of import and might of wand. The minister strongly intimated that Harry could go a long way towards proving his good faith to the Ministry by naming three Regents and Stewards, one of each post for each House, until he turned 27 years old. Fudge had a list of older, mature and respectable men that would reliably fit these jobs, in the Ministry's formal opinion.

Harry replied that he would acknowledge the Minister's request as valid only if it were deposed his demands and list of names before king Ragnok on a blood-sealed Ministry form with the names of all the original plaintiffs signed in blood as well, to bind them all to the Gamot and Ministerial resolution. The Minister looked at Harry with something akin to genuine, gut-deep fear for a second, before removing himself from the goblin territory, now that he remembered just who he was accosting, and where it was happening. The first thing Harry did inside the bank was ask for a copy of the two door sentries' memories of the encounter so he could file a grievance against Cornelius Fudge at the DMLE and Wizengamot Services for conspiracy of attempted Blood-Line Theft. Plus, the man had tried to hijack the heredity rituals of three titled noble Houses, to put them in the hands of a structured cabal for the debasement of Peerage, entitlement, nobility and Chartered Families.

These heretical sacrileges would NEVER be tolerated in Magical Britain.

After that malicious piece of crapulence had been dealt with, the passing of the Black Lordship was mostly perfunctory. It was the second time that Harry used the ritual chambers under Gringotts, so he felt welcome and safe. Looking at king Ragnok to the side of the altar, he commented that the feeling he got was similar to the Van Uttebatten chamber, where the honored ancestors were close and watching upon them kindly. Unaware of the monarch's pleasure at the compliment, Harry processed the ritual with alacrity and stoicism as the Black Magicks wanted to test the boundaries and flexibility of his morality, looking for weaknesses or faults that would disqualify him, or give the Magick and heirlooms the right to kill him. However, after the scandal of the late Lord's manner of death, the Family's Magick seemed to understand the need to change and adapt if it wanted the Lineage to survive the coming hardships.

Harry left the bank late in the evening, accompanied by Hermione and the Malfoys, unaware of the two aurors and one Unspeakable who were disillusioned, watching from separate rooftops around Diagon Alley. The boy and his allies walked to the public Floo chimney without ever realizing the danger they were in. Dark forces were now moving in the shadows, and their time of safety and friendship was running out faster than they could imagine.

{ HP } - { Halloween, and again this are bad } - { HP }

Things were mostly peaceful or easily handled in Hogwarts itself until the night of All Hallow's Eve. Harry was trying to concentrate on preparing his usual prayers for his dead kindred when his female elf, Jippsy, came to him with a missive from Lord Malfoy that a surprise emergency Wizengamot meeting was being held with less than the required quorum in attempt to pass fraudulent laws. The goal was to bolster the Minister's own powers and authority over the ennobled houses, including those who had been created under Royal Warrant before the Gamot even existed, which was treason. The presence of as many Lords as possible was required to block this scurrilous attempt, and to have the felonious minister arrested for trial.

Warning his friends who had planned to be by his side during the evening of prayers, he cast a few quick spells to change into his battle kit as he had managed to assemble it, and used his suite's active Floo to pass through. As a measure of security, Harry had never used the Floo in his trunk to connect directly to the Ministry, afraid that the Unspeakables or bureaucrats could try to track his address and movements once the signal was established as his. He arrived in his private Lord Peverell office in the Wizengamot's floor, and carefully cast what few divination spells he knew to peruse the area around his door. Seeing nothing bad, he unlocked it and walked out, going towards the main amphitheater where the illegal meeting was being held.

On the way he found Lords Malfoy, Nott, Parkinson, Sandhurst, and Ladies Bones, Longbottom and even Madam Marchbanks, walking towards the same direction. Seeing the gravity of the attempted coup by the Ministry against the hereditary Families and Peerage, the Heads of Houses girded themselves for a fight. All were happy to see the others had worn dueling or combat robes for the seditious event they would be crashing.

A quartet of young Pureblood aurors without important names or affiliations other than their generic magical ancestry and white skin guarded the locked doors, trying desperately to look brave when they realized face-to-face just what kinds of Power and Arms they challenged. One male auror, barely twenty-five years old and puffed up like a turkey in mating season tried to bullshit the Lords into submitting to him.

"Halt! In the name of the Ministry DMLE!" he showed them a glowing new gold badge with the words 'DMLE - Head Auror' embossed on top. Which was weird since Rufus Scrimgeour was supposed to still be the top auror in their community, at last they knew. "I am the chief of criminal investigations and arrests, by order of Minister Fudge! You will surrender your wands and be escorted back out of the building. The Ministry is locked down for important business, and nobody is allowed in." Then, turning to the three fearfully shaking beginners, he commanded them loudly "Seize the fucking little plunker before he disappears! It'll save us a trip to Hogwarts tomorrow. And be careful of those knives, they ain't for show! My cousin saw him use one in school, a few weeks back, and he's good with 'em. Just cast some good expelliarmus at him and he'll cave in quick. He's a kid and doesn't even have a real wand, just a damned wooden spoon he carved a few years back."

Harry was in no mood to be insulted, let alone be arrested for no valid reason by some fraudsters participating in a botched coup d'état that couldn't even get off the pub napkin where it was drawn without setting the tavern on fire. He called his Battlestaff out of the shrunken trunk at his neck to let it float besides his left arm while taking out his hatchet in the left hand and the pistol from his back with the right hand. The four newbie aurors saw the very worse scenario unfold before their eyes as a fully empowered Lord of Magick marched unto war.

Before any of them had the chance to raise a wand to cast anything, it was over. Offended beyond belief and words, Madam Marchbanks had cast a mass-area disarming charm that had grabbed all the primary wands, secondary wands, shield rings and badges from the youths in one fell move that left them gap-mouthed at the sheer capacity of the old crone. They never got to say anything in protest or their own defense because Madam Bones had just used two wands to multi-cast four distinct stunners locked with an old German password to keep them asleep for the full 24 hours the spell could hold if not unlocked or dispelled. They found that the doors of the Gamot were locked physically but not magically as the quorum was not had, so the wards did not engage, a visible refusal by the ancient building to sanctify the outrages being committed inside.

With every hand carrying a weapon, and both Lord Malfoy and Harry having a phantom arm to carry a third melee item as well, Griselda Marchbanks used her authority as lawful Chief-Witch to force the activation of the Protocols & Procedures of Session to command the opening for the arriving Ladies, Lords and Regents. She could hear others that had been summoned to attend when the sacrilege had been discovered, and at least a dozen were marching up behind them, with another dozen after that before quorum was had and the session could proceed fully.

As the large oak panels moved ponderously, Harry enacted a small spell from 'Tricks of the Trade' to have a slow, pompous ceremonial dirge play aloud around the entire room and corridor as they entered and took strategic positions rather than their traditional seats. The first arrived stormed the surprised, fear-struck Ministry officials and Lords who were about to vote on some unlawful bill or project already tabled and read into docket. Cornelius Fudge was sitting in his pinstriped robes with his green bowler hat on the desk before him, not at all bothering with the decorum or rules of the Gamot since not a single plum colored uniform was in sight anywhere. Besides him were seated the hard-right fascist supporter Bartemius Crouch Senior, Head of the Department of International Cooperation, and the Darkness follower Walden MacNair, executioner of dangerous beasts for the Ministry's Department of Creature Regulation. The scribe in service was the junior that had been Imperiused by Dolores Umbridge, raising questions about his true mindset and allegiances yet again. Maybe he had been spelled willingly as a ruse?

Madam Bones gestured towards the stunned young man that had been floated in by the Lady Zabini, while other Warlocks brought in the remaining three posers to expose their perfidy to the open public. To the consternation of the traitor Lords, the few friendly reporters they had invited to attend what they saw as a moment of Power and Glory would now be writing about their Fall from their seats of authority, right to imprisonment, and maybe even being Cast Out by their own Houses. It could only get worse if the muggle monarchy got involved. All of them would rather be killed, be transfigured to ash and then be flushed down the toilets than be judged by muggles.

Harry Potter stood in the middle of the larger, bulkier and better trained adults that he had walked in with, shamelessly using their mass and experience to shield his own weakness. He was proud of his accomplishments, but not stupid enough that he stood much of a chance against all of the assembled Gamot members and their bureaucrat allies if wands were drawn. His best chance at distance was his pistol, or some wandless spells he had learned for close range. He wanted to be heard at the moment of judgment, not attract attention in the middle of a fight when everybody, their dog and the dog's fleas could probably take him out with cantrips. Or at least, that was his evaluation of his strength versus the Welsh Wiccan adults. He had forgotten how badly Dumbledore had amputated the course programs for a century, and mangled what was left to suit his need for mindless, miseducated worshipers that followed his words without proofs.

Cornelius Fudge tried to blubber his way out of the very obvious open grave that was yawning at his feet when Barty Crouch spoke aloud, surprising everyone. "You have it here, before you, the proof that the boy is wild, delinquent, and out of control. Look at how he tries to command the adults around him, standing in their midst as a monarch." He said in his arrogant voice, tone regal and manners fitting the Head of an Ancient and Noble wizarding House. With a sneer of disdain common to all Purebloods when they look at mud-bloods and subhumans, the old man with the Hitler-like mustachio, dark black pinstripe robes and black short top hat pointed a rolled scroll at the child with glee. "You are too late, boy! The writ of arrest, containment and removal of your Lord rings by the Unspeakables has been voted already! Your spies were too late! We may have been betrayed tonight, but we, the Purebloods of Human Wizardry, will still have gain of cause this day! You, boy, will end in Azkaban for your absolute disrespect of our age, Power and almight before Mystra, Mother of All Magycks! Submit to the magicks of the Law of Britain!" he screamed rabidly in a spatz of self-induced delirium as he waved the scroll towards Harry.

