Welp, I should really stop reading DZ2's forums. It's not enough that I've been inspired to write one story based on their Eyeballs to Entrails challenge (On the Delights of Drinking Blood, obviously). Now I have been inspired by another.
This one is loosely based on (and thus not a full response to) their What's Yours Is Mine challenge. The concept of Harry being a thief struck a chord with me, and when I thought about powers and things that might help him as a thief, I was inspired from two sources mentioned below: Raziel's Shifting abilities from the Legacy of Kain games, as well as Death and his family's ability to go 'between' moments from the Discworld novels. Like On the Delights of Drinking Blood, this is a Lunar Harmony story, my fourth if you count my Henry Ashford stories, a pair of crossovers with Resident Evil. The powers are probably like something out of fantasy cliches and the main characters may seem OP, but hey. This is a story meant to be read for fun. Not quite as overtly humorous as On the Delights of Drinking Blood, but as with that story and one of its inspirations, Silently Watches' Faery Heroes, its about three outsiders sticking it sideways to Magical Britain.
As with On the Delights of Drinking Blood, this story has Dumbledore bashing. However, this story won't have Weasley-bashing, beyond Ron falling out with his friends over the Fourth Year.
Incidentally, if this story does get published as a standalone story, it probably won't be until the next big update. That in itself won't be for a while, as I HAVE to take a break from fanfic writing, BUT said big update will have the first chapters to the sequels for Is Your Great-Aunt an AI?! and Cycle of Sin, along with the first chapters of Res Nullius. So, keep that in mind.
JUST A TOUCH OF KLEPTOMANIA
CHAPTER 1:
A TRIPTYCH OF THIEVES
The residents of the rather dreary suburban street of Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey enjoyed gossip and rumour, the more salacious and malicious the better. Given the rather monotonous appearance of their street, this was probably to relieve the ennui of their existence. Still, the rumours around 4 Privet Drive were amongst the most scandalous, even if many in didn't quite believe some of those rumours.
These rumours revolved around the black sheep of the Dursleys family, the nephew of Petunia, one Harry Potter. Petunia spread those rumours herself, aided and abetted by her husband and her son. The rumours and gossip stated that the boy was a criminal delinquent, taking after his parents in that regard, and went to St Brutus', a school that, in another time, would have been called a borstal.
Now, many didn't quite believe it, if only because, despite the praises being sung of Dudley Dursley, he was a fairly well-known local bully. True, Privet Drive was generally populated by a bunch of upwardly mobile snobs who looked down on Harry's scruffy clothes (because the Dursleys never deigned to buy him anything new), and there were mysterious thefts that happened on Privet Drive over the past few years. But most residents of Privet Drive also merely thought that Petunia Dursley was a dried-up cow who had pretensions to affluence when in reality, she was full of effluence, along with her husband. Most residents of Privet Drive held the Dursleys in mildly amused contempt. But then again, many of them held each other in such bored disdain.
The rumours were mostly wrong. Harry Potter's parents were not drunken dole-bludgers, but rather heroes of a hidden part of society, who had died saving him. He didn't go to St Brutus', but to Hogwarts, a school in a Scottish castle that catered to young wizards and witches of Britain. And in general, Harry was a decent enough young man, certainly far more so than the rest of his family.
But there was one thing they had gotten right. Harry was indeed a criminal, and had been from an early age. Since before he learned of his right to attend Hogwarts, he knew he had magic. And he used it to get his own way. With his birthright stolen from him, he began stealing it back, with interest…
The bedroom was luxurious, lined with artworks and valuables of many kinds, along with bookshelves of magnificently dark wood filled with books of all kinds, magical and mundane. It would not look out of place in the opulence of Versailles, Buckingham Palace, or any of the great palaces all over the world. It was actually the interior of a luxury wizarding trunk, with the occupant no longer sleeping in the room he was nominally meant to.
In a bed fit for any monarch lay a teenager, completely naked under the sheets. His figure, while no musclebound mass, was nonetheless something many a woman would find desirable. His messy hair framed features that were handsome, his emerald eyes currently closed in repose. A fading scar snaked out of his fringe, like a lightning bolt.
