Chapter 2- Hiding and preparations.
He landed inside Diagon Ally, cold permeated his very being it seemed. He stuffed his invisibility cloak into his pocket, and shouldered his broom. He walked to Gringotts withdrew some money, and returned to the street. No one was there at that time of night. He needed to change his appearance badly. But how? If he had someone else do it they would know who he was. He could not do that, and he couldn't do magic until he found out how to do so without the ministry on his back. He pulled his black cloak over his head hiding it from view. He snuck into Nocturne Ally. Looking around there was little life here either.
He found the place he had fallen into in his second year. Borgin and Burkes. He walked into the store; he guessed shops on Nocturne Ally didn't close at night. He went to the counter, and rang the bell. A few minutes later Mr. Borgin came out front. "May I help you, sir?"
"I need answers to some questions." Harry said simply.
"I hope I can help you." He said, though Harry somehow doubted he did by his sleepy tone.
"How does the Ministry keep tabs on underage wizards?" Harry asked
Mr. Borgin looked at him suspiciously, "All residences that have a magical person inside, have wards that watch the underage wizards, the wards act like a beacon and track the wizard alerting the ministry if they do magic. To destroy the wards and the beacon you have to either contact the ministry and have them do it…or I could help you." He said as though expecting Harry to throw off the cloak and show an Auror badge.
"How much do you want?" Harry said, dismissing the man's fears.
"200 galleons." Harry handed over the money, Borgin pulled his wand pointed it at Harry and cast a charm and had him drink a potion to negate the wards hold on him all wards that he had ever had placed on him were now gone, Borgin explained. Harry felt as though a presence he had never known was there but was always a part of him, was suddenly gone. He pulled his wand and pointed it at the ground, "Reducto" a small hole was blown in the floor, "Reparo." The shards of wood fit themselves together again, he waited for a few minutes and when no owls came he knew it had worked. A small smile came to him under his hood. He pointed to his face, "Abeo." He face morphed, long blonde hair reaching to the bottom of his face, high cheekbones, chiseled features, and sky blue eyes. He was the picture of an angel. He lowered his hood Showing Mr. Borgin his new face.
"Thank you Mr. Borgin, I wont forget it." Harry said as he walked out the door. Outside he stood and looked around the street, nothing caught his eye. Then he saw another blonde, Lucius Malfoy, 'perfect' he thought. "Malfoy!" he shouted. The man turned to look at him.
"Do I know you?" Malfoy said dismissively.
"No. And that's the way it will stay." He grabbed Malfoy by the collar, "You will help me join the dark order or you will die." Harry whispered. Malfoy's eyes were bulging with fear.
"Y-yes I wi-ill. P-p-please d-don't hur-rt me." Harry sneered. The coward. "but first…um… you need to be uh…trained in the dark arts otherwise you wont be …of…um… any use to us."
"Sounds good teacher give me a time and a place." The older man glanced nervously at Harry and thought quickly.
"Meet me here everyday from now until when you join," glancing at his watch, " around this time, from here I will take you to a training area." He said in one breath then hurried away. Harry glanced at his watch as well noting the time. A little late at night but he would talk to Malfoy
The next night at the appointed time Harry was waiting for Malfoy. When Malfoy arrived Harry informed him that he would address him Anima, and asked how they were getting to this training area.
Malfoy gave him an incredulous look then sighed, "I guess our first lesson will be apparation. They action is not hard, but it is getting your body prepared for the magic that it takes, that takes the most time. You must be subjugated to magic in increasingly larger doses until you get the feel for the amount of power usage." He looked around the dingy little area they were in. "I guess right here will do as any. Veneficus!" a stream of nothing and yet everything shot from his wand into Harry's chest. He felt his insides melt then reshape, over and over again, as Malfoy added power to the spell until he felt normal with huge amounts of pure magic flowing through him.
They re-did it over and over. For hours on end they worked on it until he was ready.
