Chapter 7
Nearly a hundred dementors were filling the streets, a large group seemed to have centered on Harry. The death eaters left the island at once, leaving vampires and dementors to finish off the Order agents and muggles still there. Harry thought fast, he could produce a large regular patronus to drive almost all them off, or he could create a killing patronus which would be able to take out only a score or so and was much more tiring. He chose the later, knowing that if he drove them off they'd just go to other targets.
"Expecto Patronum!" A huge silver Royal Aaron leaped form his wand, in a second Harry transformed into a large black unicorn, utterly black with a two-foot long horn, large than any normal horse he leaped at the dementor crowds. Daring them to fight, spearing them on his horn and shaking them off. Keeping them back with flailing hooves and his now bloody horn. His patronus charged into them, taking them out, finally it vanished. It had done more damage than Harry had expected, nearly thirty dead dementors litter the street. Suddenly three patronus's, a silvery orb, a large bear and a cheetah raced by into the dementors, a few seconds later Remus, Garth, and Timalari were beside him, directing their patronus's at the dementors. Garth and Timalari were of the Blue patrol; Remus worked with dark magic detection, werewolves and sometimes helped out with the order animals. Harry transformed again and hurled his own patronus at the dementors. Patronus's were such a nuisance, his just didn't seem to ever assume a form and keep it. He'd seen and stag, a phoenix, a Royal Aaron and even, over the summer, a black unicorn. The one he'd just released was a stag again, but he was willing to bet that next time it wouldn't be.
"Hi Harry, having fun?"
"Oh yes Remus, just the way I love to spend the summer." Harry replied, stunning a few dementors that appeared to be trying to escape. He reached out and searched, locating his elementals, they were quickly making short work of the dementors, but they and he were tiring.
"Damn," Remus suddenly muttered, Harry nearly slapped himself for missing the message, whatever it had been, from Sirius. "Miranda's fighting with Voldemort…they're just a few streets over, maybe we sh-" at that moment the entire line of buildings to their left was blasted apart, Harry ducked a killing curse and rolled to avoid something that looked like a nasty vomiting curse that basically made you vomit out your stomach. They rushed through the rubble to see what was going on. The street was a mess, littered with dead and dying. Order agents were everywhere, Harry even Charlie Weasley and three others coming in on dragons form the next island over. In the center, in a crackling globe of power, Miranda and Voldemort were locked in battle. Curses were flying everywhere, along with huge masses of pure power that could blow something apart down to its atoms and more often than not them too. Ever deepening pits soon covered the island; the Order agents had a tough time keeping the dark lords forces from aiding him. Finally Sirius arrived with another patrol…the purple. The trainees were evacuating muggles along with the gray patrol. The ground started to rock and shake.
Sirius the island is caving in, collapsing into the ocean, we've got to stop them and get out of here! Sirius looked up and nodded, and he blood smeared across one cheek and a slash running down his leg from something or other. I'll try to open a link through the dark power stone, see if I can't drain more of his powers. If the Order creates a link they could keep him here for long enough…maybe, it's worth a shot. He sensed Sirius relaying the plan to everyone, Harry summoned his power stone, it appeared a few seconds later in a flash of light. The Order linked, they threw up a dome of power over Voldemort, Miranda joined them and stepped out of the dome, Voldemort was left trapped inside. He raged against it, trying to smash it, Harry strained mentally, calling the magic so that Voldemort's spells hit the dark power stone, which Harry held up just inside the web. Finally he felt a sickening dark link flare into life and drew the stone out of the dome. Voldemort screamed as he felt the link, Harry hung on and drew the blackness he sensed into the stone with all his might. His hands began to bleed from contact with the stone as it grew red hot with a horrible black fire. His scar hurt so much…finally it broke and began to bleed heavily, Voldemort shouted and incantation, black power flared, the ground shook and Harry stumbled, the dome nearly cracked form the spell, but it stopped the power which rebounded onto he ground, everything blew up in a flash of black and gold power. Rumbling pounding noises were very where and the earth shook and ripped apart, huge chunks of pavement and dir and grass were blown away as Voldemort manage dot snap the apparition ward and vanished, Harry and everyone else was thrown off their feet as the island ripped itself apart. The sea came rushing in, Sirius shouted an incantation over the link, Harry held onto the stone and called his lightning, it came down in a blast and they were gone.
