The Peverell Legacy
A/N: I own nothing, especially not HP. Welcome to another fanfic, Italics are for thoughts and Bold is for spells. Here's chapter eight, enjoy! As a side note: Happy thirty-fifth birthday to me. It feels just like being thirty-four, except I'm slightly more sore.
Chapter Eight: Professor Peverell meets his nemesis
Harry was glad to be back at Hogwarts. Scratch that, he was thrilled. The castle looked exactly as it had when he was a nervous eleven-year-old. He was greeted by Professor McGonagall at the door and led to the Headmasters office. "The Headmaster would like to deal with the Diadem first and then see you to your office." She explained as the gargoyle moved with a quick "Lemon Drops!" McGonagall turned to face Harry, "Good luck tonight Potter, try not to do anything that will kill you." With that and an almost Snape-like swish of the hem of her robes, the Deputy Headmistress walked away.
"Ah Professor Peverell, right on time!" Dumbledore said merrily as if they were merely having a staff meeting and not about to destroy the next-to-last soul anchor created by Voldemort. Harry wasn't sure of what to do with the Horcrux inside his younger self, but that was something that they would ample time to deal with.
After the Diadem, all that was left was the Ring, Harry, and the wraith form of Voldemort himself. Padma had suggested letting Quirrell get possessed and then kill them both. He had relented when she pointed out that Quirrell had willingly gotten possessed the first time around. With the Diary destroyed he knew that the basilisk wasn't a threat unless another parselmouth wizard or witch came to Hogwarts, but he wasn't willing to risk that. So as soon as possible, while he was here, they would bring a rooster to the Chamber and deal with the basilisk.
"Are you ready sir?" Harry asked, "We need to do this and then look over what I need to know about my first class on Monday. Padma has made it very clear that I'm supposed to come home each night."
"Of course, the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw is a treasure we haven't seen in centuries, I am absolutely thrilled to see it in person." Dumbledore said as he stood up, "So it's been hiding this whole time at Hogwarts? Tom is a very evil man, but he was always very clever. I often wondered what would have happened if he'd turned his mind towards helping his fellow man."
"Don't know and I don't care. He didn't and there's no sense in pretending that we can change that fact." Harry replied as the two men left the office. "I'm sorry sir, I know that you are a big proponent of forgiving your enemies but I have a fiance, a baby at home, and another on the way. I don't have the time, patience, or disposition for forgiving people who would happily murder someone over something as stupid as blood status."
"I understand that I do-"
"No sir, I don't think you do." Harry said as they made their way up the stairs, "You haven't seen the bodies that decision left. You didn't have to bury the parents of your godson, you didn't have to try and keep his grandmother from overdosing on dreamless sleep potions." Harry took in a breath to calm himself, was this how Padma felt all the time? If so it truly explained her enjoyment of slapping people.
Harry had spent months after the war barely able to function. Friends, the closest thing he'd had to actual family, nearly everyone close to him had died and if it hadn't been for Hermione moving into Grimmauld Place in order to keep an eye on him, he probably would have ended up joining them. Hermione had spent her summer before going back to Hogwarts forcing him to stay a part of society. Teddy had helped as well, by virtue of the fact that Harry knew he and Andromeda needed him.
Then he met Padma again and the color started to come back into his world.
Finally, they arrived at the tapestry. Harry paced in front of it while thinking about a place to hide things and the door appeared. "I found it without knowing what it was when I put a textbook in here. Tom had a weird sense of humor. Instead of putting it inside a locked box, he just put it on-" Harry stopped and pointed his wand, drawing Dumbledore's attention, "that bust."
Dumbledore's eyebrows rose in shock, "The Diadem...the things we could do with this if it was cleansed of Voldemort's soul fragment." Almost reverently he raised his hand as if to touch the cursed item.
Harry pushed his hand back, "Padma wouldn't mind watching you die from the Diadem eating your brain, but I don't think you want to do that sir." He warned, "A good rule of thumb is to avoid touching cursed items after all."
Dumbledore looked like a very old and long-bearded child being scolded for trying to get into the candy bowl, Harry noted with a well-hidden chuckle. "I'll take the soul out of it and then if you want to study the curse to see if it can be removed, feel free."
One well-aimed Killing Curse later, the Diadem was inert as far as Harry could tell. "You know after this was destroyed in my time the jinx on the Defense Position was removed. Hopefully with this destroyed now you can have a better Professor than the ones I had." He said as he watched Dumbledore carefully levitate the Diadem into a small dragonhide bag he'd been carrying in his pocket.
"We can go after the Ring after I've had a chance to study this. Perhaps during the Christmas holiday?" Dumbledore said as the two walked back out and the room closed up behind them.
