Chapter 7.2 Autumn 1997

For the first time in 40 years, the school year started with the same professors as the previous year. Harry didn't trust it. The Health and Safety course combined with having Professor Binns teaching Defence might provide some protection, the illness of Duelling Professor Algar had shown how tenacious Voldemort's curse was, and Harry knew the problem had only been misdirected, not solved. He was still determined to break the curse.

On the second Saturday of September, Harry looked at the candidates for quidditch try-outs in dismay. Had he really been foolish enough to look forward to being a quidditch captain? Why were all these people who looked like they could hardly stay on their brooms trying out for the quidditch team? Some of them were not even Ravenclaws. He did some mental sorting, separating the serious contenders from the ones who should have stayed in the stands, and realised what the problem was. Essentially all of the latter were girls, presumably boy-who-lived fangirls who knew he was single. Unobservant boy-who-lived fangirls. After six years, the observant ones would have noticed that his response to meeting one of them was to run the other way, and subsequently put them in the category of people to whom he was polite but distant. He sent the non-Ravenclaws away, and divided the fangirls into their chosen positions, then had the chaser candidates attempt a corkscrew manoeuvre while holding a quaffle and at the same time had the beater candidates attempt to make them lose the quaffle. He assigned everybody who was not flying the task of casting cushioning and fall-breaking charms on those who fell off their brooms. As predicted, it was pandemonium for a while, but any beater who was hit by a bludger or missed hitting the bludger was sent off, as was any chaser who fell off their broom, dropped the quaffle, or, in one case, threw up her breakfast. A few actually made it through the exercise, showing that even some pretty airheads could fly. To make things fair, he had those who looked like serious contenders go through the same exercise. After that, he had the remaining chaser candidates make runs at the keeper candidates and discarded those who missed two out of three. That left the seeker candidates, of which there turned out to be a disproportionate number, no doubt hoping that a reserve seeker would have more time with Harry without being expected to fly particularly well. He transfigured three stones into snitch sized balls without wings, and had last year's chasers throw them into the air, telling the seeker hopefuls that they could only start once the chasers let go of the ball, and had to catch them before they hit the ground. None of the six candidates managed to catch more than one. Again, for fairness' sake he went through the exercise as well and caught all three stones. By then try-outs had taken several hours and Harry told the remaining 12 that together they formed the starting and reserve players, and they would figure out who was which during training. Harry was none too pleased with the behaviour of several of the girls, but as long as they kept the fangirling and training separate he would try to endure it.

Harry was pleased to hear that a club had been started that would build a new house in Hogsmeade. Harry agreed to organise warding the building. He got the members in the rituals club involved; not because they would need any rituals to activate the wards, but the members of the club all had an OWL in Ancient Runes and were serious about making the most of that knowledge. The club was an eclectic mix of teachers, students, board members, including Sirius, and members of the rituals club of various ages. They all came together in a spirit of cooperation, and a commitment to do something for the betterment of Hogwarts. It was nice to get a preview of adult life, as Harry led one of the main tasks that were needed to build the house, so he interacted with the other adults on an equal footing.

"Good afternoon, professor," Harry greeted Professor Babbling at the end of the last class of the day.

"Now that you've passed your NEWT and are of age I think you should call me Bathsheba."

"If you call me Harry," Harry agreed.

"What can I do for you, Harry?"

"I was wondering how soon I have to start looking into what I'm going to do next year. I've found it very helpful to have two different masters in you and Stanbeny, and I think I would like to study under a third person to finish my mastery."

"It couldn't hurt to start thinking about it. Would you want to continue working in Futhark?"

"Not necessarily. Did you have something specific in mind?"

"Yes, there is master in Hong Kong who runs a school of sorts. He takes on several mastery students every year and runs a warding business with the students as employees. It's the only major Runes system that uses a living language. That has some small advantages because the warding co-evolves with the language in a way that the dead languages don't. And I understand that despite Hong Kong joining the People's Republic of China at the start of summer, that they will keep the traditional script for the foreseeable future. However, because you'd be learning a new language, you should expect to take at least another three years to finish a mastery."

"When do you think I would have to decide?"

"It would be best to write and ask. I should think that since you've progressed so far beyond your NEWT already that your qualification would not be an issue, but I don't know if there are more applications than there are places, or if the master accepts everyone who qualifies. I could find you an address to make enquiries?"

