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The Treasure Hunter.
Harry sat with the other Gryffindors at breakfast while they waited for their schedules for this year, inwardly pleased the potions he had taken had ensured he looked as rested as the others while hiding the fact he had actually been up most of the night. As he ate his breakfast, his mind was on the upcoming Tournament; he knew that somehow he was going to be entered into it, the only problem was he didn't know how and when this was going to be.
But at the same time, Harry saw the advantages behind being entered since it would give him the excuse he had been looking for all this time. Getting acknowledged so he could, at last, take his NEWTs, and hightailing it out of this insane country for good, so he could go out and plunder various countries of their treasures. He knew if he passed his OWLs he would be eligible for taking them anyway, but if he could get emancipated, he could take them earlier than everyone else so he wasn't trapped in this stupid school for months on end. It was perfectly legal and there was nothing Dumbledore or Fudge could do about it.
Even better, if he could get away from Hogwarts, Harry could leave the magical world to deal with the mess and the chaos it had brought on itself; it was far past the time where they needed to grow up, and solve their own problems without someone to hold their hands and tie their shoes. However, if Voldemort did return, and Harry guessed the bastard would with the strong pains in his scar, to say nothing of the visions he was getting recently, he would have hundreds of countries to visit so he could find something to use against the Dark Lord and give the bastard a fight he'd never walk away from.
At least if he couldn't find any Horcrux immediately. He had been looking out for them for years since he returned to the magical world, and while he regretted being forced to destroy the one in the second year, he knew he had no choice, what with the spectre of Tom Riddle. Stupid Ginny Weasley. Why that stupid child couldn't have handed the diary over, he didn't know.
Harry was brought out of his thoughts when McGonagall came around to hand out the timetables. She left Harry's for last, which surprised him, but then he realised she was saving him so then she could scold him without delaying the others when classes were started. He had to admit it was a clever idea if only the woman chose a different place for the confrontation since he was going to make sure it did not go her own way.
"Good morning, Professor," he greeted politely even though he had to hide his instant distaste for the woman when he noted her look of disapproval when she looked at him. "You well?"
McGonagall glowered at him even as she handed his timetable over to him. "Mr Potter, you had us horribly worried when you disappeared, and why didn't you go to the Quidditch World Cup?"
Harry's polite facade slid off and replaced it with confusion, but it hid a demeanour of sharpened steel. "Professor, I didn't realise I was meant to go to the World Cup. In any case, I wanted to see somewhere different, somewhere more interesting than Britain for a whole summer. I don't see the problem of going abroad."
"The Headmaster was concerned for your safety!" She scolded him.
Harry raised a brow. "I was perfectly fine, Professor. And besides, if the Headmaster was so concerned about my welfare he would never have sent me to the Dursleys as a baby. Its a bit too late for him to care, in my opinion."
Now if she just took the bait…
McGonagall was outraged and astonished by the lack of respect towards Albus Dumbledore, and she wasn't the only one if the faces of some of the eavesdropping students, but Harry ignored them. He believed Albus Dumbledore, as a grown man who was very powerful, had met his own fair share of spite and opposition over the years and he should be able to take it and he didn't need school kids to stand up for him. "Mr Potter! The Headmaster has always looked out for your wellbeing, and you will never be disrespectful towards him again-!"
Harry couldn't stop or help himself while his mind raced for a way he could shut them up. He knew they would be bringing up the Dursleys again any moment now. And then he had it. It would mean revealing his scars, but he hoped it caused severe damage to McGonagall's worldview and cause problems for Dumbledore down the line.
"Disrespectful? Why should I respect a man who claims to be responsible for my welfare, and yet," Harry stood up after shrugging off his outer robes and pulling up his school jumper and his white shirt to reveal horribly scarred skin, "I've got these?"
McGonagall backed away while everyone around him pushed their plates or bowls away in disgust at the long-scarred skin, gaping in horror at the sight of the damage. "H-how-?"
The look threw in her direction like a master throwing his dog a few measly scraps was full of contempt. "If you don't know the answer to that, then it's clear as day the Headmaster didn't pay as much attention as he was meant to, or you didn't personally bother to check on my progress. I was shoved on top of a bonfire pyre. It would have been a busy night, dozens of muggles celebrating loudly so they wouldn't have heard any cries from a baby shoved on top by a family of muggles who clearly dislike magic and would go as far as that to keep it out of their lives, which makes me wonder if you lot even knew how they felt about it, but decided it made little difference in the long term. If it wasn't for my magic protecting me from the worst of the fire, I would have burnt to death. And it would have been your fault, supposed friend of Lily and James Potter," he sneered while barely holding any of his personal distaste for her.
