Harry Potter - Gamer Neighbour
Summary: The new neighbour over the street at Privet Drive number five seems pretty normal, but not Privet Drive normal. But is anyone with the power of the gamer ever even remotely normal? No fucking way.
Disclaimer: I do own some shit, but not any recognizable characters, places or settings in this particular fanfiction.
AN: Finally had to cave and give an actual date. Using the 2020 calendar ( wrote this in 2020, but didn't publish it until 2021 ) to figure out what day of the week it is for simplicity's sake. Just assume that whatever unmentioned year this story takes place in by some weird multiverse bullshittery coincidentally happens to match the 2020 calendar in our piece of the multiverse perfectly.
From what I can figure out, Hogwarts school years end at the last week in June, though the End of Year feasts are held earlier for some weirdo Wizarding reason. The feast for Harrys/Violets third year was held early in June, but then they had weeks of school left after the End feast? Yeah, weirdo Wizarding reasoning. Then students have July + August off, then return to school on September 1st.
So the first chapter starts on July 3rd, three days after Violet comes back from Hogwarts. Their encounter at the supermarket later in that chapter and Violet's first night sleeping at Nick's place takes place on July 14th. Ten chapters later and we're now on July 17th, so not much time has passed and there's still a fair amount of summer left until Hogwarts starts up again on September 1st.
Chapter 11:
"So, yeah, uhm... We'll put that idea on ice for a bit. You just focus on getting better, mom." Violet said and went for a quick topic change before anyone said anything that kept her mind flashing to images of her snogging her own mother. "So, what now?"
"I need to consult some books to set up a proper diet and exercise regiment, then brew some potions to compliment that. Your mother needs clothes and necessities. I didn't check the Scrying bowl after we got back yesterday and haven't had time to do so today, so I'll want to have a quick look at that and see if Sirius has been located. Haven't read todays newspapers yet, but I need to check those to see if the Dumbledore story has broken yet or not." Nick rattled off but then smiled in Lily's direction. "But at a guess, I'd say that most of the day we'll be answering a lot of questions if you got your curiosity and determination from your mother." he finished.
"Oh yeah, I have questions. Many questions in fact. Lots and LOTS of questions." Lily firmly agreed, empathizing her point.
"I'd suggest moving downstairs for it. I had a cup of coffee when I made breakfast and another with breakfast, but I require more black gold in me." Nick declared, being the kind of guy who didn't properly wake up until sometime after his fourth or fifth cup of coffee.
Ten minutes later, they were seated in the big sofa facing the spot where Nicks TV had once been. He'd ordered a new one when he took Violet shopping, but it wouldn't be delivered until tomorrow evening. Violet had lent Lily a pair of very comfortable soft-fabric trousers and a thin long-sleaved shirt, as she had been a bit chilly and highly uncomfortable in just panties and t-shirt. The trousers were a bit small in length and too big in the waist, but it was still a far better fit for Lily then anything Nick had. Nick himself had made a pot of coffee for himself and brewed some tea for the ladies.
Lily had actually stated a preference for coffee over tea, but he'd advised her against that until her stomach had gotten used to not being a shrivelled-up husk of decomposing biological material any longer. The end result of that was that she was now looking down at a cup of weaker than usual tea with a splash of honey, while casting envious glances at Nicks cup of blacker then black coffee.
She had also gotten a highly unpleasant confirmation that her body was extremely weak. She had been incredibly pleased with her newly regained ability to move her body, but once she was out of bed, it had become immediately evident that everything wasn't sunshine and roses just yet. She had been awfully unsteady on her legs and just remaining upright had been a struggle. With Violets assistance, she'd managed to take a few steps, but had staggered and felt dizzy almost right away. That resulted in her once again having been carried by Nick, but to add further insult to injury, not directly downstairs as she had to visit the bathroom again.
At least she'd been able to wipe herself off this time, but there had been little privacy as she had swayed and felt dizzy even when sitting down, so Nick had been standing next to the porcelain throne holding her upright, then had to help her pull the panties and trousers back up for her as she'd nearly fallen flat on her face as she tried bending forward to do it herself.
And now she found herself staring at half a cup of shitty honeyed weak-arse tea, while that bastard Nick was drinking the sweet ambrosia that was coffee! She hadn't even been given a full cup, as her motor control wasn't the best, so she only got half a cup to reduce the risk of spillage. Forcing herself to remain mostly calm and polite after waking up this morning towards him had been pretty hard already after the events of yesterday. But him denying her coffee had damn well nearly pushed her over the edge into full-on rage. She had managed, but it had been a struggle. Looking down at her shitty tea did not make it any easier.
The chocolate chip biscuit she had been given with her tea seemed appealing however.
Breakfast hadn't been that long ago, but her stomach seemed eager to continue to wolf down more.
"Well, fire away." Nick suggested and sipped from his cup with a contented expression.
"Violet gave me a condensed version of her story and some general information yesterday." Lily started and frowned. "But she didn't know how or why you brought me back."
There were so many things she wanted to ask that it was incredibly hard to select one to begin with, but this felt like a good point to start from. It also felt like it would be something that could provide some measure of distraction and make it easier to remain calm. She wanted to rage at him, but barely knew him and was pretty darn helpless at the moment, heavily depending on his help. It galled her something fierce, but she just couldn't afford to act as she truly wanted and instead had to force herself to remain somewhat calm and polite.
"I had a look at the protections around Violet and found several odd bits. I assume you placed them on Violet, not number four?" Nick asked and Lily nodded. "I figured as much. I have no idea how, but Dumbledore somehow also managed to tie them to number four, your sister and your nephew. Or I assume it's Dumbledore at any rate, can't really think of anyone else who could have possibly managed to do it and had the opportunity to do so. Probably to not have the power requirements for something like that killing Violet, he also managed to tap into a local Leyline, which powers them instead of sucking Violet dry of magic. There's also a connection to them going off towards Hogwarts, I assume to monitor them. But there was also one more connection to them, which I tracked to Godric's Hollow. When looking at where that connection led, I discovered that it led to your body."
"That's impossible. I was dead, I know that I was dead. Corpses don't have any magic, so any connection I had would be gone in a few days at most." Lily protested.
"Yes, that one stumped me as well. At first, I thought you'd been buried alive or been put to sleep with the Draught of Living Death or something like that. But there were no air channels or something like that, even with the Draught, small amounts of oxygen is still periodically needed to maintain the faux death state. Any to be found in the grave wouldn't have lasted for very long. I just couldn't figure out what was going on. All I had was a guess." he sighed and scratched his jaw, then took another sip from his coffee.
