Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-One-There Is Pleasure
"I'm sure he went down that alley!"
Harry sighs a little as he stands under a Disillusionment Charm and watches them all rush past him. There are British Aurors mixed in with the French ones, which is a bit surprising. He thought Britain would rage about him but continue hunting him mostly in London, that they wouldn't even think about him leaving the country at first.
They must really want him dead for being a Dark Lord.
Harry shakes his head. Honestly, it's his own stupid fault. He ventured outside with a disguise for his face and eyes, but he didn't change his hair. Why would he? There's lots of people who have that kind of shaggy dark mop, right? It's hardly unique to the Potter family or him.
But he knew he made a mistake when he glanced up from a display of oranges and saw a witch's eyes widening at him. Then she shouted, and although Harry didn't grasp the particular French word that it was, Aurors appearing around him after that woke him up.
He winces as he listens to the footsteps pound by again. They're doubling back and circling around, which means they're going to find him unless he moves.
Harry Apparates back to the Black safehouse, grumbling a little. He might have to go further away than France, which is annoying. There are some Black properties in Italy that he inherited and even ones in India, but he isn't sure that he wants to go somewhere so completely different that he has no knowledge of the languages, the culture, or the climate. And he does want to transition into the Muggle world in a more peaceful way than this would allow him to.
He just wants to watch some of the consequences in the wizarding world first, that's all.
Abruptly, Harry sighs and buries his head in his arms. "I really am an idiot," he mutters. There's an enormous storehouse of nasty Black artifacts right in this same house with him, after all. He'll need to do some monitoring to discover something that can safely turn him invisible and let him pass through crowds without them noticing, but there has to be at least one.
Just one that he might have to experiment with a bit if it's tuned to only be responsive to people with a Black blood inheritance. The hours he spent with only one arm the last time he didn't test an artifact were interesting, but not fun.
Harry strolls into Diagon Alley with the hood of the ancient cloak he's found thrown over his shoulders. It will muffle him utterly from other people's senses as long as he wears it thrown over his face. They can't see him, can't hear him, can't smell him, and will veer aside from him without realizing what they're doing. Harry assumes they can't taste him, either, but that's the sort of thing he didn't really have the chance to test.
It was an interesting test wrestling the cloak and convincing it that he does have the right to wear it because he inherited all the artifacts that belong to the Black family line. The cloak tried to eat his head, Harry dipped it in acid, the cloak tried to eat his hand, Harry set it on fire, and they came to a truce.
Harry looks at the Prophets propped up in numerous stands outside numerous doors proclaiming him the Dark Lord Potter and the architect of all the wizarding world's misfortunes. He considers that, then nods. Well, he can't claim actions that Voldemort and Grindelwald actually did, but in the context that he eliminated some of the justifications for wizarding Britain climbing up its own arse, he did that.
He notices a hushed conversation between people dressed as Auror trainees and heads in that direction. They're hissing to each other, and the hissing includes his name. Harry stands at the edge of the circle without anyone noticing him, of course.
"...send us after him!"
"What would be the point, though? I mean, if fully-trained Aurors can't handle him-"
"One of his friends said he had a soft spot for young people in school. He trained a lot of them before he started learning Dark Arts. So they think he won't kill us because he'll see us as kids."
Harry raises his eyebrows. He's not actually sure who said that, and if they were someone intending to betray him or someone intending to spread a confusing rumor. He'll have to try to find out and see whether he should thank them or yell at them.
"Kids with wands trying to lock him up in Azkaban for the rest of his life!"
"Well, I mean, they're revising all those cases where someone just went to prison for being Muggleborn. I don't really know what the justification was for that at the time, but anyway. They could also look at his case in a while and give him a second go-around if they wanted."
Harry leaves the chorus of disagreement that produces, well-satisfied. Not every member of the Wizengamot would want to admit they made a mistake in favoring pure-bloods, but enough have felt the cognitive dissonance to get the trials started. If not all of them happen right away, he's sure Hermione will manage to hurry some along.
The next place he goes is Gringotts. He just wants to see if attitudes will have changed between wizards and goblins, but he gets off the wrong foot when he tries to stroll past the guards and they turn and stare at him accusingly.
Harry tilts the cloak's hood enough to reveal a bit of his face, and the lead guard immediately snarls at his subordinate and leads Harry further into the bank. Harry lets the hood drop back again. Things haven't changed enough for any wizards or witches in Gringotts to gape at a goblin marching self-importantly along.
He gets taken to a room lined with rock and extensive wards. Harry appreciates the compliment. They wouldn't prevent him from breaking out if he had to, but the goblins are at least taking him seriously.
"We haven't yet received anyone from the Ministry demanding that we hand over the wands we now possess."