McGonagall had clapped her hand to her mouth, her face white with horror, and she wasn't the only one. More than half of the girls nearby at the Gryffindor table and even those at others were looking in horror at the scars on Harry's back.
"Do you believe me now, Professor?" Harry glared at her, not even hiding his dislike for the woman anymore while he straightened his clothes again. She had forced him to reveal this little secret, but now his sharp mind was suddenly seeing the possibilities this presented. "If you don't, I can point you in the direction of the hospital I was taken to shortly after I was found on the pyre, and the detectives assigned to investigate the case of attempted murder. Yes, murder. What else would you call it?" He added when he saw the look of disbelief and panic flow across her face, which only made him more contemptuous of her. Did she think the Dursleys had been playing some bizarre and dangerous muggle game by putting him on the fire or was she really that clueless? He had no idea, and he took out his wand, knowing the best way to seal this so then people wouldn't accuse him of making this up.
Time for the piece de resistance.
"I, Harry James Potter, do hereby swear on my magic everything I saw about the Dursleys is correct, so mote it be! Lumos!"
The tip of the wand glowed bright, sealing the oath.
McGonagall looked at him in horror. She had spent a whole day watching the Dursleys in her cat form, and she knew of how obnoxious and disgusting the Dursleys had been, but she had listened to Dumbledore's claims they were the best people to watch and raise Harry Potter. But now she could see she had made a big mistake, and now it was going to cost her.
Harry meanwhile was delighted by the chaos he had caused even if he had just exposed a secret he had lived with most of his life, but he still had much more to do.
"Now, do you mind explaining to me why you are suddenly poking your nose into where I live and what my holiday arrangements are when you botched the whole thing by placing me with my mother's so-called sister?" Harry asked, sending her a pointed look, inwardly remembering the irritating meetings he'd endured with Dumbledore and this useless woman just to make him go back.
He had spent ten years without the Dursleys in his life, and yet these idiots didn't even know about it until his first year had more or less finished, and they still insisted on him going there without once listening to him, so he was hardly in a mood to listen to her anymore. It was time for her to see the longterm damage she was an accessory of. "You never truly seemed to care before, why start now? Why are you and Dumbledore meddling in business now when you didn't even know I wasn't even with the Dursleys after they tried to burn me alive? If you truly wanted your precious saviour to be safe then you would never have let me be placed into foster care. Hell, knowing the Headmaster's obsession of them, I'd likely be sent back to the Dursleys, only they might have shoved me into a rubbish bag, driven me all the way to the coast, and thrown me off a cliff, and if you say I'm exaggerating then you're an even bigger idiot than I thought you were."
"Mr Potter!" McGonagall was affronted, but Harry spoke over her. He didn't care for any social nicety right now. He was done with her stupid defence for Dumbledore, done with her meddling and siding with the old man, done with her ignoring the things going on around her. It was time for her to see he was prepared to fight her, and while it would cause Dumbledore to look at him more closely, he didn't feel too bad and as long as he kept on the line without crossing it, it was doubtful the old man would interfere. He hoped.
But then again, he could take care of that; a few nice photos of his back and a nice little memory of this conversation, and a few of the appointments he'd had as a child to help his lungs recover from the flames on that Bonfire night would be sent off to the Daily Prophet. And then the old man would be under so much fire he would likely not have time to poke his nose into business which was not his own. Harry was prepared for that.
"What do you expect, Professor, do you think I'm going to respect schoolteachers who poke their noses into my business when I'm not even attending school? You have no say in where I go or even what I do, but I will tell you I was happy and I was safe. And I would appreciate it if you and the Headmaster, both stop your attempts to tell me what to do with my life; you didn't even know I was nearly burnt to death by my so-called relatives until this moment when the Headmaster has known about it since my first year, but he dismissed it, saying I needed to spend time with them when it was clear I would rather throw myself into a volcano than have anything to do with them," Harry turned around, clearly dismissing her.
McGonagall looked down at him, stunned into silence by the unexpected rant. Harry took a few moments to notice the reactions of the nearby students. Weasley was looking at him aghast and Granger… well, Granger looked torn between anger at how he had just spoken to her favourite professor and shock by what had happened to his back. Their reactions were mirrored by the other students, and not only those in Gryffindor, but in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and even a few from Slytherin. Harry wondered what the long term consequences of the revelation of his back would be for the students, but he was hopeful McGonagall would finally stop being Dumbledore's doormat.