"You cast the protections, so there was likely some connection to them still lingering even if they were centred on Violet. Dumbledore must have moved insanely fast after that Halloween. As best as I can figure, he got Violet installed in number four, changed the protections to include number four and the two related by blood to Violet and tapped into the Leyline before the magic in your body was completely gone. Not necessarily in that order. After that, excess magic from the protections constantly kept your body supplied with magic from then on. I'm not sure if your connection to the protections remained because you were the caster or because you got fed magic from the Leyline." he continued.
"This is a theory that came to me this morning, so all I knew yesterday was that your body was incredibly unique, since it still had magic in it. It sapped small amounts of magic from the protections, making them less powerful then they probably should be, I wanted to investigate what was going on. I told Violet that I wanted to unearth your remains and figure out what was going on, which she accepted after a lot of hesitation and deliberation. Once your remains were in my laboratory upstairs, well, a notion came to me. One of the Potions I can make is a powerful restorative, it can identify and heal almost any injury. If your body had magic, Potions could theoretically work on it." Nick further explained and Lily's eyes widened.
"There's Potions that can heal all ills, a general panacea? Wow, that was one of the holy golden grails of Potioneering if I remember correctly!" Lily exclaimed with great enthusiasm. "Potions must have come a long way in the last fifteen years!"
"I can't really mass produce them at the moment, but yes, I do have an experimental Potion that pretty much blows everything else I've ever heard about out of the water. Phoenix Tears probably is the only thing that comes even remotely close to it." Nick replied after a few moments, while Lily stared in shock at him.
"You invented it?" she asked with a highly impressed expression. He was still a daughter-molesting asshole, but she couldn't deny that having created something that Potion Masters had been trying to do for centuries was impressive as hell. If she hadn't been busy with her family and Voldemort, she might very well have been one of the researchers trying to accomplish that in whatever time she had that wasn t spent raising Violet.
"Rediscovered is probably a better word for it. I found the recipe, so someone else came up with it in the first place. I had never heard of it before, so it must have been lost at some point." Nick admitted.
Which was pretty much true, the recipe was a dungeon drop as were some of the ingredients for it, which was why mass production was impossible and why he'd never heard of it before the recipe dropped. If he could come up with some way of replacing the more unique ingredients with more easily acquired ones, he had a frigging gold mine on his hands. Phoenix Tears were good, but rare as fuck, so they cost an arm and a leg to buy when some were actually available and their shelf life was pretty darn bad. They could be used in ingredients for potions and the like for months, but used as-is for healing didn't work for longer then a week or two at most. He had a few drops up in his laboratory and those few drops had cost nearly as much as the basilisk venom he used up yesterday had. Fresh tears still good for healing would have been even more expensive if he had even managed to get Phoenix Tears that fresh.
"Anyway, after confirming that your body could accept Potions, I suddenly found myself in possession of an unexpectedly healthy corpse. So unexpectedly healthy in fact that I believed it possible to get that body going again. Of course, it was missing a Soul, which was a bit of an issue. Here's where my theory that using magic turns the users insane over time comes in." he admitted with a somewhat bashful expression. "Instead of placing the body under stasis and do some research, find me some talented researchers in various fields to help me out and prepare more thoroughly, I just went ahead and decided to fix the missing Soul issue right away."
"And you accuse me of being rash and hasty?" Violet suddenly interjected with a dubious expression, though it was tainted with a bit of gleeful schadenfreude as he wouldn't have a fucking leg to stand on if he tried leveling those same accusations towards her in the future. She just wished to have something similar over Hermione, the one who most frequently had made such claims against Violet in the past.
"How would you even go about fixing a 'missing Soul issue' anyway? That sounds... I'm no expert in Soul Magic, but after fifteen years, that shouldn't be even remotely possible!" Lily added in disbelief.
Nick sighed and held up his left hand, wiggling the finger which currently held the Gaunt ring with the Resurrection Stone. He had yet to remove it from his finger after he first put it on yesterday.
"This was hosting one of Voldemort s Horcruxes up until yesterday." he started and Violet gasped in shock, while Lily looked confused.
"Like that diary you told me about yesterday, Violet?" Lily asked, glancing at Violet, before her eyes returned to the ring.
"Yeah. I didn't know the diary was one when I destroyed it, but it supposedly was a Horcrux." she replied, looking with a sort of awe at the ring Nick was wearing.
"This is a hereditary ring that had been passed down the Gaunt line, Voldemort s family on his mothers side. But before that, it belonged to another line that came before the Gaunts. A much older family, a pretty infamous family." he explained. "The Peverells."
"The who?" Violet asked with a confused expression. "Never heard of them."
"A very old family, James said the Potters were descendants of them." Lily said, looking at the ring with intense interest and trying to ignore the grief, loss and frustration she felt at the reminder of her now dead husband. She hadn't quite processed and accepted the fact that she was now a widow and had no desire whatsoever to do that in front of what basically amounted to two strangers, even if one of them was her daughter and the other had brought her back to life. "They were pretty famous, there's even Wizarding fairy tales about them." she managed to continue after having taken a few moments to force her grief down and supress any chance of her breaking out in tears.
"Not so much fairy tales, actually. More along the lines of truth twisted into fiction." Nick commented. "The ring is nice now when a piece of Voldemort isn't freeloading in it, but the important bit for this conversation is this black stone set into it. This stone is one of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone, supposedly given to Cadmus Peverell by Death itself. I'm not so sure about that last bit, it could be just some incredible and immensely powerful enchantment that Cadmus somehow managed to cast or otherwise get his hands on. But Death itself or not, it is an incredibly powerful magic item with some measure of power over the Souls of the deceased. This was confirmed yesterday when I used it to summon your Soul from the afterlife to my laboratory and when a command from me made your spirit obey immediately instead of staring in shock and awe at Violet as had been the case before my order."
Violet gasped and Lily frowned.
"That's pretty much when I start to accurately recall things again. Everything from my death to that moment are... Incredibly vague. I remember nothing about what I was doing during that time, just have some impressions of things that have happened to Violet. I asked her about them yesterday and she could confirm that everything I somehow knew of had actually happened. I know we spoke of something before that, but when you said Violet's name, that's from when I start to remember things more clearly." Lily revealed.
Nick could somewhat relate. That was pretty much how he had felt too, when he first became aware. He'd remembered more about himself and his past after that, but at the time, it was as if he'd just come into existence from out of nowhere. He'd learned since that he had a presence before, fake as it sometimes felt. But he'd met people that he'd apparently known before, like Tonks who had been his friend for almost three years or Dana who he had gone to school with in Malta when he was younger. He'd spoken on the phone with his parents and sister and even visited his sister once after becoming aware when he was traveling around before coming to live at Privet Drive. Though none of that helped with the overall feeling that he didn't belong, that he was some sort of outsider or impostor somehow living a lie.
