Unashamedly AU as always, another version of 'Harry gets the Horcrux sucked out of his scar by the Dementor on the train', with a twist or ten. Liberal use of Beaters Bats on Alby, the Weasels and the Dursleys among others as usual, and Harry ends up with an entirely unplanned harem as a result of his saving people thing. Harry is even more suspicious and unforgiving than normal because of what happened to Hedwig, so it will be a bumpy ride for anyone who crosses him. Using the usual titles and society and I'm still going with 10P to the Knut, around 3 Pounds to the Sickle and 50 Pounds to the Galleon because the 'official' exchange rates make no sense at all to me.

All rights to the Harry Potter world and characters reside with J. K. Rowling and the associated entities.

Remus John Lupin (née John Lyall Lupin) was supposed to be pretending to be asleep as he slumped in the corner of the selected compartment on the Hogwarts Express, waiting for Harry and the Devil's Whores to arrive, but the previous night had been the full moon, so it was no act. He hadn't been happy about having to play a part in what Albus was planning to do to get Harry (commonly known as Harry Potter, Harry James Potter and the Boy-Who-Lived… But more accurately, Henry Potter VIII, Henry James Potter or Earl Henry James Potter-Peverell-Black.) out of the Witches' control, but he couldn't second guess Albus…

After all, if Albus Dumbledore didn't know what needed to be done, no-one would… Albus couldn't risk too many details getting out, but what he had been able to share was rather damning, because James' son was apparently being pulled away from the Light by a coven of budding Dark Witches, just as James had been. He'd been shocked when Albus told him about how Evans had become part of a coven which practised forbidden dark rituals and used those rituals to seduce and manipulate James, but when he thought back, he realised that he'd seen for himself how James had started murdering instead of capturing the ones he went up against… Which meant that there was no way of determining whether they'd been led astray by Voldemort and could be redeemed, or even whether they innocent bystanders…

And now Harry was apparently going the same way. Albus told him that Harry had slaughtered a troll that wandered into the castle and murdered one of his Professors who had been possessed in his First Year… Then revealed himself as a Parselmouth by making a snake attack another student before obliviating another Professor in his Second Year and viciously attacked his Muggle family over the summer, killing his Uncle's sister and almost killing his Uncle as well... This Hermione Granger was moving a lot faster than Evans had though, because it had taken Evans until late in their Sixth Year to get her hooks into James, while Granger had managed in their First Year… She'd apparently recruited a Slytherin Witch in their year to help seduce Harry and separate him from Arthur and Molly's son to drive a wedge between him and the Light, and it had obviously worked because from what Albus told him, Harry wouldn't listen to him, the Weasleys or anyone other than them any more…

No, as much as it went against what he believed, Albus was right, the only way to stop those Devil's Whores totally corrupting Harry was to get them away from him, permanently, and that was why he was supposed to be pretending to be asleep… At some point before the Hogwarts Express reached Hogsmeade, it would be stopped and boarded by the Dementors that were being sent to Hogwarts to stop Black from finishing his Master's work by killing Harry. Like Harry, Granger and anyone with them, the Dementors would be magically compelled to come to this compartment and if Harry didn't faint as Albus expected when they arrived, he'd have to stun him to get him out of the way while the Dementors dealt with the Devil's Whores.


Something that Dumbledore hadn't shared with Lupin, or anyone else but the minions he got to do the job and then obliviated when they came to get paid for it, was that Sirius Black hadn't escaped from Azkaban as everyone believed… When Ronald Weasley's loud diatribes about Potter being a Dark Wizard because he was a Parselmouth irritated Potter enough to make the compulsions to trust and go along with Weasley fail, Potter turned his back on Weasley and began spending all his spare time studying with Granger, the Greengrass sisters, Amelia Bones' niece and the McDougall and Lovegood bints… He'd made the mistake of failing to keep a close enough eye on Granger while Weasley's efforts to hold Potter's performance back to his level in First Year seemed to be working, so he'd missed seeing the friendly rivalry and cooperation develop into a close friendship between her, the older Greengrass sister, Bones and McDougall as the top students of their year, and Lovegood and the younger Greengrass sister too when they started a year later…

Of course, when Weasley found out that Potter was studying with Slytherins as well as Granger, he totally lost it… And then Potter, Pomfrey and Weasley had all had to be obliviated after Potter chased Weasley down, beat him half to death and then threw him off the stairs because he'd caught him trying in vain to pry the legs of a nearly naked Hermione Granger apart in the Infirmary while she was petrified. (Like Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Macmillan, Abbott, Brown and many other 'Traditional' Purebloods, Weasley had needed another year or two's preparation to have any chance of getting through First Year... In fact he'd obviously needed more time to prepare because he'd failed nearly every class since he started, but they needed him in Potter's year so he'd had to start in '91... So he had already turned fourteen and was being ruled by his hormones at that point.)… This meant that Potter was going to need to have a lot of his memories from the last school year replaced, and stronger compulsions placed on him to make him do whatever Weasley said and forget that Granger and those other bints ever existed…