The island was left in ruins, sometime around midday two days later in finally vanished into the sea. Nearly five hundred people died that night in the battle; twelve were from the Order of the Phoenix.
**
Harry leaned back in his chair and rubbed his neck with a bandaged hand. His palms were nearly healed from the fight four nights ago. The dark power stone was gray now, showing that it held some of Voldemort's power, tinting its former white a pale but distinct gray. He placed the paper on the pile beside him. In the adjacent room Fred was setting up the samples, then he slid them through a door in the wall onto a counter that ran through the wall between the rooms, Harry opened the door on his side and took them out, and preformed the tests. This way Fred was never exposed to the skull and the tests went much faster. Harry sent he samples on to the next room through the same method to George who put them in racks according to how long it took the cells in each to burst, each jar was labeled with the time and placed in the huge racks. At the end of the day the twins filed all the papers alphabetically in the correct folders, again according to how long it took for the samples to turn blue. It was midday and since nine that morning they'd gone through 240 samples, done in groups of five. In all Harry had 'processed' or 'checked' or 'tested' depending upon who you asked for the term used to describe the endless testing, 1,030 blood samples. Fred and George could both withstand the skull's powers for 2.8 seconds; Remus Lupin currently held the record with 2 minutes and 22 seconds, followed by Arabella Figg with 2 minutes followed by Victor Krum with 1 minute and 45 seconds. Harry as yet wasn't showing any affects. In addition he'd gotten word back on the inscriptions within the chamber, the ones he couldn't read. The rest of the Special Projects Division was working on those, with Harry's help, he'd mastered the new language in only a few hours, much to his and everyone else's surprise.
Hercules flew into the hall outside with the Daily Prophet, he was one of the oldest owls Harry had met at the Potter manor, and one of the largest. Harry went out to meet him, since the owl couldn't get near the skull either, and took it from him.
Our Ancestors Tyrants?
By Rita Skeeter
A lot of theorizing has been done recently about what life was like for our long gone Atlantian ancestors. Mr. Potter said in his showing of the source of magic and its pedestal that from what could be read of the inscriptions in the chamber in which the source of magic (a skull carved form obsidian) was found only the Royal Family had magic. The rest of the Atlantians were muggles. The royal family would have been a small group, the leaders of the Atlantian people, but how did they, with more than twice the power of any wizard today, treat their subjects? They are obviously superior with their great power and the longer lifespan that comes with having magic. They obviously would have had a better lifestyle than that of the muggles, and the muggles must have known that. But what could they do? Our ancestors, their lords that the muggles might not have wanted as lords anyway, had the ultimate power, magic. It fits then that the royal family would have been like dictators, they made all the laws to suit themselves and could do basically anything they wanted. Many people however disagree, preferring to see our magical ancestors as benevolent rulers who truly cared for their subjects. Mr. Potter is giving the magical world an update on how his work this evening at seven; perhaps he will be able to clear this matter up then?
It continued about how their ancestors had managed complete domination over the muggles through the educational system etc. Harry grew more and more disgusted, and pleased that he would be able to prove her wrong.
Harry considered saying nothing about it, but that would just show Rita right. According to the inscriptions she was wrong, but he'd have to make it easily understandable, seeing as she was so incredibly stupid. He tossed the paper aside with an angry growl
By dinner he'd gone through another five hundred, and had enough of it to last a lifetime. It was endlessly boring and repetitive, but someone had to do it. He perked up though when he remembered that his friends were coming to visit him at Potter Manor the next day after they went to Diagon Alley, and he'd see them again four days later at school. School, something to get his mind of the endless blood testing. Thought he wasn't taking many subjects this year, having taken the NEWTs for Divination, History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Muggle Studies, Astronomy, and Potions. Quiet a feet for a sixth year student. This meant that he only had Transfiguration, Herbology, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, and Defense. Four classes less than any of his friends, enabling him to spend more time working with the skulls, his animagi forms, the Elemental blood, etc. A soft trill from just behind him startled Harry and he looked up from his dinner. The rest of the people in the hall did so as well. Raslith, Sirius's Phoenix, was sitting on the back of his chair with a letter that he dropped into Harry's hand before flying off. Harry glanced at it and saw no seal so it must not be official. He pocketed it to read after dinner.
