Disclaimer- dont own nothing just doing this for the banter as i got nothing else to do as i sit at hom all day alone
Thanks people, couple of important things in this chapter, better read them well.
After Harry's slightly late arrival he was updated on the information that was scheduled for the emergency meeting. It seemed that Dumbledore had issues with the security at Hogwarts. 'So this was why he didn't want me here, thought he could get the Wizengamont to makes some rules and I would have to abide by them'. He signalled to Madam Bones that he wished to speak, to which she gave a nod of consent and standing he addressed the council.
"Members of the Wizengamont I assure you, as the owner of Hogwarts and its grounds that the castle and said grounds will be the safest they have been for many years once my plans, which are in progress at the moment, have been implemented. I have with me a brief, outlining my strategy for defence, and counter attack of any and all attackers that may try. All I will say is I encourage them to try, as will you after you have read the folder" Sitting down again he distributed the folders, he was expecting such a move from Dumbledore, he just didn't expect him to try and do it without him there, the old man had really thought this through. Among the plans were putting families of dragons and griffins into the forbidden forest, already done but he wasn't going to tell them that and he had added a pack of nundu. The nundu were extremely happy to help the light side, they were dark creatures but light sided on the whole, much like Harry. His animagus form really did suit him. Also in the plans were his thoughts about restoring the original wards, Dumbledore would hate this as all his own wards would be wiped by the sheer power of the original wards, but the castle would be one hell of a lot stronger.
Much to Harry's delight and Dumbledore's displeasure, he was the only one to vote against, both were voted through. Now all Harry had to do was make a show of putting in a couple of young dragons and griffins and it was done. Little would the rest of the world know there were whole herds of them in the forest; he would leave that surprise for Voldemort. Making sure this sort of thing was never attempted again by Dumbledore, Harry suggested using bracelets with a protean charm on them that a member could use to signal an emergency meeting, this again was ruled in and Harry left with a blue band circling his left wrist while the rest of the council left with there own colour coded band as well.
As he was leaving Harry sent a rather nasty mind message to Dumbledore, basically stating, try this again and it will hurt you a lot more than it will me. Harry was already coming up with a couple of rather mean things to do, he was headed to Gringott's to talk to Rucknil again, but he wanted the old bastard to think he was getting away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist for now. Emerging from the ministry he noticed a shadowy figure in the alley, extending his senses he could feel at least twelve more. Harry went into a slightly defensive position, unreadable by an onlooker but would give him a much better chance of deflecting any curse fired at him. As he begun to walk he could also sense that Flash had come and started to circle above, a storm cloud brewing to show his anger.
The first curse was a stunning spell directed by an obviously weak opponent, who seemed to of fired along time before he should of, the trap wasn't even nearly closed yet. Thanking Merlin for his luck he summoned an invisible shield, much stronger than the curse. To the surprise of the attackers, and horror of the firer of the curse it rebounded upon him, travelling much quicker than before and knocking him back twenty foot before he crashed head first into a wall. All hell broke loose as the remaining attackers launched killing curses and crucio's at him, spinning low to the ground before jumping back up when the curses had passed, he successfully managed to take another three down with nothing more than dodging. 'That's four down, and all I have cast is a shield charm. Must be new recruits, still eight to go though' he mused as he prepared for the next attack.
It came with a much wider variety of attacks, both block able and some unforgivable curses thrown into the mix. As Harry dodged and threw up a strong shield charm he noticed another five go down to a chain lightning effect, hitting one wizard then jumping on to the next and so forth. He chuckled as he heard Flash whoop in his mind at getting so many in one, apparently it was a record for him. Straightening he decided it was time to finish this and conjured ropes around the remaining death eaters, he had seen there masks and cloaks from the light as the lightning hit. The Death Eaters had regrouped, making the conjuration a lot easier. As they struggled with there bindings Harry turned the ground underneath them to acid, killing all but one, the last was finished with a blasting curse, leaving the mans legs still on the ground, with the parts they were supposed to be attached to covering the walls around the alley.
Checking the attackers he found only the original caster to still be alive, he was not sorry for what he had done. They were there to kill him, you tried to kill him and he would kill you first. It was a simple really but it worked for him, it helped with the guilt. He was glad there was still some guilt there; it would stop him becoming another Voldermort, but he would kill any Death Eater he crossed wands with. Harry took the one remaining living, Death Eater down to the department of law enforcement where he explained what happened outside, Shacklebolt just chuckled and handed him a wallet. Inside he found an Aurors licence, basically a license to kill death eaters, and an apparition license. 'Present from the guys'he had called it, he wasn't about to say no, thanking him he apparated back to his house in need of a good sleep, it had been a very long day.