Madam Marchbanks was not impressed, and not afraid to say so. "Oh yeah, Crouch? And if that piece of toilet paper is truly legal, then why did you have to pass it under quorum, without the chamber wards active, or any of the actual Most Ancient and Most Noble Houses? Why is it, boy, that you felt the need to scurry in the dark, behind every loyal Britannic wizard of our nation? Speak up, sneak-about! I'm not hard of hearing, but I can't hear you!" she railed at him in great glee at his sudden puce coloration when he realized who he was affronting tonight.

Lord Malfoy contributed his own venom, stating in chilling urbane tones that belied the true extent of his ire, "Cornelius, I had thought you had a modicum of common sense, but I stand corrected. You are clearly not able to whelm a single whit of brain matter under that hat! How did you think my voting block would react, tomorrow, when this law appeared in the papers? You just tried to commit the kidnapping of a seated Warlock via the aurors by unlawful warrant, Line-Defilement and Line-Theft via Unspeakables against all laws of the land, and threatened to shove a reigning Lord of three ennobled Houses into Azkaban without a lawful trial on sham charges, just like Dumbledore did with the last Lord Black. Congratulations for not learning the lesson of what happens to conspiracies the first time around, Fudge! Bagnold is dead and Crouch was already under investigation by Madam Bones for his involvement in Sirius Black's unlawful arrest, sending to prison, and then the illegal banishment, and here you are, sitting by his side to repeat his failed plan anew. Good show, Cornelius, good show on seeing just how stupid this all is!"

Minister Fudge tried to faff around for an escape route, so he grasped at straws to save his elections, and possibly his freedom as well, if Bones and Marchbanks weren't neutered. "But Lucius! Think about the great boon I'm getting for your House and descendants! The title of Lord Black back into Pureblood hands, who also have the Black blood in their veins! Your son Draco could rule that House properly, unlike this half-blood mongrel who accaparates titles, ranks and styles he should never even say aloud, and certainly never put his filthy mud-blood hands on! The sight of those rings on those hands! For shame! Only a proper Pureblood should ever hold such almight and entitlements in our Welsh Wiccan community!"

Shaking his head in a desperate attempt to deny the full imbecility of the man he helped to elect in the position, Lucius replied "You cretin! I went to Gringotts with my wife and son to bear witness and accept publicly the new Lord Black! I gave my oath to the Black Blood-Law! What do you think would happen to me and my family if I did anything to accept or support this cabal of cur knaves that surround you? Would you see the House of Malfoy squibbed or dead? Is that the gratefulness that you demonstrate for that money and assistance at getting people to vote for you as Minister?"

Madam Zabini snorted in contempt, declaring in a soft but strong voice that carried all around the room on the force of her charms; "Of course, he wants to see you squibbed or dead. He wants to kill off all the old Families and titled nobles so that only elected and Ministry nominated minions could ever hold power and authority in Magical Britain again. It's not a favor to you or other Pureblood Lords, it's a genocide against all of our Hallowed Lineages! The use of the Potter boy's situation is just a transparent excuse to rail against the very privileges that him and Crouch have pined after for decades! I certainly remember little Horny-Corny from Hogwarts, always snooping around the rich and titled, trying to get scraps of attention or alms for his services at doing somebody's homework or term paper for them. I'm willing to bet he was elected because Dumbledore wanted a docile puppet, not because of anything you did, Lucius." she closed with toxic words that didn't in any ways reduce the truths she spoke.

Amelia Bones snorted, kicking lightly the stunned boor at her feet, mentioning "Not to mention that trying to make changes to the hierarchy of the aurors and hit-wizards is my jurisdiction alone. The Ministry's political and judicial wings are NEVER supposed to interfere in the DMLE's internal policies or promotion schedules. You crossed a line that only tyrants and Dark Lords have ever crossed willingly, Cornelius. History will not remember you kindly. But from a cell in Azkaban, you won't have to care for public opinion polls and voting basins anymore."

Puffing himself even more, like a balloon about to rupture, Minister Fudge shouted "NO! I won't go to prison! I am the Minister of Magic! I am the authority in this nation! I made these laws, I got them voted in session, and now they'll be applied! You've fired, Bones! From your job and from the aurors! Women have no place in such jobs! You should be so lucky to walk out with your wand and life intact, instead of heading to the Diagon Plaza for a public thrashing under an energy whip! And you, Marchbanks! You decrepit, obsolete old crone! How dare you challenge my authority inside my chamber of parliament! I am Minister of Magic! You will obey me, in the immediateness of the moment, or be broken by the aurors until you know your place in life!"

Harry shouted over the Minister's rant "Don't listen to his foul lies! He's trying to bullshit you into giving up your positions and badges willingly because he can't magically compel you, since Marchbanks activated the wards on full! Any attempt to seize our titles, ranks, styles, sigil rings or badges of office will be seen by the wards as committing High Crimes, Sedition and Treason, and be punished immediately by The Old Ways, without a trial. The only chance the conspirators have to win their putsch is if we're stupid, or scared enough, to give into the lies they spew! They have no power at all! That's why they held a secret, low-attendance meeting on Halloween night, a family ritual night! To bypass not only the protocols & procedures, but also the chamber wards and their blood-oaths that were tightened after the Dumbledore debacle was aired out. As long as we hold fast our stations in Nature, Magyck and Society, they can't touch us without destroying themselves and their allies! They'll be the squibs in the end, not us!"

Barty Crouch Snarled in unfettered anger at the child's poisonous voice that was undoing all the careful word-smithing he had Fudge's cronies put in the law bill that would have killed-off this little maggot's attempts to rebuild Magical England in depth. No longer seeing straight, the elderly man subconsciously decided to go out in a blaze of magical glory as he raised his wand at the boy's face, incanting 'Avada Kedavra!' with seething bile that any confirmed Death Eater would have felt kinship for. A tight powerful beam of green energy ran from the wand towards the child who dropped his hatchet to let it dangle from his wrist by the lanyard as the hand moved to point-cast, silently and without foci, the childish spell 'Hole' to create a five foot wide disk of blackness that hung in the air in front of him, while a matching 'Hole' appeared automatically 5 feet to his right side. The killing curse from Crouch's wand went in a straight line, as it always did, entering the sudden dimensional aperture to do a 'U' turn in the Ether before disgorging from the paired 'Hole', going straight at Barty's own startled form.

Bartemius Crouch, Head of House, reigning Lord Crouch, dropped dead in his chair, without a sound or defensive move, killed by his own Avada in front of dozens of witnesses and the press who had recorded the acts as they happened.

Cornelius Fudge was scared so hard by the twin green flashes that occurred right besides him that he vomited, pissed and shat himself in the same second, then dropped unconscious on the floor, laying in his own stinking mess until he was picked up for transport to the cells.

Walden MacNair jumped from his chair, throwing a quick dagger towards the insolent child that had just killed their best chance to take over the country without an army of rabid fanatics and dumb, subhuman brutes like Fenrir Greyback and his he-bitches. The Death Eater wanted to have the Power his dead master, Lord Voldemort, had promised and Crouch's discrete paperwork approach had been promising. By the laws of the land, if they declared an emergency session and passed bills under quorum, the rest of the Warlocks had only 30 days to question or contest the laws for a full debate and regular vote with quorum in place. The strategy had been to make the laws, vote them silently, wait for thirty days without saying anything to anybody, then surprise the fucking little cunt-dropping with a team of aurors backed by Unspeakable Bode, a hidden sympathizer of their group. But then somebody couldn't keep the building sealed right, and everything went down the loo at championship casting speed.

Harry saw the six inch dagger coming at his chest and used a body booster from Warrior Law to quick-move backwards by four full yards, again scaring people by casting without any sounds or foci visible. He didn't have the chance to take a shot with either pistol or spell as MacNair's knife was stored in an invisible wrist sheath that also had a conditional portkey that triggered when the knife was out for more than one full second. The Death Eater disappeared before Madam Marchbanks could activate the chamber's siege wards to blockade magical transports.

With a scream of rage, Madam Bones turned towards the seated Warlocks, wand aloft in case some fool male tried to hit her in the back, but all the elderly men were sitting in stunned fear, the fullness of the misconceived, utterly feeble plan dawning on them now. They had been hoodwinked by honeyed words about easy Power and cost-less victory, with all the burdens and hardships being borne by the child who defiled the purity of their blood and community.

All lies.

Madam Marchbanks had never been temporarily suspended, so the bill didn't pass legally.

Madam Bones had never been legally fired, so the young buck that replaced her was a sham.

Minister Fudge said he was in charge, but it was Crouch that managed everything, with Fudge just along for the ride because he too wanted easy Power without efforts or costs to himself.

And MacNair wasn't just a friendly supporter of traditional Pureblood patriarchal authority, as he had purported, but a hardened killer and genuine Death Eater that had escaped prison by claiming to have been Imperiused by Voldemort to obey him. It was only now, after their bitter defeat at the hands of the true masters of the Wizengamot, that the geriatric traitors realized just how thoroughly they had been played like patsies, just like during the Blood Purity War.