The action was simple, just as Malfoy had said, he had to release that magic that was inside of himself, inside himself, picturing where he wanted to go. Ten or eleven tries later he was able to apparate across a room with ease.
Finally Malfoy told him to leave.
'They are making this harder than I thought.' He said as he sat in his new apartment two weeks later. He had told Malfoy that he would need a more permanent place to stay to continue his training, which in itself was not looking so good.
Malfoy was a brutal teacher using the Crucio liberally, but even with the pain as a boost in his learning, his wand did not want to cooperate, it just didn't like dark magic, and sometimes he felt ready to snap it for disobeying.
So he had a new wand created for dark magic from a black-market wand shop. It was tailored to him and his needs, the crafter had spent an hour giving him tests, magically and mentally, and asking about special abilities, before he even drew the outlines for his wand.
The wand itself was rather strange and completely hideous yet frightening to look at. The core was the feather of an Occamy. A strange winged snake, and instead of wood, it was the body of a Runespoor, a three headed snake, the body being cut to length, petrified, preserved, hollowed for the core, and had the slightly rattle-like tail as the tip of the wand. The handle of the wand was Occamy eggshells smelted onto the beast; the wand almost smelled of dark magic. His magic had reacted quite powerfully with the wand, making it perfect for his use (he had nearly destroyed the whole floor with a simple reducto). Any magic used with it was in itself subtle and somewhat sly, the colors were mellower, and it seemed to cause less attention to be drawn to it, but was also quite strong, being the magic of himself and the two powerfully magical creatures. The best part was when he figured out he could use his parsletongue ability with it.
He was practicing with his new wand against Malfoy, seeing to put his new wand to practice, when Malfoy conjured a snake. It was a gigantic Boa that raced at him seeing to constrict him, confronted with a snake the parslemouth came to the front and he shouted a burning curse in parsletongue. It had worked, just as if he said it in Latin. The snake shriveled into ashes, and Malfoy had stood there with his mouth open for five minutes staring at him. Then hastily told him the lesson was over, nearly running away. He had probably gone to see the Dark Lord, and tell him they had found a parslemouth recruit.
He had gotten the apartment just the other day, but the days were really all becoming the same, training, wandering around, thinking of different ways to kill Bellatrix, reading, avoiding people he knew, and he spent so much time in Diagon Ally and Nocturne Ally he knew most of the owners and their families on a first name basis.
When he had told Malfoy he needed a real place and he had gotten a gleam in his eyes that Harry was started to associate with pain.
So what did Malfoy do about Harry's living arrangements? Field trip! So that day instead of practicing dark arts in the training hall they had found an apartment building nearby, found one with a good view, barged in, put up some wards, tortured the guy that owned it and killed him. Malfoy then left him to sort out all of the guy's stuff and his body, "for practice" he had said.
After he left Harry had run to the bathroom and lost his lunch and then some to the toilet, all the while repeating to himself, 'It's for the greater good. It's for the greater good. It's for my revenge. Revenge. Greater good.'
He burned everything that had belonged to nameless man; Harry needed no reminders of what he had done. The bare apartment was soon filled with his stuff. His little knick-knacks, his new furniture, everything was new and his and had nothing to do with that guy.
The dark order wanted all recruits to be fully versed in the dark arts and they needed a sponsor from the inner circle, but so far after a month of training he was still a little whelp compared to Malfoy. It was going to take a long time.
The Boy-Who-Lived Missing! September 1st 1996
This reported has recently found that Harry Potter, The Boy-Who-Lived, has been missing since the beginning of the summer. Both the ministry and Hogwarts headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, have been keeping it quiet so as to not alert Lord Voldemort. A detachment of Aurors has been assigned to looking for him, scouring Magical Britain for The Boy-Who-Lived. At The Ministers Press Conference yesterday he said that they "were doing all they could to find the poor boy."
Harry snorted as he skimmed the rest of the article full of people claiming to have sighted him. One woman said he had been sleeping with her for almost a week before the article. The woman was said to be in her 60's. Harry nearly lost it on that, he put his breakfast away no longer feeling hungry. Some people were just a little crazy over him.
