Hi everyone, So here it is, a little more plot advancement, and the beginnings of what will be Hogwarts. A bit of a time skip to September 1st but with a bit of wrapping up the summer first.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program!
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Michael POV
The rest of Summer had gone by very fast. One perk of my situation that Al was insanely jealous of was that the trace didn't work. In one of the books that I read, it explained that the trace worked by identifying the magic of the wizard. The magical core goes through a change on the 11th and 17th birthdays, and the trace is an ingenious piece of magic that by law must be put on wands that can identify those differences. This means that even pureblood kids can't use magic away from Hogwarts, even using their parents' wands, despite the other magic used in their homes. Hogwarts is excluded, because of how the identification system was set up at the ministry.
When I asked Harry about if the identification system, and how it can exclude places, I asked if families like the Malfoys could have thrown some money around to get out of the law.
That resulted in a trip to the Ministry where I asked my questions to a secretary at the Department of Underage Magic. I found out that only Hogwarts can be exempt from the tracking spell, as the magic was sealed in blood when the spells were first cast back when the ministry was created. The secretary even told me that Hogwarts has to notify the department of Hogsmeade weekends so the department can be on alert because even though students shouldn't be using magic in Hogsmeade, it's a grey area.
During the rest of the summer, my days included reading the material that Harry assigned, as well as getting private lessons in earlier Hogwarts stuff from Hermione when she was free. She was the 4th person to tell me to use her first name and that I was practically family. She was curious about how my wand worked, so she ran me through some testing to see if I could do certain spells. I learned that the patronus charm wasn't as hard as it seemed, but I then learned that the charm is considered soul magic and my achievement of a big white mist shield was not as profound.
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Soon, September 1st was upon us and we were travelling through the barrier onto Platform 9 ¾. I even slid on the ground and hit my head coming out of the barrier.
As we made our way over to the train, Albus asked Harry,
"What if I'm not placed in Gryffindor?"
"Wherever you go, you will still be our child. Your mother and I will be proud of you in whichever house that you get sorted into. Even Slytherin."
"Thanks Dad, that's what I needed to hear." Albus took in a breath. "Are you sure you can't tell me about how we get sorted? Uncle George told me that we'd have to fight a troll, and our methods would tell the professors what house we should go to. I don't think I really believe him, it is Uncle George after all, but there is a little voice in my head that's worrying like crazy."
Harry then laughed. "While I can't tell you how the sorting works, I can say that your Uncle is just messing with you. In fact, he told your Uncle Ron the same thing when he was a first year."
"Thanks, Dad" Al chuckled, thinking of his uncle worrying just like him.
After that it seemed like the whole Weasley gang had found their way over to us.
"I've been dreading this day for years," Hermione said, as Rose was about to start her first year.
"It's worse when all of your kids are out of the house," George said, "at least we have the new store in Hogsmeade to keep us busy." At this Ron nodded.
I saw Victoire walk up to me and she looked even more gorgeous than when I had seen her at the Weasleys a couple of weeks ago. She was wearing a very nice light Purple dress, and her hair was flowing down her back, almost like water.
"Hey, are you taking the Express?" she asked me,
"Unfortunately not," I said after gaining my wits back. "Since I'm not a student or staff, I'm not allowed to. Its a stupid rule that nobody really thinks is fair, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'll be there for dinner; I can sit at the Ravenclaw table with you and Leo"
Victoire had told me about Leo in one of her letters, and also about how Leo was the only other person except me to not have any visible reaction to her at first. I had to dissuade her of her fear that I was possibly gay as quick as possible.
"I would love that, and I'm sorry that we can't have the time to talk on the train"
"Me as well. Well, you should probably get on the train, don't want to get into trouble like your Uncles did their second year"
At this she laughed, and I found her laugh very melodic.
Lily then came to me for a hug for comfort as her brothers and cousins got on the train. I picked her up, knowing that this was the first time that she was the only one of her siblings still on the platform. Only her and Hugo remained as the kids who weren't going to Hogwarts yet, and they both still had 2 years more. Lily had told me that even though she spent a lot of time at Hogwarts with her dad's job, she didn't see her brother that often. Now she wouldn't see either of her brothers and she didn't like that idea very much. I told her that I would be around to see her when she spent time at Hogwarts, and I think that has been the only thing keeping her from breaking into tears.
The train pulled out of the station; we then had 9 hours before we had to be in the great hall for the feast.
Harry spoke first, "Anything you want to do now Lills? I know that seeing your brothers go away is pretty sad."
"Can we go get some ice cream?" she asked.
"Of course"
After apparating to the Alley next to The Leaky Cauldron, Harry, Lily, Ginny and I stepped into Diagon Alley. I was surprised to see that there were still a lot of people in the alley. For some reason, I had always envisioned the alley to be kind of empty when there were no students, but that kind of seemed dumb after seeing it still full of adult wizards.
Before we got Floreans, Harry and I had to stop at Gringotts bank. Apparently, since I am an official agent of the department, I am automatically on their payroll, which, fortunately for me, is a fact that they forgot about when they made me an agent right away.