"Padma would skin me, tan my hide into leather, and use it to upholster the chair in our study if I left our house at Christmas. We need to do it before that." Harry replied as they turned and went down the stairs. They didn't go to the Headmasters office, instead, they went to the Muggle Studies classroom. "Is Quirrell the professor yet? You only told me that the current professor needed some time off." He looked around the classroom where various bits of muggle technology sat in glass cases. "If he isn't, I'd get Charity Burbage on the floo. She was a good teacher and was murdered for it, he was a shit teacher and let Voldemort wear him like a suit."
"Miss Burbage is on my radar, to borrow a muggle phrase, and one that I might add is especially apropos given where we are." Dumbledore said with a small chuckle, "However, she is currently completing her studies at Oxford and won't be in the magical world for some time yet. She was the first student I've ever met to have a perfect score on her N.E.W.T. for Muggle Studies."
Hermione had been fond of Professor Burbage and when she was murdered it had hurt his friend terribly. Harry knew she was passionate about this subject, especially now that he knew she'd gotten a perfect score on her N.E.W.T.
"This classroom will be your domain to do as you see fit for the next three months. The third-years are your first class Monday morning, I believe it is a relatively even mix of three of our four Houses, Slytherin students rarely choose this elective." Dumbledore explained as Harry looked at the textbooks on the desk. "May I ask what you will start with?"
"First I plan on bringing the students into the current decade as far as muggle technology goes. No talk about 'horseless carriages' and 'black powder rifles'. I'm going to tell them about the moon landing and the atomic bomb." Harry said pulling some books from the mokeskin pouch. "After that, we will need something a bit lighter, so I will talk to them about board games, cartoons, stuff like that. I'll use the projector Snape had when he taught Defense for a day in my third year and show them some cartoon characters the half-blood students should know."
As he and Dumbledore discussed his lesson plans, his fiance was meeting with someone in order to prevent a terrible accident. Padma had gone to the Rookery to fulfill a request Luna had made of her before she'd left. She knocked on the door and waited for it to open.
Pandora Lovegood didn't know what to expect when she heard the knock on her door. Coming from her lab, she raised the bright purple goggles she had been wearing and smoothed down her dragonhide apron. She opened the door and found a young woman in stylish robes, holding a dark-haired baby standing at the door. "May I help you?" Pandora asked the stranger in front of her.
"Mrs. Lovegood?" She asked, "Of course you are, you look just like her." The woman said quietly, "My name is Padma, this is my- well, this is Harry Potter and I'm from the future. Your daughter Luna helped me get back here in order to find my fiance." She reached into her robes and pulled out an envelope, "This is a letter she asked me to bring you."
Pandora raised an eyebrow but took the envelope. After checking it for spells she opened it finding a letter written to her from Luna Lovegood. Reading over it she felt a deep pit growing in her stomach. "I died?"
"It nearly destroyed her. She grew up with Xeno. He's a good man, he loved her, but he's nearly helpless." Padma said, "Luna was in my House, a year behind me. She was bullied by some of the others so I and my friend Cho Chang started keeping an eye on her. Around that same time, she started hanging around with my fiance Harry Potter."
"But you said-"
"This is Harry Potter and the adult Harry Potter is my fiance, we are raising him in order to keep him from having the childhood that made my man the way he is." Padma said, "Anyway, that's not the important part..." Padma continued to give a shortened explanation of Pandora's daughter in the future. "After the war, she went into research herself. Tried to fix the spell that killed you. It didn't go well then either. She figured out why: the spell is flawed at a fundamental level. It will never work."
"She mentioned that." Pandora said looking at the letter, "Damn, I thought I had this worked out. I've been playing with this experiment since my fifth year."
"That's the problem. You've been playingwith it. Luna- wait," Padma stopped, her face wrinkled in confusion, "How are you this okay with finding out that I'm from the future and your daughter asked me to make sure you don't kill yourself when she's nine?"
"For starters, she used a sheet of paper from the Quibblers press for her letter. That's kept locked in the office here and the lock is blood sensitive." Pandora said turning the paper over and showing Padma, "Next is that fact that she mentions my nickname for Xeno. Finally, she mentioned that I named her after my mother. I've always said I wanted to do that."
"So you'll stop this experiment?" Padma asked her. She really hoped so, she didn't want Luna to lose her mother again. Especially not now when Pandora knew the spell wouldn't work. Luna always said her mother was smart, so she had hope, but that hope was also mitigated by the fact that it was Luna who said this. Luna Lovegood was one of the most brilliant minds Padma had ever met, but she and common sense had never been especially close friends.
"For her sake, I will not work on this one. Besides, I have so many other fun spells to work on." Pandora grinned and then grabbed Padma's hand pulling her inside fast enough that Padma made an audible sound of surprise. "I can't wait to show you this one!"
Fuck me sideways, she's as bad as Luna...Padma thought as she was led further into the house. Pandora, like her daughter, showed no concern for the fact that she'd just met a new person and was showing them confidential research. What mattered was she had a new person to show it to.
It would be a long day for Padma.
It was a long day for Harry. He was introduced to the other professors by Dumbledore leading him to each office, despite the man knowing full well that Harry knew where he was going. It's like he is intentionally annoying me for not wanting to go on his little adventure at Christmas. Well, excuse me for actually having family that I haven't completely alienated.