Lily's Soul had to come from somewhere, wherever Souls went when their bodies passed. Was that what had happened to him? Had his Soul come from somewhere else and been implanted into this body, perhaps grafted to or merged with the body's original Soul? Was that why he didn't really feel a true connection to anything that happened before his 'awakening'? Was that why he felt so disconnected from just about everything, but still sometimes got memories of things before his awakening?
But then, why did his friendship with Tonks feel so much more real than many other things from his past? Had his Soul known her before?
He gave a mental shrug, perhaps he'd get a better idea about what was going on once he eventually managed to max out his Soul Magic.
"Wait a moment. When did you manage to get a hold of that thing? It had a piece of Voldemort in it!" Violet demanded to know as she pointed angrily at the ring, as if that was somehow personally responsible for once housing a bit of Voldemort in it.
"I've been researching Voldemort, both after he assumed that silly name and before that, when he was Tom Marvolo Riddle. That also led me to look into the Gaunts, which led me to the Peverells. I knew that this ring existed, I suspected what the Hallow could do. So when I found myself with a body missing a Soul, I hopped onto my broom and went to the Gaunt Shack in Little Hangleton. I knew that a powerful object was hidden under nasty Wards there and hoped it was this ring. I hadn't bothered trying to overcome the Wards before as there was no real deadline to get my hands on it, but with the missing Soul issue, I went to see what I could do about the Wards." Nick replied, mixing a bit of truth with outright lies.
"Not sure what happened there, but the shack was in shambles when I arrived, which left the ring accessible and me able to just ignore what remained of the Wards which were somewhat in shambles after whatever exploded the building. So I just summoned the ring and came back here. The Horcrux in it came as a bit of a surprise, but I had some imported basilisk venom in my stores, so I used that to get rid of the Soul Shard. With that done, I could summon the Soul your body was missing and try to get the body working. When your body went from unexpectedly healthy corpse to living body without a Soul, I told you to get inside and then used a Potion made to trap Souls to bind your Soul to its former home." he declared.
Both Potters stared at him with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
"You... That..." Violet started and shook her head. "All of that happened when I was in the bath? You just went ahead and brought someone back from the dead in less then an hour?! And found a Horcrux? And destroyed a piece of Voldemort s Soul? On a whim?!"
"If it wasn't me it had happened to, I'd call bullshit right away. That's insane!" Lily protested. "It shouldn't be possible!"
"The amount of weird coincidences are staggering. It's almost enough to make even a sceptic like me believe in some form of divine guidance." Nick agreed and shook his head in wry disbelief. "We have a body that by some pretty weird circumstances still retained magic. A body that happened to be found by someone who not only had the means to bring it back to a working condition, but also knew about a way to bring the original Soul back AND get that Soul to stick to its old body. Not sure what the odds of all of that happening all at once are, but they must be ridiculously small."
"How about James? Can you bring him back?" Lily demanded and Violet perked up, staring intently at Nick.
"I am sorry, but I do not believe so. Your body had magic in it, which allowed me to restore it well enough with Potions that it could be revived before I trapped your summoned Soul inside your body. If I did the same with James, we'd have his Soul trapped in a shit-condition dead body without magic. That would..." Nick started, then trailed off and looked incredibly confused for a while, before he eventually spoke again. "I am just guessing here, but I would assume that would still trap his Soul in his former body. But since it's a dead body without magic, it would either trap his Soul permanently here instead of wherever Souls are when they aren't here or his Soul would be slowly destroyed without magic to sustain it. Ordinarily, the Soul would just depart from a dead body, but if it is trapped, it might just fade into nothingness. I'm not sure. Could even turn out to be a way to create some sort of undead, some variant of Lich or Inferi."
Both Potters looked utterly crushed at that.
"Could another body be used? A living body without a Soul, like someone executed by Dementor's Kiss?" Nick mused to himself while looking down at his now empty coffee cup for a while, before he looked up at the girls again. "I have studied many things over the years, but Necromancy isn't one of them. I know a bit of Soul Magic, but I am far from an expert in it. If we could somehow find a living body without a Soul that is compatible with James Soul, like a blood relative or some such, it MAY be possible, but I can't say for sure one way or the other. You'd need an expert in Soul Magic to give you a solid answer to that."
He wasn't completely sure, but it may be possible to return James Potter.
The key was getting James body to hold magic within it, so it could be brought back to the same state as Lily's body had been in. While she had been dead, he had gotten her body to a stage where it was weak, but not in any sort of lethal danger other then her original death of course. So he had been able to get her heart beating on its own and once that happened, trapped her Soul inside that once again living body.
Dead bodies didn't have magic to them and held infused magic very poorly, quickly loosing it.
But if he could tap a Leyline or some other powerful source of magic, channel that magic into a dead body and keep it being channelled into it faster or at the same rate as the body lost that magic, that body would wind up in a similar state as Lily's had been in. He still wasn't sure how Dumbledore had managed to do that, but if he could somehow do that or something similar to it, there would be another corpse which somehow had magic in it.
It may also be possible to do some sort of bastardized version of the Ritual to create Inferi, which did imprint some magic into dead bodies. If he could somehow remove the parts that turned the Inferi into mostly mindless slobbering monsters and keep the get-magic-into-dead-body-part, he might wind up with a body in a similar state as Lily had been.
He wasn't quite sure, but perhaps something could be done with Mana Potions as well, if something could be done that made the corpse hold on to magic better then it otherwise would.
With that starting point, the same process he'd used for Lily should work for James or just about anyone. Possibly at least, he suspected that the magic that had been infusing Lily's body was responsible for the unexpectedly good condition her body had been in. It hadn't been nearly as decayed and decomposed as he had expected it to be. But if magic could just be forced to flow through a body in a reasonably decent starting condition, it might just be possible to resurrect just about anyone thanks to the Hallow and his Potions. With a less well-preserved body, they might have a harder time to fully recover then Lily would, but it might be possible.
However, letting that be known and preforming experiments along those lines, did not feel like a good idea at all. There would be enough chaos, confusion and disorder once the news that Lily was alive again got out. Even worse, if it was known that he could repeat it as long as he had enough Potions and knew the name of the deceased so the Soul could be summoned. If others somehow learned how to repeat what he could do, well, if the world thought it had resource management and overpopulation issues now, just wait until mass resurrections of the deceased increased the population even more!
Even letting just Violet and Lily know about it felt like a bad idea, especially since there was that Sub Quest, which now didn't seem quite as impossible as it had in the past. He was sitting on the same couch as two Potter females. Having James Potter around, well... He did like a challenge, that much was true, but seducing his wife and daughter from right under his very nose?
