DISCLAIMER! This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy. New Movie is coming in April! Hurrah! Yeah, for Fanfiction – a great place to stretch your imagination and enjoy someone else's creativity too! This is the sequel to The Potter Cartouche.
Chapter 34 Armageddon Runes and HogsmeadeThe Daily Prophet coverage of the duel included a complete spell by spell analysis of the exchange between Lord Matthew Ogden and Harry Potter. A retired Auror who was interviewed first admitted he had been amazed at Mr Potter's shield and suspected that Headmaster Bennet must have cheated. A duelling champion was interviewed next, and he began by calling the retired Auror 'a fool and an idiot'.
"Charles Bennet is an honourable wizard! As is Filius Flitwick! Neither wizard would ever permit anyone to cheat on a duelling piste! The young wizard was simply able to block every spell that Ogden cast! His shield is beyond magical! Merlin, I wish I had been there to see it!"
"But the boy looks bored toward the end of the duel," the reporter mentioned. "Potter looks like he was never worried about the outcome."
The Auror sighed and admitted, "And the boy – the young wizard – did offer Lord Ogden the chance to apologise and walk away before the duel. And then at the end of the duel, he offered to let Ogden live if he would concede the duel."
The reporter looked confused for a moment before he asked, "So, you think Harry Potter legitimately defeated Lord Ogden in the duel."
"Without a doubt. The people complaining about the outcome have no one but themselves to blame," the Auror stated.
"But how can a half-blood beat a pureblood?" asked the reporter.
"Are you married yet?" the duelling champion asked the surprised the wizard.
The reporter shook his head and the older wizard asked, "Do you want children who have strong magic? Who will be able to cast all kinds of spells? Not just a few that they've been drilled in for seven years at Hogwarts?"
"What do you mean?"
"Take apparition. It takes you what, three jumps to get from Hogwarts to London?"
The reporter nodded and the duelling champ continued, "A half-blood can make the trip in one jump. The Ministry for Magic doesn't want you to know that."
"That's not true! They can't be more powerful than a pureblood!" insisted the reporter.
Glancing at the retired Auror who looked very uncomfortable, the duelling champ, added, "Harry Potter is a half-blood and fourteen years old. He stomped the niffler guts out of a pureblood wizard in his prime a couple of days ago while the pureblood never landed a single spell on the Potter. Old Dumbledore, who portrayed himself as the second coming of Merlin for many years is a half-blood. His power kept Tom Riddle on his back foot for years."
"Who?"
Smirking the duelling champ said, "Do some research on Tom Riddle. He's the muggle-born who worked with Dumbledore to destroy Magical Britain."
"And if you want your children to be powerful wizards and witches, marry a muggle-born," he added.
Turning toward the retired Auror and finding the man pulling his wand, the reporter threw up a shield that deflected the man's obliviate spell. The reporter fled with a portkey while the duelling champion disarmed the retired Auror and said, "That'll make a great headline tomorrow. 'Ministry fears the truth about power of half-bloods'."
Then the retired duelling champion threw the retired Auror's wand across the path into the woods and apparated away. He had another interview to give to the ICW in Switzerland.
CHANGE SCENE: Harry Taunted by StudentThere were many intense conversations between Harry Potter and different students in Hogwarts. Daphne Greengrass admitted her father was extremely concerned about the next few months and had no idea what would happen in the future.
"My father thinks the purebloods are idiots, but he isn't going to move against them openly," Daphne admitted. "Just like I can't be seen talking to you after this."
Theo Nott refused to talk to Harry even with guards on the doors. His only comment was, "Good luck, Potter."
Marietta Edgecombe taunted Harry on two different occasions saying, "My grandfather is going to end your life, muddy-blood boy! Just wait, he'll find you this summer and rip your head from your body."
The first time, Harry merely stared at the fifth year Ravenclaw who continued spewing gossip she wrote in letters to her great-grandmother, Griselda Marchbanks. The girl had written several letters discussing Potter's friends.
However, the second time, Marietta announced, "Granny wanted to know about your friends, Potter. I told her all about you and Longbottom. She wrote back that she'd deal with them first. Then she's going to deal with the Weasleys next. They'll desert you or die."
Marietta glanced toward Ginny, whoever was nearby. "You don't stand a chance against the purebloods."
She never noticed that Harry had to hold onto Neville who wanted to attack the girl.
"Miss Edgecombe! Detention!" shouted Professor Bennet, the wife of Headmaster Bennet. The charms professor hurried over and confiscated Marietta's wand and said, "Come with me! We're going to visit Professor Flitwick and figure out how many detentions you'll be serving and when you'll get your wand back this year."