Harry takes the cloak down and faces the goblin who's marching towards him through the door, not one he recognizes. "You might not. In all the chaos, I'm not sure that anyone's had time to count the wands in that spare room and realize how many of them are missing now."
The goblin sneers at him and points to the chair in front of the desk with a claw. Harry starts to sit down, then smiles and shakes his head. "I think it'll be more comfortable for everyone if I stand."
The goblin stares at him, teeth slightly bared.
Harry flicks his wand, and a plume of smoke in the shape of the chair rises from the wooden arms and back. "A trap to snare me when I sat down? Looks like one to knock me out, even. Well. I understand the Ministry is offering a huge reward."
The goblin's claws dig into the desk. "I did not set that trap."
"But you knew it was there, and you didn't warn me." Harry shrugs and leans on the back of the chair. Small trap spells snap at him, but are defeated by the Black artifact cloak. "Well. I came to see how you were getting on, but I suppose now that I need to withdraw all the Black and Potter money that I still have here, too."
The goblin freezes, looking at him. Harry returns the glance with a mild, patient expression. The goblins are welcome to be as angry as they like. Harry was actually planning to take most of his money and convert it into Muggle currency anyway, but he also thought he'd leave a single small vault in Gringotts. It looks like that's not viable anymore.
"You have already taken some of your gold elsewhere."
"I did think you'd noticed that. Although perhaps you in person don't know about the Potter and Black accounts."
The goblin utterly ignores that and says only, "You are betraying the sort of arrangement we agreed upon to fight your rebellion."
"I have no interest in taking your wands away or reporting that you have them to the Ministry. On the other hand, you have an interest in turning me in and claiming the vaults that I have here." Harry knows that has to have been a greater temptation for the goblins than the reward the Ministry is offering. "I think it's best for all of us if I quietly remove myself from the equation."
The goblin touches the side of the desk. Harry hears a chime somewhere deep in the bank, and then hears a clang behind him. It's probably a metal grille of some sort sliding down to block the path he came in by.
He sighs again. "Really?"
"We have clients who would lose confidence in us if they knew the Potter and Black vaults were no longer here."
"I think you should question whether you'd lose even more confidence by continuing to host them, now that most people think I'm a criminal." Harry easily touches his wand. It's not the Elder Wand, but it's got him out of more scrapes than he thinks the goblins know about. "Let me go in peace. It's not that difficult."
The goblin says something into a crystal on top of the desk, and more and more doors begin to open in the walls, revealing more guards armed with spears, axes, and lances. Harry has to admit the lances are an interesting touch. They don't have enough room in here to actually use them or mounts to make them easier to maneuver. They're either planning to do something else with them, or the lances are actually a different type of weapon.
Harry shakes his head slowly as he looks at them. "Really?" he asks. "Is this necessary?"
"You have continued the insults to Gringotts long enough," says the goblin sitting behind the desk. His claws are practically tearing the wood off the desk in strips now, and he's smiling as if he can't imagine anything better than getting to gut and strangle Harry-probably at the same time. "Did you really think that your insult and theft during the war had been forgotten?"
"I'm also the one who went a long way towards shaking off the Ministry prejudices towards you."
"Those prejudices are gone, but the insult remains."
"Very well." Harry raises his wand. He immediately gets more than one axe aimed at him, but he's not casting the spell at the goblins. Instead, he murmurs the words loudly enough for them all to hear and aims his wand at the wall. "Colliquesco aurum."
"What are you doing?"
Harry didn't know a goblin's voice could get that shrill. He smiles at them. "The one thing that you really, really don't want me to do. And I'll keep doing more of it if you don't let me go." He aims his wand at the opposite wall, where more vaults will lie. "Colliquesco aurum."
"Stop melting our gold!"
"Why? It would be easy to reforge it back into coins, wouldn't it? And you wouldn't ever have to lose wizards' trust if you just didn't tell them. I can't possibly melt all the Galleons in the bank before you kill me, anyway."
Everyone is staring at him with hatred. Harry just stares back, unimpressed. He's used to that. They should have chosen a different means of showing displeasure.
One of the goblins towards the back of the nearest ranks barks a command, and the weapons part to reveal the door Harry came in by. Harry keeps his wand out and the spell for melting Galleons on the tip of his tongue, but he smiles at them as he walks out. "Thank you." No need to be less than polite, after all.
"We will never forgive nor forget this insult-"
"I've already got one, what's one more?" Harry shrugs, and then follows the path towards the front of the bank. But he does halt on the way there, since he has to give the goblins time to catch up with his money.
They hand it to him in huge, heavy sacks. Harry Lightens them and Disillusions them and walks out of the bank with them floating behind him.
