Chapter 17: Larceny, Lies and Legal Loopholes
Breakfast in the Great Hall, the last day before the Christmas Holidays. I, Fred and George had spent some time preparing a little mischief, they to impress Padfoot and Moony and I to build a closer friendship with two of the most skilled potential magic gadget inventors in Hogwarts. Seriously, they're great at coming up with things, and if only I could get them to apply themselves to useful things instead of silly pranks they could accomplish so much…
The chatter in the hall diminished rapidly when the day's post arrived with no less than three dozen owls carrying howlers, spreading out across the hall to various random students of all houses and years, and even Dumbledore and Snape got one, his face turning visibly furious that someone would send him a howler.
Everyone expected some angry tirade, but nobody (except us who created it) expected the even worse horror the howlers released:
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day…
There is no escaping this song in late December. Not even at Hogwarts.
It had been surprisingly easy to buy a few stacks of howler paper, a magical record player and a record of the piece and let all the howlers record while playing the disc. The difficult part had been getting them to play synchronised, but George had figured that part out. Why did we get a bunch of howlers to play Christmas music? Cause why not. It's unexpected, doesn't hurt anyone, Sirius found it hilarious to send Snivellus a howler and it demonstrates that much of the stuff wizards use could be used to do many more things with a little out of the box thinking.
Most importantly, in setting up, recording, packaging and addressing this many howlers I taught the twins the value of organising production in an assembly line style. Knowledge they're going to need if they're ever going to set up a business selling prank items and/or actually useful gadgets.
The real surprise was another letter I got that morning…
Harry Potter
I have something for you to see. On the fourth floor in the east wing, the third room on the right.
Come alone.
Well, that's interesting. Anonymous letters are usually my modus operandi.
"Hey, Fred, George? The music sync was perfect. Great job."
"Yeah, it worked way better than expected! Are you going to be at Hogwarts for the holidays?"
"No, I'm going to be celebrating at home with Sirius and Remus, like last year."
"We're going to stay at Hogwarts, our parents are in Romania, with Charlie."
"Ok, well, if you want, I'm sure Sirius would have nothing against a few extra guests for the holidays. Our place is huge."
"You're inviting us to spend Christmas with Padfoot and Moony?"
"Sure, why not? Just promise me that the house will still be standing afterward. By the way, could I borrow the map for a moment? I need to check something out."
"Sure, here."
"Okay, bye! I solemnly swear I am up to no good..."
Let's see, fourth floor east wing, there's only one person there.
Albus Dumbledore.
What's he doing there?
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Third room on the left. According to the map, it's Dumbledore in there. But according to my invisible eyes peeking into the room, it's empty, except for a giant mirror.
The Mirror of Erised.
Of course. The way I've been behaving, making school-wide changes and preparing for war as a first-year, I'm completely different from what he expected of me. Of course he wants to find out more about what kind of person I am. And what better method than by invisibly observing my reaction to seeing my own heart's desire? And of course he doesn't know that I know he's there, since I never mentioned the map to him and left the part where I used it out of the pensieve memory of Quirrel and the troll. And since I'm wearing The Cloak of Invisibility, Deathly Hallow and all, he probably doesn't yet know I'm here. He's probably reading a book or something while waiting for me to show up.
So, should I go in and take a look at the mirror?
Wait a moment. Fatal plothole detected. If the mirror is here, and Dumbledore is here, then what the hell is guarding the Philosopher's Stone?
Only one way to find out!
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"Alohomora!"
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"Sleep, Fluffy , sleep!
Thy father tends the sheep,
Thy mother shakes the branches small,
Whence happy dreams in showers fall.
Sleep, Fluffy, sleep!"
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"Incendio!"
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"Alohomora!"
Of course, that didn't work. Let's see. Looks like a relatively simple mechanical lock, but charmed against opening charms. The keys are enchanted with wings, which is a lot more difficult to do the more other enchantments are on them, so they're probably normal mechanical keys and don't have a magical signature detected by the lock. Let's try lockpicks. Because of course I have some, I spent two years preparing for every situation I could imagine, and it's not like the size of my pockets is limited.
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Bingo! Now, the chess set…
"Sirius Black. Hey, Sirius, could you please quickly apparate over to the Grangers and give the two-way mirror to John?"