"How's the blood testing going?" Professor Dumbledore asked kindly, knowing how tired of it Harry was.
"Nothing new, but I should be getting results on the dried blood samples I sent to LMF shortly, this evening probably."
"Did you really need to do that?" Harry knew what Dumbledore meant, Harry could already tell just by theorizing whose blood those samples were.
"Yes, I need evidence to back my theory."
"How about decoding that other language?"
"It's complex, alphabetical, with an excellent mathematics system. The French Department of Ancient Magical Languages got the math system figured out. Not surprisingly they have numbers 0-9 as we do, and just mix them for everything else. They had subtraction, addition, everything we do now. And if the inscriptions are right everyone was well educated in all of it. Skeeter's theory of the magical royal family being the only educated ones and a slave/master relationship between them and the nonmagic folk's got nothing to go on." Harry said, rather triumphantly, "and both muggles and wizards working together carved those inscriptions. The team is working on the other inscriptions; I figured them out two days ago. It's not that tough really, the grammar is like ours, but since it's all in lines it takes a while to sink in. "
"Impressive, considering you're the only one really working on it." Professor McGonagal said.
"Fred and George have been a huge help, and the team has done some amazing work on the inscriptions, by the way have you found a defense teacher for this year?" He asked the headmaster. Leaving out that he himself had also been spending extra hours and hours each day working on the inscriptions alone, they were rather disturbing.
"It is difficult, but I will be teaching unless something big comes up." He replied, eyebrows went up on every student there. Oh yes, something will come up, Harry thought dryly, something big.
"What new news will you be sharing this evening? Can earth-shaking consequences?" Snape asked, Harry put his fork down, not quite sure if he meant it literally.
"Literally I assume?" he asked, noting the way everyone was watching him. Snape gave Harry a long look, searching for a some sort of trap in his words. "You may." He bit back a smile as eyes blinked rapidly, taking that in. "Now don't ask anymore will you? I would prefer to wreak my destruction on the social and political aspects of wizarding life only twice if possible." There was a very long pause in which no one said anything or moved.
"Twice?" Snape finally asked.
"Once with words once with actions, there are big changes coming professors, big changes, good or bad will depend on your interpretation of them." Harry stood gracefully and left, he needed to make sure he was ready before he dropped the bomb on the wizarding world.
Halfway down the hall he was met by Ahira, one of his snake helpers.
Masssster Voldemort had attacksss planned for this evening…at your presssssentation. He hasss a death eater among the reporterssss who will carry a sssspecial device for lifting the apparition wardssss. Harry reached down and picked her up, carrying the snake to his rooms, thinking about this.
Ahira will the death eaters be stationed around the Fortress?
No massster, twelve shall be in the crowd, another five will ssssneak in today during the prepatationssss. Another ten will arrive by a portkey.
Just one portkey?
Yesss
There are spells to make sure that no portkeys besides the ones sent out to people by the Order are used.
The reporter massster, they will carry a spell-link to enable the othersss to come. The othersss will ssssneak in in the form of guardsss for the Turkish Minissster. Ssince he and a dozen or ssso othersss will be there early.
Is he a death eater?
I do not know masster, all thisss I learn from Dakoff who watches the meetingsss of the dark lord'sss Inner Circle.
Very well Ahira, thank you, this will be most useful.
You're welcome massster.
Harry placed the tired snake on a cushion in a pool of sunlight before returning teleporting to his mansion to gather some things he would need and then to the Fortress to inform the Council.