He shakes his head. People could be so sensible if they wanted to, but apparently they don't want to. It's never going to cease to baffle him.
Harry lounges next to the fireplace in the Black Hole that night. Ron sent him an urgent owl telling him that he thought his mum would destroy the house if Harry put off speaking with her any longer. Harry meant to speak with her anyway and he likes the Burrow, so he gave Ron permission to share with her a set of Floo coordinates that will, for one night, open the hearth here.
Molly's face appears with a puff of green smoke and a glare. Harry grins. "Mrs. Weasley," he says, because he loves teasing her by calling her a name she told him not to call her, and also it can't possibly make her angrier right now.
He gets a sterner glare, but no reminder that he's a member of the family and should call her by her first name. Well, of course not. There's been a lot of owls out of the tower since the last time she could sincerely call him that.
"Why did you do this?" Molly asks.
"Because I wanted to free the wizarding world of prejudice."
From the angle she's at, Harry can't see her hands in the flames, but he's pretty sure she clenches them. "You couldn't have asked if people felt they needed to be free of them? If they felt any prejudices at all?"
Those words startle Harry into laughing-something she's displeased about, from the thinness of her mouth. But Harry can't really believe she asked that question. "Of course the people in power won't think they need to be free of them," he says, shaking his head. "They think everything's fine since those restrictions don't affect them. And you thought that you didn't have any prejudices, and I thought Hermione and Arthur might not have them-"
"We didn't!"
"But every one of you ended up on the floor when the fire burned your minds."
Molly is quiet for a moment, her mouth still firm. Harry watches, knowing he won't be forgiven. He's a bit sorry for that, but on the other hand, he would much rather have achieved what he did than be in Molly Weasley's good graces.
"You convinced four of my children to betray the family," Molly finally says. "I knew that Ron would stand with you no matter what, and George has been strange since Fred died, but Bill? And Percy?"
"Bill had to watch his wife and children suffer daily because people distrusted Fleur's Veela ancestry. He suffered himself from having werewolf scars on his face. And anyway, he didn't fight. He just asked for safe haven while the rebellion was going on."
"People didn't really mean the things they said."
"Bill thought they meant them." Harry shakes his head. Molly isn't evil, but she is somewhat blind. On the other hand, he supposes it's hard for her to remember how strong those prejudices were now that they've been destroyed, just like everyone who used to suffer under them. "Anyway. They didn't betray your family."
"They rebelled against the Ministry."
"And you didn't do that when you were following Dumbledore in the Order of the Phoenix?"
Molly adjusts her robe collar, looking something other than angry for the first time. "Don't compare yourself to Dumbledore. He never would have done this."
"Well, no, he wouldn't," Harry has to acknowledge. Dumbledore sought to change the wizarding world, but not enough. He sought the Deathly Hallows, but he wouldn't have used them the way Harry did. "But that doesn't mean that I somehow tricked your children, Mrs. Weasley. Bill asked for sanctuary. I gave it to him."
"And Percy?"
"Decided on his own. I'm actually a little surprised that he told you," Harry adds. He trusts Ron, George, and Bill enough to know that they wouldn't have betrayed Percy's secret, even to their own mother.
"He did. When the fire was past. Just came walking in and announced that he'd joined your side, like he was proud of it."
Harry tilts his head. There's something hiding under Molly's voice that he's not sure she's aware of, but he won't let it go unacknowledged, because he's that kind of shit. "I think you're actually proud of him, aren't you?"
Molly stares at him, her face flushing a hectic red. Harry knows that Ron heads for shelter when she looks like that. That's all right. Ron can do that, and Harry can do what he's going to do. "What?"
"You're proud that he chose a side and stopped desperately trying to pretend that nothing was going on. Even if you think he chose the wrong one."
"Of course he chose the wrong one! What you did is wrong, Harry! Manipulating innocent people's minds, making them think differently-"
"That was less wrong than letting Muggleborns go to prison while pure-bloods walked away with a slap on the wrist! Less wrong than letting unicorns be slaughtered! Less wrong than letting goblin war after goblin war happen because of our blind bigotry towards them!" Harry takes a deep breath and reels his temper back in. He shouldn't have lost it. He's endured worse than this. "Anyway, it's done now."
"New troubles will arise."
Harry shrugs. "Those, I'm not concerned with. The wizarding world can stop relying on me as its savior. I'm done. I've done my part."
"You're not a savior, you're a Dark Lord!"
"Admit it," Harry says with a faint smile. "Part of you is proud of me, too."
Molly abruptly shuts down the Floo connection. Harry chuckles. As much as he'll mourn the loss of those family dinners, he won't be surprised if he and Molly communicate on a regular basis at some point in the distant future.