Harry Potter and the Silver Dragons
Chapter 7: The Orphanage
Everyone was still awake in the sitting room when Mr. Weasley returned with news on Fred and George. After being bombarded with questions, Mad Eye finally shouted "Enough!" and Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny fell silent. "Now one at a time." Mad Eye told them.
"Are Fred and George all right?" Ginny asked before anyone else could get a chance to.
Mr. Weasley walked over to one of the arm chairs and literally fell into it before he answered, "They will be fine." Mr. Weasley told them, "They are themselves again, but the healers wanted to keep them for a few days for observation…just to be on the safe side."
"Do they know what happened to them?" Harry asked.
"That was one of the first things we asked them as well," Mr. Weasley said as he conjured up a steaming hot cup of tea. "They told us the last thing they remembered was leaving the joke shop to come here for the party, and then waking up at St. Mungo's." Mr. Weasley took a sip of the tea and settled back in the chair.
"Are they free of the curse now dad?" Ron asked.
Mr. Weasley shook his head, "Nobody can tell us that," he said, taking another, "they can't tell if the curse was just a one time thing, if they would do the same thing every time they came here, or anything else. They can't even be sure the joke shop won't set them off."
"Then who will watch the shop for them?" Ginny asked.
"Lee Jordan is going to be watching the store for them until they get out of St. Mungo's…maybe even longer." Mr. Weasley told them. He took another sip of his tea, "Now, no more questions. Your mother," he was obviously directing this comment at Ron and Ginny, "will be home sometime tomorrow and I don't want her to have you lot all tired out." As Mr. Weasley watched them go, he called out, "A moment Harry."
Harry stopped, and when the other three were out of the room, he turned to Mr. Weasley, "Harry, I just wanted to thank you again for what you did."
"It was nothing really." Harry told him.
"You're being too modest Potter." Mad Eye told him, "What you did not many full grown wizards could have done."
"Indeed, I have told you before it was a lucky day for our family when Ron shared that compartment with you on the train to school." Mr. Weasley told him. "That is yet again that you have saved a member of this family," he continued, "and Molly and I don't know how we can ever repay you."
Harry thought about this for a moment, "You already have Mr. Weasley," Harry said, "you have taken me into your home, even though I might have placed your entire family in danger, not to mention you have made me a part of your family. That means more to me than all the gold in Gringotts."
Mr. Weasley gave Harry a smile, "Thank you Harry. Now you had better be off to bed."
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Harry didn't wake up till around 1:00 o'clock the next afternoon only to find that Ron had already woken up. After changing into his muggle clothes, he headed down to the kitchen and found Mrs. Weasley was there making lunch for Ron, Hermione, and Ginny. "Good afternoon Harry dear." Mrs. Weasley told Harry as he sat down next to Ginny.
Mrs. Weasley set a plate in front of Harry with a sandwich on it, "Fred and George asked me to thank you for them." She told him, "And I just wanted to thank you as well Harry." She told him as tears began to form in her eyes.
Hermione left after lunch to get everything they might need at the orphanage. While she was gone, Harry and Ron practiced all of the spells and jinxes, they had learned over the past several weeks on each other, with Ginny and Tonks, who had come over to see how everyone was doing, watching from the sidelines. That night, as much as Harry insisted it was not necessary, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley gave him a belated birthday party. Hermione finally returned just after the party began. When they saw her, Harry nudged Ron, who thankfully was standing right next to him at the time, in the ribs. Excusing themselves, they went up to the room Hermione was using.
When she saw them, Hermione began to tell them what she had been doing all day, "First I went to Hogwarts to check in on how Professor Slughorn was coming on with the potions, and it appears both cauldrons will be ready right on time." She informed them, "I also contacted the lady that is caretaker for St. Bastian's Orphanage, a Mrs. Wilson, and she will be expecting us early tomorrow morning."
"Well done Hermione," Harry told her, "did you get the stuff you think you will need tomorrow?"
Hermione nodded, "I even found an old potions bag to carry everything around in." She indicated leather colored bag that sat at her feet.
"Alright then," Harry began looking at both Ron and Hermione, "we will leave first thing in the morning."
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"What would they want with that old orphanage?" John asked Victor.
Victor shook his head, "I wish I could tell you John, but that is beside the point. Sam is already on her way there to assist in any way she can." Victor looked the younger man square in the eye, "I want you to contact your uncle and make arrangements to get inside the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix."
John gave Victor a strange look, "To what end?"
"Have you ever heard of the term Priori Incantatem?" Victor asked.
"Isn't that what happens when a wizard or a witch duels against another wizard or witch whose wand has a core that is from the same magical animal?"
