Disclaimer - still don't own anything.
AN - Sorry I took a few extra days to post this one, it was my birthday on Wednesday, so I've been quite busy this last week. Anyway, here's the next chapter, I hope you enjoy :)
Chapter 5 - Put A Ring On It
Harry and Alex walked through the Ministry Atrium. Harry felt sick as he walked past the place where he had cast an unforgivable on Bellatrix. He swore to himself there and then that he would never use another. Neither Voldemort or Dumbledore were worth the damage to himself.
"We have an appointment with Minister Fudge." Alex told the security guard whilst handing him his wand. He gestured to Harry to do the same.
"Mr Alex Jackson, ten and a half inches, willow, unicorn hair, and Mr Harry Potter, eleven inches, holly, phoenix feather. You know the way to the Minister's office?" the guard asked.
Alex nodded and walked toward the lift, Harry trailing behind him. They entered and thankfully found themselves alone.
"Remember, be polite but strong, let me lead the conversation, and don't lose your temper. Fudge will be full of apologies, but will also be obnoxious about it. If we dangle the carrot enough, he'll bite."
The lift opened and again Alex led the way. They were in an outer office and the receptionist looked at them with suspicious eyes.
"Will you please tell the Minister that Alex Jackson and Harry Potter are here for our meeting?" Alex asked courteously.
The girl blinked a few times and then nodded quickly, placing her wand to a little box on the desk she spoke.
"Minister Fudge, I have Alex Jackson and Harry P-Potter here to see you." The girl looked so flustered that Harry almost laughed at her.
Not ten seconds later the door opened to show Cornelius Fudge, minus his normal bowler hat, waving his arm to show them into the room.
They took seats on opposite sides of the desk and Alex waited for Fudge to open the conversation.
"Can I get either of you anything to drink?"
The pair declined politely, but still stayed silent.
The Minister flushed before talking again.
"Mr Potter, I'd like to offer you my personal apology for the fiasco here at the Ministry in June. And of course for disbelieving you last year when you informed me that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back. I made a very large mistake."
"Apology accepted, Minister. I hope we can work together to see that Voldemort is gone for good in the near future."
Fudge seemed to take heart from Harry's words and smiled.
"That makes two of us. Now, I assume you requested a meeting for a reason, may I know the reason?"
"Of course, Minister," Alex said, taking control of the conversation. "Mr Potter hired me over the summer to help him gain some control over his life. You see, Headmaster Dumbledore made some very bad judgments when it came to Mr Potter's personal life, and he would like to be able to overturn them. We have come to see you with a form for emancipation, with the hope that you will fully grant the emancipation given the realities of Mr Potter's situation."
"I see. Please can I have the form?" Fudge held his hand out and Alex passed it over the desk.
"If I may ask, what judgments would you like to 'overturn'?" He asked as he began to glance over the form.
"Mr Potter's living situation to begin with. He was placed into an abusive home by Headmaster Dumbledore, with magic hating Muggles. Obviously this is not a suitable residence for Mr Potter, especially as it is in a fully Muggle area.
"Another reason we are applying for emancipation, is to ensure that he is able to gain tutors in different kinds of defensive magic, and begin training over the summer. I think you will agree that Lord Voldemort has taken a rather unnatural interest in Mr Potter, and he will need to be able to keep himself alive. Again, the Headmaster has decided this is not necessary. This decision comes at a time when he has just informed Mr Potter that it is prophesied that he will be the one to defeat Voldemort."
Alex sat back in his chair and watched with amusement as his last statement sunk into the Minister's brain.
"It's true then? You are the only one who can defeat him?"
Harry nodded his head, a grim smile gracing his lips. "I am sure you can understand now, Minister, my reasons for wanting to learn and train as much as I can, as fast as I can. I would also prefer not to continue being under the Headmaster's control. He is a powerful man, but if I am to truly meet my destiny, I think it is time I learned to stand on my own two feet."
Alex smiled at Harry. It was in the bag, he could feel it.
Fudge nodded absently as he finished reading the form.
"It says on the form that Mr Potter will be living with you during holidays and in the summer until his graduation, but there is no address. Why is that?"
"My house is under the Fidelius, and currently, there are only four people who know the secret, two of us being in this office. I'm willing to tell you the secret personally, but I am unwilling to write it on a form that could fall into the wrong person's hands."
Fudge nodded again.
"What types of magic are you hoping to learn?" He asked Harry this time, looking intently at the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry sensed this question could make or break the meeting.
