SCENE BEGINS
For the balance of February, Dumbledore was distracted by movements in the Hogwarts Governors to remove him as headmaster. Bribes from the families of the dead students fed that fire, and the meetings flowed over into March. Professor Snape stopped his efforts to drive Gryffindor House into negative numbers in the race for the House Cup when he discovered that Flitwick, Lupin and Babbage waited until after supper and then took twice the number of points from Slytherin that Snape had taken from Gryffindor each day. The students in all four houses ignored the House Cup counters and tried to cooperate in their studies.
Neville spent many hours in the greenhouses with students from all four houses and years while helping Professor Sprout pot, harvest, trim and care for the exotic plants, both magical and mundane, needed for potions. He noticed that Professor Sprout received a lot of owls in the greenhouse, and she usually smiled when reading the letters.
Draco Malfoy tried to create situations where he could get Potter in trouble. Still, his minions deserted him for study groups, the other third-year Slytherins repeatedly lectured him on his Gryffindor-like behaviour, and Scarhead always vanished when Draco thought he had the mudblood cornered. The Dementors ignored who he was on the next Hogsmeade weekend and left Draco ill for a week in the infirmary.
The young heir of House Malfoy lay in a bed near the one reserved for Potter and worried he would fall behind in his classes. The mudblood Granger worked at the same level as Greengrass and Zambini in the class, and Draco was a distant fourth…or eighth. The infirmary door opened and the beloved face of his mother, Narcissa Malfoy, slipped into the room. Draco waited to see if his father appeared, but Madam Pomphrey closed the door and locked it to allow the mother and son some privacy.
"Draco! I have been worried about you since Severus called your father on Saturday."
Nervously, Draco asked, "Is Father here, too?"
Smiling and kissing her son's forehead, Narcissa said, "No. He is busy with ministry toadies today. They have so many problems since their budgets were slashed; he has to visit with Fudge every day."
"Every day? Do you miss him?"
Her eyes laughing, Narcissa confessed, "No. I shall pray the ministry budgets will remain slashed for the next ten years and keep your father away from the manor."
Draco sat up to embrace his mother and whisper, "I don't know what to do. Nothing is like Father said Hogwarts would be. No one listens to me, and everything revolves around Harry Potter."
Narcissa returned the hug, summoned a chair and spoke plainly with her son. "Draco, it is time for you to stop being a minion of your father or the stick that Severus uses to poke the sleeping dragon that is Harry Potter."
The boy stared open-mouthed at his mother as she instructed him to put his studies first, forget Harry Potter, ignore his godfather's suggestions, and never follow his father's suggestions about causing trouble. Before Narcissa departed, Draco decided to have a better second half of the year at Hogwarts.
CHANGE SCENE Testing Runes
In his private classroom, Harry turned his attention to preparing a defence against Sirius Black. The wizard broke into Hogwarts twice already this school year, and thinking of the experiences in his first two years; Harry figured there would be one or two more incursions before the end of the year.
'Why did Black attack Ron that night? And who is this wizard named 'Peter' he said he was going to kill?' he wondered as he wrote questions in his notebook about the attacker, his appearance, and exclamations that night. He stopped for a moment and realised, 'How do they know that the crazy man is Sirius Black anyway?'
"I need to petrify him solid…something that will hold him still. That will prevent him from attacking or escaping again," Harry muttered. He wrote out several words, pulled out his muggle dictionary for synonyms to petrify, and found nothing that would work.
"Petrify means scare or turn into stone. Yikes! That would either scare Black away or kill him."
Then Harry looked up words such as stupefy, confound, and drug. He decided, 'So words are not always simple replacements for runes…and I need to experiment with some cartouches.'
The curious wizard wrote out several different words and finally settled on one set. Then Harry prepared a paper cartouche with 'safe petrify', 'shrink to figurine', 'hide in Harry's robe pocket' written in sequence from left (begin) to right (end). With Dobby's presence in the Room of Requirement, Harry pointed the cartouche at a large dummy the elf had found in the room. Once the rune array hit the dummy, Harry frowned and stared at a mangled dummy. Examining the dummy and consulting his notes, the wizard decided, 'The magic couldn't figure out what to do with the dummy in the sequence. Too many commands at one time, and I can't use three separate sheets of paper.'