Thinking about that, he'd decided that he couldn't afford to leave the Black situation to chance any longer. By rights, Sirius Black should have been dead or totally insane by now, because they'd put him in the highest security levels of Azkaban with the maximum exposure to the Dementors, eleven and a half bloody years ago… But his people out there reported that the little shite was somehow still lucid, and even worse, his people in the DMLE had heard Black's name coming up several times in discussions between Bones and some of her senior people for some reason. If the truth ever came out about what had really happened in Eighty One, it would make no end of trouble for him… So he'd had his people in Azkaban arrange for Black to be kissed by the Dementors, transfigure him into a loaf of bread and report that he'd escaped, then tear small pieces of the loaf off and drop them over the side of the ferry all the the way back to the mainland… It had been ridiculously easy to convince an imbecile like Fudge that the guards had heard him talking about Hogwarts, so he must have escaped to finish what his Master attempted, kill Harry Potter… And the argument that while the Dementors didn't cost anything, Aurors were paid more than most in the Ministry worked to get Fudge to order that the Dementors would be used to track down and deal with Black… The fleeting thought that having Dementors roaming unchecked around Britain would almost certainly result in Muggles, and probably Witches and Wizards too, getting kissed was dismissed with a shrug as 'acceptable losses' because after all, the only unacceptable loss was Albus Percival Dumbledore…


Of course Potter had to upset the apple cart again while he was tied up on the Continent making sure that the ICW didn't diverge from what he'd planned, by throwing a tantrum and attacking the Dursleys before running off, but he'd already sent the Weasleys off to Egypt to stop anyone getting a chance to look too closely at the girl, so he had no choice other than to leave him at the Leaky Cauldron until they returned to Hogwarts… But the little bastard didn't stay at the Leaky Cauldron did he? When he finally got away from the ICW, he rushed back to London get started on changing the brat's memories, only to be told that some girls his age came to see him a few weeks back, and a couple of hours after they went off into the Alley together, an Elf had turned up with his room key, payment for his room and a letter… Which thanked Tom for looking after him but said he was going to stay with friends for the rest of the holiday, adding that he hoped Tom didn't mind, but he'd bought himself a new and better trunk and just about everything else, so he'd had his Elf clean up and pack everything but his notes and a few mementos back into his old trunk and leave it in his room for someone else who might need them. It was all Albus could do not to permanently silence the idiotic barman as he prattled on about how nice it was of Harry to do that, because a wave of his wand confirmed that every active tracking charm he had for Potter was now pointing to somewhere behind the bar…

And it only got worse from there. For a start, where did this Elf come from? If it was a Potter Elf the brat would learn far more about his heritage than Albus wanted him to... He also realised that Potter must have found some way to make a withdrawal without his vault key (which as far as the boy knew Molly had) if he was buying himself a new trunk and other things, so he had to get to Gringotts to find out exactly how he got access and how much he'd withdrawn…

Albus stopped a couple of steps inside Gringotts, because he could tell something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on what it was until he suddenly realised that there wasn't a single member of the Hook Clan anywhere in the banking chamber, when they normally made up at least two thirds of the Goblins serving in the chamber, and a quick glance at the wall where the Clans' coats of arms were displayed confirmed that the Hook Clan's coat of arms had been mostly smashed off, to show that the Clan was forcibly terminated rather than dying out honourably… And now that he was paying attention, he recognised his name in the Gobbledegook some of the Goblins were shouting into their Runic Communicators, so he quickly spun around and left Gringotts as fast as he could without running because he knew that the Goblins' version of 'justice' started with 'an eye for an eye' and escalated until the aggrieved party was satisfied, but he didn't believe that the jumped up little beasts would be willing to start another war with Magical Britain by arresting him outside of the sovereign soil of the Goblin Nation… He was right about that, but discovered to his anger that they weren't above pointing at him and announcing that he was the reason that Gringotts would be closed while they finished rooting out and dealing with everyone linked to the Hook Clan, whom he had corrupted with false promises of money and power, in any way, shape or form… And that anyone and everyone who gave the thief Albus Dumbledore gold or assisted him in any other way would be designated as his accomplices and have any vaults they had access to locked down pending judgement, like the ones he had access to had already been… He'd managed to get Fudge to stop the Prophet reporting the story, but enough of the sheep had heard the story first hand for it to be spreading by word of mouth too fast for him to contain it.

Then when he returned to Hogwarts, he had McGonagall berating him for changing Harry Potter's electives from his choices of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes to Divination and Care of Magical Creatures without at least warning her, as Potter's House Mistress, that he had done so, to give her a chance to prepare herself for Potter's outrage and anger… And not warning her that he had overridden the Professors' joint decision to have Ronald Weasley repeat Second Year because of his behaviour, immaturity and the fact that he'd failed every subject, again without consulting anyone…

That was when he decided that Harry Potter had to be brought to heel quick smart, but he wouldn't be able to do so until he got him to Hogwarts because Potter was currently behind impregnable wards… There was no way Granger or the other bints would let a sudden change in Potter go without raising a big stink about it, and he couldn't alter them enough to prevent that without people noticing and asking questions, so for the Greater Good of Albus Dumbledore, the bints had to go. Luckily, Fudge had jumped at the chance to use the free Dementors rather than highly paid Aurors to locate and deal with Black… And Umbridge was so happy about the idea of getting rid of a Mudblood and Blood Traitors that she didn't demand as much as she normally did to have Fudge's bodyguards stop the Hogwarts Express so that the Dementors could board the train and deal with them…