Victor nodded, "Voldemort's wand has a Phoenix feather at the core of it," he explained, "that Phoenix gave only one other feather to Ollivander, and that wand was sold to…"
"Harry Potter!" John said comprehension evident on his face. "Then when Potter duels with Voldemort…"
"Priori Incantatem will happen again." Victor said.
John gave Victor a strange look, "Again?"
Victor told John about the night that Voldemort had returned and how he had forced Harry to duel with him, "So when they both cast their spell or curse at the same time, their wands were joined together and several of Voldemort's victims, including Harry's parents emerged from his wand and helped him to escape from there."
"Ok," John said after a moment of silence, "but what does that have to do with me going to Grimmauld Place?"
"You will train Potter in the use of other forms of fighting." Victor told him, "That way he will be able to defeat Voldemort without his wand if he chose not to."
John nodded his understanding at this assignment, "Just one question though…"
"How do I know what happened that night with such detail?" Victor finished, and John nodded, "I am fortunate enough to have been one of the few people that Albus Dumbledore told the entire story to. That is after he heard it from Harry Potter."
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Harry and Ron woke up early the next morning, dressed, and packed a duffle bag with various equipment and supplies. Among the things they were taking with them were Harry's invisibility cloaks, three pairs of shield gloves, a couple of decoy detonators, some Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, and one set of special goggles for each of them.
When they arrived in the kitchen, they found that Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were sitting at the kitchen table with Hermione, who looked a little disheveled and very tired. Mrs. Weasley looked up when she had noticed that Harry and Ron had entered the room and walked over to fetch a plate of toast and some marmalade. While she did this, Harry and Ron sat down at the table next to Ginny and Hermione.
Mrs. Weasley sat down the plate in front of them and took a seat at the head of the table. It was a long and eerily quiet moment before anyone spoke. "So where are you lot going so early in the morning?" Mrs. Weasley asked them.
"Just out." Ron said though a mouth full of toast.
Mrs. Weasley then gave Harry a stern look, "Well Harry?"
Struck by inspiration, Harry told her, "We're going to visit Neville Longbottom."
Ron, Hermione, and Ginny all nodded their heads enthusiastically at this. "Hmmm, and that was what all that training you have been doing for the last month has been for." She told them in no uncertain terms.
"Well you never know when you could be attacked by Death Eaters these days, can you?" Ron said.
"I see." Mrs. Weasley said. They all finished their toast, then Harry, Ron, and Hermione got up and walked over to the middle of the kitchen. Both Ginny and Mrs. Weasley got up too. "So how long will you be gone then?" She asked.
"At least a couple of hours." Hermione told her.
Ginny quickly walked up to Harry and gave him a kiss on the cheek. As she did so she whispered in his ear, "Good Luck!" She then walked back over to stand next to her mother.
"You three be careful now, you hear me?" Mrs. Weasley told them.
"We will!" all three of them said at the same time. All three of them turned in unison and seconds later were standing in an alley.
Hermione led the way down several blocks until they were standing in front of an old building that looked like it had seen better days. A barely legible sign over the front doors read 'St. Bastian's Orphanage'. As they walked up to the building, they found a middle aged muggle woman standing there looking up at the building. This was obviously Mrs. Wilson.
"Mrs. Wilson?" Hermione asked. Mrs. Wilson jumped a little, "My name is Hermione Granger, we talked on the telephone yesterday."
"Ah yes Ms. Granger." She looked at Harry and Ron with a tiny bit of scrutiny, "And these young men are?"
"Oh," Hermione said, "these are my friends and collogues, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley."
"Charmed!" Mrs. Wilson told Harry and Ron, "I suppose you want to get a history of the place before you go inside." All three of them nodded. "Well to be honest I don't really know the entire story myself…just what my mother, who was the administrator when the place was open, told me."
"Just tell us what you know, and we will determine the rest." Harry told her, trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about.
Mrs. Wilson nodded, "From what my mother told me, roughly about thirty-five to forty years ago the owner, Mr. Robins, came in for an inspection. Unfortunately that same night a freak snow storm came in and he was forced to stay here until it had cleared up."
"What's so freaky about a snow storm?" Ron asked.
"It was in the middle of the hottest summer on record, and from what it looked like, on the outside it only snowed here at the orphanage, and strangest of all it had completely cleared up the next day." Mrs. Wilson told them. Harry looked at Hermione, and they both knew that the snow storm was more than likely conjured up by Voldemort. "Anyway Mr. Robins was given a vacant room, the next morning he was found dead."
"Did they ever find out what killed him?" Hermione, who was trying to play her part without flaw asked.