"I'm hoping to study an intense course of defensive magic, as well as occlumency, given Voldemort's proclivities towards mind control. I am also hoping that we can come to an arrangement of a few lessons from one of your Aurors in offensive magic."
Harry took a deep breath. "Minister Fudge, I'll be honest. I don't think this war can be won with only defensive magic, but I do believe it can be done without the use of dark magic. I have no wish to damage either myself or others around me using magic like that."
The Minister sat back in his chair, his elbows on the desk, his fingers tented in front of him. If he didn't allow this, it could backfire terribly on him in the press if spun the wrong way, and he was holding onto his office by his very fingertips and he was well aware of that.
If he did allow it, it would release a strong public figure out from under the control of someone he didn't trust; and it could also, if he arranged the requested training with the Auror office, put him in good stead with the Golden Boy, which judging on public opinion at the moment, was precisely where he wanted to be.
Sitting up, he smiled at Potter and Mr Jackson and made a show of picking up his quill. Inking it, he added his signature with a flourish along the dotted line and handed the form back to Mr Jackson.
"I assume you'll want to keep this as quiet as possible? Dumbledore is certainly not going to be happy with you."
"Yes please Minister, if only for a few more days," Alex replied, duplicating the paperwork with his wand. He pushed the copy back to Fudge for it to be filed quietly and put the original into his briefcase. "Dumbledore will soon realise that Harry isn't missing as he believes, and when he does, the fireworks may just be spectacular."
"Of course. If you would leave me your address, I will contact you directly about another meeting shortly. Perhaps we could come to some arrangements that would suit all of us?"
Alex smiled. He wrote the address down quickly and showed the parchment to Fudge. When he saw the Minister had read it, he set the parchment on fire, watching it disappear.
"We look forward to our next meeting, Minister. If you could file that today, it would be extremely helpful."
They shook hands, and Harry fell into step beside Alex as they left the office, taking the same route they had on their way in. It was mere minutes before they were Apparating away back to the safety of Alex's flat.
…
"Did it work?"
Sirius sat anxiously waiting for them, looking much better than he had when he left the bank.
"It did," Alex replied with a smile, Harry grinning like a loon as he walked into the room behind him.
"He can't control me any more, Sirius, we did it!" He laughed in jubilation, giddy on the feeling of being free of his manipulator.
They all sat down in the living room and Harry called Dobby to get the butterbeers.
"You know that the hard work is really going to start now, don't you?" Alex said seriously to the still smiling Harry. "In a few days, you are going to have to sit down in front of the Headmaster and not hex the man to bits?"
The smile slid from Harry's face.
"I don't know if I can do that Alex. Even just thinking of him makes my blood boil. How can I sit in the same room as the man that tried to kill my Godfather and not do anything?"
"You have to, Harry. I know it's hard, but you and Alex have worked hard to get where you are now, don't let anger ruin that," Sirius said, staring solemnly at Harry. "You can do this. I know you can."
Harry nodded. He would find a way to get things done. He always had.
…
Harry woke the next morning with a smile on his face. They had spent the rest of the day and the evening talking, partly making plans, but mainly Harry was filling Sirius in what he had missed, and Sirius was making Harry and Alex laugh with tales of pranks from his days at school.
The three arrived at Gringotts, Apparating into the same room they had left from the day before. Bludaxe was waiting for them.
"Alex, Harry, Sirius, I trust you come with good news?" the goblin asked as they took their seats.
"We do, Harry's ready to take on his Lordships."
"Of course, if we could get through this quickly, I have our best healer waiting for us. He has promised to run a full scan over you Harry, and has informed me that it may take a while. I have the rings ready, if you would like to put them on one at a time. Gryffindor first, Potter, then Black."
Harry picked up the first ring offered to him, a gold signet ring with a ruby in the middle. Engraved on it was a lion with the words Courage Is Key wrapped around it. He placed it onto his finger and a red glow flashed from it as it re-sized to fit him.
The same thing happened with the next two rings he put on. The Potter ring looked much the same as the Gryffindor ring, only with an opal stone and a unicorn engraved with the words, Light in the Dark. The Black ring was white gold, and it had a topaz sitting in the middle with the Black Family Motto, Toujours Pur inscribed across it in black.
He admired the three rings spread across his two hands for a moment, before he looked up at Alex. "What happens now?"
"Well, we just gained a whole lot of new paperwork," Alex said with a small chuckle. "And you have a meeting with a healer to get to."
Harry nodded.