Yeah, no.
He wasn't THAT fond of challenges.
So instead of admitting that it may be possible, he instead told them that earlier spiel about permanently trapping his Soul, possibly making him an undead, Soul-compatible bodies of relatives and the like. All likely possibilities, to be honest. But he told them all of that mainly to get their minds off the possibility of getting James back in any sort of reasonable time frame and distract them a bit from other possibilities of accomplishing that.
Telling the truth, but not the full truth, was the best way to lie to people. That way, there was no proving it to be a lie.
Now then, perhaps some other distraction to get their minds further away from possibly bringing the husband/father back from the dead, that didn't seem too unnatural a change of topic?
And gave him a chance to get over feeling like such an utter and complete asshole for concealing the full truth from them.
"The Resurrection Stone of Cadmus Peverell, the Elder Wand of Antioch Peverell and the Cloak of Invisibility of Ignotus Peverell. Together the three of them are known as the Deathly Hallows." he started and held up the hand with the ring again. "The descendants of Cadmus joined with descendants of another infamous family one point, the descendants of Salazar Slytherin. Many generations later, this resulted in the birth of Tom Marvolo Riddle, now more commonly known as Voldemort. The Stone was passed on down that family as a heirloom. The Elder Wand went from Wizard to Wizard over the centuries, not following Antiochs descendants, but rather whomever managed to take the Wand from the previous owner. Its whereabouts are currently unknown." he continued. "The whereabouts of the Cloak of Ignotus Peverell is generally unknown by the general public, but I do have a fairly strong suspicion that it can be found in the Potter Vaults at Gringotts or wherever else James may have put it." he finished.
"What?!" both ladies exclaimed in shock.
"Ignotus grandchild, Iolanthe Peverell, should have inherited the Cloak once her father, Ignotus son, passed away. Iolanthe married a certain Hardwin Potter and by following the bloodline down from there, we eventually wind up with Violet here. James was known to have had an Invisibility Cloak that he inherited from his father. However, Invisibility Cloaks tend not to age very well, unless they are both exceptionally well made and properly cared for. So the likelihood of James inheriting one that actually works are pretty darn low. If that rumour is actually true, what he got was in all likelihood the Cloak of Invisibility originally held by Ignotus Peverell." Nick explained.
He was actually pretty sure that it was currently somewhere up in Violets room, likely in her trunk, but he'd have a hard time explaining how he actually knew that as Violet had never mentioned her cloak to him, so he didn't. He hadn't rummaged through her trunk when he got her stuff from number four, just put stuff in it that he'd found outside of the trunk, so if it had been somewhere in there, he'd just made it harder to tell by dumping more stuff into the trunk. Of course, there was also a possibility that she had never received it. The Harry he recalled had gotten it for his first Christmas at Hogwarts, but that might not necessarily have happened with Violet.
Violet gasped, jumped up from the couch spilling some of her barely touched tea and slammed the cup down on the low table in front of the couch, then darted off upstairs to her room.
Lily just stared silently at him with a shocked and awed expression for several moments.
"How do you know all this?" she asked.
"Lots and lots of reading and research." Nick stated with a somewhat bashful expression. "My parents moved all over the place when I was young, so I didn't have all that many close friends. So I turned to books and still go through a great deal of them even now."
It was even true, from what he could recall. He had been a real bookworm while growing up and still was to this day. Of course, not all his knowledge came from reading, but he couldn't exactly reveal that to her.
"My fathers cloak." Violet announced after returning, holding the Cloak up like some sort of trophy.
"It certainly looks to be in a very good condition for an inherited Invisibility Cloak." Nick commented as he observed the silvery-looking material of the cloak.
Violet returned to her seat and all three of them observed it, running their fingers over the smooth silky material.
"It's like the Stone, there's a truly immense amount of magic layered into this." Nick commented after feeling it out. "Does it do anything else? This amount of magic is... It's leagues and leagues above what it takes to turn invisible. It is attuned to Secrecy, which makes it hard to get a good feel for it. But I can tell that it has got more to it then that."
He frowned.
"I shouldn't even be able to tell that, with this amount of power and being attuned to Secrecy. Heck, with this amount of magic, I wouldn't even expect to be able to tell that it was magic in the first place if all of that power was used for Secrecy." he continued and peered intently at the cloak.
"Not that I've ever noticed." Violet admitted. "It can hide more then just one person, that's all I've noticed."
"James never mentioned it ever doing anything else either." Lily spoke up.
"There's... A weak spot?" Nick murmured and moved his hands over to an area of the Cloak that felt different. He felt all over the cloak and peered intently at it, but found nothing. After turning it over however, he saw and felt something off about the inside lining. He got his wand out and shone some light down at the area that felt different. "Huh, that's clever." he mused. "There's some runes stitched into it, using a similar material as whatever the Cloak itself is made of. Look, there's barely any difference in colour whatsoever, so it's hard to spot, but if you run your hands over this area, you can feel it."
"That bearded old fucker! He messed with my cloak?!" Violet snarled.
Nick held his left hand up and tilted it back and forth, his right still running over the runes he'd found.
"This feels old, very old." he murmured, straining hard to feel it out with his Mage Sight going at full tilt. Looking at the Cloak with Mage Sight activated made him feel faintly nauseous and the Stone he could somewhat see out of the corner of his eyes made breakfast rest uneasily inside his stomach. He tried to focus just on the Runes, ignoring everything else. "Probably not Dumbledore, I think. At a guess, I'd say this was done about two hundred years ago, if not more. Probably someone who wanted to do research on the Cloak, figure out how it was made. But they probably couldn't analyse it as it was, so they added these runes to make it easier." he finally decided, letting out a sigh of relief as he deactivated his Mage Sight which lessened the uncomfortable feeling he got. He was also somewhat pleased that Violet's gut instinct had been to blame Dumbledore, it seemed like his dirt-slinging had taken and made her distrust the bearded old Wizard. "It's some form of beacon array done in a very old style, unrefined and inaccurate by the standards of today, but pretty darn powerful. It would conflict with the Secrecy on the Cloak, possibly..." he trailed off and was lost in thought for nearly a full minute.
"Snap out of it, you ruddy rune geek!" Violet exclaimed and slapped the back of his head.
"Ah, sorry. It makes the Cloak 'less invisible', I guess you could say. Might also interfere with some other functions it might have." he said with a faint shrug. "Can't really tell how the Cloak works, so it's hard to say exactly how this array interferes with what it's supposed to do."