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"Hi, how are things going? Yeah, I'm fine, Hermione's fine too, she's not with me though. Could you please help me for a moment? Turn on the computer, I'll explain while it boots up."
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"Bishop to D6, and checkmate! Thanks!"
McGonagall's animated statues 0, Fritz! Chess Software for MS-DOS, 1.
Looks like magical AI development isn't quite keeping up with Moore's law.
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I could've Wingardium Leviosa-Boinked the troll here but it wasn't even necessary, one of the twins' dungbombs made its sense of smell useless, and it had no chance of seeing through my cloak. Silenced boots FTW.
Now, the fire challenge. Purple flames on the way out, looks like normal flames with a colour change charm on them, a normal flame freezing charm or fire resistance potion would get me out. On the way forward, though….
After looking up in both the Black and the Hogwarts library what the fire I remembered from Snape's room in the books could be, I'm sure it's Schwarzflamm.
A magical fire that was invented in the late medieval period by German wizards, it's several thousands of degrees hot and has the absolutely fascinating property, from a physics point of view, that it barely radiates any heat at all. You can stand right next to it and only feel a little warm but anything that touches the black flame is toast. Very useful for blacksmiths who want to heat up exotic magical metals very quickly, and practically impossible to get through without a very specialised and difficult to brew potion.
Which is what's probably in the small bottle on the table here. The logic puzzle checks out, my poison detector Remus bought for me half a year ago agrees with the puzzle on where the poisons are, so here goes nothing...
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Okay, so I'm through the fire and on the other side is a big safe, covered in glowing runes.
So this is Dumbledore's protection when he doesn't use the mirror.
"Kreacher! Could you please help me analyse what's going on here?"
After about half an hour of careful examination, we determined that the safe is protected through a myriad of overlapping runic circles, probably drawing power from the castle itself to make it practically impossible to open or damage the safe without getting blown to bits. Disarming this would take a skilled curse-breaker weeks, and I have only skimmed the basic runes books.
We did determine that it's safe to touch, although I have no idea where Kreacher got that guinea pig from, and we did figure out that it doesn't react to house-elf magic being used in its vicinity.
Let's think, what is something Dumbledore would never expect Voldemort to do and therefore would not guard against properly?
"So, Kreacher, you can apparate in and out, you can't side-along people because they would get splinched by Hogwarts's anti-apparition field, but you can carry objects, right? Do you think you could apparate the safe, let's say, one meter to the left?"
"Kreacher will try!"
Crack!
Honestly I just asked him if he thought he could do it without it triggering anything, but he jumped straight to trying, and it worked. If Kreacher can move the safe around in this room, it's likely that any elf could also apparate the entire thing out of the castle entirely.
Pretty big security hole if you ask me. Voldemort would probably never think of using an elf, he made exactly the same mistake in his inferi cave after all, but Quirrel was a Ravenclaw and he might think of it. So assuming that Voldemort and Quirrel together are at least as capable as I am, the Stone isn't safe right now.
Even assuming that Quirrel isn't as smart, the Stone isn't safe, because I am right here and I think I might borrow it. I mean, it's the Philosopher's Stone. Gold and Elixir of Life sound like things that could come in really useful. And if I take it now, make some gold over the holidays and ask Kreacher to apparate it back in afterwards, nobody's going to notice, right? And Dumbledore would be easier to convince to upgrade the security here if I can demonstrate how easy it is to bypass.
"Kreacher, could you move the safe into the basement of Grimmauld?"
Crack!
Crack!
"It is there, Young Master Harry."
Holy shit, I just stole the Philosopher's Stone. Maybe I should leave a note, so Dumbledore doesn't think Voldemort did it.
To: Professor Dumbledore
Do you know what a Penetration Test is? It's when you get a good guy to pretend to be a bad guy trying to defeat your defences to see if you have any major flaws in your security.
I hereby rate your little adventure course:
Originality: Acceptable
Entertainment value: Exceeds Expectations
Actual Security: Poor
Safety: Troll
I'll safeguard this artefact in a more secure place until the security here is seriously improved or the original owner is contacted.