Under the orders of Madam Marchbanks, the group of loyal Ladies, Lords and Proxies began to recover the wands of the traitors, searching them for foci, weapons, portkeys and potential suicide devices. Noisily, two full squads of aurors in red battle robes arrived in the chamber to assist in the arrests, doing scans and revelation dweomers to find any who might have hidden, or invisible devices that could go off and hurt people.

That was how they detected a small insect trying to fly out of the open doors, but had an animagus signature. The common shit-fly was the treasonous Unspeakable Bole! The aurors fired stunning and paralysis spells, until one woman who was more alert than the rest shot an explosive pellet that spread outwards hundreds of thin filaments of sticky glue. The human as a shit-fly was hit in the torso and wing, getting stuck beyond his insect body's capacity to get free. He reverted to human, the ward glyphs embroidered in his robes unglueing him and deflecting the stunners just enough for his Unspeakable portkey to transport him through then open doors. He appeared in a secret safe-house under sorcerous Fidelius that had been decommissioned following the Blood Purity War, a decade ago. Operating solely on mundane means from now on, the traitor would remain at large for a long time to come, fomenting anarchy and sedition amongst wizarding white males wherever he went.

{ HP } - { Another wrecked Yule break } - { HP }

Whelp, it was official; the Wheel of Days had turned a full lunar year, and things had ended about the same as they had begun going down hill at the last Yuletide. Back then, Dumbledore's perfidies were exposed to the wide open public, precipitating the Fall of the Manipulator and his puppetized theocracy of his own effigy. The intermezzo had been all about bureaucracy trying to plod along the road that wasn't supposed to be taken, grading the land, setting rails and raising signals posts as they advanced, just like the pioneers of the railways had done before them. And now, another bevvy of treasons, investigations, public denunciations or allegations of the crassest level, with yet more societal upgrades and renovations ahead.

And Dumbledore's investigations, trials and sentencings weren't even half done!

It was taking King Ragnok Backsnapper several miracles of patience and tolerance every week to keep upholding his given pledge that all the nations, governments, churches, guilds and chartered or titled families that had suffered from Dumbledore's crimes would get a chance to interrogate the bastard to get answers to mysteries that have gone on for a century or more. As it was, the goblins estimated prudently that another two years would be needed to fulfill the decree of their king, and their obligations under British, ICW and UN laws.

Two more fucking years before Justice met with Albus too-many-titles Dumbledore.

At the very least, the Goblin Nation was over 97% done with him already, and the British were strenuously nearing the 66% bar but had stalled due to all the seditious and treasonous activities that had happened in the country. The process was starting up again, but slowly. The ICW's other member states were mostly at 80%+ finished, with a few details remaining. It was the chartered and titled families of nine different countries that were the real problem. The families had been ordered by exaltation, Peerage, titles, ranks, styles, positions and closeness to the monarchs or governments in place. That meant that Harry's Peverell and Potter files had been processed amongst the first, especially as they had been the linchpin that made Albus fall from his pedestal. When Harry inherited the House of Black in October, it destroyed all of the magical and not-so-legal blockades put in the way, and also swept away all the diplomatic posturing that had been maintained by Bartemius Crouch to help his ally.

And wasn't that another bloody kick in the fucking teeth!

Bartemius Crouch Senior had died a traitor to Britain, so the Old Laws of Magical Britannia still applied. It automatically gave the DMLE and aurors an unfettered right to search & seize ANY and ALL things in his bank vaults in Magical or Mundane Britain, in his estates or businesses. No lawyer – client privilege applied anymore, so his notary, solicitor and barrister could be questioned and searched too.

The aurors who knocked down his manor door were greeted by a wailing, sobbing female house-elf who was incredibly grateful to see the red robes inside the property. She had been barred by her master from ever contacting any human or goblin outside the estate without Bartemius Senior's prior and constrictive orders. She took the aurors down to the official basement, then down to the hidden second sub-level, to show them yet another treason done by the elder Crouch.

His only son, who had been cast out of the Family's Blood-Law by magic, was imprisoned inside a very well crafted wrought iron cage with two inch thick bars. The cage dated back to when having muggle slaves for all sorts of reasons, or dark creatures like lycans or vampires, wasn't even something that you had to hide or pay a permit for. Back in the 1300's and 1400's even, all sorts of experimentations, spell practice, sacrificial rituals, household slavery, sexual perversions and such could be done on muggles or other non-wizard entities without shame or fear. So the cage was strong, built by professional architects and magical blacksmiths who had engraved scriptworkes to cancel Channeling, Essence, Mentalism, Primal Essaence, Psionics, animagus transformations and most forms of naturally produced venoms from happening inside. The cell was actually more like a small hall, with six separate two-bed cells at the back and a plethora of ancient torture devices covering the middle half of the common space. The two quarters of the common area on the left and right were long workbenches with floating shelves over them to hold the diverse handheld tools, weapons, or varied experimental devices being tested on slaves.

It was in cell number one, at the far left, that they found the young man, bound to his bed by a heavy iron chain just long enough for him to reach the stone bench that was the completely exposed privy and the sink besides it, also a block of carved stone. The beds were iron frames covered with a thick layer of straw but now sheets or pillows. The inmates had to burrow into the straw to stay warm as there were no fires or heat sources in this part of the floor. The only times a fire was made, it was in the massive monumental hearth to heat branding irons or similar items of pain and misery, or to cremate a dead slave to avoid contamination or discovery.

Seven years ago, young Bartemius Crouch Junior had been illegally removed from Azkaban prison by his father, despite that he was a publicly avowed Death Eater who had taken part in the raid on the Longbottom estate. He was caught at the site, injured badly enough to incapacitate, and brought in for trial and processing. He stayed in jail for three years, before his father had obeyed his dying wife's last wish, imposed upon him via a magical vow. Barty Senior gave his wife Polyjuice Potion to look like her son, while he Imperiused the young adult, barely 24 years old, to drink the same to look like his mother. The Dementors can't recognize the original from a fake, no matter the Ministry's propaganda, something Barty Senior knew full well. So he did the switch and his wife's already taxed body gave out before the potion had run its hour. He called the auror guards, declared the boy dead from dementor exposure, as dozens do each year, and left with Barty Junior posing as his bereaved wife who just lost her only son.

Once back at the family manor, Bartemius Senior had wasted no time in chucking his felonious son in the second basement where he inflicted seven years of misery on him, as he truly believed that he should suffer like the terrorist and traitor he was. The public could have swallowed that part with efforts, but they could have. But Barty Sr was by that point a mite cracked in the kettle, as the saying goes. He decided that since his son had cost him his wife's happiness and life, then it was the young man's job to replace her in his life. Not up in the manor, despite the Imperius being applied every week like clockwork, but in his bed. On the extra-large wooden wrack that had been upholstered and enchanted with permanent cushioning charms, centuries ago by an old Lord Crouch who liked his sex toys to be awake and responsive but unable to resist without having to drug them out of their wits. It wasn't fun if they didn't know what was happening, and why he was imposing such violations upon them. Bartemius Senior felt the same way about his son, and since he had in fact cast him out by magic, he didn't see him as his son anymore, and not really as a human either, to be honest. Then again, Senior wasn't fully sane by then, so...

And that was what the aurors had to deal with, and make a report of to the DMLE and Gamot when they brought the delirious, partially handicapped young man to St-Mungo's for treatment against chronic pains and spams from Cruciatus exposure, and severe mental illness due to serial mind-rapes via diverse spells and potions. That was yet another scandal to rock the establishment and destroy a bit more the already shredded reputation of the supposed 'Pure'-bloodlines of Britain.

The thirteen conspirators that followed Fudge and Crouch having been stupid enough to try their putsch inside the official amphitheater of the Wizengamot meant that the ancient Royal Wards had automatically sent urgent messages to the Queen's Archmage. He in turn alerted the armies and government of a state of open insurrection inside one of Her Majesty's territories, specifically the Homeland, in London proper.

The result was that the surviving conspirators of that Halloween night were forcibly seized by the Royal War-Wizards, to be judged and condemned by Her Britannic Majesty in person. All of them were immediately taken to The Tower of London for detention and trial, and it is where they met their inhumane end. Each conspirator was interrogated with human Veritaserum and the Goblin version that causes great pain to those who lie or refuse to answer. Upon full confessions that opened many more investigations into other people and organizations, they were given potions to nourish their bodies and keep them awake to endure the many punishments to come, spaced over several days.

Each traitor to the Crown and Throne was branded with the Traitor's Sigil using scalding-red irons on their forehead, hands, feet and torso. They were flogged on bare back with a barbed scourge, dipped in boiling salted vinegar between blows, until no more skin remained between the nape and waistline. To prevent them from lying ever again, their tongues and teeth were pulled out with pliers, and their vocal chords were severed with a small scalpel through a hole in the side of the throat. To make certain their lies were not propagated by written texts, their hands were crushed with iron war-hammers. Then they were put to the wrack until their long limbs had dislocated and broken, but their pelvis and spine were protected to endure the rest. Once properly crippled, they were slowly hung by iron hooks in their shoulders, elbows and wrists to keep them aloft in a floating cross shape. At that point, their stomach was opened with a fishmonger's knife and they were gutted with the old disemboweling crank-winch. When their abdomen was empty and only then, even if they died before, were they made to kneel before the block to be beheaded with a crude, heavy iron war-ax, their head mounted to an iron spike on the tower battlements.

Upon death, each traitor was further punished by having the judgment of their chosen God denied as the Queen's Archmage stood by to intercept their soul, converting them into Lorne spheres, the money of the Outer Planes and Divine Temples. Each fool would forever end evermore be refused forgiveness as they were passed from hand to hand across aeons untold, being nothing more than spare change for Entities of Powers Unspeakable by mere mortals.