He had kept the same looks that he had when he arrived three months ago, his robes were slightly nicer having been taking after Lucius, and he could've passed for Lucius' son, much to his real son's chagrin. Draco had been in a few times training with them but had been pathetic even compared to Harry, who had started improving at a much faster rate with his new wand and three months of tutelage.
They were really started delving into the dark arts now. Before they were just going over the well known dueling curses; burning curses, crushing charms, transfiguration, and several slashing and cutting jinxes. Now they started with the pain curses, torturing charms, mind spells, He had been surprised those were considered dark arts but Lucius explained that light wizards considered playing with the mind right up there with the killing curse.
The imperious was one such. An unsanctioned memory charm was the equivalent to 10 years in Azakban. Even Legilimens had to register with the ministry and undergo numerous moral and aptitude tests before they were even considered for training. The dark order had its two master Legilimens (Besides the Dark Lord himself) who taught the troops. But that was for another lesson.
They had focused in the beginning on the torture and pain curses, moved to different types of confundus charms, memory charms, and hallucination jinxes. One particularly good illusion charm that Harry favored was that of a basilisk, (you had to have encountered the illusion to be able to conjure it) his basilisk looked just like the one in the Chamber of Secrets, it scared the crap out of Lucius that he was even able to conjure it.
Lucius had slowly become a sort of strange uncle-like figure, in a distorted sort of way. Maybe it was because he had been hanging around the man so much, or the fact he looked so muck like Lucius, or Harry's own formerly hidden Slytherin side that connected to him. They were alike in more ways than either of them liked to admit.
Lucius was teaching him tons, even if he didn't like the subject, scarily enough he found he was starting to just not care about his earlier ethical issues, and even slowly becoming to like them as he imagined the target as Bellatrix or Voldemort. Lucius had also noted the emotion filled curses, but knew well enough the anger that his pupil showed.
Lucius, he found, even had a sense of humor, buried real deep down. Not a very nice one, but he did have one. One time Lucius was showing him different types of potions that he had to know how to make, and had taught Harry how to make a potion that worked like a hallucinogenic drug. They then slipped it to a man and watched him make a complete ass of himself in the middle of Diagon Ally. Lucius laughed so hard that he had to hold a wall for support. Later Lucius told him that he needed to release some tension and humiliating people did that nicely for him.
Today he should have been on the train to Hogwarts but had decided that it was unneeded, besides he didn't even want to think about getting caught practicing dark arts in school. Plus someone might have even talked him out of his campaign to end Bellatrix's life. He didn't want to stop, he needed to be rid of her, avenge his godfather, revenge for the dishonor she had laid upon him, and finally to rid the world of her presence. And his plan so far was working great to get at her. He had her death all planed, he would get her by herself, give her the crucio, showing her that he was no child that couldn't get a curse right. Then kill her after a few taunts, maybe even revealing himself to her before she died. He was stuck on how to kill her though; one idea was the cruciotus until she broke, just like she did to the Longbottoms. Then there was the good old killing curse to fall back on. Poisons, beheading, blood loss, beaten physically to death. He didn't know they all sounded good to him. Too bad he couldn't kill her then raise her back to life…and kill her again! That was a good one, but necromancy was a just bit out of his league. Only the powerful sorcerers of old had even enough power to even give life to a bunny at their max.
Wizards of today had nowhere near that much power. Voldemort had maybe enough power to give life back to a bacterium, then die of severe magical exhaustion. Maybe he could convince Voldemort to try to raise something like a dog, and have him die. Except, no, he, Harry, had to kill the bastard. It probably wouldn't work if it were just indirect, he most likely had to be the direct cause of death of the Most Powerful Dark Lord in a Century. It sounded like some game show, he thought sardonically.