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The next day Harry left quite early to go and see Rucknil as he had intended to do the night before. Upon arrival he was again escorted to the office when something came to Harry's mind. What the hell had happened to the death eaters they had caught on his first visit to the bank this summer. When Rucknil entered that was his first question to which he was returned with a toothy grin and told that they had been trying to steal something from the vaults with an old map the goblins had used to build the system and locate the carts. The goblin responsible and death eaters had been killed for there crimes. It was not a ministry issue as it was done in Gringott's, which was goblin land.
Chuckling slightly, he could just imagine that the Rucknil would have taken great pleasure in killing them himself, for the sheer nerve of trying to steal from his bank. Harry then told him of his problem and ask what sort of thing he could do to limit Dumbledore and his meddling. The fact was, he was to important to the public image of light and his experience was undeniable on the political side, it would be suicide to just off him, even if he was tempted, every minute of everyday. The solution they came up with together was so ingenious it gave Harry the desire to laugh evilly and stroke a white cat. He had seen this in a muggle movie at the Dursleys once and thought the image was very intimidating and very cool. The plan was to reinstate Harry's command as owner of Hogwarts, meaning that he had control over all the teacher in the castle, during term time, but he was going to be away for the rest of summer anyway, and Wizengamont was on summer break, Dumbledore wouldn't dare call an emergency meeting about by laws during that, or Harry wouldn't be the only one after his head.
The main advantages of the ownership rule was, much like when students or teachers wanted to leave the castle during term, the headmaster would have to ask his permission to leave. Another plus he hadn't expected was that it would disband the school board, instead he could appoint a council of three people overlook and make sure everything was running properly. Harry was delighted and had sent letters to the Moons, Zabinis and Westfield's asking for the cooperation, after getting there replies he sent the letters to the old board and Dumbledore. The old man would not like this one bit, but he was not stupid and he knew there was nothing he could do about, other than try and prove Harry was not the closest direct heir to the castle, he may not be but if he wasn't then Voldemort would be, he really didn't think Dumbledore was that stupid. With the board out of service, of which seven of the ten were death eaters, it gave him one less headache.
Harry apparated back to his manor for the last time in a couple of weeks, he had entered the preliminaries of the world duelling competition. There was no doubt he was a good dueller now, but to duel the dark lord he would have to be a hell of a lot better, and practise was the only way. Packing his trunk of all the things he would need he apparated over the Bones manor. Susan had convinced him to let her come along. An hour later they both looked completely different. Harry couldn't really do much in case he got hit with a spell in a duel and it took the glamour off so he was using a potion. This potion lengthened his hair, both on his head and on his face, giving him a goatee beard and long hair tied loosely in a ponytail, hiding the golden scar that was fading by the day. He darkened his eyes to almost black, nobody would recognize him now, he looked positively evil. 'I might even scare a few of the duellers enough they run away crying he mused'. Susan on the other hand had changed her hair from a shinning blond to a murky brown with splashes of blond through it; she had refused to give it up all together. That together with changed her eye colour and height and she looked totally different.
All set they both apparated to the Scottish highland duelling centre. The centre was one of the best in the world, with state of the art facilities, this was all funded by the Scottish Druids, long ago the druids and the warlocks had been the best duellers in the world, often fighting each other in friendly duels to test there skills. The druids had not wanted there lineage lose there duelling prowess so had built a self updating building to cope with the problem. Just a pity it was gifted to the ministry as the Scottish Druids died out nearly a millennia ago. Upon entering Harry looked to at the board to see what group he was in and when he was duelling. Cedric Black-Group C. He had decided on this fake name second, to start with he was going to go with James Evans, but decided anyone with half a brain would guess who he was so changed it to Cedric Black in the honour of his lost godfather and friend.
The next day Harry headed down to the ring wearing standard duelling robes, black with a wand and sword crossed on the back. The only different between his robes and anyone else he could see were that his were actually dragon hide, not battle robe quality hide from the legs and back ridge of a dragon but more flexible belly hide, which was not in any way disallowed by the rules. Madam Malakin had thought him ingenious when he mentioned it to her.