"Yes, please. And how much longer would you say it would take if I want to finish sooner?"

"It's impossible to say. I would advise you to keep going the way you were during this school year. After that you could attempt to start on your masterpiece. That normally is at least 6 months of full-time work, but that's for a successful project. Some people get unlucky, have many false starts, and take as much as five years, and some succeed on their first try. It also depends on what you want to do after you finish. If you want to teach, teaching experience and a recommendation from your master can be as much of an asset as an impressive masterpiece, while if you want to go into research than you'd need something that is innovative enough to get published at a minimum."

"And if I wanted to go into business?"

"Get your mastery on something unrelated to your business idea. Something that only meets the minimum requirements. I assume you'd be able to provide your own start-up finance. Then you'd have to get good legal advice. I have no experience, but I'd say your main worries would be that your product is competitive, either because it's new, or because it's better or cheaper than what is available. Then you'd have to protect it against others taking your product apart, finding out how it's made and beat you at your own game. And, if you have employees, you'd also need a contract that would prevent them from becoming or joining your competition."

Harry nodded. Some of what she'd said he had already figured out himself, but it was still helpful, "thank you, Bathsheba. If you can find the address of the master in Hong Kong, I would appreciate it."

Although Bellatrix Lestrange had died intestate, Sirius' claim to her inheritance as her head of house had been challenged by the head of the house of Shafiq, who was the closest relative of the Lestrange brothers. As there were several hoops to jump through, it wasn't until October that this had been brought before the Wizengamot. In response to a rumour that Shafiq was trying to buy votes, Sirius had paid someone to find dirt on the Shafiq family, which he had then taken to the auror department, and had started a counter-rumour that he would ruin anyone who voted for the Shafiq claim, which had no legal basis. Apparently the Shafiqs had thought that Sirius' efforts to escape the reputation that previous generations of Blacks had earned of underhanded politics would mean they could get away with their dirty business, but instead it gave Sirius more room to manoeuvre. Over the coming years, he would carefully exploit the reputation this victory had given him of resorting to illegal means of counter-attack only if provoked into doing that, by spreading rumours of such provocation himself and then responding against Death Eaters who had covered their tracks well enough that the aurors couldn't find evidence by legal means. Sirius and Harry would talk about it whenever either of them thought they needed to act as vigilantes, always keeping in mind that it was a slippery slope to place themselves above the law. Sirius, who had grown up a Black, and been taught that that alone was justification enough, was more often the one to propose taking such action, but Harry, who had had his own youth that had conditioned him not to rely on others for getting justice, may have been less inclined to take matters in his own hands, being a more patient person, but was more willing to do whatever it took, including murder, once he was convinced someone had to be stopped. After all, Harry had been forced into kill-or-be-killed situations while still in his teens, in contrast to Sirius, whose one act of almost getting Severus Snape killed while still in school had turned out to be a rash mistake.

The Wizengamot had agreed to Sirius' claim of the Lestrange inheritance. The vault contained a horcrux, the Cup of Hufflepuff. Harry discussed it with those who knew about the horcruxes, whether Voldemort had made 6 horcruxes, plus some, possibly accidental, soul-magic involving Harry's former scar, or whether Voldemort had actually been even more deranged and had made 12 horcruxes to get to a 13-part soul. They agreed that the only means they had of finding out was to destroy the horcruxes, kill Voldemort and see whether a soul escaped from the body. In view of the prophecy, they taught Harry how to cast fiendfyre, with which he destroyed the horcruxes.

Subsequently, the head unspeakable had argued that it would be best to kill Voldemort with the killing curse, because it was soul magic, like the ritual that produced horcruxes, and would potentially help in undoing the magic that had kept Tom Riddle's soul from passing on. They had asked Harry whether he was prepared to cast the killing curse, but when he had expressed doubt that he had it in him to cast the unforgiveable curse, nobody had insisted. They took the stunned body of Voldemort to the chamber with the Veil of Death and taught Harry an experimental spell that might be able to banish an escaping piece of soul through the veil. The head unspeakable had cast the Avada Kedavra at Tom Riddle's stunned form. Nothing escaped from the body, leaving everybody with a rather stunned sense of anti-climactic triumph.