In his independent studies of the dark arts he discovered that just last century there was a dark lord that was stronger than Voldemort. People forget really fast he thought with his now familiar sarcasm, this guy wasn't nearly as bad as Voldemort though just more powerful. He was a Necromancer, of a different kind than the normal, by the name of Master Corehic. His special brand of necromancy that he created worked by instead of giving life back to its original body, he stole the essence of the person giving him a part of the magical powers of the person, after a person died every few seconds a chunk of its power left, with its essence, and soul, and Corehic took that power, but even in the fast times he got to the bodies, he still only managed to get about 5% of a persons power at most. He didn't go around killing people though, he waited for the person to die then performed his craft. He was fine, sitting in his manor and studying necromancy, but the wizards of the times found him threatening, having the power to take others power, and formed an army against him. Not wishing to die he formed his own and fought with the light wizards, until he was assassinated by a spy in his ranks.
It had been a month since the article about his disappearance and he was coming along at about an average pace in his dark arts, he was informed by Lucius.
Tonight he was invited to a social event with Lucius, for the upper classes of wizarding society. Being seen as an up and coming wizard, being friends with Lucius, had reserved him a place at the ball. Lucius had found him a partner to escort and had sent a house-elf, to help him get ready, with some special robes and jewelry as a gift. The ball was set to start at 9 o'clock tonight, so he called the house-elf at 7 o'clock to begin getting ready.
The elf gave him a choice of robes; fine silk black, deep red velvet, and green and gold cotton. He chose the black silk liking the feel. After fixing himself in the bathroom and making himself presentable, he asked the elf about the jewelry. It just showed him a roll of cloth. Upon rolling it out he was stared at by numerous glittering objects. A silver watch, a ruby earring shaped like a fang, a necklace made of platinum, and a golden tie for his hair. He got most of the jewelry on without help and a little advice from the elf, but the earring mystified him. Lucius knew he didn't have his ear pierced so why the earring? He wasn't ungrateful just confused.
The elf being in its helpful nature noticed his master's friend giving the piece of jewelry a look of confusion. He looked at the human's ear and noticed no hole. He jumped when he reached the obvious conclusion. "Master's friend sir I can help you! I can pierce your ear for you!"
Harry gave the elf a grateful look and sat down to be at a better level for the elf, "Thank you, if you please." The elf raised a finger and suddenly he felt his ear sting. He motioned the elf to put in the earring as well, which it did with a snap of the fingers.
After sending the elf away, he apperated to the Malfoy manor. He had discovered that this had been where he had been training for four months and never found out. He met Lucius and his wife at the door, he bowed to her and kissed her hand in greeting, being his first formal meeting. She gave him a smile, "So this is my Husband's protégée he talks so much of. What a wonderful young man, how old are you Anima?"
"I'm sixteen ma'am, and I should tell you what a pleasure it is to meet the wife of such a distinguished man." He smiled back playing the game he would be playing all night. Lucius had taught him the wizard customs and how these types of events are always just a large game of either intimidation of flaunting.
"Sixteen! Should you not be in school?" she exclaimed.
"I have been trained in basic magic by my family as is custom of the first born. After the family education it is up the person to find a tutor in whatever magic he wishes to specialize in." he explained in the set-up lie he had made and practiced months ago.
"Acerbus," she said his last name thoughtfully, "I thought that family died out over a millennia ago." Harry was impressed she even knew of them, an old family of elementals in Italy between the 200 B.C. to around 900 A.D., totally destroyed by a rival family.
"It did. The first of my line took the name as a sign of respect in 13th century, it's a little foggy but that is the accepted history. The family has never played an important role, always being in the background and nearly always neutral." He explained
"Wonderful, I hope to discuss family history with you more later on, but I do believe we most take our portkey." The guests were required to portkey there for security purposes. He was also meeting his escort there at the ball, which was being held at the Ministers Manor.
Check it out in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them If you don't have it, Occamy eggshells are made of silver. And Runespoors are favored snakes of Dark wizards
The Next chapter will be the ball and Harry's first meeting with Voldemort.