The tournament was in a round robin stage for the preliminaries with the top two in each group of four going through into the knockout stage. In Harry's group he had two veteran fighters who had been fighting in the championship for over ten years and a younger competitor who had fought in the championship two years ago but had missed last year with injury. The whole tournament was over a period of two weeks with the round robin stages in the first and the knockout in the second week. Harry had also wanted to enter this tournament so he could try a couple of the spells he had invented using his crafting ability. He got the chance in his first duel.
The younger man turned out to be a rune master and if it wasn't for Harry being one as well and able to quickly draw counters to them as his opponent fired blast through them he was sure he would have been beaten. The flaw in his opponent's strategy was that he always used runes, every time. Harry countered a particularly vicious bone breaking rune with a reflective rune however he cast a splitting shield in exactly the same place. The splitting shield was one of his own inventions, combining a replicating charm used to copy books to keep originals safe and a simple 'protego maxima', the result was the spell being returned back to the caster but in eight separate beams. The more power he poured into the curse the stronger the beams would be. Because the original curse was a rune curse, this meant that the eight reflected beams all had to be blocked by runes. This was almost impossible to do in time, and so his opponent went down with a leg, arm skull and two ribs broken. Harry was tired after the duel, but had learned fro his opponent's mistake of sticking to the same strategy, you needed to mix things up, combine what you had.
His second duel was much easier, the older man had a lot of power and the sheer amount of spells he had at disposal was quite something to behold, not nearly as much as Harry, but for your everyday dueller quite impressive, the reason Harry won so easily was the old man was just that. His movement was nonexistent, meaning he had to rely on shields and ending the duel quickly to avoid fatigue. Harry realising this early fired some extremely powerful blasting curses at him forcing him to pour power into his shield and tiring him quickly, Harry finished with a ribbon cutting curse, a curse that had been up for dark arts selection almost a hundred times, only not being classed as dark arts because of its use by the wizard lumberjacks. Harry was extremely good at directing the curse however and removed both mans hands at the wrist, ending the duel. The medic wizards reattached his hands and the old man beamed at him for spotting his weakness so quickly and exploiting it.
The last of his round robin duels was by far the hardest and last almost twice as long as the others. At the start both waited for the other to attack, without anything coming at Harry was the one to attack first, he usually liked hiss opponent to throw the first curse, he didn't know why but it helped him, apparently so did his opponent this time. The duel was back and forth with what Harry though was many pointless located shields being put up around his area. Located shields were about a metre in diameter and could be places in an area. Almost too late he realised he had put them in such a way that with one last locater shield they would join together making one shield, a lot stronger than the singular shields on there own. Harry used a Parsel-rune curse, of his own design, that doubled the power of a shield, he planned it to be used to strengthen an alley's shield, but in this case it would overload the located shields causing an explosion when they evaporated. Harry formed his own bunker shield, he thought he would need it, he was right. The shield went off with a huge explosion, knocking his opponent along way outside the area, lying unconscious. Harry checked his shield and found the original purple colour had dimmed to an orangey-red colour, showing just how much power the shield had given off.
Harry qualified first in his group with his last opponent second, he was alright thanks to a last minute shield protecting him slightly from the blast, he had erected it when he saw the shield overloading and Harry erecting a bunker one himself. The last sixteen was going to be a lot more difficult than his round robin, he had watched all of the duels he could, some of them were an awesome display and he knew he would struggle a lot against the better duellers. He was under no delusions that he was going to walk this tournament; he was here for the experience and had learned a lot already. Talking to the veterans and watching them in action was awesome. Combined with the fact he had seen Voldemort duel a good couple of times, he knew what he had to work on, the only down he had was the fact he couldn't use his sword in the duels, he was sure that he would have been able to win if he had been allowed to use Eleanor.
Harry was recovering from his first knockout match, the dark arts were not banned in this tournament, the only thing that was, the killing curse, and his opponent was a dirty dueller, not particularly skilled in magic but very cunning with his strategy. He had a slight spell-crafting ability allowing him to disguise curse incantations and wand movements. This was a pain in the arse, literally, he had disguised a slicing rune curse as a stunner, and it had gone straight through Harry's protego and chopped of his right buttock, incidentally he standing to watch the match. Then it happened, it all made sense, especially since he had been thinking about it for so long. He couldn't figure out what he would have had to gain from it, and why he would have so easily let himself get disarmed, especially with his control over wandless magic. In the duel a wizard had just yelled 'Avada Kedavra' and the famous green light leapt out at a stunned wizard striking him on the chest and blowing him back.