However Potter's 'saving people thing' had ruined everything, because he didn't faint as he was supposed due to the Dementor exposure, he pushed the girls behind him to protect them but while he was the first one the Dementors latched onto, they attacked everyone else in the compartment too... Though luckily, the protections Harry, Luna, Susan, Morag and Daphne and Astoria's Mums had placed over them, and they in turn had placed on Hermione when students started getting attacked inside Hogwarts were activated in Harry once the fragment of Voldemort (née Tom Marvolo Riddle)'s soul that had been bound to him after the night Voldemort attacked his family was sucked out (because Dumbledore had used dark rituals to make the fragment of Voldemort's soul into a breach in the protections around Harry and the bindings he'd placed on Harry were anchored to the soul fragment, so once it was gone, the protections kicked in and started sucking the magic and memories out of his attacker), and immediately in the girls. The thing that few people living knew about and none understood though was that the Dementor horde was essentially a hive mind that shared thoughts, memories and magic… This was part of the reason Dementors were believed to be invincible, because if one element was attacked, more magic was fed to it to heal its injuries and ward off its attackers, but this backfired on the Horde when it attacked those protected by the rituals performed over Harry and the others, because all the magic/life force and memories being directed to the elements trying to 'Kiss' them was being sucked straight through them, and the Horde panicked as it suddenly felt itself growing weaker, so it attacked any other humans in reach in an attempt to regain what it was losing… Unfortunately for Lupin (as the only human in the compartment without the ritual protection), Delores Umbridge, Cornelius Fudge and Lucius Malfoy (who were in Umbridge's office waiting for the report of what happened on the Hogwarts Express so that they could send the Dementors on to Hogwarts), Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle (who came down to watch Potter, the Mudblood and the Blood-Traitors being Kissed) and the humans in the higher security areas levels of Azkaban at that moment (including Narcissa Malfoy, who unfortunately for her was in the process of delivering her monthly care package of food, potions, clothes and necessities to her sister Bellatrix Lestrange at the time), the rules and other protections that had been keeping the Dementors away from them were ignored when the Horde went into a feeding frenzy, ignoring the protective amulets and summoning the prisoners to suck the magic/life force and memories out of everyone they could get to in a desperate attempt to survive what was happening to it.

If Harry, Hermione, Daphne, Astoria, Luna, Susan and Morag hadn't all been bonded to each other and their Elves... They would have almost certainly been burnt out or exploded at that point because the magic and memories of hundreds if not thousands of people was drawn into them over the next ten minutes or so… But they had survived it due to their bonds sharing the load between the seven of them and all their Elves, the protections placed over them and the Occlumency the girls had been making Harry practice diligently for the last nine months… Not without repercussions though, because they were all writhing in agony as their minds and bodies tried to assimilate the magic and memories of hundreds of witches and wizards and deal with bindings and memory blocks placed on them being destroyed, and their minds tried to bundle up and contain the memories of the thousands of people who had been 'kissed' over the last seven hundred years or so…

They wouldn't have survived it without the ancient Fae magic they'd all been learning from their mums' Grimoires since Samhain the previous year… One of the things that had drawn them to each other was the Fae blood that they shared, as that meant that they could learn and use Fae magics as well as Wizarding magic, and Fae Battle Magic gave them the tools they needed to survive, like the ability to Split oneself to create a Doppelganger with half of your magic, and the ability to step from the physical realm to the Otherworld, and back into the physical realm at a known time and place…

Being able to Split and push half of the magic that was quickly straining their ability to contain it off into a second form saved them from being overwhelmed by the magic, and their Doppelgangers Stepping through to the Coven Chambers part of the Room of Requirement in the Otherworld prevented overcrowding in the compartment… Most Battle Mages could only Split their magic once before the additional Doppelgangers lost the ability to use magic, but as the original purpose of the Split magic was to save them from being overrun in physical combat, that wasn't a major limitation. Harry and the girls' situation was rather different however, as they were being inundated with the magic of hundreds of beings who had been 'kissed' by the Dementors, so even with feeding as much magic as possible to their bonded Elves, they had to keep creating Doppelgangers with the magical reserves of several Mages over and over again until they finally sucked all the magic out of the Horde and destroyed it. When that happened, their original forms Stepped through to join their multitude of Doppelgangers and the Elves in the Coven Chambers in the Otherworld to try and work out out how the deal with the issue they were faced with.


The Coven Chambers were originally created as an extension of Rowena Ravenclaw's private chambers. Rowena created a runic gateway to grant those without the ability to use Fae Magic limited access to the Otherworld. The Gateway could give access to three separate Otherworld spaces within Hogwarts… The cathedral sized store room known as the 'Room of Hidden Things', the 'Room of Requirement' or 'Come and Go Room' as the Elves called it, which could become anything the requester wanted, and the Coven Chambers/Rowena's Chambers. While anyone could access the Room of Hidden Things and Room of Requirement if they could find them, only accepted members of the Coven and the Elves who served them could access the Coven Chambers, and only Rowena's Heirs, their invited guests and the Elves who served them could access her private chambers. The same access restrictions applied to accessing the spaces via 'Stepping', but those with authorised access could 'Step' directly into the spaces from anywhere.