"At first, the medical examiner thought he might have had a heart attack, but when an autopsy was performed on him, it showed he was in perfect health. Not long after, the building began to give off a strange and eerie feeling, almost as if something supernatural was roaming the halls. Finally several months after Mr. Robins was killed, they shipped out all of the orphans and closed the place down."
"What room was he killed in?" Harry asked
"The first room on the second landing." Mrs. Wilson told Harry.
When Mrs. Wilson looked away back at the building Harry gave a knowing look to both Ron and Hermione. "Well, I will leave you to your project for school." Mrs. Wilson told them, "But I won't expect much in any case."
"Why is that?" Harry asked.
"Well," Mrs. Wilson told them, "over the years I have tried to have the place investigated by professional mediums and fixed up by work crews, and every time none of them had ever lasted more than five minutes inside of there." She then pulled out an old key from her pocket and handed it to Hermione, "Good luck in any case." She said and walked back up the path.
Hermione led the way up to the front doors of the building, "Some of those things she mentioned could have been the result of anti muggle spells."
"And the bad feeling everyone got inside after the murder of Mr. Robins could have been either the protection Voldemort put in place or you might have been right about the Horcrux putting off a lot of negative energy."
When all three of them were inside and the door shut behind them, Harry pulled out the invisibility cloak, "We need to determine who will stand guard outside in case Voldemort is becoming wise to what we are doing."
"No need," Ron said holding out a hand for the cloak, "I'll stand guard." Both Harry and Hermione looked at him, "Look, Hermione needs to go because she has spent so much time trying to learn about what type things are protecting the Horcrux, and Harry you are the only one of us that has actually been up against those protections." Ron took the cloak and threw it over himself, "Besides there is still one more Horcrux for me to help recover personally."
Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then agreeing with Ron's logic, Hermione pulled an earpiece out of her bag, "Then take this." She said holding the earpiece up.
"What is this thing?" Ron asked as the ear piece rose out of Hermione's hand and disappeared.
"It is an enchanted two-way radio." Hermione said as she pulled two more devices out of her bag and handed one of them to Harry. "This will allow for us to stay in constant contact with each other."
"Brilliant!" Harry told her as he put the ear piece in.
"Ok," Ron said, and they heard footsteps going up to the door, "let me know if you find anything." The door then opened up and then closed again.
"Let's Go." Harry said.
After they lit their wands, Harry and Hermione started to walk down one of the hallways that led into the building. After a few moments of walking, they had found a large stone staircase. As they started up the stairs, Harry remembered when he had visited this place in Dumbledore's Pensive. At that time, the administrator of the place was a muggle woman named Cole. He remembered following her and a much younger Dumbledore up these steps to Tom Riddle's room.
Harry's thoughts were interrupted though by Hermione, who poked him hard in the small of the back. "What is it?" he asked her, a little annoyed at the way that she had gotten his attention.
"Look!" She said pointing over the banister.
Harry looked down and saw a small pile that must had consisted of at least ten Red Caps. Nasty creatures that had a tendency to attack anyone they came across. However these Red Caps looked as though they had already gotten into a fight with somebody they could not defeat. "No visible marks on them," Hermione said, "so it must have been done by a wizard."
Harry suppressed the urge to make a comment about that statement and continued up the stairs. When they reached the second landing, it didn't take long for them to find the first room. "Have you noticed this seems way too easy?" Harry asked as Hermione pointed her wand at the door which opened with a click.
"I think your right Harry." She said, "It seems like we have not seen much in the way of protection for this Horcrux, at least not after what you and Dumbledore went though in the cave."
Cautiously they entered the room, wands at the ready for any sign of trouble, but the room seemed quite empty. All that was in it was a bed with an old moth eaten blanket on it, and a large wardrobe that stood opposite of the door. Harry recognized it at once, "That is the wardrobe Voldemort used to hide the items he stole from the other kids." Harry remembered Dumbledore had set the wardrobe on fire when he had visited Tom Riddle over fifty years ago in order to prove he was indeed a wizard, then how, when Dumbledore had found his trophies as he had called them inside it, he had forced Voldemort to return them to their rightful owners.
"Then that would be where Voldemort would have most likely hidden a Horcrux." Hermione said as she cautiously walked over to the wardrobe. Suddenly it began to shake violently. Hermione looked at Harry, "I think there might be a boggart in there." They had learned in their third year that a boggart was a shape shifter that normally took on the form of whatever the person that was fighting it most feared.
"Ok then," Harry said, "you stand off to the side and open the wardrobe, I will take this one." Hermione nodded and stepped off to the side.
