Hogwarts fields
Harry threw off his invisibility cloak and took a deep breath of the crisp night sky. 'Most awkward 'party' ever to be held in the Gryffindor tower.' he thought as his mind wandered to the party the twins had tried to set up. Only for it to fall flat as most people were too busy staring nervously at Harry.
He stood on the open grass fields surrounding the castle watching the stars. He wished he had his broom for a detention-hogging flight but he knew that Sirius's gift had been broken impaling the arrogant heretic god. 'I wonder what Sirius thinks of that when he finds out his gift was used that way.' Harry mused.
His thoughts were so focused on taking flight once again that the aria flowed from his lips without thinking. "Noble white steed born from a monster's blood. Thunder forth and bless the earth with spring again. Carry a hero aloft once more to victory!"
Out of the thin air a gory spray of silver erupted spraying the area under. The softly glowing silver coalesced into a winged steed of the purest of whites. The pegasus towered over Harry and he estimated the magnificent steed was about half a time bigger than Buckbeak was.
Due to Harry being a relatively small human for his age and the horse being a rather large animal it didn't take much effort for Harry to figure out the pegasus was female. She bent her head slightly and the pair made eye contact. Harry felt something benign being formed but he ignored it for the excited gleam he saw in her eyes that he saw within his own whenever he was ready to go out in the quidditch field and he was doing a last moment checkup in the mirror.
He walked to the pegasus side and she let out a neigh of nervous energy as she spread her wings to allow Harry easy access to her back. In a hop with far more agility or heigh he would normally do, Harry seated himself smoothly behind the pegasus's wings. It's wing roots started just behind the neck. "Go." he whispered.
In a single step the pegasus ascended from the ground and shot up steeply. Yet Harry did not feel threatened to fall off at all. Like a single wise voice whispering in his ears he felt himself explained that as long he was her rider. He could only fall if somebody landed a deathblow on him or he willed himself to.
"Show me what you can do." Harry asked his new steed and with a happy nicker the wings started to beat furiously. It did not take long for the pegasus to outspeed Buckbeak, nor did it take much more to outfly his Firebolt. Harry watched it all with wide eyes and broke out in a happy laugh as the wind only flew by him as if he was flying a lap around the castle.
Spurred on by his laughter the winged horse took her rider up to the clouds and Harry enjoyed watching the stars under the moonlit sky while bobbing up and down on the pegasus steady wingbeat.
And as he soared through the sky. He learned more about his newest animal companion.
Fourth Year's male dormitory
"Hermione?" Harry grumbled as felt a dainty hand shake him awake. "Five more minutes, please." he pleaded. "No Harry." Hermione denied. "Headmaster Dumbledore asked me to wake you. breakfast is almost over and he wants to speak with you afterwards." she chided.
With a grumpy expression Harry left the warmth of his bed. Hermione put her hands on her hips. "So what did you do?" she asked. "Went flying on my pegasus." "Pegasus?" Hermione replied disbelievingly. "An authority I got from Perseus. She is really beautiful." Harry replied as he dug into his trunk for something to wear.
He could see Hermione wanted to ask questions but unless she wanted to join him in the shower she could not ask. Harry took the moment of reprieve to sort out his mind as something had hit him belatedly. He did not know the name of his pegasus and he started to suspect she did not have one.
A quick shower later the pair of teens hurried to the headmasters office. Once there the guardian statue leapt out of the way without a word and the pair of teens wasted no time walking up the spiral staircase.
"Mister Potter, Miss Granger." Dumbledore greeted once the pair opened the door. "Please have a seat." "Headmaster Dumbledore." the two returned. "Mister Potter. Did you use an authority around midnight?" Dumbledore asked bluntly. "Yes sir." Harry replied politely and Dumbledore relaxed a bit.
"I would ask the next time you use an authority you leave within a minute. The ward will fluctuate otherwise and my night became rather unduly longer than it already had." "I will. I am sorry for troubling you." "It is alright. I suspected it to be so when the first possible culprit was absent."
"Ward Headmaster?" Hermione asked before clapping her hands for her mouth for interrupting. Dumbledore's eyes twinkled at the honest curiosity. "For as long we have had the written word. Witches and wizards have created spells to hide our presence from the divine. The most popular way is a certain ward. The downside of every spell or ward is that once something divine enters it, it will collapse or fail in short order. In the case of the Hogwarts wards it is ten minutes for a full failure. After a minute of divine exposure it becomes unstable and ineffective and needs maintenance to return to full effectiveness."
Harry had no trouble catching the not so subtle quaffle Dumbledore threw him. Hermione tilted her head in thought and Harry could see from her slightly glazed eyes her mind was going into overdrive. "But… doesn't that make it fail because of us? More than one book suggests our magic comes from a divine ancestry." she asked. "Oh? You must have dug deep into the Hogwarts library miss Granger to find this. The pureblood believes from last century has done a lot to hide this."
"To answer your question. Mister Potter's status as a Campione does not generate any divinity, aside from the tiny remnants of our shared ancestors, and thus does not disrupt the wards. When he calls upon an authority however it is not his divinity involved."