As the daughters of past Coven members, Daphne, Susan and Morag were invited to join the Coven in their First Year, and they in turn extended an invitation to Hermione when they got to know her. Harry would have been invited in First Year as well, but they couldn't get him away from Ron Weasley long enough to induct him into the Coven. Astoria was the next one inducted into the Coven when she started the next year, but they were having trouble making a connection with Luna until Mimsy (the Ravenclaw Heirs' appointed Elf who had looked after the Coven for the last sixty odd years) found her crying in a disused classroom after curfew one night in September after Cho Chang and her gang took her from her bed and locked her out of the Ravenclaw Tower, silenced and without her wand. Mimsy could sense that Luna was Miss Selene's daughter, which meant that she had a right to a place in the Coven, and she was also Lady Rowena's true heir by right of blood and magic, so she popped her into Lady Rowena's Chambers.

Mimsy was furious, because not only did Miss Luna have more right to be in the tower than anyone else as Ravenclaw's Heir, locking a half dressed young girl out in the halls without any way to call for help or defend herself when those nasty older boys were roaming about in search of easy prey was tantamount to trying to get her attacked. That was when Mimsy decided that while she would continue to serve the Coven, her primary responsibility from now on was looking after Miss Luna. She tucked Miss Luna into bed and went looking for her things, but over half of them weren't where they were supposed to be, including her wand. Luckily she still had most of what she'd gathered for Miss Selene while she was at Hogwarts there, so she altered some robes and shoes to fit Miss Luna and collected a trunk full of discarded wands and wand holsters from the Room of Hidden Things, along with enough text books and equipment to cover what she'd need for the next day or two until her things were recovered.

In the morning, Mimsy got Miss Luna up to shower and get ready for the day, then served her breakfast in the Chambers to give her time to find some wands that were compatible with her in the ones she'd collected. Mimsy also brought Miss Morag and the other Coven Misses to meet Miss Luna, and by the time she went to her first class, she'd been inducted into the Coven too. While the students were in class, Mimsy tracked down and recovered everything that had been stolen from Miss Luna, and when she found that the nasty thieves who took Miss Luna's things had taken others' things as well, she recovered them too. If the ones the things had been stolen from were still at Hogwarts, she returned them, but the rest went into Lady Rowena's Chambers. While she was at it, with Hilly and Roddy's (the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor Heirs' Elves) help, she went searching for anything stolen from the other Coven Misses' children, and they were horrified to find how many things that rightfully belonged to Miss Lily's son had been stolen… The worst part of this being that they found most of what had been taken from Master Harry in Whiskers' chambers and office, and that included his blood in devices on a shelf in Whiskers' office.


As the year progressed, the nasty girls kept picking on Miss Luna, stealing and breaking her things and locking her out of Ravenclaw tower, and they were getting nastier because someone else was stealing whatever they took from them after they took them from her. (Mimsy wasn't silly, everything she recovered and repaired was kept safe in Miss Luna's rooms in Lady Rowena's Chambers while she supplied Miss Luna with workable clothes, books and equipment to use… And of course, every time they locked Miss Luna out of the tower, she popped her into Lady Rowena's Chambers for the night.) The nasty redhead in Master Harry's room kept stealing from him as well, so they recovered everything he took and kept it in Lady Rowena's Chambers for Master Harry until the Coven Misses brought him into the Coven.

They were happy when the nasty redhead finally gave Master Harry a reason to cut off ties with him when it came out that he was a Parselmouth like Lord Charlus had been, because that gave Miss Minie and the other Coven Misses the opportunity they needed to bring him into the Coven. They were worried when Master Harry got so angry about all the things that had been stolen from him, but he and the Coven Misses explained that he wasn't angry at them, he was angry with the ones who stole from him… Then he proved that he was Miss Lily's son and Lord Charlus and Lady Dorea's grandson when Miss Daphne said that he needed to get his blood out of those devices in Whiskers' office, because he gave a nasty smile and asked whether his blood could be replaced with the nasty redhead's. Roddy gave a nasty smile of his own and popped out, returning an hour later to apologise for the delay, but he'd had to wait until Whiskers left his office to swap the blood.


What the Headmaster and his minions didn't realise though was that Harry had changed over previous summer, because he had worked out that Dumbledore was entirely to blame for putting him and Hedwig in the situation where he had been forced to sit and watch while his vicious bastard of an uncle wrung Hedwig's neck to stop her taking messages to any of his friends. Harry was in no state to stop him at that point, because he'd just been given a beating which left him hardly able to move, with a broken arm and ribs, crushed knee and numerous other injuries, and the bastard had actually laughed as he murdered his beautiful Hedwig. By the time he was 'rescued' by the Weasleys at the end of he holidays, Harry had had no-one to talk to and nothing to do (Other than try to get his anger and the accidental magic which sparked whenever he thought about Hedwig or his uncle under control. He kept up the exercises to deal with the Weasleys and other aggravations after that, which he found made learning Occlumency and Fae Magic much easier when he started studying with the girls.) with all of his things locked away in his chained up trunk for over six weeks, so he'd been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching in that time. This in turn made him start questioning many things about the Weasleys… Like how they'd known he needed to be 'rescued' and where his room was… Hell, even where the Dursleys lived for that matter… The callous way they dismissed Hedwig being killed right in front of him and the rest of his concerns, then ignored his polite request to be given the key for his vault… And whether they were really on his side at all.