I handed the goblin teller my agent card, as there was a fee for opening a vault. The payment would probably be coming out of my salary anyways.
We met back up at Floreans, where Lily got her big bowl of chocolate ice cream.
We then split up, Ginny taking Lily home. The next thing on the list for me and Harry was to head to the Ministry to pick up some materials from the department.
Before we walked into the phone booth for the guest entrance, Harry pulled me aside and said,
"The security desk can't recognize that you are not a muggle, so you do not need to take out your new wand for it to be scanned. Remember what would happen if the security wizard touched your wand."
"Right, I totally forgot about security. When we came when I had questions about the trace, I didn't even have my wand on me."
"That's another thing that I will have to drill into your head: always have your wand with you, preferably in its holster and not in your back pocket," Harry said with a grimace
From my knowledge of the books, I assumed he was remembering back to the 1994 World cup when Barty Crouch Jr. had stolen his wand to cast the Dark Mark.
I countered with, "The wand holster is really itchy on my arm. Isn't there a charm to make it more comfortable?"
"Another thing you will have to learn is that magic is not the answer to everything. The spell that you would use to help your comfort would unravel the sequence of spells on the wand holster making the wand summon proof and able to come to your hand with a flick. I don't know how it exactly works with the arithmancy, but Hermione put me in my place when I asked the same questions. That fact was actually one of the factors that led me to quit the aurors."
I couldn't help but laugh at the thought of an itchy wand holster leading to Harry quitting the Aurors. We headed into the phone booth and Harry dialed 62442, which I thought interesting because it used the muggle early texting way of spelling 'Magic'. I wondered if Arthur Weasley designed the entrance back in his day?
Walking into the Atrium, and past the security guard, we went straight to the elevator and down to the Ninth Floor. I was surprised that Harry was able to lay low in the Ministry atrium by just wearing a hat. It was a very fun thought, thinking about wizard logic - or lack thereof.
Walking into the department, I gave my agent card to one of the guards who then took my eye and fingerprint scans. Once we were let in, I took out my map and we found our way to the director's office.
"Hello Agent, Mr. Potter," Croaker said as we entered his office
"Hello Director, I heard that your researchers have come up with a new tool for Michael and other agents not stationed within the department."
"Ah yes. They have. Let me call in Agent Mercury to show you the prototype."
The Director took out a Galleon out of his pocket and transfigured its inscription to ask for the research agent to come to his office
"They took the idea from Hermione and the DA," Harry said at my look of curiosity.
A couple of minutes later, another agent came into the office.
"Agent Mercury, would you please show the new disguise prototype to Agent X here?"
"Sure," the agent said, pulling a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. "These glasses work to change your appearance so you won't be recognized in a crowd of people. While the department robes have the same features, they are not the most efficient thing as there is a lot of surface area for someone to cast finite incantatem on them. These glasses make disguising yourself easier because most people don't have the precise aim with a wand to hit something as small as these glasses. Also, our arithmancers are working on adding many other features to the glasses in the future, like helping see through walls and other spy things like that."
"Cool," I said, taking the glasses from the agent. I put them on and then asked, "How do I use them?"
The director answered me. "Since you don't have magic of your own, the rune on the right side has to be charged before you use it, and you just tap the rune to activate the disguise"
Once I tapped the rune, I didn't personally feel any different, but when the director handed me a mirror, I could see that my hair had turned more reddish and grown out to a little bit below my shoulders, and I also had a sort of goatee for facial hair.
Laughing at my new disguise appearance, I tapped the rune on the sunglasses to turn it off.
"Wow, those really work. Do I get to keep them?"
"Unfortunately, not yet. This is the only prototype the department has, but when they manage to make more copies, you will be given one to test," the director answered
"We are hoping to get more prototypes as well as include some upgrades by Halloween," added Agent Mercury.
After seeing the new gadget, we got what we came for from the director. A couple of one-of-a-kind books on soul runes, something I was told was a very secretive subject that not many magicals knew even existed.
After exiting the department and the Ministry we went back to Harry's house to take care of one major thing. When we got up to my room, Harry made me put all of my electronic things in the portkey chest that my mom had sent over my clothes in, which apparently has wards so that no magic from the portkey travel short circuits the electronics.
"The runes in the chest are of American design and are actually banned in Britain so you best not talk about them," Harry said. "While the ministry is reformed at most of the top levels, a lot of people who work there still have a somewhat backwards mindset so laws like the banning of things like this were never repealed; mostly only the laws relating specifically to blood purity were the ones that got repealed."
After Harry had redone the British end of the portkey for where I would be staying at Hogwarts, and I had done the calculation of when my mom would need to send it back, we sent the portkey back over to America.
After we were sure that there was no more electronics in the room, Harry literally carved out the small section of the door frame that had the runes which allowed me to use my electronics safely, holding a small lump of wall in his hands.
"Since the Hogwarts sensors can tell if we drew these runes on your doorframe at Hogwarts and would alert the Ministry, a little loophole is to transfer this little piece of wall to your door post at Hogwarts."
At this I laughed, thinking that this takes wizard logic to another level. I finished packing all of my things to go to Hogwarts, dreading the upcoming floo trip.