The entire process of execution was recorded in mundane and magical methods, then consigned to the British Realm's secret archives of the Royal Throne so that it never be forgotten what the dangers, and the price, of being Anointed Monarch means. The Wizengamot archives received fully notarized copies of each recording, and the full assembly was made to view them, as soon as all the heredity rituals had been finished and all seats that could be filled were. That meant that 11 year old Harry Potter and Hermione Dagworth-Granger saw the unfiltered truth of what it costs to be in Power, to maintain that Power, and also what happens to those that try and fail in the race to usurp or conquer Power from others.

The two kids weren't the only ones to need therapy after that, and Hermione got a lot less strident about Harry's bad habits with alcohol or recreational herbs. She even thanked him quite honestly when he offered her an antique nargileh that he had found for her in Hedgerow Terrace. Then again, Neville had just gifted the tight-knit group with dubious herbs aplenty and Draco had distilled some great tasting wine over the year, so everybody was happy that February, for a change.

{ HP } - { End of Hogwarts year I, at last } - { HP }

Thanking Hades Profusely and repeatedly, Harry Potter watched his house-elf Jippsy as she did one last run around the Lord's suite to recover every last bit of property and sanitize all traces or effluves from her Lord and his kin. It wouldn't do for the bad Ministry men to have physical parts of her Master in their hands. They would use all sorts of evil mojoju and idols to remotely force the boy into felonies and treasons to destroy his reputation or steal his heritages.

Harry cracked his back and neck, silently glad he had relented, a year ago, and bonded with Jippsy to handle his household affairs in the trunk and suite. His schedule over the year had been a horrendous montage that left him barely a few hours here or there to relax and purge his mind. With the constant crimes, depravities and treasons strolling out of the Wizengamot chamber like a New Year's parade at each new moon of each month, things had gotten dicey right quick.

And now the muggle Queen was involved, up to her eyeballs in it, too.

Man, had that gotten stuck in people's craw, what she did to those thirteen traitors! All the old Pureblood Lords were a-twitter with worries and bile, claiming into empty air that the Crown had betrayed Wizarding Britain and that they MUST rise up to recover their wand-rights and manly Powers before Mystra. Strangely enough, that handful of geriatric fools had bitched and whined in public for a good month before they suddenly disappeared and Gringotts processed their successions promptly. Nobody was ever told what actually happened to them, but their heads now lined the battlements of The Tower of London, right next to Fudge and his other fools.

The Welsh Wiccan sect was in full self-despise and self-mortification mode, trying to find someone to blame, and some sort of savior that would rebuild their sense of worth as humans, and superiority as wizarding men who stood above all inferior species and primitive magicks. Yes, there were several articles written in the Daily Prophet exactly in that tone of voice, with that choice of words. Demagoguery, populism, theocratism and messianic rhetoric were in full swing as the higher nobles, bourgeois merchants, middle class professionals and low-class plebes all asked the same questions at the same time. The human population of Magical Britain was sinking in a torment of despair, led down the whirlpool by geriatric old crones who still thought that white men were better than everything else under the sun, moon and stars. They spoke, prayed and harangued the crowds as if the epoch of England's christian missionaries conquering the planet back in the 1700's had never ended, just paused for a little while.

And the stupid, delirious and desperate crowds wanted to hear more.

The thronging horde of plebes wanted a damned savior, like Dumbledore had promised them.

Five dozen fake Seers had been convicted to varying sentences in Azkaban for trying to promote false prophecies or oracular pronouncements, the same way that Sybill Trelawney had done, and the criminals were targeting the exact same demographics for patsies, thus the situation explained before. The DMLE had its hands full with trying to corral the fake preachers of doomsday and their agitated followers out of the public roads and plazas. Aurors had to intervene a few times, especially when a mentally ill squib vagrant claimed to have learned the arts of the Haruspex from a traveling Fae priestess. The defective retard managed to emotion and harangue the crowd of deluded old crones he was preaching at so much that they obeyed his command to bring him a young mother, so that he could cut her belly open to extract the child to perform an augury on it. The miserably confounded old men, agog with belief and envy for such a are Gift of the Celestials bestowed upon such a simpleton, made quick work of forcibly procuring a pregnant girl for him. The felon had soon ripped the girl's abdomen open and brought out the baby girl, butchering her under the pretense of seeing the future inside her bowels and organs. The aurors arrived too late to save the young girl or her daughter, but they didn't let a single perpetrator escape, bringing in some 19 geriatric men who swore by their superstitions, four elderly women of the same mindset, and the very clearly mentally ill squib who was laughing as if he were on potions in preparation for a surgery. All 24 people were investigated and condemned by the Wizengamot to the Dementors' Kiss within one week of arrest.

And that wasn't all the criminality that happened.

Harry's Peverell properties were nonexistent since the House had been in stasis for so long that everything had been sold off or destroyed centuries ago. All that was left were the books, artifacts and monies in the vault under Gringotts, so that was safe. The Potter properties had been undergoing renovations to shore-up their value and get better kinds of tenants with less problems when a slew of attacks struck nearly half of the rental spaces, all motivated by envy, bigotry against his age, and superstitions fanned by old crones in search of a messiah or sacrificial goat. The Black properties were in worse shape since Sirius had never followed the advice of his account managers, preferring to spend the money on his vices to numb his ill mind. The foul mingrel had acted like a slum lord, letting good buildings fall into decrepitude so that they were only used as whorehouses, drug dens or worse. Despite saying that Remus Lupin was such a competent, over-educated man, and trying to push him unto Harry as Steward or Regent, Sirius had never formally hired him for anything, thus letting his own personal affairs slide into a quagmire over the decade since he had left Azkaban damaged. And then practically all of the already not-so-good Black rental properties were attacked by an organized gang of vandals throwing canisters of raw Promethium oil to sap the wards as the buildings burned. Thankfully, most edifices had two layers of wards and several had added muggle water sprinklers in the last thirty years, so only a handful were totally lost, but a dozen would need to be gutted and rebuilt.

Harry descended into an unholy fury so bad that he summoned some of the less dangerous creatures that he normally dealt with to see if one of them could track the bastards to their hideout or homes. He promptly got several names and addresses that the aurors then investigated at high speed, to corral this intolerable rioting and serial demolition of living spaces and shops. They managed to capture three young adults in their late twenties, but four others had managed to flee the country entirely. It averred that all seven men were a cabal formed by the grand-children of several of those geriatric felons that had been arrested and executed since last Samhain, following the Halloween 1991 attempted putsch by Fudge and Crouch. The men had simply used the ongoing civil unrest and attacks by superstitious fools to enact their vengeance against Harry, in the vain effort of getting away Scott-free. Instead, three were captured, the names of the four others were known, and the Dementors' Kiss would be their reward to all of them, as they got caught.

Looking in the mirror of his suite, Harry snarked mentally that he may be a devoted follower of Hades, God of death, but the body-count piling up at his doorstep was getting exaggerated. If it continued, Jippsy would start wondering if she had enough Power to blink through the dense mass of corpses whenever she had to leave the house for errands or leisure. Metaphorically speaking, of course! He wasn't so uncouth as to let bodies pile on the porch when he had a perfectly good (neutral, really) Tenebrous Pioneer to dig him a graveyard in the rear garden.

The ride back to London and 'civilization' was rather bland, all things considered. Happily, nobody was stupid enough to bully anybody this time, the message having been painfully received a year ago. The sight of all six girls and one boy being thrashed in front of the great hall just before dinner, counting as a school event demanding mandatory presence of all students and faculty, had left none of the castle residents unchanged. The good part was that bullying had been dramatically reduced. The bad part was that those who did continue bullying did so with the firm intent of leaving as many gravely injured victims as they could before being expelled. But, it still did the job, as inter-student violence or harassment had dropped to a fraction of what it was under Dumbledore's rules. Even those dunderhead 14 year old Weasley Twins had learned their place after just one tag-team punishment at the very beginning of September, then been silent and unseen, giving an impression of cooperativeness all year.

So, Harry and Rehz were able to freely enjoy the train ride with the same five people as the trip going up to Scotland; Susan Bones, Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy, Nymphadora Tonks, and Hermione Dagworth-Granger.

Susan was expecting to be alone and lonely a lot this summer since her aunt was working overtime at the Ministry building due to all the investigations that just kept piling up, on top of all the crud from Dumbledore & Crouch that hadn't finished being processed in front of the Goblin courts and ICW members. The fallout from Fudge and part of the Ministry being judged traitorous to England and forcing the Queen to get involved was another kettle of fish that would be monopolizing the time of the seated Warlocks this summer too.

Neville had planned a slow but productive season in his greenhouses or visiting Hedgerow Terrace, to try and find himself a druid conclave, or even a witch coven. He wasn't picky and would probably accept an invite from the Green Sisterhood if they talked to him honestly. It didn't take long for the boy to reveal that hi grand-mother was born a 'Rosier' and her late sister had married Saul Croaker, the man who became Head of the Unspeakables. While Saul was usually too busy to visit and wasn't really much of a bother, his older brother Algernon Croaker, Head of House and Lord Croaker, was a right bastard who had always pined after Augusta since they had met in Hogwarts, over fifty years ago. He had taken her marriage to Lord Longbottom very badly, and tried twice to drum-up spurious fake charges of having committed Anathema acts to try and get rid of her husband. He failed both times, getting kicked out of the Ministry for it and losing the Croaker seat in the process, which was then sold by the Bagnold administration at public auction, going to a newblood witch. Algernon never forgave the Longbottoms for these crimes, even though they were his own, and it is rumored that he actively helped to kill Augusta's husband to get her on the rebound. He was also thought to have paid Bartemius Crouch Jr to ask Voldemort to target the Longbottom males to End the Line, so he could get Augusta clear and free for himself. The problem was that for all these rumors, and big signs they weren't far-fetched, the rabid old gribbitch Augusta had never barred either men access to Longbottom manor, even when they hit or cursed her last living descendant.