Nearly a hundred dementors were filling the streets, a large group seemed to have centered on Harry. The death eaters left the island at once, leaving vampires and dementors to finish off the Order agents and muggles still there. Harry thought fast, he could produce a large regular patronus to drive almost all them off, or he could create a killing patronus which would be able to take out only a score or so and was much more tiring. He chose the later, knowing that if he drove them off they'd just go to other targets.
"Expecto Patronum!" A huge silver Royal Aaron leaped form his wand, in a second Harry transformed into a large black unicorn, utterly black with a two-foot long horn, large than any normal horse he leaped at the dementor crowds. Daring them to fight, spearing them on his horn and shaking them off. Keeping them back with flailing hooves and his now bloody horn. His patronus charged into them, taking them out, finally it vanished. It had done more damage than Harry had expected, nearly thirty dead dementors litter the street. Suddenly three patronus's, a silvery orb, a large bear and a cheetah raced by into the dementors, a few seconds later Remus, Garth, and Timalari were beside him, directing their patronus's at the dementors. Garth and Timalari were of the Blue patrol; Remus worked with dark magic detection, werewolves and sometimes helped out with the order animals. Harry transformed again and hurled his own patronus at the dementors. Patronus's were such a nuisance, his just didn't seem to ever assume a form and keep it. He'd seen and stag, a phoenix, a Royal Aaron and even, over the summer, a black unicorn. The one he'd just released was a stag again, but he was willing to bet that next time it wouldn't be.
"Hi Harry, having fun?"
"Oh yes Remus, just the way I love to spend the summer." Harry replied, stunning a few dementors that appeared to be trying to escape. He reached out and searched, locating his elementals, they were quickly making short work of the dementors, but they and he were tiring.
"Damn," Remus suddenly muttered, Harry nearly slapped himself for missing the message, whatever it had been, from Sirius. "Miranda's fighting with Voldemort…they're just a few streets over, maybe we sh-" at that moment the entire line of buildings to their left was blasted apart, Harry ducked a killing curse and rolled to avoid something that looked like a nasty vomiting curse that basically made you vomit out your stomach. They rushed through the rubble to see what was going on. The street was a mess, littered with dead and dying. Order agents were everywhere, Harry even Charlie Weasley and three others coming in on dragons form the next island over. In the center, in a crackling globe of power, Miranda and Voldemort were locked in battle. Curses were flying everywhere, along with huge masses of pure power that could blow something apart down to its atoms and more often than not them too. Ever deepening pits soon covered the island; the Order agents had a tough time keeping the dark lords forces from aiding him. Finally Sirius arrived with another patrol…the purple. The trainees were evacuating muggles along with the gray patrol. The ground started to rock and shake.
Sirius the island is caving in, collapsing into the ocean, we've got to stop them and get out of here! Sirius looked up and nodded, and he blood smeared across one cheek and a slash running down his leg from something or other. I'll try to open a link through the dark power stone, see if I can't drain more of his powers. If the Order creates a link they could keep him here for long enough…maybe, it's worth a shot. He sensed Sirius relaying the plan to everyone, Harry summoned his power stone, it appeared a few seconds later in a flash of light. The Order linked, they threw up a dome of power over Voldemort, Miranda joined them and stepped out of the dome, Voldemort was left trapped inside. He raged against it, trying to smash it, Harry strained mentally, calling the magic so that Voldemort's spells hit the dark power stone, which Harry held up just inside the web. Finally he felt a sickening dark link flare into life and drew the stone out of the dome. Voldemort screamed as he felt the link, Harry hung on and drew the blackness he sensed into the stone with all his might. His hands began to bleed from contact with the stone as it grew red hot with a horrible black fire. His scar hurt so much…finally it broke and began to bleed heavily, Voldemort shouted and incantation, black power flared, the ground shook and Harry stumbled, the dome nearly cracked form the spell, but it stopped the power which rebounded onto he ground, everything blew up in a flash of black and gold power. Rumbling pounding noises were very where and the earth shook and ripped apart, huge chunks of pavement and dir and grass were blown away as Voldemort manage dot snap the apparition ward and vanished, Harry and everyone else was thrown off their feet as the island ripped itself apart. The sea came rushing in, Sirius shouted an incantation over the link, Harry held onto the stone and called his lightning, it came down in a blast and they were gone.