Harry nodded as he suspected that. "But why isn't the entire world covered in this ward?" he asked. Dumbledore hummed for a moment. "'Hide' is not the right word for what the ward does. It plays on the arrogance of the heretic gods and makes it less interesting. Imagine seeing the world in grays. Anything interesting is in a clear contrast while everything else is blurred. The wards make it more blurry. However if the entire world is blurred, or something is far too blurred it becomes noticeable. For that reason the ICW strictly polices the usage of the ward, extremely so." Dumbledore looked a bit distant after his impromptu lecture. "More than needed if you ask for my opinion."
"Now to the reason I called you here mister Potter. I had a rather long but productive evening in the ministry. Some things went as planned while others ended up being rather unexpected." Dumbledore paused for a moment. "It is a tale best told at the beginning."
"Upon my arrival at the ministry there was understandably an upset and worried crowd. Those who understood what had happened in the arena had gathered at the ministry to use the ministry's wards to hide. Minister Fudge was not the most capable in assuring the crowds."
"I repeated my explanation of your new ascension and I suspect the entire world happens to know now. I was not aware that a reporter of the Wizarding Wireless was also present." Dumbledore said with an apologetic look. "I did use this public stage to set your request." A twinkle in his eyes and a small twitch of the beard showed that Dumbledore was smiling.
"The minister's rather harsh denials and my reiteration that you only asked for a fair trial set the mood and Madam Bones wasted no time gathering the rather sparse material despite minister's Fudge commands." he leaned forward and rested his chin on his intertwined hands. "It became rather clear why when it was revealed that one Cornelius Fudge was the person responsible for collating the evidence for Sirius Black's case."
"It took Madam Bones at best ten seconds to call the entire file invalid and confirm that there was no trial." "That is horrible… will he be impeached for this?" Hermione asked, outraged at the blatant incompetence. Dumbledore shook his head with a sense of sadness. "Perhaps he will. He will likely claim it was not his department and succeed as a defence. All the aurors were on the field after known Death Eaters after Voldemort's fall. Or he could try to call it an old mistake. It will depend if the Wizengamot could be swayed or not after a vote to impeach him is made."
"After that we moved the proceedings to a more private setting and Madam Bones ran through mister Black's wand and confirmed he had not cast a single offensive spell. Instead his wand was a mixture of tracking and animagus detection spells and I was more than capable of filling in what had happened with what we learned last year."
"I spent the rest of the evening lifting the panicked interdiction minister Fudge had placed on the media and preventing some other foolish actions. I suspect the Prophet will arrive any moment now after those delays."
He opened a small box on the table and presented its contents to Harry. "After that I nearly had a fight on my hands convincing the unspeakables that your wand is just a normal wand made by Ollivanders. I might have made the mistake mentioning that it was your broom that landed the telling blow." his beard twitched again. "As you can imagine. Convincing them to return your Firebolt as well was a rather pitched battle."
"Despite their fervent attempts otherwise they could not find anything that gave your broom divine slaying properties. I did not give them time to find new reasons to keep the item so I took it and left. A rather rude thing to do but they can be a stubborn lot when they believe there is something interesting to find. And if they are wrong they just hide that mistake in one of their many storerooms."
"I took the liberty of contacting the producers of the Firebolt. I was surprised to find that they were still awake and waiting for the arrival of the broom. The damage is surprisingly minimal and they say they have it fully repaired and ready in two days." The last traces of amusement faded from Dumbledore. "I ask you to be firm on saying 'no' of the PR stunt they undoubtedly will try to make of it."
"I will, Headmaster." Harry agreed. "And thank you for helping Sirius." "It is alright my boy. I wish I could have done more when I found out the truth. Or I had been more critical of the events directly after Voldemort's fall." Dumbledore admitted.
The twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes made an unexpected reappearance. "Now could you please show me the authority you gained from Perseus? I am most curious to see one that is not aimed at me." "Aimed at you sir?" Hermione asked as she joined the two men in the room towards the exit.
Dumbledore recounted his tale of his encounter with Voban while they made their way outside. How he had been falsely summoned by the minister of magic on an urgent ICW related issue. His arrival into a sullen silent forest had tipped the fresh out of war Dumbledore that something was off.
The unnaturally large wolves that ambushed him confirmed his worst fears. Dumbledore then described in vivid detail how he had tried to fight a running retreat by setting trees ablaze. He had transfigured iron cages from the ground that failed to hold back the wolves and how he had conjured eagles as scouts. Their sudden petrifications warned him of Voban's approach and his dangerous eyes.
His escape was cut short by the appearance of a river and the constant attacks did not allow him to create a large enough floatation device. Even the portkey he had created, a self admitted world record in creation time with the haste he had made, had not worked. It was only Fawkes' timely return that brought him relief.
Hermione listened in with wide eyes while Harry mentally noted everything should he ever need to escape the man. Anyone Dumbledore found worth specifically warning to stay away from was someone to pay attention to.
When Dumbledore wrapped up his tale the trio were already outside and moving towards the forest edge. He spends the last part of the trip explaining his own spell work to the curious Gryffindors.