Sitting down, Harry remembered the multiple cartouches in the map his dad, James Potter, and his friends created. Excited, Harry created a paper with three small cartouches with a separate set of words in each cartouche. But, when he finished, Dobby demanded that Harry Potter test each piece of the new cartouche runes individually. Harry sighed but obeyed the insistent house-elf; first, he used 'safe petrify' on the dummy and then returned it to the proper size. Then he petrified and shrank the dummy. He used a biro to test the 'hid in Harry's robe pocket', and the ink pen was transported by magic into his pocket.
With Dobby watching intently, Harry invoked the paper with the three commands in different cartouches. The dummy vanished and appeared as a petrified and shrunken figurine of a dummy inside the pocket of his robes. Harry was able to restore the dummy to its normal size without any problems, and this time the young wizard and the house-elf both celebrated.
SCENE CHANGE Runes and Medallions
The following day while Harry daydreamed in transfiguration class – McGonagall assigned the students to read the next chapter while she dealt with some issues from the lawsuits that began from the deaths on the Hogwarts Express. During the winter break, Harry explored in the library and found many examples of McGonagall's assignments from previous years. Reading the headings and the requirements, he realised that McGonagall assigned the same topics for essays every year. He had already finished reading the textbook and had outlines of essays written for the next three months. While Harry thought about runes in history class, Ron Weasley slept, Hermione and read her textbook though she did glance at Harry and watch him scribbling in a muggle notebook.
'Trying to use a paper cartouche outside of my classroom…a criminal isn't going to stand still and wait for me to pull out a piece of paper from my book bag,' Harry thought with a snort. 'So how do I get it into my hand?'
Pulling out his runes textbook for the fifth year, he flipped to the reference section that listed known and often used runic arrays with illustrations of how the array looks after being carved.
'The rune 'Warm House' just hangs on the wall in the middle of the house, and you tap it once to turn it on,' Harry read. 'Glamour face is carved on sandstone plate and then shrunk to be a small medallion worn around the neck. That's got potential, but you still have to touch it with your wand to activate it.'
He read on and found runes to protect the mind from intrusion that could be placed on a ring that, when worn, worked constantly. 'That's something I need in any case. Dobby will know more about that.'
The transfiguration class ended, and Harry filed out of the room, talking with Neville about an upcoming quidditch match – they planned to sit together with the Weasley twins and Luna Lovegood. In the hallway, Neville mentioned, "Harry, Justin wants to sit with us at the Quidditch match, but he wants to bring Hermione too. Will you be okay with her there?"
"Sure, Neville. I don't hate her, just not friends anymore," the wizard replied. "I like having good friends like you and Justin and Luna."
"Me too. I'll make sure he knows to bring her to the game. Listen, I've got to run to the greenhouses before supper. Professor Sprout's got some blooming plants that I need to harvest the buds before they open."
"Need any help?" asked Harry. "I've got a free period and can hold the basket while you do the snipping."
"Great! Come on," Neville said. Shortly thereafter, Neville Longbottom showed Harry how to harvest Snorting Purple Snodgrass buds properly.
"The trick is to move your wand in a corkscrew motion while saying, 'release,'" the herbology crazy wizard told his friend while demonstrating the wand movement. Harry watched as four buds fell off a single potted plant that resembled a large weed he often removed from his aunt's flower beds.
"Neville, that's brilliant. How do you get four at once?"
"Just concentrate on the whole plant when you twirl your wand and give the command," Neville replied.
"So, instead of saying a spell, you're giving the flower a command?"
Grinning and pointing at the pot, Neville explained, "There's a rune on each of the pots for simple commands like bloom, grow, dormant, release, and other things."
"Where?" Harry asked with some excitement. "Wait…let's finish the harvest, and then you can show me."
SCENE CHANGE Considering Rings
After Harry studied the cartouche on the bottom of the clay pot in the greenhouse for a few minutes, Neville went to a box that held shards of broken pottery and found the bottom of a broken pot and told his friend, "Here, take this to your classroom and study it. Just don't forget to come to supper tonight."