It had been alright so far. He'd met Professors Sinestra and Vector as they were having a discussion about some of the more challenging students this year. They had been polite, though a paranoid part of him thought that Professor Vector had become slightly less polite upon learning he had a child, a fiancee, and a child on the way.
Professor Flitwick was always fun, Harry had thought as he met the professor that had been one of his favorites the first time around.
Sadly shaking Flitwick's hand signaled the end of the good times for the day. Up next was Snape. The man that, besides the now incarcerated Wormtail, was the most responsible for his parent's deaths. A young Snape, Harry found, was no less obnoxious than the middle-aged one he'd known. But there was one thing about the meeting that had been fun.
When Harry walked in with Dumbledore, Snape nearly dropped the vial he was pouring Doxy saliva out of. He'd been told often how much he looked like his father and seeing the shock, and a healthy dose of horror, in the eyes of his least favorite instructor was almost worth having to be in the same room as him.
"Severus, I would like to introduce you to our interim Muggle Studies Professor, Harry Peverell," Dumbledore said, completely ignoring the look of dread on both men's faces. "Professor Peverell will be with us during class hours for the next few months. I hope you will do your best to make him feel at home."
Harry wasn't shocked when both he and Snape grimaced at the same time.
Dumbledore continued, "Severus is a prodigy with potions," he said, rather unnecessarily to Harry, "I've never met anyone as skilled as he is with the art."
"I heard from meeting Horace Slughorn that Lily Potter had been a prodigy in her time as well. If she hadn't been betrayed and murdered, I wonder if she would have taught Potions." Harry said, enjoying the wince on the face of Snape and the flicker of discomfort on Dumbledore's face, "My family is related to the Potters, their son is staying with me now."
"I see." Snape practically spat.
Now Harry was in a more comfortable mental place. Tormenting Snape had been harder as a student, but it had been worth it whenever he could do it. Now he was in the position of being able to annoy the man without worrying about detentions or House Point deductions.
"Yes well, perhaps we should continue the tour Harry, lots more to see after all." Dumbledore said with false cheer as he led the younger man out of the Potions Lab. Once they were on the other side of the door he looked at Harry, "Is there a reason you deliberately antagonized Severus?"
"Family tradition?" Harry said with a lazy shrug, "The man did tell Voldemort the prophecy that got my parents killed and Neville's cursed to the point that death would be preferable. After that is the fact that he plays favorites, punishes every House except his, and is a generally unlikeable ass. Plus I haven't had a snack in a while and I get grumpy when I'm hungry." Turning on his heel Harry walked to the kitchen, "Ooh snacks."
Dumbledore got the message better than Harry thought he would, I'm done being paraded, now leave me alone. The Headmaster walked off, allowing Harry to enjoy what the House Elves would consider a small snack but nearly everyone else would consider a feast.
When he went home that evening he found Padma in the position she normally found him. Padma was, to use the best word Harry could think of, frazzled. Her hair was slightly out of place, making it look as if she had been in a wind tunnel. "So, how was your day?" He asked as he sat down at the kitchen table.
"Pandora Lovegood isn't going to work on that spell. Luna's mother is safe, as much as she can be. I seem to have become her best friend, or at least she wants to pick my brain about the future." Padma said rubbing her temples. "After finally breaking free from her I went to see Narcissa. She wants to introduce us to the Parkinsons. We had so much fun with Pug-nose Pansy the first time."
"Well, you'll be happy to know that I managed to annoy Dumbledore enough today that I doubt I will be asked to come back and teach anything after this year," Harry said, drawing her into his lap. He winced at the smell from her hair, "Were you on fire earlier?"
"Shite, I thought I got that stink out of my hair." Padma groaned in annoyance, "Pandora just had to show me that stupid printing press. Frigging thing overheated. Apparently, it's as big a junk-heap now as it was when it caught the Rookery on fire last year- er- you know what I mean!"
Harry should have left well enough alone, but he laughed at her annoyance and for it earned an elbow in the gut. "I am having a very annoying day. I stink, I have a headache, and I think my feet are starting to swell in the evenings." Padma said irritably.
Harry kissed her, "In that case, why don't you put on your fuzzy slippers and go sit down in the living room. I'll order some takeaway and we'll have a nice quiet night in. How does that sound?" He asked her.
As in on cue the baby Harry began to cry upstairs. "I'll handle it." Harry said, shifting her and standing up, "You put on those fuzzy slippers and order something for the both of us."
Later, as she thumbed through the menu for Gandhi Tandoor, the restaurant she found that she liked the best, Padma smiled in spite of her smoky hair and the dull throb at her temple. Life wasn't perfect, but by the time their children were ready to start their own time at Hogwarts, it would be much safer for them. Maybe Harry can go an entire year at school without nearly dying...She thought as that smile turned into a chuckle.