There were many clocks on the wall, but one in particular began tolling out the time, twelve strokes. Afterwards, a strange, warped noise seemed to fill the air. The paintings, most of which showed sun-drenched rural landscapes, suddenly shifted into darker landscapes, no less beautiful, but certainly eerie nightscapes. The shadows in the room lengthened. The air seemed to become thicker, and the young man woke up.
"Is it that time already?" he murmured to himself. He looked at his watch, a series of numbers appearing in mid-air, confusing to anyone not used to such a device. He laughed softly. "Happy birthday to me," he said quietly, more to hear the sound of his own voice than anything else. He quickly started donning a figure-hugging bodysuit of Basilisk hide. "They think I'm fifteen out there, and not the seventeen I am now. Thank Merlin for the Shadow Gift of Body. At least Hermione and Luna can bluff it out, call themselves early bloomers. Whereas the old goat might get suspicious if I grow too quickly. Can't have the weapon getting too strong."
The shadows in the room seemed to ripple and warp, before disgorging a pair of teenaged girls wearing Basilisk-hide suits. They weren't wearing the masks: they didn't need to. The dark-coloured suits clung to their figures in distracting ways. But that was okay: they were his girlfriends.
One had bushy brown hair and a demeanour that was usually somewhat strident and bossy. Now, instead, she was confident and collected. Considering that she was the junior member of this group in terms of membership time, that was saying something.
The other had a more ethereal air, with blonde hair and protuberant eyes. She all but skipped into the room. She had a rather strange smile that on some might be considered vapid. On her, it looked vaguely unnerving, as if she knew a joke that you were the butt of.
"Happy birthday, Harry," the two girls chorused, with the bushy-haired one looking askance at the blonde one briefly.
"Thanks, both of you," Harry Potter said. "So, what have you two got in store for me?"
"It's a surprise," the blonde girl cooed. "Anyway, it's my birthday too, at least when you count time in the Shadow Demesne. I'm now 16, and you're both 17. So, I let Hermione think of the destination as a surprise."
The bushy-haired girl nodded. "I think we'll all like it. I don't know whether it'll have much…but it's the principle of the thing. And afterwards…well…" She blushed slightly. "We'll be doing what we've been waiting for."
Harry grinned in anticipation. He then clasped the hands of his girlfriends, and soon-to-be-lovers, in his own. Luna Lovegood. Hermione Granger. And Harry Potter. Partners in crime. "Well then…shall we?"
Luna clapped her hands together as they emerged from the shadows at their destination. "Oh, Hermione, you take us to all the best places!" she cooed.
Harry grimaced. "It's a dump. What is this place?" he asked, looking around the rather grim neighbourhood of a semi-abandoned of a northern mill town. The night seemed to be picked out in shades of grey, like the monochrome of a black and white film.
"Spinner's End in Cokeworth," Hermione said. "Your mother was born here. Remember what I told you about how she met Snape? How I stole his memories?"
"With your Gift of Mind, yes," Harry said. "You didn't tell me where, that's all." He blinked when he realised it, and a large smile split his features. "Oh…are we near Snape's house?"
"Of course. We're right near the door," Hermione said, indicating one brick house. "He's out tonight, on Voldemort's orders. I took that from him."
"Where you were staying? You haven't told me that yet," Harry said. "I was a bit annoyed at the lack of response from you, actually."
"That's because I didn't want Dumbledore or Snape to get any clue to what I was doing," Hermione said. "We'll talk inside." With that, she slipped through the door, like a ghost, Harry and Luna following suit.
While rather dingy, Harry and his girlfriends whistled appreciatively at the various bookshelves lining the wall, with a lot of books. "These are wasted on him," Hermione said with a scowl. "I guess I know what that prick spends his money on. Books and potions ingredients."
"Would it kill him to buy shampoo?" Harry asked.
"The Oleaginous Skullworms growing from his scalp would die, and poison his brain until he was left a vegetable," Luna said.
"…If that was true, no big loss," Harry said darkly. "Do you think he has a potions lab we can raid? I think we'll need more of the ingredients for you know what."