That led to him going over all his interactions with the Weasley family in his head, and the dirth of instances that didn't raise questions was rather worrying. This raised a few red flags and made him start looking at all the people he interacted with in Magical Britain, and he wasn't liking what he was seeing. The only ones in Magical Britain who had ever shown they really cared for him or could be trusted were Hedwig and Hermione, and with Hedwig dead that just left Hermione. The idea of taking Hermione and getting the Hell away from the Magical world was starting to look rather appealing, but he couldn't do that without money and the Weasleys were keeping him away from his money.

When the twins proudly showed off their brand new Cleansweep Sevens at Quidditch practice, Harry started putting two and two together… The Weasleys wore their humble circumstances on their sleeves, making no secret of the fact that they had next to nothing in their vault and could hardly afford to buy the necessities, so how the Hell could they afford to buy a pair of high end racing brooms for their sons? Oh that's right, they had the key to his vault, which held mountains of gold compared to theirs, or at least it did the last time he got to see it a year ago… Thinking about the probability that he'd paid for the twins' brooms made him wonder who had actually paid for the new Cleansweep Sevens that Wood, Johnson and Spinnet got the previous year, and for that matter, the Nimbus 2000 that McGonagall supposedly gave him.

Like Luna, Harry and the others had to stay in their dorms and pretend to be the same as they'd been previously, but they kept everything important in the chambers Luna had Mimsy create for them in Rowena's Chambers… Including the backup wands that they'd found they were compatible with among the wands that Mimsy and the other Elves dug out of the Room of Hidden Things. The rest of them didn't sleep there as often as Luna, because they didn't have bitches locking them out of the dorms on a regular basis, but they kept everything precious to them in their chambers to keep it safe, and did most of their studying and training there, as well as spending time learning the esoteric magic that the Coven delved into.

They couldn't decide whether to be amused or furious at the outrage drummed up when Mimsy finally got sick of Chang and her bitches repeatedly locking Luna out of the tower at night in her nightdress or less and dumped them in the hall outside the Slytherin Chambers in nothing but their nickers. Unfortunately they were found by a prefect patrol before the ones they were trying to set up Luna to be attacked by came along, and of course, nowhere in the outrage about the danger these fine, upstanding young Witches had been put in was the question of just what they were doing roaming around the castle at that time of night asked. No, instead it was Luna who was threatened with expulsion for being found in a disused classroom in her nightdress and everything she said about frequently finding herself in that position was dismissed as lies, because her dorm mates had all stuck to the story they'd come up with to cover themselves.


As the year progressed, Daphne, Astoria and Susan led Harry's education in how to take up his rightful station in society, because they had the best grounding in the family and other politics of Magical Britain. The fact that they had to struggle to remember that Harry's name was really Henry, that the family name was really Potter-Peverell, or that he was the Heir Apparent to two Most Noble and Most Ancient Houses and a handful of lesser Houses was a clear sign that magic was being used to try and hide the truth about who he was. The fact that the Goblins hadn't ensured that he took up his role as Heir, made him aware of his assets and responsibilities or demanded to know why his Trust Vault key was in someone else's possession when Hagrid took him to Gringotts proved that there was something up there as well.

As they could not trust at least some of the Goblins and none of them had access to the gold needed to get to the bottom of this, they started tossing around ideas about how they could get the gold they needed. It was Mimsy who came up with a possible solution to the problem (the Otherworld spaces in Hogwarts were part of Lady Rowena's domain, so she knew the most about them). Once she had filled them in on the fact that everything that had been lost or left behind in the castle had been accumulating for the past Millennia in the Room of Hidden Things, and that most of what was in there was in much the same state as it had been when it was put there because the room was kept in stasis unless someone was accessing it, they agreed that she was onto something and started making plans. Mimsy, Hilly and Roddy couldn't take enough time from their other duties to go through everything in the cathedral sized chamber with a fine toothed comb without attracting attention, so they went looking for help.

At that point, there were thirteen powerful Elves helping out at Hogwarts as Free Elves because they weren't prepared to be bound to serve the Headmaster after they had been given clothes by their 'Traditional' families because they were too independent and strong willed for their liking, but the ambient magic in Hogwarts was strong enough for them to continue there indefinitely without being bound to serve a Wizard… Mimsy, Hilly and Roddy also found a dozen ex-Potter Elves who remained loyal to the House of Potter, even after James had freed them under Dumbledore's orders, and tracked down twenty more Free Elves outside of Hogwarts who were in much the same boat. While they weren't prepared to be bound as slaves to any Wizards or Witches however, the Coven's library had records of other types of bindings which had fallen into disuse as Wizarding Britain became ever more arrogant and bigoted, and these were rather more palatable to Harry, the girls and the Elves.

The one they actually agreed on had been rarely used because it was so intrusive. The bond was actually an extreme form of familiar bond, but it worked even better between magical beings than it did between a magical being and a magical creature, because it allowed them to communicate mentally, even between the physical realm and Otherworld, and to share magical energy and abilities and knowledge… In some ways, it was very similar to the Dementor Horde's Hive Mind, and the girls postulated that it may have been part of what was used to create them, but what it came down to was that they were in each other's heads and shared everything, and that was what saved them when they sucked the Horde's magic out of them.