"A blasting charm disguised as the killing curse, of course, Snape would have been in Voldemort's good graces for finally killing the thorn in his side and proving his loyalty. Probably allowing him to destroy texts and get any horcrux's Voldemort held in his own possession" he muttered to himself. The soul beaker wasn't anything but a tale to tell the public and protect Snape, so he is probably still alive, another death eater would have been put in his place to make sure he kept his 'most loyal servant' alive and well, even if Dumbledore was still alive. 'Bravo Dumbles that was one hell of a plan. I could use a man like that on my side, pity he's a manipulative old goat really"
Harry's next duel was against an Asian man, he had got into the semi finals last year so Harry was going to be very wary of him. Of course he had been wary of all his opponents so far but this guy had to be good to get to this stage two years in a row.
'Well I was right in thinking he would be good' Harry mused after a good fifteen minutes of fighting his opponent. The duel had been back and fro, Harry had mixed up his duelling as much as possible, even throwing in some curses he had invented himself, nothing got through however. 'It's like I am sending him messages of my moves, for the love of Merlin how am I going to beat this guy'. He was getting more and more frustrated, finally loosing his rag he drew a rune on the ground under his opponent's feet and launched an extremely powerful blasting charm at it, the most powerful one he knew in fact. The only problem with this strategy was the fact his opponent had anticipated it and drawn the same rune under his feet, deflecting the blast back and hitting it, Harry was blown out of the ring ending the duel.
Harry punched the wall, how in the hell did that happen, he knew for a fact the guy couldn't be reading his mind, his occlumency shields were so tight even Dumbledore couldn't get through them, and he was the best in the world, by far, at the art. What in the hell had happened.
"Wondering how he was able to know your every move before you did it, say a counter charm or shield before the spell had even left your wand?" a voice said from the corner, looking up Harry saw an old man who looked a lot like Dumbledore yet he had no grandfatherly expression, what you say was what you got with this man. "Yes I am related to Dumbledore, I am Aberforth his younger brother, but believe me we are brothers in only name. He tried to get me imprisoned in Azkaban, I rival his power you see, and he couldn't have that so pinned some petty crime on me, made it a big deal in the Wizengamont and my wand got broken" Harry instantly felt sorry for Aberforth, if Dumbledore would manipulate his own brother to the point of getting his wand broken, Harry was in for a long fight.
"Anyway that's not why I came, the reason he beat you was his aura reading ability, all good duellers can do this, it's a way of sensing what spell is coming next. The fact you lasted so long against someone so good at it only proves your potential. I have won this title more times than my brother, I beat him in the final the last time we fought, that's part of the reason he had my wand broken. I want to train you to duel Mr Potter, if you accept I will take you to a level of duelling skill so high that you could take my brother in his prime, he is no where near that anymore. The simple fact of the matter was he was, we were, awesome in or prime" Harry stared at the man before him, he stared hard, he tried to judge him, he wanted to accept this, he felt he needed it. Aberforth seeing what Harry was doing dropped him occlumency shields and let the boy see his sincerity, surprised at the boys strong legitimacy skills and the fact he would have been able to tell even if he was lying. Harry released himself from his mind and nodded in consent. He was going to accept this offer, the man was sincere and he needed to be able to duel properly, his life and that of most people in Britain's depended on it.
"The only problem I can see is the fact that I go back Hogwarts in two weeks, believe me I have tried to get out of it but the fact of the matter is Dumbledore won that battle, just about the only one he's won this summer though" at this Aberforth gave a chuckle and eased his worries by telling him he owned a house outside of Hogsmeade and that he had duelling facilities there. They parted with plans to meet up at Harry's summer home, also near Hogsmeade but was tiny house with nothing more than one bedroom, bathroom and toilet. Abeforth had seen this before and knew where it was, making it a good meeting place. With there arrangments made Abe, vanished leaving harry to suspect he was an elemental, but shrugging headed to find Susan, she was no doubt wanting to tend to his wounds as before but he would be silly to complain, all in all he was quite looking forward to her ministrations.
Harry and Susan had grown a lot closer during the tournament, they slept in separate beds but on the last night they shared one, they didn't have sex but it was still the best night of Harry's life, it felt special to hold a girl in his arms while she fell asleep and to wake up with her still there, it was like a constant. He knew now what had been missing that day when he picked up his wand, it was this, security, maybe love, maybe just having someone to care about him, all he knew was now he had it, he didn't want to let it go.