"Thanks, Neville. This is just what I needed," Harry replied, already headed out of the greenhouse. In his examination of the pot, Harry found the cartouche was protected from being copied or changed in size. When he enlarged the shard of pottery, it did grow larger, but the cartouche remained tiny. Harry explained a magnifying glass to Dobby, who found three in the Room of Requirement. After making one of the glasses more powerful, he was able to see the runes used in the cartouche that made the flowerpot follow commands.
"Dobby asks if Mr Harry Potters going to grow runes in a pot now?" the elf inquired curiously.
"Nope," Harry replied. "If I were going to try to grow anything, I'd ask Neville for help. "I'm just wondering about making a runic array work from a medallion or a ring."
"Dobby knows wizards use rings to hold family magic and protections that are runeses."
"Do you know how they create them?" asked Harry. Dobby shook his head but didn't threaten to punish himself any longer when he didn't know an answer. The elf had learned that his Mr Harry Potter wouldn't allow any elf to punish themselves for not knowing the answer to a question.
That evening after supper, Harry returned to his private classroom and searched in the reference section of the fifth year textbook about carving runes on the inside of rings; there were different methods, including enlarging the ring before carving and then shrinking it back down. Dobby provided three old rings from the Room of Requirement for Harry to examine. Each of the rings had runes and magic in them, and Dobby urged Mr Harry Potters to never put them on.
"Only family that made rings should use rings," the elf explained.
Thinking for a time and using the magnifying glass to examine the inside of the rings to see the runes carved there, Harry asked, "What families own these rings?"
"They be left sometime in last thousand years. One ring be Bones, one be Abbot, and one be Weasley."
"Put them away for tonight, and I'll think about it," Harry said and handed all three rings back to Dobby. He spent twenty minutes writing notes about the runes and words to put into a paper cartouche to create a ring and considered what to use to create the ring.
'I got gold…should I make pure gold or use some rock as the base for the gold for the ring?'
There was a sack of gold rocks ready to send to Gringotts, so he added a note to the bag asking the goblins for advice about the best 'gold' to use for a ring and sent Dobby off with the sack before making himself invisible and returning to the Gryffindor Tower. There was time for a chess game with Ron before bed.
Laying on the table beside Harry's bed the next morning was a note from the goblin who handled Harry's blind account with the gold, and he'd sent a book titled, Metals for Magic, Rings and Runes. The note mentioned that the purest gold, such as the first batch, would make the most powerful rings but urged him not to make too much of the gold, or the wizard would sleep for a month again.
'They think I slept for a month after making that gold. Huh?' Harry realised and decided to say nothing about that information. 'I will send a note of thanks when I return the book.'
He had a full day of classes and had to work on several assignments, but eventually, he could put schoolwork away and read the book. In the Great Hall waiting for supper, he wrote some notes in one of his muggle notebooks and referenced the 'metals' book when Professor Babbage noticed what he was reading.
"Mr Potter, where did you find that book?" she asked, politely but with some concern in her tone.
Looking up from his notebook, he replied, "It's on loan from someone outside the school."
"And they sent it to you? How much did they charge you?" she asked, and Harry looked surprised at the question.
"It's a book the goblins wrote, and only their most senior wizard employees are allowed to read it," the witch replied before she sat on the bench beside the student. "Whoever sent it to you might be trying to get you in trouble with the goblins. Or at the very least, doesn't know what they were doing."
"Really?" Harry asked. "I'll send it back immediately, professor."
Then he asked, "Have you ever read it?"
"Oh no," Babbage replied. "I don't want the goblins mad at me."
She noticed Professor Flitwick enter the Great Hall and called him over. Before Babbage could mention her concern with the book, Harry put his notebook away and closed the book but left it out the table for the moment. As soon as Professor Babbage began explaining, the Charms Professor threw up a small but powerful privacy charm. He glared briefly at his colleague about not protecting the boy's privacy before asking Harry, "How did you come by this book, Mr Potter."
"I wrote and asked someone about metals…the best metals to use for runes, and they sent me this book."