When it was time for the students to go for classes, Harry stood up and walked out of the hall. He didn't feel guilty of showing Dumbledore's stupid ideas for where he should be living, and what he should be doing over the holidays the pile of rubbish they were, and since he had raised the point the Headmaster of Hogwarts was interfering in the affairs of a student over the holidays where he had no jurisdiction, he hoped it would make the parents of the Pureblooded students create noise in the right places.
He didn't particularly care what kind of chaos it caused for Dumbledore later on; the old man's meddling which had begun when Harry was nothing more than a young boy had caused more harm than good even though he wouldn't change it for anything since it had allowed him to become a thief and a treasure hunter, and he wouldn't want to give up that kind of life for anything since it granted him a great deal of freedom. But when Harry had come to Hogwarts, Dumbledore had tried to stick him back with the Dursleys, completely nonchalant about the fact they had nearly burnt him to death.
In Dumbledore's mind, the incident was a misunderstanding which made Harry certain the old man was growing senile.
But now, Harry had caused waves; the revelation in public of the scars on his back, scars he usually kept hidden, would not only make people realise Dumbledore's choice of guardian was clearly dangerous to a baby, but the fact Dumbledore and his yes woman was still playing a game where they felt they had the right to meddle in his life outside school would reach their parents along with the news of the scars. They'd believe it, especially since they knew he had cast that oath, and they couldn't be faked.
And if Dumbledore didn't stop… well, Harry could arrange for the Daily Prophet or one of the other newspapers to see the scars. A picture in the newspaper of the scars on the back of the famous Harry Potter would create waves, and would hopefully cause the old bastard a lot of problems. The more problems Dumbledore received would be music in Harry's ears.
"Harry, wait!" He heard Hermione's voice from behind, and he sighed in irritation and he slowed down his pace to let Hermione catch up and he turned and saw her and Weasley hurrying towards him, both of them panting for breath. They were so unfit it wasn't funny; Weasley, for all his harping about being a great Quidditch player, was terribly unfit, and he was borderline obese because of his eating obsession. Hermione led a sedentary life, always reading her books and never bothering to truly exercise; it didn't really take much for them to run out of breath despite carrying and lugging heavy books around when she could cast a weightless charm on her bag so it wouldn't cause her strain, which reminded him he would need to resume his exercise regimen.
Harry had to suppress a smirk at their red faces. "You know something, you two could really do with exercising regularly," he commented.
Hermione glowered up at him, her face red and sweaty. Harry sighed and flicked his wand at them and cast a silent cooling charm combined with a water spell on them to cool them down. "You didn't have to speak to Professor McGonagall like that!" Hermione snapped between pants as she recovered from her run.
Harry raised an eyebrow. He knew the rebuke was automatic more than anything else. But then she surprised him. "Did….did your family really do that to you?" She whispered although he could see there was denial there. Harry knew what was going through their minds. Hermione and Weasley had both been assigned to spy on him, but Dumbledore must have persuaded them to try to make him return to the Dursleys because they kept badgering him into submitting to Dumbledore and returning to the Dursleys, and Harry knew they had both cast tracking charms on his things so then Dumbledore would have a better chance of tracing him. None of it worked.
Harry simply nodded. "They did," he said simply, "and that's why I am so against going back. And I don't and have never considered them family, ever. So don't even use that word to describe them."
Hermione looked shaken and she looked visibly torn. Harry knew what the problem was. Hermione and Granger had spent a long time likely hearing from Dumbledore the Dursleys were loving, kind, and decent people, so to discover her beloved Headmaster was either incorrect or lying deliberately must have been a big blow.
Harry decided there was no harm in laying down the law here. "Listen to me, the pair of you. You've both urged me to listen to Dumbledore about returning to the Dursleys, but now you're going to stop. I don't care if you're my friends, force me to go back to that family and I will make you regret it."
Hermione backed up in shock, especially as he held his wand in a threatening manner all of a sudden while Weasley paled, which made his red face blotchy. "Are you threatening us?" Weasley asked angrily.
"Yes," Harry said plainly, not even trying to deny it although he hoped it wouldn't cause him grief, later on, he was tired of everyone interfering in his life that now he was going to make a stand. "I've got second-degree burns on my back from where the Dursleys tried to burn me to death; I don't need some old schoolteacher who has never even met them to tell me they're loving when they tried to murder me. In any case, you heard the oath, don't tell me you didn't believe it."
Harry turned away and walked off, regretting what he'd just been forced to do. He knew he had been impulsive in this instance, but he had known the best way to make the stupid teachers get off his back was to reveal the truth and the scars on his back, and if it caused problems for Dumbledore then so much the better.
He only hoped nothing serious happened in the long term he would regret.
