Chapter 103
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To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Tuesday 14/8/92 6:03pm (GMT)
I need to find out more information, I think that vassals and vassal amulets are rare, there are no books in the library that explain it properly or contain the oaths a witch or wizard has to make to become a vassal, though a couple mention it. It's apparently an old family thing, not just pureblood but really old, ancient, much older than the use in the nonmagical world, it has gone out of fashion in the last couple of hundred years. I think it used to be like knights who would fight under the banner of a lord but it's also passed down along family lines until the family become titled in their own right so some of the ancient families still have some though swearing new vassals isn't widely practised and some families haven't kept up the tradition and have released their vassals or maybe the new generation didn't uphold the family values so the vassals chose not to have their children make the pledge.
One thing that Mrs Donahue said that she thought would be helpful is that it would be harder for someone to manipulate someone if you don't trust the manipulator, and that knowing that it was happening to other people should put Dean and Seamus on their guard and make them harder to manipulate. Mrs Finnegan seemed to take comfort in that, but if it is Dumbledore, he's one of the strongest wizards in Britain, I doubt he would have trouble overcoming that lack of trust in a twelve year old, and he seems to be trusted and even revered by most of the people at Hogwarts, students and staff so even though Dean and Seamus will be on their guard against being manipulated they won't suspect that he might be the one doing it. Even if I told them I don't think they'd want to believe it. If they didn't think I was outright lying they'd tell me I must be mistaken or being compelled to distrust him by the real culprit. Which to be honest I couldn't prove that I'm not being.
Sometimes I feel that I must be imagining things. Who am I? To have made two such powerful enemies before I even started magical school? Who can help me fight them and get control of my life? Who would even believe me? Dumbledore is not only trusted by most of the witches and wizards in Britain he's liked and respected, almost revered. Can he really be so manipulative? Or am I wrong about who's manipulating students and professors in his school? If he's as powerful and wise as they say he, is wouldn't he notice and put a stop to it? Wouldn't he want to protect his friends and the children in his care?
The protection bracelets can be spelled so they can't be seen or felt once they're locked in place on the person's arm or ankle. You'd have to put it on your mum while she's asleep so she doesn't freak out when it disappears as you lock the clasp in place and of course it won't work forever since your mother doesn't have any magic to power it, and nobody she's in contact with to cast magic to power it for her. I'm not sure how long it would last but the problem is when the magic wears off so will the charm hiding it from people, and you wouldn't be able to see it to take it off and send back to me to re-charm until it's visible to everyone, including your mum which would probably freak her out more than the protection had been worth and we have no way of knowing how long it might take so you couldn't guarantee you'd be there when it became visible. Mrs Donahue thinks that giving something like this to a nonmagical person is not a good idea but if I can find a way around the power issue I will get you one for her.
There's no information in the school library on compulsion spells and potions or other means of compelling someone to do what you want. I asked the Defence teacher and he refused to teach me any of them, which isn't that surprising but when I explained that I only wanted to learn about defending myself from these compulsions he gave me some information. He mentioned protection amulets as the easiest way, and like Mrs Finnegan thought that my family vault should have something that would protect me, he didn't mention vassals but said that family head of house and heir rings were often used to protect the heads of house and some families had been paranoid enough to have family rings for all their children and their wives in the past. He didn't mention occlumency but did say that with enough strength of mind and will and magic such compulsions could be fought. He showed me a spell that can be cast on people to check for compulsion spells but said the only way to detect if you're under the influence of a potion was to take a flushing draft and see if it changed your behaviours and beliefs. He also showed me a spell that would tell me if there was a potion in food and drink but warned me that the school regularly put birth control potions in all the drinks served each month and calming drafts after any major event. HE said some schools also added a mild nutrition potion to their desserts because they knew children without supervision wouldn't always eat a healthy balanced diet. I practiced casting the spells and I can, the problem is I'm going to look like a paranoid git if I'm constantly casting them on everything I eat and drink and with switching spells I'd need to keep casting after putting my cup down and taking my eyes off it for even a moment.
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Wednesday 8/15/92 10:06am (PST)
Harry don't start doubting yourself. I believe you, and I will help you to the best of my ability which given that I don't have magic and live on the other side of the world from you perhaps isn't much most days.
Your arguments for Dumbledore being the manipulator are valid and I definitely believe from what you've told me that he is the most viable suspect, I'm not questioning that, but one of your questions made me stop and think.
You said that if Dumbledore is everything everyone says he is he has to be the villain, or working with the villain or for some reason letting the villain magically abuse children's free will making his image of being a good wizard a lie. But what if it's the rest of his reputation that's a lie? What if he's not wise or observant or magically as strong as people think he is? After all that world believe all sorts of stupid things about you that aren't true for no good reason. Is it possible that he's not the villain in this whole thing but just another victim? It doesn't seem likely and if it's true then it would need to be one of the other professors. You can already rule out McGonagall and Flitwick, Snape seems the obvious candidate, he certainly seems to dislike you enough to wish you ill in spite of saving your life when Quirrell jinxed your broom, but then again to get away with this for so long it's probably not the obvious suspect. Or of course I could be wrong and it is Dumbledore, and the only thing wrong about his legend is the fact that he's wants to control the entire British wizarding world in his own way just as much as Voldemort does. We might never know who it is or why they're doing it. Remember that finding out who is far less important than finding a way to protect yourself and get away.