Harry promised to look into it with Amelia Bones, sometime soon. He also invited Neville to come live with him over the summer, if he needed a safe refuge.

Draco was looking forward to being home because his parents had decided to let him build his own small laboratory in one of the older tool sheds in the estate gardens. He would be allowed to start distilling, fermenting and brewing basic things to get some practice, to develop his taste buds and nose as primary tools of his future trade. He would also get in some flying on his broom, since he hadn't been able to have one at Hogwarts this year. That old Dumbledorian rule hadn't yet been changed, but was due for revision next year.

Nymphadora glared at Harry hen he used her full name unpunished, because he's the Lord Black and he scared the bejeezus out of her. She'd seen the security recording of his intercepting & sending back Crouch's Avada, killing the cruel man in a cold second. With that under his belt, the boy was already heads & shoulders above her in combat practice, despite that she was getting fast tracked into the auror cadets without an extra preparatory year as had been the custom for several decades, due to Hogwarts' defense curriculum being unstable and diluted like rat piss. Her summer would be spent with her girlfriends in Diagon District, enjoying a small bit of her hard-earned freedom now that she was a legal adult. She would go to sleep-overs at her friends' places a few times. Come September, she'd be neck deep in auror boot-camp, so she wanted to enjoy herself first.

Hermione was uncertain about everything. Her parents had of course been informed about the family's past genealogy and honorable service to the Crown and Nation on the magical side of Britain. But that meant they were also aware of her status as the new Lady of the House, and officially emancipated by the Will of Magyck. She didn't have to live with them or follow their rules anymore, if she wanted out. Furthermore, she now had the money and properties to live on her own with the finances to pay her own staffers. With the way her parents gauged success and maturity, there was a good chance that they would in fact say "Well done! Good showing! Now, when are you moving out to concentrate on your chosen career?" The good side about professional parents was that she had a lot of freedom. The bad side was that there was precious little emotional attachment between them to hold the family together under these circumstances.

Harry, Susan and Nymphadora immediately offered her a place to stay until her affairs were settled enough to be safe and comfortable in her new home. Draco offered her politely to ask his mother to assist her, as a boy and girl of their ages, alone and out of view, could create a scandal that would fuel the already blazing social unrest of the plebes. Neville agreed with Draco, adding that his grand-mother tolerates his existence barely, she wouldn't accept any friend of his.

The young girl understood their situations and thanked them each, touched by their effort to help.

The House of Black goes Dark

(Harry Potter - theme)

July 1992

12 Grimmauld Place

London, England

Harry walked slowly through the mundane side of the vast train station at King's Cross, taking the time to breathe in the air of civilization and modernity. Hermione walked besides him, looking around fretfully as she tried to find either her parents or one of the valets from their home. She didn't see her name raised above the heads of the crowd gathered at the waiting area, like so many people did to guide their loved ones to them. Biting her lower lip in anxiety, the 12 year old girl scanned the crowd fearfully until Harry whispered to her "You are emancipated and the Lady of House, you can use a 'Point Me' or 'Blood Compass' to find them. The laws for underage sorcery no longer apply to you. Take a breath and feed magic to the earrings I gave you at Yule, they will show you the way."

Hermione did as he suggested, casting the Blood Compass first, then the Point Me to a servant of my parents when she did find her family in the station. The pull from the small foci dangling from her ears brought her to a young man, barely twenty years old, caucasian white, with green eyes and brown hair cut in a prudent style. He was dressed in black trousers, a white button shirt and blue waistcoat with a briefcase in hand. He didn't look aggressive or angry to have waited for the person he was meeting. As Hermione and Harry came near him, he seemed to recognize the young woman as he gave a formal bow from the neck towards her.

"Madam Dagworth-Granger? I'm Roland Xavier Holtzberth. I was sent by your parents." He spoke in a slight rural accent from the Midlands. He put the briefcase on a visitor's bench to open it and take out a thin folder, which he handed to Hermione.

The girl read through the file with her right eyebrow raising on its own the further she got into the papers. After passing through the two dozen sheets at high speed, she closed the file and gave it back, looking the young male from feet to head intently. Putting on her Wizengamot face, she asked for clarification "So, my parents reacted to the situation by hiring you to be my personal secretary to cover for me when I'm at school? And you'll be my driver when I walk the Mundane Side of the world?"

Nodding happily, the young man replied "Yes ma'am! I'm what the Welsh Wiccan call a 'muggle in the know' because my parents were both squibs who descended from other squibs. So, I went to a special school that has half-magic and half-muggle courses. I can't use an external focus like a wand or ring unless it was crafted with stored charges or permanent charms. I can however read, count, write and speak a half dozen magical languages, engrave scriptworkes correctly and I've been told I'm a deft hand with tools in either a workshop, garden or apothecary. My entire personal file is at your parents' house, with my school reports and the commendation from my last employer. He was the only one I worked for to date, after ending high school."

Hermione blinked both eyes once at the information, asking for clarification "Did you leave the other posting because you wanted better conditions, or a higher profile employer? Or were you no loner satisfied of the situation? It can't have been a bad thing since they gave you a formal letter to recommend you."

Smiling sadly, Roland shook his head with a distant look in his eyes as he replied "No, it wasn't bad, just time to move on. My first boss was a good woman who hired me right out of school for pretty much the same job. She was a witch with the Green Sisterhood, born into the sect nearly two centuries ago. She died three months ago, in late April at the age of 197. Spry old gal, she was! And a temper gentle like a brook in spring. But she told me when she hired me that her time was nigh. She felt Mother Gaia calling her. She passed at peace in her sleep. T'was a quiet funeral with only other sisters present. She had no family left to mourn her, not at that age. So, she wrote the letter around Valentine's Day, telling me she would be around to bother me much anymore. She's the one who did the divination to find my next job. I only sent the one letter to your parents, before they even thought of putting an ad somewhere to find you the extra help. I reckon I scared the living lights out of both with that bit. Still, they met with my Boss about a week before she died, and that was the deal done. I started moving my stuff and working at their house in mid-May, after the funeral and will reading. Been there since."

Harry looked at the forlorn young man, softly praying to Hades in his mind for Sight and Truth, to be certain this wasn't a trap to kidnap or hurt Hermione. The spell returned a wave of positive and protective feelings, telling all would be right for his friend. He took hold of her hand to give it a light, supportive squeeze as signal to go with it.

Hermione took strength form her friend, asking "Have my parents decided that should live apart or do I still have a room over there? I haven't had time to visit any of the properties I inheritied yet, and I need to find new house-elves since the old ones died much after the House was put in stasis. My ancestor Hector died three hundred years ago and I'm the only fully magical descendant since., so everything has to be reactivated, cleaned and stocked to be livable."

Nodding as he gestured towards the station's passenger exit, Roland responded easily "I gotta say your parents looked mighty pleased by the news about your inheritance. And their ancestry too, by what I saw of them. They haven't said a word of putting you out, but you shouldn't expect them home any more than usual, if you tag me meaning..."

"Ha," Hermione replied in understanding. She had brought reputation, honor and money to the family, but that was simply their expectations from her, regardless of magic, gender or age. As long as she behaved as fitted the rank and appearances of the household amongst their professional associates, they wouldn't feel the need to be present to mitigate her bad manners. It was nothing more or less than regular service inside the Granger home.

Smiling sadly at Harry, the young girl whispered "Maybe I'll be looking at the old manor sooner than later, then. I don't plan to live somewhere that I feel like an uncouth guest that overstayed their welcome at distant relatives' place instead of getting a hotel room. Plus, as soon as I get at least one elf, most of the mess will sort itself out... like magic..." she finished lamely in a poor attempt to lighten her own mood from the depression that was threatening.

Nodding, Harry escorted her to the old car that had been borrowed from the Granger's garage for the day, waving the two goodbye as the rolled away. The boy cast a discrete tracking charm on the car's rear bumper to find it on the country's map, later in the day. He would go and pay a silent visit to insure everything was going well, or at least peacefully in her family's house.

{ HP } - { Home, sweet poisonous home } - { HP }

Harry walked from King's Cross to as small alley where he could be hidden from the pedestrians and cars on the street. He slowly walked some twenty minutes northward, over to the location of his new home, at the rather shabby looking #12 Grimmauld Place, Borough of Islington, London, in a Muggle neighborhood that hid the decrepit wizarding house. It had been called Black Manor in some past life, but never truly deserved such an appellation. It was a townhouse built over two basements and four storeys plus attic in the style common in the 1800's all over the British colonies and influenced countries. The thing's floor plan was a nightmare to understand, especially when you took in the bevy of permanent space expansion charms to create secret passages and rooms.