Sharing the task of harvesting the wealth of the Room of Hidden Things between four dozen Elves made it much more manageable, and they started at one end and worked through it methodically. Mimsy created a series of storage rooms full of internally expanded trunks as part of the Coven's Chambers, with each room designated to store things of a given nature, and they filled the trunks with what they gleaned from the Room of Hidden Things. The worries about not being able to fund the investigations soon disappeared, because it didn't take long to accumulate over half a million Galleons worth of magical and mundane currency, gold, jewels and jewellery in the room designated for that.

An interesting side project arose when the Elves uncovered one half of a pair of vanishing cabinets while they were going through the room, because the improvements the Occlumency was making to Harry's memory made him recall seeing an identical cabinet sitting in Borgin and Burke in Knockturn Alley when he ended up there by mistake last summer… So they sent one of the Elves there under a glamour to see if he could buy the one in Borgin and Burke's cheap. After trying everything he could think of to drive the price up for a while, Borgin eventually gave in and sold the cabinet for next to nothing with an assortment of other knickknacks, because he knew as well as they did that it was worthless without the matching cabinet.


Once they had the funds to make a start, the Daphne and Susan asked their mother and Aunt, respectively, whether they could recommend anyone trustworthy to look into Harry's affairs in the Magical and Mundane worlds (Luna's father hadn't been quite 'right' since her mother died and Morag's Mum didn't have the type of connections they needed to help Harry)… They knew that their parental figures were up to something when they smirked and recommended the same person, Lady Andromeda Black Tonks of the Fawley, Du and Tonks Magical/Mundane legal practice, but it took them a while to drag the information that Lady Tonks had been born Andromeda Black and that she was a member of the Coven in the late Sixties/early Seventies out of them. She was also related to both of Harry's parents, and she and her husband were one of the most successful legal teams Magical Britain had seen in the last fifty years. Needless to say, Harry and the girls wasted no time in writing to her, and 'Aunt Andi' and 'Uncle Ted' were delivered to the Coven Chambers by Elf Express to start making plans with Harry a couple of days later.

The Tonks were exactly the ones they needed to straighten out Harry's situation… For a start, Harry's Mum had ensured that he was properly established as a legal entity in the Mundane world, as Henry James Potter Evans. She also registered her own Magical and Mundane wills, which were duly executed in 1981, establishing Edward and Andromeda Tonks as Harry's legal guardians in Mundane Britain... As well as having Andromeda magically accepted as Regent for the Most Noble and Ancient House of Rosier and Noble and Most Ancient House of Le Fay (if Lily's mother had had a little more magic, she would have been recognised as the Pure-Blood Heiress to House of Rosier rather than being cast out as a Squib because she was a Hedge Witch, in that event Lily would have been known as a Half-Blood, rather than a New-Blood or Muggle-Born).

While they didn't have the power to overturn Dumbledore's machinations in Magical Britain and the magical shenanigans that were blocking people remembering Harry's true identity were also blocking those who knew about the Dursleys remembering their connection to Harry… The Tonks were looking after the Magical and Mundane estates that Lily had left for her son, and Andi was using the Rosier, Le Fay and Black votes to block things that she and Uncle Arcturus wouldn't approve of…

As with most things that 'everybody knows', the fact that Andromeda had been cast out of and disowned by the House of Black for rejecting the marriage arranged for her and marrying a Muggle-Born was a fallacy. While her parents, sisters and Aunt Walburga were certainly demanding that, the only one with the power to do so was Lord Arcturus Black III, Head of the Most Noble and Most Ancient House and Clan of Black and Its Associated Houses and Clans, and Uncle Arcturus had no more intention of casting Andi out than he did his grandson Sirius Black III. So while 'everybody knew' that Andromeda and Sirius Black had been disowned, in actual fact Andromeda was magically accepted as the Steward and Voting Proxy for the House of Black and Sirius was magically accepted as Heir Primary for the House of Black in the Seventies… Then when Harry was born in 1980 and Sirius named him as his Heir, Harry was magically accepted as Heir Secondary for the House of Black, and with Sirius illegally incarcerated and Harry missing, Andi was formally installed as the magically accepted Regent for the House of Black upon Arcturus' death in 1991.


While the situation was convoluted, Gringotts was quite happy to accept Andi's authority as the Regent of the Houses of Black, Rosier and Le Fay. When Lily was accepted as Head of the Houses of Rosier and Le Fay in the Seventies, Charlus and Dorea had the Rosier and Le Fay accounts added to the Potter-Peverell Account Manager's portfolio so that they'd be looked after. Gringott VIII, the Potter-Peverell Account Manager, was well aware of Andi's legitimate connection to Harry and that Harry was the Heir Apparent for the Houses of Potter and Peverell, so he had no problem with looking into the withdrawals that Harry had asked her about, but he was outraged when he discovered that Harry's Trust Vault had been all but emptied by the time it was topped up to twenty thousand Galleons again on his birthday every year since 1982 (it was only supposed to be two thousand, but increasing the limits on his son's trust vault was one of the few things James could authorise without being magically accepted as Head of the Houses of Potter and Peverell). With an estate the size of the Potter-Peverells', twenty thousand Galleons a year wouldn't even qualify as a drop in the bucket, so Gringott hadn't noticed that this was going on until he specifically went looking for it, but now that he knew about it he was out for blood, because it was clear that someone had been stealing as much as they could from his client ever since his parents were killed in 1981.