The island was left in ruins, sometime around midday two days later in finally vanished into the sea. Nearly five hundred people died that night in the battle; twelve were from the Order of the Phoenix.
**
Harry leaned back in his chair and rubbed his neck with a bandaged hand. His palms were nearly healed from the fight four nights ago. The dark power stone was gray now, showing that it held some of Voldemort's power, tinting its former white a pale but distinct gray. He placed the paper on the pile beside him. In the adjacent room Fred was setting up the samples, then he slid them through a door in the wall onto a counter that ran through the wall between the rooms, Harry opened the door on his side and took them out, and preformed the tests. This way Fred was never exposed to the skull and the tests went much faster. Harry sent he samples on to the next room through the same method to George who put them in racks according to how long it took the cells in each to burst, each jar was labeled with the time and placed in the huge racks. At the end of the day the twins filed all the papers alphabetically in the correct folders, again according to how long it took for the samples to turn blue. It was midday and since nine that morning they'd gone through 240 samples, done in groups of five. In all Harry had 'processed' or 'checked' or 'tested' depending upon who you asked for the term used to describe the endless testing, 1,030 blood samples. Fred and George could both withstand the skull's powers for 2.8 seconds; Remus Lupin currently held the record with 2 minutes and 22 seconds, followed by Arabella Figg with 2 minutes followed by Victor Krum with 1 minute and 45 seconds. Harry as yet wasn't showing any affects. In addition he'd gotten word back on the inscriptions within the chamber, the ones he couldn't read. The rest of the Special Projects Division was working on those, with Harry's help, he'd mastered the new language in only a few hours, much to his and everyone else's surprise.
Hercules flew into the hall outside with the Daily Prophet, he was one of the oldest owls Harry had met at the Potter manor, and one of the largest. Harry went out to meet him, since the owl couldn't get near the skull either, and took it from him.
Our Ancestors Tyrants?
By Rita Skeeter
A lot of theorizing has been done recently about what life was like for our long gone Atlantian ancestors. Mr. Potter said in his showing of the source of magic and its pedestal that from what could be read of the inscriptions in the chamber in which the source of magic (a skull carved form obsidian) was found only the Royal Family had magic. The rest of the Atlantians were muggles. The royal family would have been a small group, the leaders of the Atlantian people, but how did they, with more than twice the power of any wizard today, treat their subjects? They are obviously superior with their great power and the longer lifespan that comes with having magic. They obviously would have had a better lifestyle than that of the muggles, and the muggles must have known that. But what could they do? Our ancestors, their lords that the muggles might not have wanted as lords anyway, had the ultimate power, magic. It fits then that the royal family would have been like dictators, they made all the laws to suit themselves and could do basically anything they wanted. Many people however disagree, preferring to see our magical ancestors as benevolent rulers who truly cared for their subjects. Mr. Potter is giving the magical world an update on how his work this evening at seven; perhaps he will be able to clear this matter up then?
It continued about how their ancestors had managed complete domination over the muggles through the educational system etc. Harry grew more and more disgusted, and pleased that he would be able to prove her wrong.
Harry considered saying nothing about it, but that would just show Rita right. According to the inscriptions she was wrong, but he'd have to make it easily understandable, seeing as she was so incredibly stupid. He tossed the paper aside with an angry growl
By dinner he'd gone through another five hundred, and had enough of it to last a lifetime. It was endlessly boring and repetitive, but someone had to do it. He perked up though when he remembered that his friends were coming to visit him at Potter Manor the next day after they went to Diagon Alley, and he'd see them again four days later at school. School, something to get his mind of the endless blood testing. Thought he wasn't taking many subjects this year, having taken the NEWTs for Divination, History of Magic, Ancient Runes, Muggle Studies, Astronomy, and Potions. Quiet a feet for a sixth year student. This meant that he only had Transfiguration, Herbology, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, and Defense. Four classes less than any of his friends, enabling him to spend more time working with the skulls, his animagi forms, the Elemental blood, etc. A soft trill from just behind him startled Harry and he looked up from his dinner. The rest of the people in the hall did so as well. Raslith, Sirius's Phoenix, was sitting on the back of his chair with a letter that he dropped into Harry's hand before flying off. Harry glanced at it and saw no seal so it must not be official. He pocketed it to read after dinner.