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One fire resistance potion, sneaking past a troll, flambéing a plant and singing a lullaby later, I was back on the fourth floor.
According to the map, Dumbledore's still here, and I've let him wait long enough, so let's see what he wants me to see and take a look at the mirror. To be quite honest, I'm curious myself what my desire is. Infinite gold? Voldemort dead? Me being a powerful wizard? World domination?
I should probably prepare something believable so I can tell Dumbledore first. Something that fits my established character of unusually smart, but ultimately good eleven year old hero. How about I see myself grown up, in a research lab, working with the world's best spellcrafters, potioneers, scientists and engineers working to solve the world's problems. Cancer? Magic cure disguised as nanotech mass-produced. Energy? Magic power generators disguised as fusion plants deployed worldwide. Overpopulation? Here's an Earth-like exoplanet being terraformed. Magic getting revealed? It's indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. Yeah, that seems like an okay desire.
Now, let's take a look at that mirror…
Oh.
Right.
In hindsight it should've been obvious.
I'm going to be dragged into a freaking civil war.
And I'm probably never going to see my actual family again.
Panicking is totally appropriate in this situation.
My mother. My father. My sister. And my little brother, as annoying as he always was, my heart desired to have them all back. My home, just like I left it in 2019.
Calm down. Occlumency up.
They probably don't even exist in this dimension. If my parents do exist, I and the existence of magic probably butterfly affected them enough already that they might not even meet each other.
Remember: Your mind is surrounded by barriers.
Solid, impenetrable barriers.
The mirror shows us our greatest desire, no matter if it is achievable or not. And sometimes it shows us that uncomfortable truth that we never really wanted to acknowledge.
Calm down! This is not the appropriate time for panicking!
When I recovered from narrowly avoiding an emotional breakdown resulting from years of blatantly ignoring my status as dimensionally misplaced quasi-orphan, I noticed Dumbledore standing next to me, obscuring the mirror with a conjured mist.
"Harry. Are you alright?"
"Yeah. I guess so. That's an- um- very dangerous mirror you have there. Not something you'd want students to just stumble upon."
"True, although I suppose the majority of your classmates would see something a lot less impactful than what you saw. May I ask what it was that affected you so severely?"
"I saw my family." And I didn't even have to use my prepared lie.
Dumbledore looked unsurprised and nodded. "Lily and James were good people, Harry. Two of the bravest students I ever had the pleasure to teach. But unfortunately, they have been dead for over ten years. This mirror shows-"
"Not your face but your heart's desire. I know. It says it right there."
"Not everyone recognizes mirror writing immediately."
"Yeah, I guess I do. The mirror shows us what we want, but it's not always possible, so I shouldn't get stuck on it. Got it. By the way, how are we going to do this whole fighting Voldemort thing over the holidays? I'm going to be home, so if anything happens, Quirrel finds a way into the third floor or you find a spell that'd work against him, you could reach me over the floo. Our address is Seriously Grim Old Place. Sirius likes his puns."
He nodded. "That should work. Merry Christmas, Harry."
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On the carriage to the train back, I decided to tell Hermione about my latest adventure.
"So let me get this straight. Professor Dumbledore had the Philosopher's Stone hidden on the third floor corridor as bait for Voldemort?"
"Yes."
"And you decided to test if his security was adequate to stop Voldemort from actually getting it?"
"Yes. And I managed to get through in less than one hour, without him noticing."
"So you decided to steal it?"
"Well, it wasn't safe where it was, I'll give it back as soon as he implements decent security, and honestly, could you resist the chance to do some tests on it? It's the most famous alchemical catalyst in the world!"
Hermione thought about it for a moment. "You're right, if I'm honest with myself I wouldn't resist the chance either. I know that stealing it is wrong, but I'm just too curious on what secrets it might hold. Harry James Potter, you corrupted me!", she shouted in mock-anger.
We both laughed about it for a moment, then she asked: "Is there anything else you might want to tell me?"
"Uh, yes. Fred and George are going to stay at Grimmauld for the holidays."
"Fred and George Weasley? The biggest trouble-makers in all of Hogwarts? Are you serious?"
"No, Sirius is the biggest trouble-maker. Well, they want to meet, so I invited the twins over."