From the information Harry had provided, he'd only ever visited the bank once, in early August 1991, where he took out around seventy Galleons. With the purchase of the most expensive racing broom available (which had apparently been done without his knowledge, agreement or authorisation) included, the total withdrawals from his vault for that year should have been around eight or nine hundred Galleons at most… Even if Harry was correct about him also paying for the three Cleansweep Sevens that other team members received when he got the Nimbus 2000, altogether those four brooms would have cost less than twenty three hundred, so at least seven or eight hundred of the three thousand Galleons withdrawn from his vault in September '91 was unaccounted for, and there was no explanation at all for the any of the other withdrawals of thousands of Galleons that were made over the year, the last one on the 27th July 1992 leaving no more than fifty Galleons in his vault… When Harry visited Diagon Alley with the Weasleys at the end of August in 1992, the items purchased for him and the coins he was given would have added up to no more than fifteen to twenty Galleons at most, but over a thousand Galleons was withdrawn from his vault at that time… Most of that probably to pay for the other two Cleansweep Sevens listed, so he was apparently correct and had in fact paid for all but one of the Gryffindor team's brooms… And nearly ten thousand more had been taken out since then… It was time to put a stop to this and deal with the thieves once and for all…

With that, Gringott quickly moved the remaining balance into a new high security vault for Harry, leaving a few thousand Galleons worth of traceable gold, silver and bronze coins in his old vault as bait for the thieves and making an appointment to see the Director as a matter of urgency… Because he needed authorisation to trace who deposited gold into their vaults after it was taken from the Potter-Peverell Heir's trust vault and then return double the amount stolen to his client's vault… And they also needed to show Harry that they were serious about dealing with the traitors in the bank, because he was obviously well aware that Goblins had to have been involved in these thefts from his accounts and if he wasn't satisfied with what they did to resolve the issue, he was quite capable of ruining them by taking his holdings elsewhere… So the traitors' entire fortunes would be forfeited to him as well.

Harry went with Ted, Andi and Susan's Aunt Amelia a month later to get Ted and Andi formally confirmed as his legal guardians in both Mundane and Magical Britain (the evidence of theft and neglect and absence of any legal records of guardianship were more than enough to have Dumbledore's nebulous claims of guardianship overruled and the only thing connecting him with the Dursleys was a few references in his primary school records). Then Harry formally took up the role of Heir where necessary and was keyed into the magic based security mechanisms for his new vault, but he got a shock when his vault opened, because it was much bigger than his previous vault, and held many times more gold.

Gringott laughed when he asked where all this gold had come from... Explaining that the thieves had stolen around twenty thousand Galleons a year from him for eleven years, plus another eleven so far this year, and Gringotts was applying full penalty rates to the amounts stolen, so they were recovering twice that much from the thieves and that had already been deposited into his vault as Gringotts would be absorbing any shortfalls… So with the eleven thousand that had remained in his old vault, there was currently around four hundred and seventy thousand Galleons in his vault… And as the assets of their Goblin accomplices were being forfeited to him as well, there would probably be over a million Galleons in his vault once the reckoning was complete.


Soon after this, Hermione and Penny Clearwater were petrified by whatever was running around the castle, which focused Harry's attention on finding whatever was responsible and making it pay. The incident in the Infirmary happened a few weeks later, but Dumbledore had been too quick with his obliviation attempt for the girls to see what was going on and Harry didn't get his memories unblocked until the summer holidays, otherwise he would have probably dragged the would be rapist off to a much higher staircase, to make sure that he didn't survive the fall a second time.

As it was, he was tempted to just tell the git to piss off when he dragged him off to that fraud Lockhart's office to save his sister, but he was still cursed with what Hermione called his 'saving people thing', so he went along with them. He cursed Weasley for an fool and Lockhart as a bastard when he saw Lockhart grab Ron's wand off him, but before he had a chance to do anything the fool brought the roof of the tunnel down on their heads with a backfired spell. Of course, he was the only one in the position to go forward so he did, almost getting himself killed saving Weasley's stupid bint of a sister.

It came as no great surprise when they got back to the cave in to find that nothing had been done to open a way for them to get out, because Harry could hear Weasley snoring up a storm on the other side. He called Roddy to pop them out of there, and once Ginny had been safely deposited in the Infirmary, he went back down with a couple more Elves to retrieve Dumb and Dumber. He was disappointed, but not surprised, when Pomfrey ignored him, who'd been bitten by a basilisk and almost died, to fuss over the three Pure-Bloods who hardly had a scratch on them and were all sleeping peacefully. Of course he got even less consideration from Dumbledore, who tried to drag him away to his office without even being looked at by Pomfrey, but for once, probably for the one and only time in his life, Lucius Malfoy actually made himself useful... Swaggering in like he owned the place and distracting Dumbledore with his pompous diatribe. While they were concentrating on each other, Dobby was signalling to Harry that Malfoy was responsible for the diary being at Hogwarts, which gave Harry an idea…

He used his being ignored to quickly pull off his shoe and sock and slip the sock into the remains of the enchanted diary that had caused the problems through the year, and when Dumbledore and Malfoy were done with their posturing and Malfoy turned to leave, Harry called out to him…

"Mister Malfoy, I'd like to return something of yours that I found downstairs..."

