Chapter 7 – Hereshot Kid Disaster
If he was being honest with himself, Harry was delighted that not only had Headmistress McGonagall accepted his tale so readily but she had also vowed to help however she could. He shouldn't have been surprised, McGonagall was firmly aligned with the Light and would always do what she could to protect her students and the school against any threat. That there was currently no bigger threat than Voldemort meant that her assistance was assured. It didn't hurt that this also meant he could delay having to go back to Gryffindor tower and have to run the risk of seeing other people. Seeing her. Seeing them. It was as a result of this that Harry found himself following the headmistress through the school to a storage area in the east wing that he'd never been to before. A few minutes of hunting around saw McGonagall make a triumphant sound before she turned to the young wizard.
"I knew there were some in here somewhere" she said, handing Harry a small package.
"What is it Professor"
"Come with me and I'll show you" The two exited the room through yet another door, and found themselves wandering another corridor Harry didn't remember seeing before. Eventually they came to another door which McGonagall opened and lead Harry through. They were in a grass covered courtyard and Harry could see the herbology greenhouses off in the distance. "I come here from time to time to sit and think about things" explained the headmistress. "It's a quiet area and quite the suntrap, ideal for contemplation. Anyway, put the package down in the middle of the grass" she continued, pointing to where she wanted Harry to lay the mysterious package. Once he had done so he was instructed to stand well back. McGongagall pointed her wand at it and with a swish and a flick incanted "Erecto!" With a pop, where the package once sat there was now a fairly plan looking tent, combat green in colour, like something from a bygone era. 6 feet long by 3 feet wide and 4 feet tall.
"That was easy" said Harry. The last time he had anything to do with a wizarding tent was at the quiddich world cup the previous year, and then everything had been set up before he arrived. McGonagall motioned for him to look inside. As he reached out for the tent flap a shimmering blue haze appeared which stopped him from touching the tent. He looked quizzically at McGonagall.
"You need to set yourself up as the keyholder for the tent. The motion is a circle and a downward flick making sure your wand still points at the flap, the incantation is 'Ego Clavem'" Harry followed the instructions and was rewarded by a yellow glow replacing the blue haze before both vanished. "Now you, and only you, can use the normal locking and unlocking charms. If you want to make another keyholder you need to hold on to the flap and point your wand at them. The incantation for that is 'Sunt Claves' and it will allow them to lock and unlock. Remember you can only have a maximum of two keyholders."
Harry opened the flap and hunched over to walk into the tent. Inside there was an entryway which led on to a fairly small but comfortable sitting room with a sofa and two chairs at one end and a small functional kitchen at the other, a fireplace took up the middle part of the wall, all set and ready to be lit. There were 5 doors leading off which on inspection hid three bedrooms and a bathroom with the last door being a storage cupboard. "This is impressive magic" he muttered. After exploring the tent for a few minutes he went back outside where McGonagall was waiting. "Why didn't you come inside?"
"Oh, you've seen one tent, you've seen them all" she replied. "I take it this will be sufficient for whatever you have planned?" Harry nodded.
"This will be ideal. Once it's set up can it be disillusioned so that it blends in with the background? I suspect I'll be staying mostly in rural areas as a series of temporary bases and then apparating to wherever I need to go". McGonagall nodded and mentioned that normal disillusionment charms would help the tent to be less obvious.
"Let's get this down again and go back to my office." She told Harry to point his wand at the tent, make a square movement and incant "facere parvum" to return the tent to the small package which would fit in a pocket. "Now that you are the key holder for that tent, only you can erect it and take it down." Harry nodded as he shrunk the tent down and stuck it in a pocket, thinking to himself that he would need to pick up a charmed rucksack too. The two returned to the headmistresses office where McGonagall motioned for Harry to sit.
"Do you have a timescale for your plans Harry?"
"Sort of. I think I'll be gone by the weekend. The sooner I get going, the sooner I can put plans in place and get to doing what needs to be done."
"What can I do to help?" McGonagall looked at the haunted figure before her. "I appreciate you don't want information leaking out, but anything you can tell me, you know will be kept in confidence to the best of my abilities." Harry nodded but didn't speak. The older witch continued. "For all his many faults, I know Albus was committed to the ending of You-Know-Who, he put a lot of trust in you Harry, I know there were failures in his treatment of you, but regardless, he'd be proud that you were continuing what he started." Another nod from Harry.