"You can't do that! My grandfather said…" Marietta began to shout before Professor Bennet's silencing spell shut out the witch's voice.
Neville hurried to his grandmother's office and shared the memory of what the hateful girl had said in front of witnesses. Augusta asked Harry if Neville's memory was accurate, and he nodded while not saying anything.
Acting as Lady Longbottom, Augusta left Hogwarts for an afternoon and requested to meet with Mr and Mrs Edgecombe in meeting at the ministry with the Grand Warlock acting as a mediator. In this confidential and safe meeting, she shared the memory with the couple. She used a Pensieve 3000, borrowed from Gringotts. The grand warlock left the memory with his wand in his hand while Marietta's parents sat down in shock.
In a cold voice, Lady Longbottom dictated, "You will not share news of this meeting or what is discussed with anyone. If you do, I'll include you by name in my declaration of a blood feud with Marchbanks. And I have the money to pay for enough hit wizards to hunt you down and kill you and your foul-mouthed daughter any place in the world."
"We…we didn't know that Madam Marchbanks…" Mr Edgecombe stuttered.
"I don't get a hippogriff's loose feathers what you knew or didn't know. Griselda Marchbanks used your daughter as a spy to determine how close my family is to Heir Potter. That is why she targeted my son and his wife…and tortured them in front of me. If she thinks that would make me hide in my manor house, she's lost more than the family fortune. You have a few days to get the hell out of the Marchbanks family."
Lord Greengrass provided calming potions for the Edgecombe couple before they used the floo to return home. He met the gaze of Augusta Longbottom once but didn't say anything before she returned to Hogwarts. The Pensieve was returned to Gringotts without any problems by a helpful elf.
Greengrass refused to share any details about the meeting with anyone the next day. This prompted Minister Diggory to meet with him and invoke a rule that the minister could require the Grand Wizard to include him on all such mediations.
CHANGE SCENE: Harry Gathers InformationWhen the day arrived for OWLS and NEWTS examinations to begin, Griselda Marchbanks discovered that she was blocked from admittance to Hogwarts. Incensed, she stormed the Minister's office and then the new Director of the DMLE. Neither man could help her and admitted the castle was screening all wizards and witches who tried to enter the wards since the duel between Ogden and Potter.
"You don't want to be splattered all over the Silver Forest, do you Madam Marchbanks?" asked Scrimgeour. "What do you mean?"
"If you try to force your way through the wards, they'll fling you in fifty directions over the forest at one time."
"That ward is entirely too dangerous to use around children!"
Diggory remarked, "Last summer you were all in favour of the new headmaster bringing the wards Dumbledore had allowed to fade back into full force. The school has been safer this year."
Professor Tofty, Professor Smithers, and the other examiners arrived every morning and the days passed slowly without any incidents inside the castle. The examination papers were locked away, under Hogwarts wards until the end of June, when they would be forwarded to the ministry for grading.
At no time in those ten days was Madam Marchbanks able to enter the castle.
SCENE BREAK: More InformationWhen Ron proved impossible to talk with, Harry approached the twins who were very nervous but explained that the man named Lord Weasley was their great-grandfather who did subscribe to the pureblood ideas. Fred said, "But Dad doesn't agree with that pureblood tripe."
Neville asked, "What about your mum? At the dinner party at my home, she was looking for a betrothal for your sister and got bent when Lavender's dad admitted her brother was studying law with the muggles."
"What?" asked Ginny. "A betrothal! I told mum I would never agree to that!"
"My brother? What about my brother?" asked Lavender. When told about Cambridge, Lavender admitted, "Steven really likes his classes though he says all he does is study."
Harry sent a letter to Bloodhook who explained that the goblins could only interfere above ground to help a single client with a problem but could not remain long in Magical Britain. If they stayed above ground longer than that single day, they would be in 'rebellion' and there was always nastiness involved with goblin rebellions for wizards and for goblins.
'Now, if you cross the front steps of Gringotts, you are in a foreign country and nothing and no one short of a declaration of war can get Aurors into Gringotts.'
Disgruntled and at a roadblock of not being certain how to handle the threats of the purebloods, Harry used his invisibility cloak to leave the Great Hall after supper and walk to his private classroom. There he revealed himself and sat down. After five minutes, an elf popped in and requested, "Minty needs twenty sheets of papers runics to make dinner plates to sell to South Africas wizards."
While folding, drawing cartouches, and then writing the words into the cartouches to make the brother plates, Harry talked aloud to Hogwarts. "I hear sales of the sandstone plates are going to let Headmaster Bennet keep all the extra classes next year. And I want to make certain you can keep up this business even if the purebloods do kill me this summer. My lucks going to run out sometime."