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At home at Grimmauld, we immediately visited the safe containing the Philosopher's Stone in the basement. The runes had stopped glowing, confirming my theory of them drawing power from Hogwarts, which obviously doesn't work outside of the castle. Typical Dumbledore, very powerful protection with a big fatal flaw: The Fidelius was supposed to be impenetrable, but Pettigrew's treason negated it. The blood protection was supposed to protect me at the Dursleys, but it only worked against Voldemort and not against anything else, like for example the Dursleys. After carefully opening the safe, we found two things on the inside: A red gemstone and a very old looking book.
"I can't believe it!", Hermione exclaimed. "It's Flamel's personal research notes!"
"It's in French."
"Yes! The original from when Flamel first worked with the Stone!"
"Hermione, I don't know French."
"Oh. I guess I'll read it and tell you the important things?"
"Okay, and I'll-"
WHAM!, I got interrupted by a loud noise from upstairs.
"-make sure that our guest's behaviour doesn't go out of hand. After that I'll run some tests on the Stone."
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Okay, let's recap what I found out about the Stone. Density 5.6 g/cm³, fascinating crystal structure, colour is ruby red, I don't have an electron microscope right now but I do have something else…
"Harry! THAT'S NOT A TOY! What are you even doing in our dentistry?"
Okay, maybe I should have asked for permission before scanning the Philosopher's Stone with the Grangers' dental X-Ray.
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I'd just returned from the Grangers' dentistry after finally getting the X-Rays done, when I was met by a rather unusual sight: Our redheaded guests getting chased through the entrance hall of Grimmauld by a brightly glowing red-green striped dog.
"What the…?"
"They wanted to make things more festive", a red-green haired Remus Lupin commented. "Apparently their formula for hair colouring potions works a bit too well on Sirius's animagus form."
Maybe inviting the Weasley brothers to the same house as the remaining Marauders wasn't exactly my brightest idea. At least things won't be boring these holidays.
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"..and I had to convince your mother to let me X-Ray the Stone. So that's what I did, and what did you find out, Hermione?"
"This book is amazing. Unfortunately it doesn't include the instructions for making the Stone, so we can't make our own one. There are instructions for the Elixir of Life, but it's a bit of a let-down. Apparently Nicholas Flamel himself spread a lot of misinformation on what it could do, he wrote here that he regrets how much he foolishly bragged about his accomplishment in his youth. If I translated this century old French correctly, the Elixir is essentially a very good anti-aging potion and little more."
"So Voldemort couldn't use it to create a new body?"
That might explain why Dumbledore used such miserable security, if there was never a big threat of Voldemort using it in the first place.
"No, I don't think so. And there's more: It apparently creates a sort of dependency. If you start taking it, you need to take a dose every month or you die. One of Flamel's apprentices died at the age of 65 after he lost his bottle of Elixir while travelling to Rome; he'd have lived for longer if he had never started taking it in the first place. This is why the Flamels decided to not give more people access to it."
Now I'm a bit more concerned about the security, why would Dumbledore be this careless with the lives of his friends? Unless the Flamels have more Stones than just the one, of course.
"So Elixir isn't that great, but what about the lead to gold?"
"Nicholas Flamel writes it's as simple as letting the Stone touch the lead, and it turns into gold. He successfully transmuted small amounts, like below one gram, as demonstrations, but he never dared larger amounts because apparently the gold is cursed. He tried to find and remove the curse for years, but never managed it. He gave up on it centuries ago, when his wife Pernelle convinced him that it was too dangerous. His main source of wealth has been other, less famous alchemical work, like the dragon's blood project he did with Professor Dumbledore."
Cursed gold… What's next, is the submersible Durmstrang ship going to pay London a visit, filled with inferi pirates, to steal it?
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"I'm not that comfortable about this, Harry. Are you sure we won't get terribly cursed?"
"Don't worry, Hermione, it should be safe. It's just a tenth of a gram of lead in this petri dish, a safe amount according to Flamel, I rigged it to drop on the Stone when this alarm clock rings which I'm going to set to ten minutes, then we'll leave, come back in twenty minutes, and see what happened. Sirius and the others are all shopping in Diagon and won't come back for an hour."