"Dumbledore does seem able to look through it." Violet mused. "Can you fix it?" she asked after a few moments.
"I don't think I'd want to use magic directly on the Runes or the Cloak itself, the amount of magic in it would make a very big kaboom indeed if something went wrong. I can't really stich, never had a hand for that sort of shit, but cutting the threads and pulling them out the Muggle way should be doable." he decided after a moment to consider it. "Any of you good at that sort of thing?" he asked.
"Normally I'd say yes." Lily replied and held her right hand up, slight tremors visible as she strained to hold it steady. "But it's probably not a good idea right now."
"Lavender and Molly have both tried to show me. Most I try come out as eldritch abominations however." Violet admitted with a bashful grin.
"The tomboy is strong in this one..." Nick murmured with a bemused expression, shaking his head as he walked off to find something to work with. He didn't have any stitching supplies and was reluctant to even expose the highly magical Cloak to the faint magic inherent to conjured tools, but eventually returned with a scalpel and a small plier. It took nearly ten minutes to extremely carefully completely remove the old rune array and he immediately noted a significant difference. Even when he was holding and handling the Cloak, he felt no magic at all in it.
Violet pulled it on and vanished from sight, so it seemed to work just as well as ever. He activated his Mage Sight again, but found nothing at all. Not even the weird sensation he felt when he looked at the inactivated Cloak before. It truly was as if there was nothing at all where he knew Violet was seated. He deactivated his eyes and tried the human revealing charm and a few others, but still couldn't find her. He slowly reached out and his hand encountered her cloak-covered head, so she really was there.
"Well, you're invisible to Mage Sight and all the spells I tried. Not sure what worked and didn't work before, but I'd hazard a guess and say that Dumbledore probably won't be able to repeat his earlier feat and see through your Cloak now." he announced.
"Awesome!" Violet approved and pulled the hood off her head, though the rest of her was still concealed underneath the Cloak.
"Woha, that's disconcerting!" Nick exclaimed and Lily nodded.
"James thought it was the height of hilarity to Glamour himself into someone else and scare the pants off other students with his disembodied head act. He got pretty good at emulating Minerva s voice, so quite a lot of students would occasionally freak out and tell stories of the disembodied head of Professor McGonagall haunting the hallways and broom closets of Hogwarts. I think one terrified Hufflepuff actually tried to Exorcize her once, believing that she was some sort of poltergeist in human disguise." Lily snorted, shaking her head as she recalled the immature school antics of the man she eventually married, once he grew out of silly childish pranking and the immense immaturity of his earlier life.
Well, mostly.
He did have the occasional setback.
But as time passed and especially during her pregnancy with Violet, he'd matured or at least learned to act more mature. After the birth, he backslided a bit, but mostly when playing with baby Violet, which seemed to bring out the child in himself once more.
Speaking of time.
"What date is it?" Lily asked. Violet had told her when they spoke in her bed yesterday that she'd just finished her third year in Hogwarts, so it was the summer before her fourth year. But how late or early in the summer?
"Friday July 17th." Violet replied.
"It's almost your birthday." Lily exclaimed. "My... Baby's... Sixteenth... Birthday..." she said, her words coming out very slow and choked, as she started tearing up. "I've missed so much..." she whispered to herself.
Damn.
Why was she so emotional? Why did tears come so easily for her? A hardcore badass like her? Sucking them back in and forcing them from doing more then moistening the corners of her eyes now was pretty darn hard. She had faced the Dark Lord three times and lived to tell about it! Not crying shouldn't be an issue!
She had faced It four times now, come to think of it, if she could count the meeting in Godric's Hollow since she had in fact died during that meeting.
But hell, she was alive again now and could talk about it. It fucking counted!
"Oh, birthday cake! Prezzies!" Violet approved, still appearing as just a bodyless head floating in mid-air.
"And of course that's what she focuses on..." Nick muttered.
Lily smiled wryly at her daughter s enthusiasm and sniffled once, making a bit more of an effort to hold back her tears.
"To be fair, I do remember acting in a similar manner around my own birthdays." Lily admitted.
"Hell yeah!" Violet approved and stuck her tongue out at Nick. "See that, you big stuffy bore? She gets it!"
"Fine, fine. Yahoo, woopie and all that jazz." he responded unenthusiastically, but did offer a slight smile in recompense. The smile rapidly turned evil though. "I bet she completed her summer homework faster though. I have yet to see a single schoolbook out and about." he commented with a glance at Lily.
"Oh?" Lily asked in a chilly tone of voice and Violet's disembodied head froze in place for a moment, before she directed a betrayed expression at Nick.
"It's all easy stuff! I can knock it off well ahead of time. Divination was just writing down the results of a single Reading." Violet frantically tried to assure her mother.
"You're taking Divination?" Lily asked, her voice still chilly, in fact it got more chilly once Divination was mentioned.
"Have fun talking, Reds. I'll just take my boring self off to my office and dig through some medical textbooks, see if I can get a proper diet and exercise program set up." Nick announced, patting Violet's head in a manner that felt more patronizing than the usual sense of comfort she sensed from them.
"Traitor!" she hissed under her breath, while quailing under her mothers disapproving stare.
Digging through some medical textbooks and refreshing his memory didn't take very long, so ten minutes after entering his office, he pretty much had the road to Lily's recovery plotted out, as long as no unexpected issues or new problems cropped up at some point. Easy exercise, slowly building on it as time went along, to get her muscles back to snuff. His meals tended to be balanced and varied, so there wasn't that much work to do on that front. A bit more focus on minerals and vitamins, possibly also some extra protein-rich sides for Lily with meals and ensuring that there were plenty of snacks for between meals. Along with Nutrient Potions, that should see her filling back out and regaining a healthier appearance, rather then looking like some gaunt anorectic on an extra harsh diet.
The real challenge probably was keeping Violet from overeating and binging on snacks and side dishes meant for Lily. The girl certainly had a healthy appetite.
With that handled, he instead turned his attention inwards.
Violet coming on to him had been unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. He had delayed giving a response instead of accepting and now he wanted to figure out why that had been.
The last couple of days had been hard in many ways, not only did he have his hands all over a very attractive young lady multiple times a day, but he did that while being affected by the aphrodisiac he'd added to the Potion to treat her Magic Burns. There was a certain kind of selfish appeal to accepting and he had indeed almost done that at first, before he got distracted by her pain and stopped thinking with his dick. He doubted that there would be sexual satisfaction immediately incoming if they became boyfriend-girlfriend, but with how rash and brash Violet could be, he assumed it wouldn't be long before she started pushing for increasingly intimate acts if they did get together.
He rubbed his temples, he'd assumed that the Sub Quest would be more of a long-term project, but Violets part of it certainly seemed well on the way.