Your description of vassals does sound a lot like the way it worked in the nonmagical world, are you going to be expected to look after Dean and Seamus other than by providing them the protective amulets if you do this? Because in the muggle world swearing a vassal oath came with significant financial gain, land a house, management of serfs including workers for your farm. In modern terms that would mean giving them a job, paying them a wage and providing housing. I can't imagine that you would have any need for two men to work for you unless you got a great idea for something and started a business.
If you're still using a fake wand most of the time are you able to cast spells without using the wand now or have you got so used to using it to hide the fact that you didn't need it that you've tricked your magic into thinking that you can't do magic without it? If you could cast the detection spell without a wand in your hand, does it need a particular gesture, or do you need to be touching the food? Is there a flash of light when you cast it? How can you tell if it's worked? If it needs a gesture you should practice to try to make the gesture as small as possible and to look casual like an automatic movement to hide the fact you're doing it.
To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Thursday 16/8/92 10:04pm (GMT)
Sorry for the angst in the last letter, I'm just over tired and over stressed and probably making mountains out of molehills. I'm feeling better now. I thought about what you said and I do still think that it's Dumbledore.
Mrs Finnegan took me to Gringotts today, we travelled by something called a portkey which feels like a hook in your belly button lifting you up and spinning you around then letting you go a couple of feet in the air. It is very startling when I wasn't expecting it. We travelled from Dublin to London in less than ten seconds. Which is convenient but very uncomfortable. This is the same thing that the schools in America would use to let me travel to school, I can see how the book recommends anti nausea potions for long journeys. But it also raises the question, if travel within Britain is so easy then why is Hogwarts a boarding school. Portkeys might be difficult to make or expensive (I don't know but they can't be all that expensive or we would have caught the ferry or Mrs Finnegan would have asked me to pay for it since she was only going for my benefit) but they still have to be cheaper than the cost of feeding and housing us all for nine months. The other magical schools all seem to be boarding schools too, I wonder why?
I met with my account manager and he said that Dumbledore has been banned from acting as my financial guardian but that's unfortunately all they have the power to do, he's still my magical guardian as far as signing paperwork to transfer schools and there's nothing I can do about it. If it were anyone else the goblins said that I could apply to the wizengamot to have a new guardian appointed but Dumbledore is the chief Warlock and he'd have to agree that I have cause to remove my current guardian before they could do anything they suggested I could also attempt to contact the Aurors and have him charged with neglect and theft from my vault but they couldn't guarantee it would work and if it did I might not get a say in who the wizengamot assigned as my new guardian. I'm also technically not allowed to remove items from the family vault without my guardian's permission but my financial guardian is able to allow that and once I explained what I wanted to look for he was happy to agree to me taking out protective amulets for me and my vassals. He was very clear that I couldn't give one to anyone who isn't a vassal of either me personally or of the house of Potter and explained the difference. He suggested that I should make Dean and Seamus my personal vassals because it would protect them from Dumbledore better, if he's the one manipulating people, because he's the magical guardian of the heir of the house of Potter. They seemed to accept that Dumbledore could do that but they refused to tell me when I asked why. I asked if a muggle could become a vassal because I want to be able to protect you too. Mrs Donahue said it might be possible but that was a bad idea because you don't have the magic to enforce the vows but I told him that wasn't a problem because you're too honourable not to keep a vow once you've made it and anyway making you my vassal was about protecting you not asking you to protect me. I know that you couldn't win a fight against a wizard and I would never ask you to, I only want you to be safe especially from anyone that wants to harm you because of me. I asked if we could do it by mail but we can't. I have to hear you say it but Mrs Donahue thinks that hearing it over the phone would be good enough, so I will need to arrange a time to call you. I asked my account manager and he wasn't very happy with that, he said it would work but that it's disrespectful. I did ask if he had a way to send me to California for a couple of days or weeks, so you could make your vow to me in person but he said no. I don't know if that's true or not but I think he recognised that I wouldn't want to come back if he let me go to America. And he's right I wouldn't. I would try to stay and enrol myself in a nonmagical school near Caltech, there'd be no nonmagical records of me entering the country so I could claim to be American and there'd be no reason to try to send me back to Britain and even if I did get caught and ended up in foster care I could still be close enough to see you. And there's no reason I couldn't put myself in school. I read about an aging potion in the library here and it doesn't look too difficult. I could age my self up for the day and rent a house and enrol my 'son' in school and stuff.