"It's probably in the basement," Hermione said. "Anyway, let's start packing. I'll tell you as we go."
Harry, Luna and Hermione began pulling books from the shelves, and throwing them carelessly (at least Harry and Luna did) into the air, dark portals swallowing them. "I can't say where we're based," Hermione said. "It's under the Fidelius. But the old wether told us not to contact you, claiming we needed to give you space, to allow you to mourn Cedric. Given what I know, that's bollocks."
Harry nodded, turning around briefly to gaze at his girlfriend's derrieres, clad in Basilisk hide, and think to himself, I'm a very lucky guy. "Okay. So you didn't contact me to keep up appearances?"
"Partly, and also because I wanted to learn as much as I could before I told you. In any case, what we didn't tell you would have pissed you off anyway. Fudge's started a smear campaign against you. Apparently he's afraid of Dumbledore usurping him, but Dumbledore doesn't need to be Minister to get his way. Anyway, Dumbledore's going senile, and you're an attention-seeking deluded teenager, according to The Daily Prophet."
"Well, they got the teenager part right," Luna sniffed, turning around briefly to stare at her boyfriend's Basilisk hide-clad rear in appreciation. "For the Prophet, that is unprecedented levels of accuracy. Though they got the age wrong, through no fault of their own, for once. Incidentally, I don't think we can risk selling much of this stuff to Borgin. Snape's a customer of his, he might recognise it."
"We agreed on that anyway. Don't sell the Death Eater stuff to Borgin unless we're sure he won't recognise it," Harry said. "I'm not happy you didn't tell me as soon as you could via Shadow-Walk, Hermione, but at least you're telling me now. Anything else?"
"Only that an upcoming raid will have to be on the Department of Mysteries. I swiped Dumbledore's memory that he reckons Voldemort is after the prophecy. We'll have to destroy it, make it seem like a Death Eater tried to pinch it."
"Is that before or after the Gringotts raid?"
"After. We need to cripple anyone who is funding Voldemort," Hermione said. "Therefore, we go on a raid of the vault of every Death Eater we can list. We'll also have to make sure we're on the lookout for any soul fragments like the one you pulled out of Harry, Luna, or the one we found in the Diadem."
A few minutes later, they had emptied the shelf of books, and set off to explore the rest of the house, which still seemed strangely monochromatic. Then again, that was the default look of the Shadow Demesne, the realm through which they travelled, and through which they seemed to be the only things with motion or colour.
The Shadow Demesne, a realm somewhere in the interstices of time. Where walls and doors could be passed through at will, to those with the ability to be Shadow-Walkers. Thieves of myth, thought long-since extinct. Only a few obscure tomes mentioned their existence in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.
All Shadow-Walkers had the ability to enter the Shadow Demesne, where time stood still…or could be allowed to flow normally while the Shadow-Walkers watched from the shadows. The perfect spies and thieves…which was why a pogrom was launched against them centuries ago, in part helped by the Goblins of Gringotts, who feared the Shadow-Walkers' ability to bypass any ward they could set up to rob their vaults.
The only reason why Harry, and by extension, Hermione, knew any of this was that Luna's mother was the last of the surviving Shadow-Walker line. Harry and Hermione had gotten it through a few relations of Shadow-Walker lines in their ancestry, and the genes just reactivated in them.
Each Shadow-Walker had a unique ability, a Shadow Gift. Harry had the Gift of Body, a sort of super-Metamorphagus ability that allowed him to imitate virtually anyone he saw. Hermione had the Gift of Mind, allowing her to take secrets from someone's head, even those protected by Occlumency, or even implant false memories, making Memory Charms and Legilimency look tame by comparison. Not to mention enhancing her already near-eidetic memory to ridiculous levels, and she could get information she wanted from books or computers just by willing it. And Luna had the Gift of Soul, allowing her to move souls, making her handy for dealing with soul fragments, or for interrogating the dead for information.
When they finally teamed up, it meant they were a quite well-suited group…but that's a story for another time.