The unexpected addition of Lily Potter to the household had also provided the missing second part to that weird quest, but there was a lot of work to be done there. Especially as the largest setbacks he recalled from checking his relationship log with Lily yesterday all had to do with Violet. That -50 Affection, which was the biggest single relationship score setback he'd ever seen, was for rubbing her daughter s vagina.
He still wasn't sure he'd actually done that. Around it, sure. That was possible. His memory was hazy, but he had managed to get some hazy sporadic images of his hands rubbing burns in that area. The log said pussy however, but perhaps Lily believed he had taken the chance to finger her daughter right before her very eyes? Geez, she really didn't think much of him, did she?
Clearing up that misunderstanding might get him a slight bonus, but he was more concerned with the fact that Lily quite obviously did not approve of him doing much of anything at all with her daughter. So getting into a relationship with the much younger girl?
Yeah, he doubted that would go over well with Lily.
So not immediately accepting likely had been the correct decision to avoid something along the lines of a -100 entry in Lily's relationship log. He needed to develop his relationship with Lily before she would accept him and her daughter doing much of anything.
And of course continue to develop it, so that she'd eventually accept getting involved with him alongside her daughter.
He nearly started laughing hysterically.
Yeah, that last bit would be a tad challenging.
But, he was a gamer...
Ever since he first became aware and realized that he would have to get involved with events in the British Wizarding World to help Violet and complete his own quests, he'd mostly focused his efforts on preparation. There had been so many people to meet with, so much to learn, so many things to arrange, prepare and set up in just the right way.
Honestly, he would have liked to take a few more weeks to prepare instead of coming to Privet Drive to start interacting with Violet, but since she was such a big part of what he had to do, he hadn't wanted to put it off for any longer. If he had known how easy it would have been to increase his relationship with her, he likely would have waited a bit longer.
He'd also focused pretty much all his experience and skill points that he gained on knowledge. He had noticed the abundance of Perks to select from, but had hardly bothered. But there were a lot of them that no doubt would assist in building a relationship with the two ladies under his roof. He'd mostly skimmed through the ones he had no immediate use for, but he did recall seeing a lot of them that had some sort of sexual or harem connotations based on their names.
Yeah, he might just have to increase the amount of time he spent farming dungeons.
He generally stuck to a few runs before going to bed. While no time passed in the real world while he was in a dungeon, time did pass for him in there. He got tired, thirsty and hungry, he sometimes got injured and needed to heal up. He could eat, drink, toss down potions and even sleep in the dungeons if he found a safe spot for it, but the end result was that he often returned back to the real world with a slight headache on top of feeling a bit tired and exhausted, somewhat like a he was jetlagged, so it was handy to do his dungeon crawling before bed so he could just exit and then go to sleep.
But perhaps he should add a few more dungeon runs as part of his daily routine, all he really needed was a minute or so of relative privacy to enter and exit. In theory, all he needed to do was go to the bathroom, then do a dungeon or two before actually exiting the bathroom. He probably shouldn't do the harder high-level dungeons mid-day, but he could run one or two easier ones. It wouldn't give a lot of experience, but loot was nice too and if he avoided the harder ones that generally took longer to complete, he should still have enough energy do deal with the rest of the day. He could save the harder stuff for his usual evening runs.
It was kind of tempting to open a dungeon and go right now, but yesterday had been somewhat of a mess and his reserves were still a bit on the low side. One or two lower-level dungeons should be fine in theory, but in case the rest of the day actually had something strenuous in store for him, even that might be a bit of an issue.
He did have some Mana Potions in his inventory, but some of the ingredients needed for those were pretty rare drops, so he preferred to save those for real emergencies.
He absently wondered what Lily would say if she knew that he could have just given her a Mana Potion instead of the Mana Infusions from yesterday. Or when she'd realize that he could just as well have made a cut on his finger or some other part of his body and had her suck on that for a bit instead of having to kiss her.
He chuckled quietly to himself.
The kissing was so much more amusing and had some interesting future potential, especially if a situation arose when it would have to be Violet that provided the infusion. If he were to succeed with the Sub Quest, having the two of them used to at least some measure of intimacy with each other had some serious potential. If they weren't keen on getting intimate with the other present, well fine, he could most certainly live with that. But if he could arrange things so that there was a bit of mother-daughter threesome action in the future... Well, that did sound appealing.
Fuck, he was hard again.
He'd been semi-erect ever since the massage earlier, but the thought of some mother-daughter girl-on-girl action had removed the 'semi' from that state.
But even if a need for Lily getting an infusion from Violet never cropped up, he certainly enjoyed referencing it from time to time, just to see and enjoy their reactions. It was just too hilarious to refrain from doing it.
He sighed and rubbed his temples again, trying to clear his mind and get his body to settle down.
He looked at the pile of mail that had amassed since he last checked it before going to Godric's Hollow yesterday, figuring that it would be a decent enough distraction and something he needed to do nevertheless. Thanks to a bit of runic trickery that emulated his magical signature, he'd managed to get any owls heading for him to instead drop their mail in a box just inside the owl flap instead of heading for him to deliver whatever they were carrying. Another little but of runic awesomeness on that box teleported everything deposited in it to a plastic tray on the top of a low bookcase.
He walked over and looked it over, starting with the Daily Prophet. The manhunt for Sirius Black was still going on, but had yielded very little in the way of results. Other then that, nothing really caught his attention as he skimmed through the paper. That was usually the case, the Prophet wasn't worth the paper it was printed on except on a few rare occasions. But it paid to be attentive to what the people around you knew and believed in, so he maintained a subscription to keep himself up to speed, even if actually reading the newspaper sometimes made him want to gag and shout in outrage.
There were some crappy and scandalous Muggle newspapers as well, but the Prophet was the biggest and for most of the magical population on the British Isles ONLY source of news. Unlike Muggle radio, the Wizarding Wireless Network didn't have regular news broadcasts. They still happened from time to time, but there was no set schedule for them and it could sometimes go a week or two without a single one. That just boggled the mind, how could anyone expect a society to function if they got all their news from a publication that made The Daily Mash or Weekly World News look respectable in comparison?
He skimmed through the latest issue of The Quibbler as well.