Still, it was -a- home and much better than paying for a small room in a backwater country inn, just to store his trunk in peace, as that was his true home and pretty much the only one he needed to be happy. For now anyways. Sighing loudly in true pre-adolescent fashion, Harry shoved his hands in his pants pockets as he stood in the miserably maintained, decrepit public park that was supposed to bring greenery and happiness to the small circular enclave. Instead, it gave a feel vaguely reminiscent of a funeral urn filled with faded, wilted flowers that stunk of decay. Looking over at the dreary, weathered façade of Grimmauld Place, the boy couldn't help the sarcastic thought thought that at least the buildings and park matched together harmoniously.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Harry crossed the narrow avenue to climb up the small stairs up to the front door, noticing the pair of small, ugly stone flower beds on each side of the masonry stairs and banisters. Those would need clearing out and replanting with things that would be able to endure London's climate without too much maintenance. Either an elf or the Pioneer could do that quickly enough. Sighing again as he noticed the large bronze door knocker in the shape of a basilisk head, he grumbled nastily about the Black ancestors in Parseltongue as he fished the overly decorative cast iron key from the man-purse at his belt. It was a useful little thing given to him by Neville at Yule, and practical fro storing things that didn't fit in pockets but were too small to need a briefcase or rucksack.

As he was about to slot the key, the bronze basilisk blinked its genuine emerald eyes, asking in a sibilant voice "Who daressss enter the den of the sssserpent kingssss? Tell me or I will bite you! You will ssssufffffer from my venom mosssst horrrribly!"

Whelp, that was it. The Black Family were cliché Darkness followers barely fit for a cable movie. On a Wednesday night after the eleven o'clock news. And the infomercials.

Using his most noble, and snobby, Parseltongue accent, Harry replied that he was the Head of House, the Lord Black, regent Duke of the Zezetshire Cairnhills in the English Midlands. He presented his Sigil rings to the animated guardian, offering his three Houses for inspection.

The metal basilisk coiled itself vigorously in deep pride at belonging to such a powerful master that had so many nest under his fangs. The construct's feelings swelled even worse when Rehz Ib Fettach appeared on the boy's shoulder, glaring at the impudent door ornament for barring the march of his Master into his new home. All gleeful with hope and venomous thoughts of glory and almight, the basilisk tasted the child's soul-aura to confirm, then immediately triggered the door to open without needing the key. It bowed as low as its position on the panel allowed it to as Harry walked by, giving him a feeling of murderous malevolence as he passed in front of its glowing green eyes.

The moment he was fully inside the vestibule, the door slammed behind him and the antique gas lamps mounted to sconces on the walls came alight, giving off a lugubrious glow that lit barely anything except dust, cobwebs, and furniture covered by dusty green sheets. Harry cleared his throat and called out "Jippsy! I have need of you."

The elf popped into being next to her master, looking around the new home with a mixture of growing horror at the dilapidated condition, but also tremulous joy at all the work and cleaning that she would be doing in the coming weeks. Truly Jippsy's master was kind to her, giving her such a monumental task to accomplish!

An obnoxiously loud pop was heard in the foyer just passed the inner door, declaring the arrival of another elf. He was male, very old, wrinkled and more brown than green, showing clearly he was in ill health after years of neglect and abuse. Seeing the boy with the Faerie Drake on his shoulder, the elf bowed until his nose touched the dirty, moth-eaten carpet, standing back up with a stern but not aggressive expression on his face. "I bees Kreacher, elf of the Black Manor for London. I bees in charge of this household. Are yous the new master Black?"

Harry answered by showing all his rings and calling notarized copies the official Heritage Blood-Tithe Rituals he had done at Gringotts to assume all titles, ranks, styles and positions correctly. The elf read the thin folio quickly, handing it back with a shallow bow. He gestured the boy towards the inside of the house and up the stairs until the first landing, where a wizarding portrait of the last Lady of the House, Walburga Black. The elf announced politely "Mistress! Here bees the new Lord Black. He comes to take House in hand. He has the goblin papers, too. He bees the Lord of Potter and Peverell, too. And door-snake says he sssspeakssss!"

The decrepit, disheveled and sickly woman in the portrait animated, leaning forward against the lower part of the frame like a windowsill, thus showing the long, broken, nails that emerged from crooked fingers. Her hands and face were stained with liver spots and deep purple bags hung under her eyes. When she attempted a feeble smile, it only served to open the seeping cracks in her lips and display her rotting, blackened teeth. Harry nodded and tried to smile, wincing in sympathy for the old woman, wondering how long she could have suffered like this, that her magical portrait ended reflecting this awful image after her death?

"Yes, child. I know. I look frightful, and my temper is actually worse, on most days. Poor Kreacher had to suffer it long enough to attest. It was a cursed illnesses inflicted upon my body that ended rotting my brain, thus affecting my mind in the end. I died in 1985, alone and isolated except for loyal, worthy Kreacher who was by my side at my Passing. Sirius was out of England due to Dumbledore's machination, but he wouldn't have come to me even if he could have done so safely. I had not been a good mother, not even an acceptable one. And Orion was my cousin to the second degree by birth before he was my husband. I never knew how Sirius and Regulus got to be so healthy and stable, given how inbred and sickly our whole Family was."

Harry nodded, in sad admission to her words. "Yes, grand-mother by adoption. I knew this when I accepted the 'Blood Compact' inside my soul. There is a deep sickness buried in the bosom of the Black Lineage, dating back far behind us by several centuries. I don't know if we can even find the original sin or guilty person anymore. Professional diviners and Seers would be hard pressed to find anything accurate, let alone actionable. All we can do anymore is try to repair the damages and clean the Family enough to prevent further degradation for future generations."

Walburga's image gazed upon her only grand-child, the result of Sirius giving the Blood-Oath of god-fatherhood and granting Harry three drops of blood during the ritual. The boy already had native Black blood from James' mother Dorea Black, but this Tithe confirmed his primacy in the heritage list. Since there were doubts about Lucius and Narcissa, poor Bellatrix was insane beyond even Family standards without any known children, and Andromeda was disinherited legally but not by magic, the burden of Lordship fell to Sirius, and now his godson.

"Tell me truthfully, child, how did my oldest son die? What was the cause?"

Harry closed his eyes, the old pain of abandonment and betrayal coming to the surface, but he took hold of it, strangled it and put it back in its coffin, in the crypt at the back of his soul. Opening his emerald green eyes, he locked gaze with the animate image and told her the raw, unvarnished truth of why and how her oldest child by birth had died in shame and pain.

Closing her eyes in pain as if she were really a living being, the image of Walburga Black seemed to be grieving for her lost child, judged by Magyck. Bowing low in her frame, she declared "I may be insane by birth and by curse, but you have my loyalty and that of the remaining House, my Lord Black. Thy will be done, in society, magick and Nature. Id mote est."

Nodding in acceptance, Harry turned to Kreacher who had watched, listened and learned the Power and strength of mind of his new Lord. He may be just 12 years old, but he was a true Lord in spirit, mind, skills and determination to be the only master of his life and destiny, except for the divinities he had chosen as patrons and guides. The elf bowed low, then stood at attention as much as his sickly, elderly boy allowed him.

Harry declared in a strong voice, bearing the Power an authority of the Head of House and Lord of Black Blood-Law; "I forbid and recuse all rights of entry to the lands, properties, edifices and vaults that fall under the purview of Black blood, or were delegated to business management, to Albus Dumbledore, his blood-kin, his allies, his hirelings, his elves, and any follower or supporter of his sectarian creed and cause. Id mote est."

Taking a steadying breath, Harry pursued "Furthermore, I forbid and recuse all rights of entry to the lands, properties, edifices and vaults that fall under the purview of Black blood, or were delegated to business management, to Remus John Lupin, his blood-kin, his allies, his hirelings, his elves, and any follower or supporter of his creed or cause, regardless of any debts that my Failed late-godfather, Sirius Orion Black III, may have incurred or not finished paying before his justified death by Line-Defilement and Oath-Breaking. Id mote est.

{ HP } - { Potenteste in domus nigra cruore est } - { HP }

Pursing his lips in memory of the attacks against the Potter and Black properties that were publicly known, Harry gave one last command with venom dripping from his words. "Kreacher, my faithful servant, raise the estate's wards to siege-time strength and severity. Let any who challenge the sanctity and quietude of the Black Manor know pain before Death takes them. By the Blackness of my Blood, so did I declare. Id mote est."

Kreacher bowed low before his master, basking in the aura of a fully empowered Lord Black such as had not occurred in more than a century. He had been a wee elfling the last time that any with the strength of body, mind, magic and soul to command the formidable Black Blood-Law had set foot in this house. Truly, it was a day of joy, celebration and prayers to the Divines!

Without a single word of reply, Kreacher put the finger of his right hand in position, jut under his right eye to visualize the magick and effect properly, then snapped the mightiest, proudest snap of his two-hundred and eight years of life. Receiving the command from their Lord through his bonded servant, the tremendously potent, dark and cruel blood-wards of House Black answered the call that hadn't been issued since the building was erected and their functions tested. Invisible to the naked eye yet felt by all for two full city blocks around and under the streets into the bowels beneath London, the many layers of energy barriers coalesced into something that warding professionals and curse-breakers hold as a legendary crafting rather than an accomplished fact. Within seconds, the House of Black disappeared from public awareness, the edifice and surrounding gardens turning unplottable, invisible, undetectable, odorless, soundless, heat-less and all vibrations dampened. A twin-layered Fidelius ward composed of a blood-magic sorcery and a religious faith consecration plexed together into something that Dumbledore could not conceive of existing, let alone find or break in this life.