Babbage groaned, "Are you reading ahead again? We don't talk about metals until the end of the fifth year with a summer assignment about etching runes with acid. Don't try anything like that without…well, don't try that. You're so like your mother sometimes."
The charms professor held out his hand and asked, "Might I look at the book, please?"
"Be careful, Flitwick; there might be curses on the book for anyone handling it," Babbage replied. Again Harry looked startled as Filius looked over the outside of the book and found the charms on the back that identified the printer (Gringotts London). Then he opened the outside cover, closed it quickly and handed it back to Harry.
"Professor Babbage, I am certain that Mr Potter is safe with reading this book this one time in the Great Hall. It'll be in the hands of its owner as soon as supper is finished."
"Thank you, Flitwick," Babbage said. She smiled at Harry and said, "Remember, Mr Potter, we must stay inside the lines with runes. I fussed at your mother about that very thing, so I'll fuss at you now too."
Once the witch made her way to the staff table, Flitwick said, "Mr Potter, someone at Gringotts gifted you with that book. Please do not allow anyone else to see it. Read it in the privacy of your bed at night, and do not share it with any other student, professor, witch or wizard."
"It's mine?" Harry asked with surprise. "I thought it was just a loan."
"Look inside the cover."
Harry opened the book and read the inscription, 'gifted By LOOn Down Helping bOOK'.
"Now put it away, and we'll not speak about this until you come to me," the half-goblin professor replied. He paused and added, "Just make it sometime before you graduate, please."
With that, Flitwick walked away, dropping his privacy spell. Harry quickly shoved the book into his bag and waited for the other students to arrive for the meal.
'I don't understand grown-ups,' Harry decided. 'And I wonder why the goblins wrote that inscription so strangely.'
Pulling out his notebook, he wrote it out on a page and then thought about the spirit he dealt with in the chamber last year. While ignoring the twins and half-listening to Neville talk about Snorting Purple Snodgrass buds during the meal, he tried rearranging the letters. Then he took just the capital letters, and they spelt, BLOODHOOK.
'So, if I take the first words 'gifted by' and add just the capital letters, it spells, Bloodhook. That sounds like a good goblin name.'
SCENE CHANGES HERE Rings and Runes
There were two things to test and experiment with the next day in his private classroom–rings with runes and the paper cartouches to petrify, shrink and move the next criminal to attack the Gryffindor tower. With the reversal paper cartouche ready, Harry prepared to test the first cartouche on a living thing – a rat that Dobby would bring into the classroom.
Harry placed a decent-sized piece of cheese on a raised platform and then called for Dobby. The elf popped into the room and put the rat in the middle of the platform. The creature looked around a bit and moved to the cheese. Once it was finished eating the cheese and was cleaning its face, Harry pressed his wand against the cartouche. The rat vanished with an unremarkable pop, and Harry reached his hand into his pocket.
He pulled out his hand and found something unexpected – the figurine was a man rather than a rat. Dobby laughed when Harry showed the figurine to the elf.
"What's funny? Why is the figure a man instead of a rat? This isn't good."
"No, it be good, Mr Harry Potters, it be good. Dobby and all elves watched this rat for years. House-elves think magic wrong in rat years ago when Percy Weasley begin at Hogwarts. First day Dobby hear and ask to work in Lion Tower, head elf tell Dobby about funny rat. When you ask to capture test something alive, Dobby thought to say to use worthless elf but then ask head elf, and she say use 'the rat', so Dobby did."
"What do I do with it? Change it back? And Ron will be looking for Scabbers," Harry said. "Merlin, I don't want to try to explain this to him. We tolerate each other, and I play chess to keep him off my back, but I don't want to owe him a favour."
Dobby placed a hand on Harry's leg and said, "Dobby get another rat, and you make papers cartouches to glamour rat to look like Ron-mouth's Scrabberses rat."
In short order, Dobby returned with a young rat, and Harry used a paper cartouche to place a glamour on the young rat to have the same fur colour and ears as Scabbers. When the runic array had done its job, Dobby popped away with the new rat to place it in the cage on Ron's bed.
Harry placed the figurine into his book bag and turned his attention to rings again.
END OF CHAPTER