Harry concentrated hard on an image in his head, for the only way to defeat a boggart was to picture whatever you feared the most into something else. For Harry, the boggart always took on the form of a dementor. Lupin, who had been the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at the time, had told Harry it had been because what he feared most was fear itself. Banishing these thoughts out of his head, Harry focused on how to make a dementor funny. After a moment he decided that he would dress it up like a clown, complete with long shoes and a red nose.
This image now locked in his mind Harry nodded to Hermione, who in turn pointed her wand at the latch of the wardrobe and it swung open. What came out of it was not a dementor. It was pale skinned, its robes were all torn up and dirty, its eyes were wide, yet unfocused, and unless you counted the fact it seemed to be looking right at Harry. With a stagger in its step, the Inferi walked straight at him, its clammy hands outstretched and ready to make him one of them.
Harry was frozen to the spot as the Inferi boggart walked closer and closer, finally Hermione, realizing something was wrong shouted "Incendio!" and a wall of flames shot up between Harry and the boggart.
Realizing what had happened, Harry cleared his mind of the image of the clown dressed dementor and focused instead on a new image. This image locked in his mind he pointed his wand at the boggart and shouted "Riddikulus!" There was a loud CRACK and the Inferi changed into a living, breathing man. Seeing that it had worked, Harry let out a good hearty laugh and the boggart exploded.
The wall of flames died away and Hermione rushed over to Harry, "What happened?" she asked
"Don't know." Harry said, "I guess my experience with the Inferi back in the cave affected me more than I thought it had. I was expecting it to change into a dementor."
"Maybe you should rest." Hermione suggested.
Harry shook his head, "We can't take the time for that."
Walking up to the wardrobe, Harry undid the latch and tried to open it, but the doors would not budge. "It must need a tribute to open." He told Hermione, who in turn began to rummage around in her bag for something.
Several seconds later, she pulled out a bottle that was filled with a thick liquid that could only be blood. "I thought we might need it after what you told us about the doorway in the cave." Using an eyedropper, Hermione carefully drew out some of the blood from the bottle and squirted it on the wardrobe. Sure enough the blood almost immediately disappeared and the door opened. There it was gleaming on a shelf, a golden cup with a badger engraved on it. The cup had belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, and Voldemort had stolen form Hepzibah Smith when he was still known as Tom Riddle.
"So what do we do now?" asked Hermione as she looked at the cup.
Harry pointed his wand at the cup, "Accio Cup!" he said and the cup moved to the edge of the shelf it was setting on before it stopped dead in its tracks. "Dumbledore told me back in the cave that the simplest solutions often tell us the most."
Hermione nodded and reached out towards the cup which was now moving back to where it was originally setting, "There must be some sort of field here that is preventing the cup from…ouch!" she said as her fingers got close to the shelf. Hermione pulled her hand back and Harry saw that the top of her fingers were red.
"What happened?" he asked, looking at the fingers.
Hermione shook her head, "Don't know, as I reached for the cup it suddenly felt like I was touching something extremely hot."
Harry pulled out a pair of the gloves that he had brought along and put them on. Tentatively he reached out for the cup, but was stopped just before his hand reached the shelf. "It doesn't look like whatever is protecting the cup is going to let me get it with these gloves on." Before Hermione could say anything in protest, Harry pulled off one of the gloves and reached into the wardrobe. The pain was almost unbearable, nothing, not even all the times that his scar hurt him over the years when Voldemort was either present or feeling particularly evil, could compare to this.
Bearing the pain, Harry reached further into the wardrobe until he closed his hand around the cup. When he tried to pull the cup out though, he found his hand was stuck inside of the wardrobe. Hermione, who had gotten over the shock of his actions, now looked at him with a worried look, "Harry what's wrong?"
"My hand is stuck!" Harry told her through gritted teeth, it felt like the flesh of his hand was being eaten away. Hermione grabbed him from behind and began to pull, but this only made it worse as blood began to trickle out of his wrist and down the field. Harry then noticed that the field was becoming weaker, "Hermione pour the rest of the blood out over my wrist.
Without argument Hermione pulled the bottle out again and poured the remaining contents of it over Harry's wrist. There was a bright flash and the two of them found themselves on the other side of the room, the cup clenched in Harry's extremely burned hand.
"We'd better get you out of here." Hermione said. She then reached up to her ear piece, "Ron, we got the Horcrux but Harry's badly hurt."
"What happened?" Ron asked through the connection.
"Never mind that," Hermione said, "we are on our way out now. Meet us in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts."
"Got ya!" came Ron's reply over the radio.