"About the prophecy" he blurted out. "I end Voldermort or he ends me. That's what it comes down to. That's why he was at the Ministry the night we were there, in the Department of Mysteries, he was trying to recover the prophecy. I already had it. He knows part of it, but not it all. I guess it doesn't matter if he finds out about the rest of it now, he know's that I'm mentioned in it, and that's enough to make sure he will keep coming after me until it ends, one way or another." McGonagall paled, but just nodded. This was even more of a burden upon his shoulders than he thought.
The night in question was one of the worst of Harry's short life. His godfather, Sirius Black had been killed and Hermione had been seriously injured when they walked into a trap set by Voldemort.
McGonagall carefully cultivated her stern image, she found it helped her teach if there was a faint air of fear surrounding her. She didn't suffer fools gladly, and had long since found that her teaching persona kept most fools at bay. That's not to say that she didn't hold an affection for certain students. Harry Potter was certainly one of those rare few, as was Hermione. McGonagall was secretly worried about the young witch and wizard, particularly now that Hermione seemed to be favouring the youngest Weasley boy as a companion, something she would never understand.
She'd spent years watching the Golden Trio develop, and saw the easy interaction between Harry and Hermione which reminded her of a latter James Potter and Lily Evans. Ron Weasley was not without his strengths, he was a prodigal talent at chess, and was occasionally capable of cutting insightfulness, but he was also prone to pettiness, jealousy and his lack of drive and ambition was well known amongst the staff. Minerva often thought that without the friendship of the other two, he would have failed more classes than he passed. There was no doubt a deep friendship between the three, but where Harry and Hermione would disagree, they would talk about their disagreements, rarely would those discussions descend into arguments. Ron and Hermione on the other hand, seemed to bring out the worst in each other when they set to a disagreement leading to their frequent rows passing into Gryffindor legend.
That's not to say she thought Harry was perfect, far from it. She recognised that he was insular, and whilst blessed with instinct, he often used that rather than logic and like Ron could often lack focus, although Minerva thought that was down to the influence of Ron. When Harry put his mind to something, often in conjunction with the only witch of the group, he didn't quit and would work as hard as was needed. That he had survived this long was testament to that. Hermione too was a glorious but flawed character. She could be domineering, bossy, she often came across as an arrogant know-it-all, when Minerva knew that all she really wanted to do was help the other two understand something. She was getting better as she matured, again, something Minerva put down to the influence of Harry who it turned out was a born teacher. Minerva had watched him teach the Defence Association, that rag-tag collection of students who had silently rebelled against the useless theoretical lessons imparted by the latest Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, the Ministry appointed Delores Umbridge. Whilst Hermione had been one of the keenest students in the class, Minerva had also watched as she took in Harry's teaching techniques, seeing how he interacted with the people he was trying to teach, like the proverbial sponge soaking up the practicalities of how to effectively impart information without coming across as condescending, something Hermione was aware she had problems with. It was plain to Minerva that those two would be good together. Yet another reason she was silently frustrated at Hermione had seemingly decided that she wished to form a closer liaison with the Weasley boy.
She snapped out of her musings to reply to Harry. "Albus had indicated that you were a child of prophecy, but of course would not disclose what the actual prophecy was."
"He only told me last year. To say I was mad was an understatement. I acted out and trashed his office. Very mature of me huh" Harry said with a wry snort. "But that's what it comes down to. Voldemort will hunt me down regardless, I also know how he survived whatever happened to him when he killed my parents." This was something Minerva wasn't expecting. "I'm not Dumbledore" Harry continued "but I have learned to appreciate how important it is not to let information go unnecessarily. Knowledge is power, and the wrong people having the knowledge means that the wrong people have the power. Voldemort is a prime example of that." Harry knew he had a decision to make. He trusted McGonagall and knew that she would not give anything away.
"As you've probably guessed anyway, Voldemort found a way to split parts of his soul and store them in magical objects. It's just about the darkest magic possible to do. Until they are all destroyed, Voldemort can't be killed. That's one of the reasons I'm leaving. I need to work out a way to track them down and destroy them. If I am static, I paint a target on my back and those of everyone around me."
McGonagall looked shocked. "How do you know this?"
"Dumbledore finally admitted it to me, albeit some time after I actually destroyed one of them." The shocks kept on coming for the headmistress. "Remember the Chamber of Secrets incident in second year?" She nodded as Harry continued. "The diary was one of the pieces of Voldemort's soul. When I stabbed it with the basilisk fang, the magic and venom in the fang poisoned the piece of the soul which was imbued in it."