"How's the blood testing going?" Professor Dumbledore asked kindly, knowing how tired of it Harry was.
"Nothing new, but I should be getting results on the dried blood samples I sent to LMF shortly, this evening probably."
"Did you really need to do that?" Harry knew what Dumbledore meant, Harry could already tell just by theorizing whose blood those samples were.
"Yes, I need evidence to back my theory."
"How about decoding that other language?"
"It's complex, alphabetical, with an excellent mathematics system. The French Department of Ancient Magical Languages got the math system figured out. Not surprisingly they have numbers 0-9 as we do, and just mix them for everything else. They had subtraction, addition, everything we do now. And if the inscriptions are right everyone was well educated in all of it. Skeeter's theory of the magical royal family being the only educated ones and a slave/master relationship between them and the nonmagic folk's got nothing to go on." Harry said, rather triumphantly, "and both muggles and wizards working together carved those inscriptions. The team is working on the other inscriptions; I figured them out two days ago. It's not that tough really, the grammar is like ours, but since it's all in lines it takes a while to sink in. "
"Impressive, considering you're the only one really working on it." Professor McGonagal said.
"Fred and George have been a huge help, and the team has done some amazing work on the inscriptions, by the way have you found a defense teacher for this year?" He asked the headmaster. Leaving out that he himself had also been spending extra hours and hours each day working on the inscriptions alone, they were rather disturbing.
"It is difficult, but I will be teaching unless something big comes up." He replied, eyebrows went up on every student there. Oh yes, something will come up, Harry thought dryly, something big.
"What new news will you be sharing this evening? Can earth-shaking consequences?" Snape asked, Harry put his fork down, not quite sure if he meant it literally.
"Literally I assume?" he asked, noting the way everyone was watching him. Snape gave Harry a long look, searching for a some sort of trap in his words. "You may." He bit back a smile as eyes blinked rapidly, taking that in. "Now don't ask anymore will you? I would prefer to wreak my destruction on the social and political aspects of wizarding life only twice if possible." There was a very long pause in which no one said anything or moved.
"Twice?" Snape finally asked.
"Once with words once with actions, there are big changes coming professors, big changes, good or bad will depend on your interpretation of them." Harry stood gracefully and left, he needed to make sure he was ready before he dropped the bomb on the wizarding world.
Halfway down the hall he was met by Ahira, one of his snake helpers.
Masssster Voldemort had attacksss planned for this evening…at your presssssentation. He hasss a death eater among the reporterssss who will carry a sssspecial device for lifting the apparition wardssss. Harry reached down and picked her up, carrying the snake to his rooms, thinking about this.
Ahira will the death eaters be stationed around the Fortress?
No massster, twelve shall be in the crowd, another five will ssssneak in today during the prepatationssss. Another ten will arrive by a portkey.
Just one portkey?
Yesss
There are spells to make sure that no portkeys besides the ones sent out to people by the Order are used.
The reporter massster, they will carry a spell-link to enable the othersss to come. The othersss will ssssneak in in the form of guardsss for the Turkish Minissster. Ssince he and a dozen or ssso othersss will be there early.
Is he a death eater?
I do not know masster, all thisss I learn from Dakoff who watches the meetingsss of the dark lord'sss Inner Circle.
Very well Ahira, thank you, this will be most useful.
You're welcome massster.
Harry placed the tired snake on a cushion in a pool of sunlight before returning teleporting to his mansion to gather some things he would need and then to the Fortress to inform the Council.