The traditional vow for vassals is "I vow on my magic that I will in the future be faithful to the lord, never cause him harm and will observe my homage to him completely against all persons in good faith and without deceit." My account manager explained it that meant the vassal has vowed to actively and constantly work in his Lord's best interest. That they must do anything their Lord asks of them to the best of their ability, and seek to improve upon their Lord's holdings and power, like some sort of supermotivated servant. I don't want to bind anyone to something like that let alone my friends. I only wanted to be able to protect them, not force them to serve me. Hopefully Mrs Donahue can come up with something better that will be enough to allow me to make them my vassals and protect them without increasing the risk they're in or making them servants like that.
Mr and Mrs Thomas thanked us for coming and letting them know about all the danger, of course they knew some of it from when I was staying with them so they weren't angry to hear the rest. They were really angry about the vassal thing. They flatly refused to let Dean make the traditional vows for a vassal. I guess they're more sensitive about the idea of Dean being forced into service since Mr Thomas has traced his family history back to the time of slavery. I assured them that while I had not worked out the vow exactly yet I was trying to find a vow that promised as little as possible while still meeting the requirements of a magical vassal so I could protect him. I promised that I would give them the opportunity to read it over so they could make sure Dean was not going to vow anything they didn't want him to. Mrs Finnegan explained to them that he would have to make some sort of vow in my favour for the vassal amulets to work but that she and Mrs Donahue were researching to make the vows as unrestrictive as possible. They still aren't happy and I don't know whether they will let Dean make any sort of vow at all.
I can still cast spells without using the fake wand, and I don't need to use hand gestures either though I have noticed that using the wand makes it easier, maybe it makes it easier to focus on making my magic do what I want it to do. But I've taken your advice and started trying to learn this spell without a wand or a gesture. The spell doesn't make a light or anything unless it finds a potion and then it lights up. There is a more advanced spell that will tell me what ingredients are in the potion. Then if you know enough about potions you can make an educated guess about what the potion might do. A potions master might be able to recognise exactly what the potion is but once you have an idea of the main ingredient you could look up what potions use that ingredient. I'm also going back and practicing a lot of other spells without my wand when I'm sure nobody is around. It's different because I've always tried to make sure I was holding my fake wand so nobody would notice I wasn't using one. I didn't realise I was using it as a crutch, which is stupid because that's why I made the fake wand in the first place because I didn't want my wand to become a crutch and get dependent on it to cast magic. I'm glad that you thought to ask me so I can break the habit.
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Thursday 8/16/92 2:20pm (PST)
Didn't Mrs Finnegan's friend already say that you don't have to use the traditional vows, is there any way to know what the minimum promise a person has to make for the magic to work to become a sworn vassal? Think about what you actually want your friends to promise so you'll know you can trust them. My suggestion would be that they promise not to deliberately harm you in any way (you might need to get some advice on how to define that more clearly as to what constitutes harm otherwise they might have trouble playing sports or duelling with you in class) and possibly not to knowingly lie to you so you can believe them or you will know that they have been lied to themselves if they tell you something you know isn't true. (Be careful with the wording of that one too, you wouldn't want magic to punish them if they told you something they mistakenly believed was true.) Of course, those two directives can be mutually exclusive at times which means that you will also have to give them clear instructions which way you want them to prioritise which rule to follow if they believe that telling you the truth about something will cause you harm.
I personally would favour telling you the truth, I can see that there are circumstances where someone telling me something I didn't expect or want to know might hurt and some people would be hesitant to say anything to avoid hurting me but I'd always rather know the truth than hide from it. Continuing to let me believe a lie would only harm me in the long term. So, it should be easy to explain to them that not telling you the truth would harm you more than telling you something that you didn't want to hear. Afterall, hurt feelings aren't actually all that harmful and the longer they hide the truth the more hurt you will be when you do find it out, and making decisions based on false information could harm you or lead to you making a decision that you wouldn't want to have made.
I was thinking about the boarding school thing and you're right that unless they have to be recast every trip and take a lot of energy to make, portkeys must be cheaper than housing and feeding all the students, not to mention paying extra staff to supervise the younger years outside of class time. I think it might have something to do with the statute of secrecy. It would be really hard to explain to friends and relatives, let alone the truancy board, that you portkey to a school they've never heard of. People would notice that you're not attending the local schools and that they never see you catching a bus to get to a more fancy private school out of the area. Of course, in a country as big as mine it would also be about time zones, Massachusetts is three hours ahead of California so school would start at 5am my time. I don't think it would be healthy for a child to have to live each day in two separate time zones like that. You'd feel perpetually jetlagged and out of synch with your family anyway so it would be easier to board but I don't understand why they don't at least send you all home for the weekend, especially in Britain where there's not a time zone difference. Maybe portkeys are a relatively new invention and as you said Hogwarts is very traditional and resistant to changing the way they do things.
It would be great to see you in person and I can picture how you might succeed in tricking a nonmagical school and a landlord into thinking that you have a father looking out for you with an aging potion. You would still be on your own though which would worry me. I know you're good at cooking and used to doing housework and washing and shopping and the garden but what would happen if you got sick and needed a Doctor, would it be safe to take an aging potion while you were unwell? Or worse if you got sick or were hurt at school and they needed to contact your guardian for permission to treat you? You couldn't be in two places at the same time. It would be too great a risk.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.
Stay safe everyone.