"How many pieces of his soul are left?" McGonagall couldn't help but think the fates were lining up against this young man. "Can you use the fang to destroy any more of them that you find?"
"To answer your first question, I'm not sure. That's one of the things we discussed when I was at the Ministry yesterday. I know for a fact there's at least one more. I suspect there are another 3, 4 or more. That's the other reason I want to keep on the move. I don't know if Voldemort can tell when one of his soul containers is destroyed, if he can he'll presume it's me and that's another incentive for his version of Harry Hunting. For your second question, I can't use the same fang, using it to destroy the diary drained the fang of both poison and magic. I'm going to use the next day or so to do some research into dark magic and see if there's anything I can find that gives me a clue how to destroy something like that. Again, I have some ideas, but with something like this, I can't go off half-cocked."
"I can't imagine there is anything in the Hogwarts library which will be that dark, but you have my permission to have unfettered access to the restricted section. You may take another with you, but I would implore you to be very careful about who you take."
Harry understood both meanings behind the statement. Take Hermione, don't take Ron. Harry would have loved nothing better to take his best friend and give her the chance to display her phenomenal research skills, but…
"Thank you headmistress. I think I'll spend some time today in the restricted section whilst I'm here. It would be a shame to pass up the opportunity. When I leave here, I'm going to head to Diagon Alley to pick up some bits and pieces like an enchanted bag or rucksack to store things in, then I'm going back to Grimmauld Place, the Black library certainly lives up to its name, so I'm hoping I'll find something useful there."
McGonagall stood and walked to a cupboard on the other side of the room. After rooting about for a couple of minutes, she returned with a satchel. "This is charmed to be bottomless and weightless, there's also a mild sticking charm on the strap and bag itself to stop it sliding around when you have it on. It was the headmasters, but it's been emptied and checked for any nefarious charms. I'm sure he would have no objection to you 'borrowing' it for a period."
"Thank you very much headmistress, this will be a huge help!" Harry sighed with relief. He wasn't looking forward to a very public appearance at Diagon Alley.
"Have you eaten today Harry?" Minerva looked at him with concern.
"I had breakfast."
"May I presume that you don't plan to head to the great hall for anything today?"
"Not if I can avoid it. I was planning to see if I could sneak into the kitchen and grab a sandwich or something."
McGonagall called for a Hogwarts house-elf and within minutes there was a selection of lunch dishes on the spare table in the room. She offered Harry the chance to have lunch with her so they could continue their chat, an invitation Harry was only too glad to accept.
As they ate, Harry outlined his plan, such as it was. He was going to meet with Amelia Bones again and try and arrange a meeting with the Unspeakables, spend a couple of days at Grimmauld and then get ready for a life on the move whilst he figured out the conundrum of the horcruxes.
"And you plan to do this on your own?"
"More or less. I've arranged for a way to keep in touch with Madam Bones, I'm hoping I'll be able to use a similar method to keep in touch with people here, but that's going to be about it. This is going to be dangerous. Too many people have been killed or hurt because of their association with me. The best way to protect them is to get away from them."
Minerva had suspected as much. "Harry, isolating yourself like this won't help. Hogwarts is always going to be in Voldemort's firing line, as is the Ministry. You don't need to do this on your own."
"Yes I do!" The power behind Harry's statement surprised both of them. "We both know who would be most likely to come with me. I can't expose he… erm… them to that kind of danger."
Minerva's heart went out to him. "And how do you think they" he noticed the odd emphasis on the word "will feel about you throwing yourself into the path of danger without support?"
"I'll have support. Like I said, I'll be able to contact the DMLE, I'll hopefully be able to contact here, I have a couple of house elves who will help me, I'm working on a plan…"
"That's not what I meant Harry, as well you know. It does you no good to push people away. No one should have to do this alone, let alone someone with as good a heart as yours. I understand you want to keep people safe, but the wizarding world is at risk whether people are here or by your side."
"It's all about levels of risk professor." McGonagall didn't even think to correct him on the honorific used. "Whilst I'm not at Hogwarts, it's going to be much lower on Voldemort's list of priorities, so that buys you time to get your own plans in place."
McGonagall could see that Harry wasn't for being shifted. But, she thought, there is more than one way to skin a cat. She should be more aware of that than most!