The outer protective layers locked into place; repulsions against muggles, squibs, wizards, priests, psionicists, house-elves from other Houses or groups, multiple types of creatures, any who spied for enemies, any who wished harm to the Black Family, any with violent intent, any with intent to betray or sell information to outsiders, and a Forbiddance against those named by Harry as Anathema to the Black Blood-Law.

The inner defenses were last to manifest; a powerful ward called 'Living Building' activated for the first time in two centuries, cleaning and repairing the structure of the house from decades of filth, debris, insalubrity and vermins. A permanent set of 'Unseen Staff' appeared, translucent but solid enough to move objects with strength and care, to arrange furniture, storage, consumables and prepare all the living quarters. In the basement, once the level was cleaned and repaired, an empty bunker opened its walls to reveal hidden closets, cabinets and cupboards full of potions, components and medical equipments, then generated an 'Illusionary Infirmary Staff' to receive injured people for treatment. Powerful 'Storm Shield' and 'Projectile Repel' enchantments all around the estate's perimeter lit up, as similar localized versions on the doors and windows became four times stringer than before. Several small stone figurines throughout the house activated fully, actively purifying the air, water, food and medications in their vicinity from any poisons, maladies, drugs or impurities from being expired, preventing sabotage and treason from having effect on the defenders of the Manor.

Outside and inside the building, golems carved out of stone, iron or wood animated and began to patrol the estate. Covered in deeply engraved scriptworkes anchored to the constructs by the two refined Ember plugs that served as the golems' eyes, each statue was fully invisible, soundless, odorless, heat-less, and made no vibration in either the air, ground or furniture as it attacked. These monstrous creations were of differing shapes and sizes to keep enemies guessing wildly, and also wrapped in the foul dark aura caused by the permanent Cruciatus embedded in their cruel talons, fangs, horns and tail spikes. Each construct could also breathe out a cloud of gaseous curse that emulated Mummy Rot every ten minutes, or spit a brace of five 'Venomous Bullets' reaching up to 500 feet away every minute, due to their internal Ember crystal matrix.

In siege mode, he magical portraits of the House gained the ability to have wands and other foci appear in their image, according to what scene or people were painted. These could channel the magicks of the building with the same strength and ability as was programmed into the memorial matrix of the entities depicted, thus creating yet another layer for the Lord to depend on.

Harry stood in the main staircase of his House, feeling the wards awaken and raise around his person, caressing his soul-aura as they flared to full Power, eagerly awaiting the test of their faith and resolve in the newly installed Lord of the Black Blood. Any who dared would suffer beyond all compare before being released into the hands of Hades, if there was anything left to have.

Summer vacations 1992; a rude beginning

(Harry Potter - theme)

July 1992

Multiple locations

The British Isles & Europa

Young Harry Potter sat forlornly in the settee besides his bed, in the master suite of #12 Grimmauld Place, with Rehz curled on his lap like a scaly, ornery kitten with poisonous breath and delirious schemes. Gods but he loved that drake! It was in times like these that he realized just how much he had come to depend on his familiar for what remained intact of his sanity.

And, to his body and soul defending, he would never admit aloud just how much good it had done him to meet and befriend the people he had at Hogwarts. With only the small Faerie Drake and Tenebrous Pioneer for company over a few years, the kids at primary school or summer camps hadn't been enough to sustain his emotional growth and stability. He could see now that it was a bad kind of stubbornness on his part that had kept everybody at arms' length in those days.

Having the added company of Jippsy had helped heal his wounded soul and heart so much that most wizards in the magical communities would be ashamed of his weakness. He now understood just how stupid and limited that mindset was. Dryskholl and Jippsy had done for his welfare things that no human ever could, or would even offer. It looked like Kreacher was on the fast track towards doing the same too. Harry smirked at the memory of the elderly elf being agog when Harry had spoken in the secret elven tongue with Jippsy, when he asked her to prepare the suite for him. It was hard to say which between Parseltongue and the elf dialect impressed the old servant more.

Harry verified the seal on the potion he took from the side table, then quaffed the vial in one go. It was time for his old ritual of learning a pair of languages again. This time he was going to do a complement to his potion from last august, Cyrillic – Greek, by absorbing the Cyrillic – Russian derived languages. For the month of August he would add to his Latinate knowledge with French, going from ancient to modern with a few of the important dialects like Provençal, Louisiannais or Québécois.

Harry had just put the empty vial back in the small service tray on the table when the wards of the estate informed him that an elf belonging to the Black Blood from a cadet branch wanted audience with the master of the House. Dobby, elf of Narcissa Malfoy. Frowning, the child released his Battlestaff to float in the corner by the bed, out of immediate sight, and called both Kreacher and Jippsy to attend the meeting. Once escorted, he made sure that his tool belt was invisible under his luxurious purple velvet housecoat, and that he looked relaxed, without worries despite carrying hard steel and destructive spells. Snort! The elf would have sensed the siege wards activate all the way across the planet because of his link to the Black Blood, or would have clued-in when he was magically forced to 'knock' and present himself instead of just popping into wherever he wanted to appear.

Nasty stuff, those Black Blood-Wards, but then again, the family knew full well how exactly it was that house-elves traveled such long distances unhindered, so they had prepared adequately.

Smirking in a superior way, Harry signaled Kreacher to accept the related elf into the suite, to give his message to the Lord Black in person. Coming from the Malfoys, this could be interesting or truly bothersome. Time would tell.

The elf appeared before Harry with a small 'pouf!' that was just loud enough to politely announce his arrival but not so rash as to disturb ongoing conversations in the room. That was another thing about the wards; they opened a transit window to the authorized spot for arrival but prevented any divinations or Sight from perceiving anything until the entity was inside the ward sphere and the layers had closed back over the minuscule hole that had passed the energy beam.

Dobby was old, much, much older than Kreacher could ever hope to live, but it wasn't visible on his skinny frame or facial features. He looked like he had been abused and damaged many times in his long life, bearing the marks of injuries and disease alike on his green skin. He may have managed to fool the weak senses of ordinary humans, but this was the Black Manor and he stood before the Lord Black himself. The almighty siege wards, built into the original fieldstone foundations in the late 1100's, could pass through the elf's disguises and faked attitude with laughable ease. If the sensors were calibrated right, there may not have been organized human societies on the Britannic Islands when this elf was born to the world. In fact, Harry was starting to feel that he was looking at a very early edition of the house-elf sub-race.

Addressing the unexpected visitor straight in the native tongue of his kind, Harry asked what he wanted in the House of Black. While he tried hard to not let it show, the information about the elf's true age and experience had shaken him badly. If the being learned and grew as normal living entities did, having been born some four millenia ago would account for an immense level of education, lived experience and magical power, even if he borrowed it from others to enact his effects. This had to be approached with caution.

Dobby however bowed low, then slowly stood up, looking upon Harry with an odd sort of gleam in his eyes, the sort that the child had seen only in religious fanatics or the mentally ill who were completely disjuncted from reality by their superstitions and phantasms.

"I bees Dobby of House Peverell, passed to House Potter by legal inheritance, then illegally sold to House Black by Albus Dumbledore, when he usurped the guardianship of Heir Peverell, Potter and Black. I could not show my true allegiance or power until this day, nearly six hundred years after the last living Lord Peverell passed into the arms of his patron god, Hades. Dobby haves been waiting for a new Peverell to care for, waitings and waitings, passing from menial jobs to worse menial jobs, until today. The false bond be broken, the lies of Bad master whiskers be burned and House Peverell can live again."

Harry blinked both eyes a few times as he processed the words from the poor maligned being, coming quickly to understand the situation. And his rage against the bearded wanker grew anew in such way that the small mythalar pillar under the house began to spin on its axis, gathering power to send a magnificently cruel dark curse across the country at the feckless procreate of diseased vermin that had pillaged his heritage to the point of injuring those loyal to him and his ancestors. Taking a deep, carefully controlled breath, the child instinctively sent a thought to the power sink beneath the house, thanking its loyalty and readiness to serve, but asking that it be at peace for now. The time was scheming and tactics, striking would come later, at the proper time.

Harry was temporarily stunned to receive an actual answer from the ward-core, passing through the Black Blood-Law to reach him, assuring him of understanding and willingness to assist on creating those plots and machinations to destroy the enemies of the House. Jippsy had both hands to her mouth in astonishment at the deep connection her master had with his Families. Kreacher was smirking in a dark, fearsomely satisfied way that only a birthed Black could truly comprehend. And Dobby's eyes were ex-orbited, grown to the size of glowing soup bowls as he beheld the full strength of a true lord of magic roused from sleep, then gone quiescent again, knowing the time wasn't yet right to act in public.

But it would come.

Oh, it would come! And rotting blood would rain from the heavens unto the knaves!

"Tell me, faithful servant of my first House, how is it that you come to me this night? And why have you waited so long? I can sense your true and deep loyalty thrumming through the Peverell Blood-Law now that we are formally introduced. Why could I not feel you before?"

Dobby smirked nastily, explaining happily "It was dumb Dumbly-dorey's doings, master Harry Potter, sir. He tinker with what he knows not. He never bother to learn about house-elves, just like average wizards. Thinks elves serve by obligation to have magicks and nothing else. Stupid, short sighted magi, they all are. The House Peverell had other ideas! Yes, it did! No, the most masterful art of Peverell was that they undid the bastardy of the house-elf race. They undid the botched Key of Life that our originator had inflicted upon us, giving a few of our kind the chance to have full lives, even though we had to be slaves due to the laws in vigor. We were freed of birth and magic shackles, but not from the laws the tyrants made. So the Peverell founders had a brilliant idea; they helped us to mate with other, original elves, to produce elflings that were freer than their forebears. And thus, the race was freed, but at the same time, it was wholly bound to the House and Blood-Law of Peverell, for all times and realities they would exist."