He stared at the papers and asked, "If I make a great master set of papers, can the elves duplicate them and make the sandstone plates without me?"
The castle tried to comfort the teenager as he sat drawing a master set of papers to have the elves test by duplicating and creating sandstone plates, two brother, three brother, four brother, and six brother.
Harry said, "You'll have to set a new price for a six-layer brother plate, Lady Hogwarts. And you'll be the only source of these plates in the entire world so charge a lot."
CHANGE SCENE: Headmaster's OfficeClearing his desk, Charles Bennet was preparing to head to bed where his lovely wife had retreated an hour earlier. His correspondence with friends in the duelling circuit had turned into an in-depth correspondence with the ICW in Switzerland, and he feared for his students and the type of summer they might face if things turned sour between the purebloods and Mr Potter.
'What do I mean, 'if'? The only question is when," he admitted. 'How can I help him?'
There were plans in place already to keep any student who asked to remain over the entire summer. Bennet had not made up his mind about using the Hogwarts Express to return the children to London. The train made an easy target for the purebloods and if the idiots adopted Death Eater tactics, they might kill the muggle-born and their families.
In his mind, through his connection to the wards, Bennet suddenly heard Lady Hogwarts weeping. She shared with Bennet that Harry was preparing to give some of his magic to help the castle keep making the sandstone plates if he was killed by the purebloods this summer.
'Wait! Help him!' Bennet commanded.
'How?' he felt/heard the castle ask.
'Give him ideas on how to fight. When to fight! Help him figure out a strategy. You're a thousand years old. Use your knowledge!'
The castle's presence in Bennet's mind returned to the normal connection and he reflected for a moment, 'Why didn't Albus ever listen to Hogwarts?'
Change SCENERY: Mediations on the Magical SoulThe next morning, Harry found a new book in his book bag. It was a well-preserved but ancient book, almost one thousand years old. On the title page, he found a handwritten title that he finally figured out read 'Medjtatjons Over a Magjcks Soulle'. He tried to read some of the writing underneath the title and only recognized 'Lord Goddrjck Gryffyndorre'. The misspellings he figured were from the time when the book was written.
It took him until lunch to decide to write a runic array to translate the book into modern language and he spent an extra hour figuring out how not to sacrifice the original book. He sent Dobby to the Come-and-Go room for a few copies of books by that idiot who taught DADA in his second year. Then he remembered about copyrights on the books and decided not to chance causing damage to the ancient book.
Dobby made a second trip to the room but the old books that were out of copyright were interesting and appeared to be one of a kind, so Harry sent Dobby to Hogsmeade to buy a blank book. Dobby stared at his wizard for a minute and listened closely to the description before he popped away for almost five minutes. The elf returned with a diary – the cover was covered by cupids and red hearts, but there was no copyright on the book and nothing on the pages except lines on each page.
With a paper array, a piece of gold, the original book, and the target, Harry touched his wand to the paper. 'Translate into Harry's English' worked perfectly except the cover remained covered with Valentine's Day hearts.
"Hogwarts, please put this original book back into your protected areas," Harry suggested as the original book vanished and Harry carried the new book to history class. There, he began reading Godric Gryffindor's observations on the magical core within each person who possessed magic. Professor Lupin gave the students a revision period and left Potter alone with the strange book with hearts and cupids on the cover.
After three days of reading, studying and meditating, Harry decided he understood Godric's treatise that the magical core of every wizard or witch was integrated into their entire being, even attached to their soul. The book's final chapter concluded that the magical core gave power to a person's life – magical people lived longer than muggles and their children survived more of the childhood diseases that killed so many muggle children. Godric wrote that this also meant that magical children required more food to grow and mature. When Hogwarts opened, the founders discovered that the amounts of food they expected to need to store were insufficient to feed the children who arrived, often starved and weak.
Once Harry completed the book, a set of parchments appeared. These papers appeared to have been written by Henry Plantagenet (Henri II) and Thomas Becket. Using another translation runic array, Harry returned the original parchments to Hogwarts and studied the translated set. The parchments documented the plans of Henri II and Becket to strip the magic from a wizard who refused to obey the king's commands. (In an addendum to the collection of parchments by Willhelm Lovensgood in 1294, the history was that when the wizard realised he was losing his magic, the wizard sped up the process by cursing the king and his faithful follower. As a result, the wizard died rather than just lose his magic and turn into a peasant.)
Harry decided that Thomas Becket was a squib who knew runes – a forgotten set of Anglo-Saxon runes lost during the reign of Plantagenets. The wizard's dying curse drove Henry to lose his son and heir, and fight with his queen and all his other children. Thomas Becket found religion and turned against Henry. When soldiers assassinated Archbishop Becket in 1170, the king bore the blame and was forced to make concessions to the church.