With that, he quickly stuffed the diary into Malfoy's hand and stepped away before he could return it…

Malfoy started to say that he didn't know what he was talking about, but his eyes widened as he realised what he was holding. At that point, he suddenly changed his tune and tried to divert attention from the diary by throwing it at Dobby as if it was nothing but rubbish. However Dobby had seen what Harry was doing and immediately opened the diary to pull out the sock, then started loudly rejoicing that he was free because his master had given him clothes.

That confused Malfoy no end until he turned to look at Dobby and realised what Harry had done. Obviously he was just as prone to temper tantrums and lack of judgement as his son, because he snarled something about Harry costing him his servant as he turned back, yanking his wand out of his cane and starting to cast something that started with 'Avada Kadav'… But that was as much as he managed to get out before Dobby used his magic to throw the blonde buffoon into the wall hard enough to break a lot of bones…

And of course Dumbledore and Pomfrey were more worried about the injuries of the grown Death Eater who'd just tried to curse a child who was supposedly in their care than the child, but something about the way Dumbledore's eyes gleamed when he looked at the diary worried Harry, so while the old man was focusing on Malfoy, he signalled to Dobby to take it and disappear and he'd call him later.

Once Pomfrey decided that Malfoy would recover, Dumbledore turned back, and was furious when he realised that the Elf and the diary had both disappeared.

"What happened to the Elf and the Diary?"

Harry just shrugged. "I dunno, he left while you were fussing over him… What was that spell he was trying to cast at me, any way?"

"Never mind that! Call the Elf back!"

"Even if I knew how to do that or who he was, what's the point? I'd like to thank him for being the only one here who made any effort to protect me, but I'm sure I'll see him next year to do that… What do Elves like anyway? I'd like to get him a thank you present."

"What are you talking about you stupid boy? Do as I told you and call the Elf back now!"

Dumbledore got a shifty look on his face. "You must understand that this is for your own protection Harry… You see if the Ministry don't have anyone else to blame for attacking Lucius, they will most likely charge you with the attack and you will be in a lot of trouble… I may even be forced to expel you and snap your wand.."

"What? You expect me to get the Elf who saved me back here so he can get into trouble instead of me? No bloody way! If I get my wand snapped, so be it! I'm beginning to wonder why I ever wanted to have anything to do with this backwards magical world!"

With that, Harry angrily stomped out of the Infirmary, taking special care to stomp on Malfoy's wand a few times to completely destroy it.

As soon as he was out of sight, Harry called Roddy to take him to the Coven Chambers, then called Dobby to him. Dobby's answer when Harry asked what he could do to thank him for helping him was predictable, and after they explained about the bonding process they'd used with the other Elves he was all for it, so Harry and the girls now had forty nine Elves between them.


When Harry discussed what happened in the Chamber of Secrets with the girls, everyone agreed that a) There was something seriously wrong with that diary and they needed to get someone they trusted in the Department of Mysteries to examine it ASAP… and b) As the basilisk carcass apparently legally belonged to Harry, as its slayer, they needed to get it rendered down and removed before someone else managed to get into the Chamber of Secrets and stole it from him, because according to Luna and Daphne, it was worth a fortune.

The diary was fairly easy to deal with, because Susan's Aunt and Guardian was the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and Regent for the Most Noble and Most Ancient House and Clan of Bones and Its Associated Houses… And as the Head of the Department of Mysteries was also the Head of a Noble and Most Ancient House and had been a family friend and mentor to her for decades, he was quite interested in investigating it… The basilisk wasn't quite so a simple matter though, rendering it down and storing every part of it in internally expanded trunks wasn't an issue with dozens of Elves ready, willing and able to jump to the task, but whenever they started talking about selling the parts, they'd forget what they were talking about… Luckily, Luna wasn't wired quite the same way as most people and once again she twigged to what was going on… Someone (Dumbledore obviously) had pulled the same sort of tricks to make people forget about the basilisk and the threat it represented to those in the school as he'd done with Harry. Now that they had two known instances of this though, they had a basis of comparison which allowed them to identify the key points of what was happening, which led the girls to conclude that it must be something related to the Fidelius charm, but it was being used to hide information rather than objects… A side benefit of this exercise was that it turned out that talking about it helped loosen the bindings on the information, and they managed to hang onto the key points long enough to arrange for enough of the restorative potion to… Well, restore... everyone that day.

No-one was happier to see Hermione back on her feet than Harry, but neither of them could work out why Ron coming near Hermione was suddenly making both her and Harry uncomfortable and angry. Of course, Ron wouldn't back down and give them space even though it was obvious that they were worked up and on edge about something, and his temper and mouth resulted in him and Harry getting into a stoush and being assigned detention for the rest of the year. Harry couldn't understand the sudden driving need he felt to hurt the little bastard… Not until his memories were unblocked over the holidays… But something was telling him that the little bastard couldn't be trusted and he wasn't going to let him get anywhere near Hermione.

Ron demonstrated an uncommon level of intelligence on the Express on the way back to Kings Cross though. Because when he went to join them in their compartment (even though it was rather full already), he managed to get the message that he wasn't wanted and had enough sense to grasp the fact that another stoush with Harry would be painful (for him) so he grabbed his trunk and… Well 'bolted' paints him in a bad light, but that's basically what he did.

A/N: As most would have noted, canon events that we're all familiar with won't be covered in detail unless the context is being changed. EG: The Chamber of Secrets is boiled down to a few paragraphs.