"But do you really think it's a good idea to make gold with this?"
"If there's a small chance we find a safe way to get unlimited money, it's worth it. Imagine how easy it'd be to free the house elves, we could just buy them all, and give them the option to work for us or go free and work for whoever they wanted to."
"Suppose we did that, what would we do with all those elves?"
"Well, how about we open a Chocolate factory?"
"You're not Willy Wonka."
"Well, if you don't like that idea, I could always hire them to work in my underground secret villain lair."
"WHAT?"
"Well, to be honest, it would be pretty despicable of me. Downright gru-some."
Okay, when she smacked me for that I really deserved it, it was a terrible pun. In my defence she was literally the only person in this world who'd get it, so I couldn't not tell it.
"Okay, fine. Unlimited money would be pretty nice to have."
"Good. Let's stop joking around and start working on it. Experiment #1, set up and ready. Let's do it!"
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That experiment worked quite beautifully. No curse on us as far as we can tell, a tenth of a gram of what appears to be genuine gold secured in a thick glass vial, and once we get the pictures of the camera I macgyvered to trigger with the alarm developed we can take a look at how the Stone worked its magic.
Of course, nobody develops film on Christmas Eve, so I'll have to wait until I can get the pictures. Oh what I'd give for a smartphone with a built-in digital HD video camera. Screw the 90s. So, it looks like our alchemy hobby might have to be put on hold for a few days.
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"Oh, hi, Ron, Fred, George. Mind if you help me and Sirius prepare dinner?"
Cooking christmas dinner for me, Sirius, Remus, the three Weasley guests, Hermione and her parents and I think Arabella is going to arrive in the evening too, that's turning out to be quite a bit of work.
"Harry, could you pass the butter?" asked Hermione, working on the pudding.
"Just say the magic words."
"Please?"
"Actually, I was thinking more along Wingardium Leviosa... there you go."
"Thanks. And Wingardium Leviosa…"
While Hermione levitated the flour towards her, the three Weasley brothers just stared.
"Did you just..."
"Do magic..."
"Outside school?"
"Isn't that, like, forbidden?"
"Are we really out of school?", I asked in reply.
"Well, we're at your home, aren't we?"
"True. Now, riddle me this: Are the two really mutually exclusive?"
"Hey," Ron exclaimed after a few seconds of thought, "didn't you mention something about getting homeschooled before Hogwarts?"
"Ten points to Gryffindor. Yes, there's a system that allows children to cast magic at home if they're being homeschooled, and we never did the paperwork to cancel that. The thing is, you need a tutor who has a teaching licence to file for homeschooling, and those are generally pretty expensive. But we got lucky, we got Remus Lupin aka Mr. Moony here, who happens to have the right paperwork. Before he tutored me he used to have trouble finding employment, something pretty rare amongst skilled tutors. Of course, now that we're at Hogwarts he spends most of his time with the British Lycanthropy Association organising portkeys for werewolves who want to skip the full moon, but today he's here and he's still legally our tutor so as long as that's the case, our home is our school," Hermione explained.
"Wow. So you found a way around the underage magic rule?", aked Fred in amazement.
I replied: "Well, legally we're only supposed to do magic when Remus is around, but it's not like the Ministry can actually track him, so we can pretty much do whatever we want at home. Of course, given how rampant bribery is in the Ministry it's not very surprising that there's loopholes giving rich kids unfair advantages."
"Yeah, not surprising", Hermione sneered. Maybe I should remind her that our current plan is not to bring down the bourgeoisie, but to become part of it through alchemy-gold? It's a much preferable choice, especially since capitalism is going to win the Cold War in about 6 hours from now.
The three Weasley brothers whispered something to each other, then George asked the obvious question: "So, is there any chance Mr. Moony here might tutor us too?"
"Well, you know, usually personal tutoring services are very expensive, but in this case I'm sure that if I asked politely, he'd be fine doing some lessons in magical pranking over the holidays for, let's say, one knut the hour?"
I really shouldn't encourage the Weasley twins and their younger apprentice to engage in full prank war against Sirius and Remus, but I need something to keep all of them busy and happy while I and Hermione figure out the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone.
At least I have their promises that they won't do anything that might bring down the house. Small consolation.