Of course, the second biggest source of regular news for magicals in the British Isles was The Quibbler. That was an even bigger load of bollocks. The entire mostly-monthly-unless-otherwise-for-weird-reasons magazine was like a big freaking puzzle. It read as if it was a source of LSD-fuelled funky dreams disguised as articles if you just took it at face value and read everything as it was written. But if you interpreted and decoded the articles, you could find some interesting morsels here and there. But it took a fair bit of mental gymnastics to do so and he usually had a headache afterwards whenever he tried to read an entire magazine. Besides, it's not like it was guaranteed to be something interesting. One article could read like a report on some mystery animal sighting, but once interpreted and decoded, it was about taxation on foreign imports being raised. Another could read like an interview with someone claiming to be a druid instead of a Wizard, but turn out to be a dirty limerick and a recipe for pumpkin-strawberry lemonade once decoded.
He liked the Rune Puzzles though, some were actually pretty nifty.
But yeah, no wonder Wizards were so crazy.
He skimmed through some of the international newspapers he subscribed too as well, but found nothing of interest. Seemed like the interview with Grindewald had yet to be printed and a lot of the focus at the moment was on the Quidditch World Cup. Sports and especially Wizarding sports held little interest for him. The World Cup final match was of interest, but not because of some idiots on brooms mucking about in the air.
In a way he was grateful that the interview hadn't dropped like a bomb yet, some more time to prepare was nice. But on the other hand, he kind of wanted shit to hit the fan so his plans could progress.
A bit of chaos and the authorities being distracted felt even more important now, when he had a resurrected woman on the other side of his office wall and no Wards around his house.
Come to think of it, he probably should lock himself away in his laboratory for a few hours at some point and prepare some nasty surprises to plant around his house and yard. If some Unspeakable hit squad arrived to lay their hands on Lily and drag her back to the Ministry for research, he'd show them runic hell, alchemical warfare and elemental Armageddon. Just because he preferred to avoid conflict, didn't mean that he didn't have quite a few ideas about how go about making any assholes who really annoyed him truly regret that for the short time they had left to live after angering him.
Come to think of it, he might have to frantically defend his home from people just desperately wanting to return their loved ones from the grave.
Fuck, he needed non-lethal defences as well. It was one thing to go all out against the ministry goons in the Department of Mysteries wanting to cut up Lily for research, but common civilians who just wanted dead family members, loved ones, relatives and friends returned to them? That wasn't something he felt warranted having their faces melted off by a spray of alchemically enhanced acid or their bones and eardrums shattered by a sound bomb.
His temples got another rub.
"Seems like every time I sit down to think, some new project I need to spend some time on crops up." he sighed and shook his head. "And now I'm thinking about stealing Time Turners... Great, another project." he groused and shook his head, then focused on the letters. The Great Time Turner Heist could be worth considering to give him more time for everything it seemed he needed to get done, but it certainly wasn't something he was willing to spend any time and effort on at the moment.
There were three letters worthy of his attention however.
One was from his old friend Dana he'd met while living on Malta. The two of them had met when he went to school in Valletta when he was younger and he'd gotten back in touch with her after becoming aware earlier this summer, since she was now an Assistant Professor in Charms at Durmstrang. He'd used her to get him a meeting with the Durmstrang Board of Directors and Headmaster, which had been somewhat of a challenge before she got him in. Thanks to that, Durmstrang was now on board with his desire to expand upon the Tri-Wizard Tournament and have it start earlier in the school year.
No way in fucking hell was he going to leave Violet on her own at Hogwarts from September 1st to Halloween, but unless he could get himself a job at Hogwarts, he had no real way in. But if the Tri-Wizard Tournament started earlier and she became a Champion as he expected her to, he would have a reason to be there as her tutor.
Assuming she even wanted him as such, that was. But he imagined that she would. She did seem to think that he was awesome enough to be suitable boyfriend material after all.
That was why he had spent a fair amount of effort this summer to try and make some changes to the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
The letter from Dana was pretty simple, mostly a thanks for some rare books and a runic air conditioning array he'd gifted her as thanks for her help. It deserved some sort of response however since without Dana, getting to meet with the head honchos at Durmstrang would have been a nightmare. Most of them were ultra-conservative old mega-traditional farts, with little to no desire to speak with a Muggle-loving foreign Wizard from a disgraced branch family of an otherwise respected Pureblood line. But once he had gotten that meeting, he'd been able to play on their greed and pride to make them see the point in his ideas and opportunity for personal profit for most, if not all of them. So yeah, he owed Dana a big debt of gratitude for her assistance.
The letter from Gringotts was to inform him that they had acquired Wizarding tents, a big regular party tent that had been modified to his specifications, rented furniture, reserved a significant part of the camp-ground near the Quidditch World Cup Finals for his use and gotten him the security team he'd asked for. Mixed in was a bunch of thinly and not so thinly veiled insults from his Manager, a goblin that had seemed to take an instant dislike to him shortly after his awakening. He had no memories of the goblin ever been so disgruntled before he awoke, but he'd also had little reason to personally interact with him in the past, but a lot of reason for it this summer once he started preparing for a very busy year. But disgruntled, outright hatred or whatever it was, the little bastard was none the less highly competent and came through time and time again. Just like he had this time.
His smirk was positively devilish at that. Renting tents and an area of the campground, then sell overpriced accommodations to affluent Witches and Wizards who were there for the World Cup may even bring him a bit of profit if it got popular, which he expected it would. The large party tent with food and drinks at the edge of the area he had rented certainly would bring in some profit. A few house elves he'd rented with a real knack for cooking would keep the kitchen running and he would have a good amount of attractive servers on hand both to serve food and drinks, but also to bring in large crowds with their somewhat risqu uniforms.
It wasn't anything he thought was truly scandalous, but they would be wearing uniforms that were a bit more well-fitting and revealing then what was common in the Wizarding World. It should do well enough to attract a lot of attention, without pissing off too many conservatives, though some would no doubt be scandalized. Some older conservatives believed showing ankles was immoral for crying out loud! But he thought he'd struck a decent middle-ground between proper and scandalous for the majority. Heck, he wouldn't be surprised if he got requests to open a permanent establishment once word got out.
But the real reason for doing all that wasn't for profit or to showcase different sort of foods compared to what was available in Wizarding Britain, even if both was a nice perk.
No, the real reason was to get a team of ex-Aurors from all over eastern Europe into the country. They would act as security around his area of the campgrounds and bouncers for the party tent.
So what if most of them happened to be hardened combat veterans with a real hardon for fighting Dark Wizards? Wasn't that just an odd coincidence? Certainly nobody could accuse him of bringing them over mostly for that very reason, could they?
He chuckled.
He really couldn't get too involved in that bit or there would probably be some interrogation and possibly something worse then a temporary stay in a DMLE holding cell in his future. He'd asked the goblins to hire the security company he'd found after extensive covert research and background checking, then told the goblins about the guards duties as bouncers and general security for his area of the campgrounds, but nothing else. They hadn't been instructed to deal with anything happening outside his area, just been given instructions for the area he had rented.