Harry searched through Snape's bedroom, not caring about the wards. He did find a photo album filled with pictures of his mother, which he was tempted to steal…until he noticed, to his disgust, that much of the last quarter or so of pages included rather creepy photos of his mother naked or undressing, presumably taken covertly. He tore out those pages to burn, and decided to keep the album anyway. A diary was soon taken, as was a safe.
Harry and Luna soon joined Hermione in the basement, and found her in a potions lab, albeit one she had mostly cleared out. "Now, before Snape left, I implanted a memory that he had left a certain potion in a stasis charm," she said as she mixed up a potion in a cauldron. "Said potion is highly volatile and, if it becomes unstable…"
"It goes 'kablooey'?" Luna asked hopefully.
"More 'fwoosh', actually," Hermione said. "It's the base for Dumbledore's special Lemon Sherbets, which are laced with Calming Draughts, Liquid Luck keyed only to Dumbledore himself, and it helps soothes his piles. But when being cooked, it's so unstable, it's like Fiendfyre waiting to happen. Contained Fiendfyre, enough to destroy this house and melt down the bricks, without affecting anyone else. But still dangerous."
"So, you're leaving it unstable while we're still in the Shadow Demesne?" Harry asked.
"Yes. It'll explode five to ten minutes after we leave…well, in normal time. We're going to be staying in the Shadow Demesne for a couple of days our time, aren't we?"
"Well, yes," Luna said. "Depends on many things, like how long the cake lasts, how long it takes Harry to unwrap his presents, how long his stamina lasts…"
"I have potions ready for that," Hermione said. "Fatigue potions, stamina potions, contraceptive potions…just about everything it's safe to take together. Sirius is jealous, Harry. He complained to me that he'd never got a threesome, and yet, your first time will be one."
Harry snorted. "Let him be jealous. At least it's an achievement I managed on my own, instead of this Boy Who Lived shit. By the way, has he heard anything from Madam Bones about the memories we sent?"
"Yes. Sadly, public sentiment is such that, the moment he sets foot in the Ministry, Fudge will set the Dementors on him, evidence or not. We need Pettigrew for Bones to even have a chance of ordering a retrial. And while we can move through the shadows instantly to any place we can remember…or in my case, that someone else does…we still need to find Pettigrew first. Snape hasn't seen him yet."
"Bugger," Harry muttered.
Hermione finished mixing up the potion, and nodded. "Okay, done. Let's go home."
Harry dropped the pages of photos near the cauldron, ready to be annihilated. With that, the three disappeared into the shadows once more.
Approximately 4 minutes later (Hermione would later kick herself for her mistake), in real time, Professor Severus Snape's house erupted in a pillar of flame. Nothing on the inside of the house would survive, though thankfully, the only damage done to nearby houses were a few broken windows. Of course, before even a fraction of a second of those four minutes was up, Harry, Hermione and Luna had a birthday party, a fun time in bed, read some of the books they had just stolen, sorted their loot into varying categories, and then had some more fun time, before drifting off to sleep, with even sleep not turning off their power.
Such were the life and times of those who could live in the shadows between the tick and the tock…
CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:
So, there you have it. Now, before you ask, the Shadow Demesne was not inspired by the Shadow Realm from Yu-Gi-Oh! (which some of my readers will feel, given the heavy thievery themes, would be a wasted opportunity, but I wanted to do things my way). Instead, it was heavily inspired by the Spectral Realm from the Legacy of Kain games, particularly the Soul Reaver games and Defiance. For those unfamiliar with those games, the character of Raziel has the ability to shift between physical and spectral realms (each with their own different physical properties) in order to bypass certain areas. Time stands still in the Spectral Realm in the game, at least as far as the physical world is concerned, and I thought, why not have that as an ability of a thief Harry? I even think of the same, eerie sound effect used for shifting between realms in the latter two games, as well as for shifting through barred gates, for whenever Harry and company shift into and out of the Shadow Demesne.
I was also partly inspired by the powers Death has in the Discworld series, powers his son-in-law Mort and his granddaughter Susan share. They can also exist in the spaces between the ticks of the clock.
We'll look into their history and their abilities in more detail in the next chapter.
No numbered annotations this time.