SCENE CHANGE: Armageddon RunesIn his private classroom, Harry worked on a three layer-brother array that would use the five Anglo-Saxon runes and the person's name to strip that person of all their magic.
"Mr Harry Potters planning to test on some wizard?" asked the quiet elf who popped into the room with a glass of milk and biscuits for his Mr Harry Potter.
"No, Dobby. This is the end of that person as a wizard or witch. From what Dumbledore says, losing your magic is worse than death."
"Then why Mr Harry Potter takes their magic?"
"They'd have a chance for a new life in muggle land. It'll be their choice to adapt or just sit there until they drop over dead," Harry explained.
Examining the paper with the runes drawn with a muggle biro, Dobby noticed his Mr Harry Potter labelled the runic array as 'Armageddon Runes'. Thinking for a moment, the elf asked, "Can Mr Harry Potters make Armageddon works on wholes family?"
"I don't know Dobby," Harry admitted. "I need a good definition of family."
"Lady Longbottom wants blood feud to punish the families that killed her Mr Frank and Miss Alice. Dobby worried Mr Nevilles never recovers from this pain…Greenthumb never trusts any magical person again."
Thinking of the pain his friend had suffered, Harry fussed, "Dobby, you're manipulating me."
The little elf nodded his head. "Yes, Dobby admits he is bad elf and will give all his socks to other elves as punishment. But if Mr Harry Potters, Freshgold, Master of Runes is determined to uses Armageddon, then Dobby must be bad as needs be."
Dobby popped away and after five minutes, returned without socks on his feet, his ears or on the end of his staff.
The next day, Harry spoke to another Hogwarts elf and gave her some galleons. The elf popped into a shop in Hogsmeade and purchased several skeins of brightly coloured woollen yarn and knitting needles. The elves in the castle took turns and knitted Dobby three pairs of new, mismatched socks, a sock especially knitted for his walking stick, and a pair of mittens in bright colours to wear on his ears. The elf cried with joy for an hour and hugged Mr harry Potter's legs every time he met with his wizard for the next week.
Harry talked to Lady Longbottom about what constituted 'family' in Magical Britain and how to describe it, legally and magically. Augusta used the family of the unpleasant Marietta Edgecombe used as an example.
"Her mother was Sophia Marchbanks, who married Cleon Edgecombe and became Sophia Edgecombe. But because he followed his father-in-law's orders, Mr Edgecombe is considered a part of the Marchbanks family. His father and brothers are not. Now, last week, both Cleon and Sophia 'denounced' the Marchbanks name and heritage. This means they are not part of that family any longer.
"Does Mr Edgecombe expect you to declare a blood feud and kill the Marchbanks family?"
"I have the money necessary to hire hit wizards and wipe them out," Augusta admitted. "Griselda Marchbanks was my friend, but she joined with the murderers…I'll not be satisfied until she and her line are gone."
"So the phrase, 'Lord Albert Marchbanks, all his family members, his loyal retainers, and their family members' would identify all the members of the Marchbanks family."
"That's probably forty people or more, Harry," Augusta informed him. "Men, women, and children."
"I understand," he replied. He assured his guardian, "But I'm not going to murder them."
With an emotionless voice, Augusta replied, "A jinx on your name won't work forever. Eventually, someone will break it and they'll remember you then."
The old woman paused, closed her eyes to chase away some memory, and only continued after a cold moment, "Harry, it's a terrible thing but I can't let them get away with murdering Frank and Alice like they did. I'm still going to call for a blood feud and kill every last one of them."
Harry nodded and didn't explain he hadn't thought of hiding his existence. 'I don't want to murder a score of people. The kids are innocent, and others don't have a choice but to do what they're told. But I'll keep my idea to myself for now.'
Author Notes on Goblin Curses:There are several goblin curses used in this story. They do not have English translations because they deal with human mating practices as imagined by adolescent goblins who have only met a few wizards and generally never seen a witch in their lifetimes.
Sturrdel: (Mild obscenity dealing with a wizard confusing mating with breathing).
Sturrdel-gryhiglzehwe (Aggravated obscenity: A wizard confuses a boggart with a witch, attempts to mate, and asks a goblin for directions).
Phvyhgs-Sturrdel-gryhiglzehwe (Most obscene: A wizard confuses one or more boggarts, or trolls with one or more witches, and attempts to mate with some level of success).
Phvyhgs- (Humorous obscenity: Human males approaching a boggart and attempting to mate).
END OF CHAPTER