Harry sat gobsmacked, well mouth agape like a gold fish out of its bowl, looking at the elf as if he had just declared that the species should trade in its traditional linen tea-towel togas for modern plastic trash bag tunics. It took the boy a good few minutes to reboot his mind into functioning order, and the combined efforts of Rehz smacking his arm with his tail and Jippsy bringing a full tea set for five persons before he was amongst the cognizant. Thanking Jippsy for her service, he offhandedly explained to Dobby that he had always felt a deeper connection to house-elves than humans since he met Dryskholl, so he systematically insisted that all elves be treated at least as well as human employees or contractors when in his presence. The goblin account managers at Gringotts found this atavism hilarious, but never questioned it, not even in his absence. Harry thought that he now understood why that was.

Studiously ignoring the smirking elves and dragonnet, he fixed his night tea with cream, honey and a generous dose of excellent Dwarven brandy from the upper Scottish Isles. Only to taste the cuppa and spit it out, swearing aloud he'd just poured a quarter ounce of fine hard booze in it, so where in Hallowed Nepenthe's catacombs had the liquor gone to? A smidgen of bratty humor from the mythalar pillar under the basement echoed around the wards, embalming the child and his friends like a mother's laughter. If said mother was an old, wrinkly, gray-skinned witch with warts and crooked teeth that enjoyed cursing the neighbors with living nightmares for fun.

Egads, but he loved the Blackness of his Blood and all it entailed!

It was a taste acquired harshly, yes, but so what? It was well worth it all.

Sending an answering pulse of mixed amusement and warning, he tasted the tea again, finding it to his proper liking. The wards had only suppressed the taste, not the active ingredients. A small advantage more for the Lord, if he needed to discretely potion the food or drink of recalcitrant guests bent on defrauding or attacking him inside his home. His ancestors really were paranoid, but then again, the existence of Dumbledore and the current state of the Family meant that they hadn't pushed the arts of prevention and scheming enough. That would be remedied soon.

Taking a good mouthful of his doctored tea, the 12 year old gazed amusedly at Rehz who sat on his haunches with a human teacup clutched between both fore-paws to have his own boozy treat before bed. Then again, with his psychedelic breath weapon gas, mundane alcohol wouldn't be a threat or hindrance to him, more of a simple spice, just like cinnamon or nutmeg for Harry.

Dobby waited for his master to be seated at rest and ready mentally before adding a few more little juicy tidbits from the distant past to make him understand events.

"You see master Harry Potter, sir, back in the deep antiquity, the Peverell founders had managed to break the fell powers of the evil necromancer who had created our race, but knew to keep it hush-hush or the clans and first churches of the Living Gods would have wanted them dead, after thy had taken their secret sciences from them. So they agreed to keep it silent, and only those elves who descend from those Blood-Law-Elves, or a first generation mixed birth, would ever know about the facts, but never discuss them outside the estates of Peverell. And they could never speak of it without a living, or undead, human member of the House by their side to anchor the Fidelius that covers the secrets and faith of the Family and its servants. That is why even when some elves -know- things or have a very old age, they can never speak of it, even in the hobbitons or elf glades where most of our race keeps the children and elderly, safely away from the evils and servitude of the human worlds."

Since Harry was again to stunned to comment, Dobby pursued his laundry-list of revelations that unraveled the already complex structure of wizarding history.

"The three good brothers who were the sons of the first Lord and Lady Peverell saw what their parents had wrought, how holy it was, and were in such awe that they immediately understood the grave peril, if it were found out by the villager elders. They would report to the clans and churches the danger to their prestige and Power, for that was what house-elves meant back then. So, the sons each created a powerful artifact of the necromancer's art, to obfuscate the true masterpiece of the Family; the so called Three Deathly Hallows. Nothing but decoys to bother the plebes. Strong yes, especially compared to the pitiful sticks and runestones that were all anybody had to fight with back then, but still just decoys."

Snorting in amusement as his eyes looked to a past only he could see, Dobby continued softly; "The fabled Death Stick, Wand of Destiny, Penultimate Focus... Bah! Nothing more than a piece of alder wood with a simple braided thestral hair core and some ash from cremating the bodies of curse-bitten vampires and werewolves, glued together with Nightsoil tilled by a Tenebrous Pioneer under a Black Moon. You could do the same, master Harry, if you's wanted to try. You's Battlestaff has more Power and abilities than the old Backscratching Twig, as Antioch called his creation."

Huffing in further amusement, Dobby said "Cadmus was ashamed of his Nut of Human Dumbness, because it worked in the inverse of any logic or magic. Inside a True Noble Dragon, in the brain, between the lobes, is a perfectly round, white gland called Pearl of Wisdom that acts for their species the way that the 'Blood Compact' or Blood-Adoption acts for humans. But, the necromancer had studied the way this Pearl worked, so he made a small, round, black stone that does the opposite. Legends call it The Resurrection Stone, but it doesn't touch the Realm of the Dead at all. It just scans the user's soul-aura to find factum about his deepest desires and who they tie to, then projects a fake phantom of them next to the unlucky fool. It worked so well as a decoy that even some of the Peverell Family fell for its lure, over time. Imbeciles, the lot of them. The Grimoire, and later the 'Blood Compact' warns of these items being useless. But children never listen until they burn their fingers on the hot stove, don't they?"

Dobby looked into empty air as he reminisced his own master, the man first human to ask him to serve his Family; "But the one who crafted the most useful item was Ignotus, a good man and husband, a better father and great friend. He was my master, but he never dominated my kind nor asked us to commit indignities in his service. He wrought the very first Cloak of Invisibility, the one that all others are made to emulate, but never achieve fully. Recent alchemists have tried to use the shed hairs of animals that are naturally invisible to weave cloth then fashion a cloak. What a stupid idea! And long and painful for no reason. Ignotus did it simply and efficiently, in a way that endures to this day, after almost four millenia. He took thestral skin and tanned it thinner than vellum, then used spells to cut it as thin as wool thread after spinning on the wheel. He buried the bobbins in a patch of Nightsoil in the garden for a year, letting the Tenebrous Pioneer till the patch each time he passed the zone during his duties. At the end of the year, the magical but mortal skin filaments had been manipulated by the Minor God so many times that they had been transmogrified into Funeste Relics of Hadean Power. It was then left to his good mother to weave the bolt of cloth, and his wife cut and fashioned the cloak's basic shape, giving it the look of what the Tenebrous Pioneers wear. Then, he steeped the formed garment into a vat of enchanting oil to which he added holy oils of the cult of Hades and Living Blood of his own hands in Willing Tithe. This blessed the cloak with a permanent religious Fidelius ward that was anchored to the filaments and the blood-oil at the same time. Only those who see the wearer under the cloak at least once in their life will ever be able to use spells to detect its presence, but not see what's under unless it is the person they first saw with it. Easy process, if a mite long."

Dobby suddenly tilted his head to the side, as if listening to something in the distance, before excusing himself to answer mistress Narcissa. It was important to act as if they were still his owners, at least until master Harry Peverell – Potter – Black was ready to reveal himself openly.

The excited, truly venerable house-elf... No! Blood-Law-Elf... Popped out of reality, traveling through the Neverland dimension to respond his mistress' demands.

In disappearing so suddenly, the elf had left the human child and Faerie Drake with so many damned questions that it wasn't even funny anymore. Until Harry saw the expression of pure, unadulterated glee residing on Kreacher's face. Every Black instinct inside Harry was screaming to get out of the room to preserve his sanity and health. Nothing good could come of elves who had such mien on their visage.

Except that Harry's experiences with house-elves have always been much better, and much more fruitful, than those with any human to date. Maybe it would change later, but now that was the state of things. So he stayed, and listened to the elderly elf plot dastardly things with his younger housekeeper. It was after that last discussion that he withdrew into his trunk, his true home, with a migraine, spinning head, whirling eyes and nausea enough that even the stomach soothing potion just didn't want to work on him.

Bherk!

At least he wasn't actually sick or anything. So why did he have the damnable feeling that he and Rehz had just heard the Unspeakable uttered aloud inside the sanctity of the Black Blood-Wards?

Well, Dobby wasn't finished with his stories, so he'd be back. Not like he had much of a choice, since Harry was the only Peverell who was alive and magical at the same time. And he was also blessed by Hades, which seemed to be an important feature, in a House full of necromancers and their support staff.

Gods but his life was getting weirder than a drug dream! Momma! Come help your boy!

Preview of chapter 3;

Harry's trying to swallow and digest everything that Dobby has told him, but there's more coming, and then things get really wonky.

After a few meetings and July passed by at duel-casting speed, Dobby arrives in early August with a dire warning. A cruel, evil plot against Harry Potter awaits at Hogwarts, and the boy won't be able to defeat or bypass it, not with the Croaker Brothers and treasonous Unspeakables behind everything.

This places Harry before a hard, gut-wrenching decision; as September 1st arrives, will he go to Hogwarts at all, and if he doesn't, what happens to his relatives and friends who do?

So many plots, schemes and machinations abound, but all have forgotten two capital facts in all this convoluted Minotaur's dream of a labyrinth: Harry's Blood is truly Darker than Black, and Dobby has almost 5,000 years of secrets in his Bag of Holding that nobody except a few liches or Noble Dragons are still aware of.

And nobody asked the goblins what they think, but that's coming too, as sure as taxes and death.