But if he'd gotten the read on these men and women correct, they wouldn't just stand around gawking if the Death Eaters decided to have a bit of fun after the finals.
The guy who would be in charge at the campgrounds was almost a hundred years old and had been kicked off the Auror force in Germany when he lost his left leg. He'd been working in private security ever since and never really lost his touch, in spite of a missing leg. That he had lost his leg by being one of the only people to ever face Gellert Fucking Grindewald in one-on-one combat and lived to tell the tale with nothing wrong with him other then that missing leg, was pretty darn impressive. Most people who'd stood face to face with Grindewald were dead, even if they had faced him as part a of larger group. With that experience in his youth and not having lost his touch over the years, meant that the old bastard was likely one of the deadliest motherfuckers to wield a wand who ever walked the planet! Having had to walk on a peg leg for nearly eighty years had also given him a real hatred for dark wizards.
Putting him in the same area as people who liked to dress up in dark robes, masks and fuck about with innocents?
Nick couldn't wait for the fireworks to begin. He imagined the crusty old fucker would rally the security team and come down on the Death Eaters like divine punishment from an entire pantheon of Gods the moment the dark-robed fuckers started messing about. He probably wouldn't bother telling his people to take them alive either and Nick knew the old guy had a reputation for brutality and fondness for a flesh rending spell of his own creation that witnesses had dubbed 'The Mincemeater'. It pretty much lived up to the name, it turned whatever it hit into minced meat, completely shredding the target in a violent shower of gore and bone fragments.
Nick imagined that the Death Eaters would quickly find something else to do very far from there, once a few of them had been ripped apart. Assuming the old guy would let any of them get away, of course.
He chuckled again. It had been a lot of work setting things up, but just the thought of what he saw as a likely course of events made it all worth it.
He might catch some flack for bringing combat-hardened trained killers into the country, but they were employed by a genuine security firm with a good reputation and he'd hired that company through Gringotts, so he felt decently confident that it wouldn't bring him any genuine legal problems. After all, how could he had known that the security he'd hired consisted of so many bloodied badasses? He suspected that he might still be detained and having to endure multiple questions from the Aurors, but he'd gotten everything in writing and had multiple copies of all his correspondence with both Gringotts and the security firm, so he felt reasonably certain that nothing could be pinned on him.
Then again, it's not like the Minister of Magic wasn't known for pulling some truly insane stunts that should have seen him having severe legal issues. The corrupted nature of the British Wizarding World truly was a massive shitshow of epic proportions. That was also why he'd made underground connections and spent a great deal of time preparing for the unlikely event that he'd have to pull a Sirius Black and break out of fucking Azkaban.
He didn't think it likely and he REALLY wanted to avoid that, because if he had to become a fugitive, he'd likely have to go full-on Dark Lord and raze the fucking Ministry to the ground, then take over himself. He likely wouldn't be able to assist Violet if he had to spend most of his time running from the law, so in that case, it was probably better to BE the fucking law.
Nick Jones, Dictator of Wizarding Britain.
Yeah, that held zero appeal to him.
The last of the three interesting letters, was from Madame Maxine, the Headmistress of Beauxbatons. Arranging a meeting with the Board and Headmistress of Beauxbatons had been much simpler then Durmstrang and they had also quickly been onboard with his ideas of not just having a task for the three Champions every four months or so and instead have much more interaction and competitions between the three schools. Nick chuckled, Dumbledore was the biggest bump in the road for those plans, but he was vastly outnumbered at this point. Even his own Ministry was against him, seeing nothing but advantages and possible profit in the new plans.
He had no clue why the old guy was even against it in the first place, but it probably messed with some scheme or preconceived notions the bearded one had.
Or perhaps it was just a question of how much time he had to spend on Hogwarts and the tournament. After all, Dumbledore was juggling three more-or-less full-time jobs and multiple extracurricular activities at his pretty advanced age. He'd been doing for years too, which was pretty darn impressive. Nick was almost certain that he'd burn out and crash in a pretty spectacular manner if he tried doing that for any extended amount of time, but Dumbledore seemed to do it fairly well. He was eccentric to be sure, but he had been that as a simple Professor of Transfiguration too, so it wasn't like he hadn't been somewhat batty before starting to juggle three stressful jobs.
Oh, how teeth would be gnashing once Dumbledore found out that the ICW had been told what an excellent opportunity it was for the ICW to evaluate the three biggest schools in Europe and their methods since all three were represented in the same place. He could just imagine the facial expressions on some of the staff at Hogwarts once they were told that their lessons would be observed by a team of international observers.
Some would likely need new jobs urgently and there would be some pretty pointed questions about Hogwarts and how it was being run.
Sounded like an exciting time to sit on the Board of Directors to him, if he could arrange for that to happen before then.
He almost felt bad for putting Dumbledore through all the trouble that was heading his way, but he had thankfully yet to meet the older Wizard in person and as such, shamelessly benefitted from his own disconnection. Dumbledore didn't feel like a real person to him, so it was easy to ignore all the problems he was making for him and how he tended to take any opportunity he could find to make Violet doubt the Headmaster and his intentions. He needed Violet to put her trust in him, not some bearded old fart with a penchant for keeping secrets ad nauseum.
Granted, he did a lot of that too, but at least he was younger, cooler and funnier!
Madame Maxine had agreed to his idea of an international food court of sorts for the spectators during the upcoming events and not only had she agreed to allow the Cooking Club at Beauxbatons to participate, but she had also reached out to former students in the food, wine and restaurant industry. The French section would be big and well represented.
Sounded as if it might be a good idea to have some security present, in case guests got drunk and rowdy.
What good fortune that he already knew of a good security company with employees who would already be familiar with the British Isles and working for Nick after the World Cup finals. If he just happened to have some Portkeys going to a prepared area a bit away from the graveyard in Little Hangleton lying around during the final task, well, that would certainly be an odd coincidence. But being able to instantly travel to an area outside well outside any Wards Pettigrew could set up, throw on some battle robes, mount up on brooms and then have a team of battle-hardened Wizards and Witches come down on the graveyard like a thunderstorm from Zeus himself, well, that did sound like it would be quite the surprise for Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Nick truly did feel like laughing, but refrained from that.
It was just so nice when things seemed to be going according to plan!
Granted, that was all assuming that things would keep on going as he recalled, which was in no way certain. The Gaunt shack having been destroyed certainly wasn't something he could recall, so things were already changing and likely would keep on doing so. But even if Voldemort came up with something other then the graveyard resurrection Nick knew about, it would still be nice to have easy access to a few battle-hardened security Wizards and Witches that could be deployed wherever they might be needed.