They were led back to the same room Sirius had been waiting in just the day before. There was another goblin sitting at the desk in the corner, making his way through a rather large book.
"Good day Lord Potter, Master Black, Mr Jackson, I hope I find you all in good health."
The Goblin was the most elderly looking Harry had seen, and he seemed to have an almost elegant manner about him that Harry had never seen in a Goblin since he had joined the magical world.
"I managed to procure your rather extensive medical records, Lord Potter, I hope you do not mind. It will make my scan much easier. I must say, you have had quite the exciting life."
"Please, call me Harry. A little less excitement would do me some good I think, but I can't hope for that for a while yet."
"Of course, and how rude of me, My name is Glossack. Please, lie down on the bed, hopefully this won't take long."
Four hours later, a furious Sirius, a shocked Alex and an exhausted Harry left Gringotts. As soon as they returned to the flat, Sirius tucked Harry into bed, sitting with him until he'd drifted off into a dreamless sleep. He brushed the hair back from his head and sighed before he quietly left the bedroom to join Alex in the sitting room.
He was handed a rather large tumbler of firewhisky as soon as he entered.
"That manipulative, scamming, miserable, old bastard!" He raged before downing the drink in his hand. Alex refilled the glass and topped his own off, before they sat down.
"I'm surprised Harry wasn't driven mad with the amount of spells and blocks on him," Alex admitted, shaking his head. "By all rights, he should be in a coma in St Mungo's. I expected to find some, but that was... I don't know how he's going to cope with this on top of everything else."
Alex wiped a hand down his face. In the short time he had known Harry he had grown rather fond of him. Of course, in any decent mind, no one, especially a teenager, deserved this much done to them by a supposed guardian.
"Do you have the list with everything on?" Sirius asked him.
Alex nodded, putting it on the table between them.
"And some parchment and a quill?"
Alex pulled that out as well. He knew what Sirius wanted to do and he agreed. They could do something to help Harry instead of sitting wallowing about what the meddler had done to him.
"The binds are the most important, and we need to teach—or find someone who can teach—Harry the different aspects of his abilities. Until we do that, he isn't going to be able to control them."
"Okay. The Mind Magic block." Alex wrote it at the top of the parchment and underlined it.
"I can teach him the basics of Occlumency, but to be honest I don't truly believe he will need it. I have a book that explains how to make shields and intruder traps. If he reads that, I think he will be able to do it himself. He has it as a natural ability."
Sirius nodded. "The only person I know who knows Telepathy is Snape, and I only found out about that by accident. It's a closely guarded secret for the people who can do it. He might help, but I doubt it. He has every reason to hate me and James, to be fair, and it seems to have carried over to Harry."
"Hmm. We can always try. Elemental Magic."
"I have no idea about that, but Harry's great grandfather could do Elemental Magic, which means there will be some journals in the vault about it."
"The books were taken from both the Gryffindor and the Potter Vaults. We need to sort this out now, before the meeting with Dumbledore."
"The journals can't be taken by anyone not of Potter blood, so they will still be in the vault. There should be a few in there about Wandless Magic as well, all of the Potter's had some ability in it, some better than others."
Alex wrote all of this on the parchment.
"Ok, so we need to take him to the Vault as soon as possible. We will also have to work with him on his control. Having the two power binds taken off was reckless really, he's more than doubled his power, all in a couple of hours. He needs to learn to control it, quickly."
"The compulsion charms on him will hit him hard, getting used to not thinking a certain way will be hard on him. He's going to need a lot of help with that. We're, well, you since I can't be seen, going to need to find a way to check a few people for compulsion charms. Or even just get rid of them. A Finite Incantatum would do it, if you knew what you were aiming for. It will just be hard to do it without being noticed," Sirius said. He stretched in his chair. He had a raging headache.
Alex sighed. "I'll find a way to check on the compulsion charms at the first available opportunity. Severus, Hermione, Remus, anyone else?"
"I don't think so. I can't help but hope that Remus has one on him, even if only a loyalty compulsion to Dumbledore. He hasn't written to Harry since I 'died'."
Alex slumped back in his own chair. "I hope so too, for his sake. Once Harry has a better grasp, we're really going to have to get the ball rolling. We need to meet again with Fudge, meet with Dumbledore, schedule a full interview with the Prophet and the Quibbler, Bludaxe told me that Lady Malfoy has requested a meeting in private with the new Lord Black as soon as is convenient, and we have to do all this before the first of September. I have a headache."
"You aren't alone."