Hermione then looked down at Harry, "I think we had better apperate in tandem." Harry nodded and let her help him up. Painfully he handed the cup to Hermione, who put it in her bag.
Both of them concentrated on the front gate of Hogwarts, but nothing happened. "There must be some sort of anti Apparation field around the building." Hermione said.
"Then you will have to carry me out of here." Harry told her.
Harry placed the arm with the uninjured hand around Hermione's neck and the two of them walked out of the room and down the steps. It was only when they were half way down that they noticed all of the Red Caps were no longer unconscious. Instead they were all waiting for them at the bottom of the steps. "Oh dear!" Hermione said as she helped Harry sit down on one of the steps.
This however did not stop the Red Caps from charging them however and Hermione shot curse and hex after spell at them, but nothing was holding them back for long. It was at that time that a giant silver spider emerged from the hallway. This sight made the entire group of Red Caps stop in their tracks, which gave Hermione the opportunity she needed. She pointed her wand at the creatures and a rope shot out wrapping all of the Red Caps up in one big group.
After the spider vanished in a silver haze, Ron ran out of the hallway and up the stairs. Taking only a glance at Harry's hand he help him up and half carried him the rest of the way. "How did you know we needed help?" Hermione asked when they had reached the hallway. She took Harry's other arm, being careful with his injured hand.
"I tried to apperate while I was still on the front steps and couldn't." Ron explained, "So I figured if I couldn't apperate, then you would not be able to either and came running. When I saw those Red Caps, I did the first spell that came to mind." Ron gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of his Patronus.
"Thanks." Harry said weakly.
When they reached finally reached the outside of the orphanage, Hermione looked around, "It's clear!" she said, and all three of them disappeared with a soft popping sound.
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Concealed behind a large bush Mrs. Wilson watched as Harry, Ron, and Hermione disapparated. With a rye smile on her face, she headed off to a nearby alleyway and stepped up to a motorcycle that was hidden behind some trash cans. Mrs. Wilson had just picked up her helmet when she heard a soft POP. "Well, well, well," came a gruff but amused voice behind her, "what do we have here?"
"I think we have a muggle that is someplace she should not be." Came another voice, this one a bit deeper than the first but still had the same amusement that the first one had.
Mrs. Wilson turned around slowly looking at the two wizards that were standing behind her. Both of them were big and clumsy looking, wearing long black robes and masks over their faces. "You young men wouldn't hurt an old lady now would you?"
"Naw," the bigger of the two of them said, "what we will do to you won't hurt a bit." He then pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. "Avada Keda..." he shouted, but his incitation was interrupted when Mrs. Wilson threw her helmet at him, knocking the wand out of his hand.
The other wizard didn't have any time to react before he found Mrs. Wilson's foot coming right at his face. As it collided, there was a sickening crunch as he felt his nose break. The other wizard didn't even have time to react to this because at the same time that she planted her foot in his friends face, Mrs. Wilson had placed her fist hard in his gut.
Ignoring his obviously broken nose the second wizard pulled out his wand and pointed it at Mrs. Wilson. "That does it," he shouted as he raised the wand up high, "Crusio!" A jet of energy shot out of the wand at almost point blank range. But unlike usual Mrs. Wilson did not collapse onto the ground writhing in agony, instead a sliver aura surrounded her body and the curse was reflected back to its sender. Before he knew what was happening, the wizard was hit by his own curse and fell to the ground.
Seeing what this old lady had done to his comrade, the first wizard, who had recovered his wand by this time, pointed it at Mrs. Wilson. Reacting quickly Mrs. Wilson dodged the curse that he sent her way by running straight up the side of one of the walls and performed a backwards flip landing in a crouching position. It was at that time the wizard noticed there was something different about this old lady. For starters, she was no longer an old lady but a young and pretty one.
Noticing her disguise had worn off, Sam whipped off the dress she was wearing to reveal a white top and pair of black shorts. She then lunged at the still stunned wizard and belted him hard in the jaw, and followed it with a spinning roundhouse kick. He fell to the ground, obviously knocked out. It was at that time that Sam's cell phone went off, "Yeah," she said as she opened it, "they just left, and I just had to take out some trash." She listened for a few seconds, "I'll be right there, Baker out." Sam snapped her phone shut and threw back her elbow just in time to catch the second wizard, who had recovered from the curse, right in the gut. She then spun around and introduced her fist to his cheek.
As the wizards face was slammed to one side a mixture of spit, blood, and teeth flew out of it. The wizard landed hard on the ground clearly unconscious. Sam then walked over to where her helmet landed, picked it up, and walked to her motorcycle. With a roar, she sped off down the alley and onto the street.
