Harry and Merope to the Rescue - Chapter 8
Disclaimer:
I don't own the HP universe, unfortunately.
Harry arrived through the wards at Hogwarts without causing so much as a stir. The students were all in their classes and Harry made his way up to the seventh floor to the Room of Requirement. After the door appeared for the Room of Lost Things, Harry contemplated creating another version of this room at whichever Potter residence they decided to raise Little Harry in.
He briefly thought about Little Harry's future schooling, while he found his way over to where the diadem was hidden. Would they homeschool him? They had the magical knowledge to do so, they would also be able to make sure there were plenty of young children that he could socialize and make friends with.
Perhaps they would give him the best of both worlds and homeschool him in magic, while sending him to muggle school during the day, all the way through secondary school, and perhaps university. Little Harry definitely had the intelligence to do both, and he would be able to accomplish so much if he had a foot in both worlds and be able to move seamlessly between the two of them.
Harry decided to table those thoughts for the time being as he came upon the diadem and he placed it in the bag with the locket.
Making his way back out of the room, Harry surveyed the items and thought he'd see what Merope thought about finally cleaning this room out one day. While they didn't need the money, it did just seem to be a waste to allow all of these forgotten items to just sit here for centuries upon centuries. There was no telling how many interesting things they would be able to find in there, maybe they could open a museum later on, who knows.
Harry made his way back out into the corridor and the door had just disappeared when he heard a hushed voice that said, "What was that sound?"
An answering voice said, "I don't know, I thought this was supposed to have been just an empty corridor, but that almost sounded like a door closing."
The first voice responded with, "I don't want to get caught somewhere we're not supposed to be, Sam, even if we have a free period right now."
"Don't worry, Beth," said, apparently, Sam, "We're probably just hearing things, it is an old magical castle, I'll bet it makes odd sounds all the time."
Harry decided to stay back out of curiosity and saw the two students coming around the corridor, a boy and a girl, he supposed them to be Sam and Beth, who appeared to possibly be fourth or fifth years from Ravenclaw. Harry deduced that they were probably coming this way to do a bit of snogging, in which case he decided he would go ahead to Dumbledore's office and lay out some pranks for him.
As he was walking away, he heard Sam say, "Did you hear what happened to Headmaster Dumbledore, while he was in Diagon Alley yesterday?"
Beth said, "You mean that he was humiliated by the new Potter that just came to town? My brother was there to see it and he sent me a letter with the breakfast post delivery."
"Yeah," Sam said, "I'll bet it was something to see. I heard he did it all wandlessly, too…."
Harry didn't hear anymore as he continued to make his way down to Dumbledore's office. Harry had just decided on some harmless, but annoying pranks. Like layering Dumbledore's lemon drop stash with randomized hexes, like one in every five to give him gas, one in every ten to act as a laxative, one in every three to inflate his nose, etc. He just needed to make sure that he hexed only the ones that Dumbledore would himself and didn't offer anyone to anyone else.
Then Harry settled on a solution for that. He could key the hexes to be triggered only when they reached Dumbledore's tongue, that way Harry could avoid any unintended victims from being affected, since Dumbledore liked to offer lemon drops to everyone, even though most people declined them.
By this time, Harry had arrived in the empty headmaster's office, he absently noticed that his illusion of the cloak was still present, so Dumbledore hadn't tried to look at it yet. And, thankfully, Fawkes seemed to be out having a fly as well, because he wasn't sure if a phoenix could see through his stealth mode or not, but he didn't fancy finding out today.
He stood in contemplation for a moment as he considered how to keep a continuous hex on the lemon drops, as he assumed Dumbledore would refill the container frequently with new lemon drops. Finally, as Harry didn't fancy coming to Hogwarts frequently just to renew the hexes, he decided the best course of action was to set his hex with the stipulations programmed into the container itself, which would then continuously transfer to the lemon drops.
Next, Harry started layering different hexes throughout the room on items that Dumbledore would typically touch, again making all hexes keyed only to Dumbledore, as he was the only one Harry was interested in pranking into annoyance at this point.
He placed a static electricity hex on all of his quills, to shock him once every time he picked one up to use.
He decided to charm two vials of ink to misspell anything he wrote, but he would be unable to notice it until the recipient brought it to his attention.
His chair received a color changing charm that would only affect his hair color, which won't actually take effect until he walked through the doorway of his office to go out towards another part of the castle.
He decided to put a memory distortion charm on all of the memory vials related to any of the Potters or Voldemort, so that he would forget any conclusion he had decided on while inside the memory. Then on the pensieve itself, he added a tiny little rune that would cause Dumbledore to forget why he needed to view the memory in the first place, if it was a new memory related to the Potters or Voldemort.
He thought of charming something else to make him always tell the truth, or speak his thoughts out loud, but decided that he would leave that prank for another time when he could decide the best spot to place it in.
Finally, done in the office, he decided to head to the Great Hall and place a hex on every chair at the teacher's table that would alternate between causing all his food to become tasteless or to disappear as soon as it reached his mouth, but keyed only to Dumbledore, so that should he decide to switch places with any of the other teachers, he will be still be the only one affected. He decided to set this particular one to dissipate after the Christmas holidays. He would perhaps think of something new for after that.
Checking the time and seeing that it was nearing half eleven, Harry decided he needed to get back to the warded clearing to cleanse the locket and the diadem, so he could be finished in time to enjoy lunch with Merope and Little Harry. With that final thought, he took his leave and arrived back in the location he had warded to remove the horcrux from Little Harry's scar that morning, undoing his stealth mode since he wouldn't need it here.
Next Harry decided to start with cleansing the diadem with the stone's power first, as he didn't believe it capable enough to be able to put up much of a fight in comparison to the locket, just based on his interactions with them in his original timeline. As he thought, it was so easy it was over in a blink, so he conjured a new bag to place it in and then took out the locket and vanished the bag he had removed it from.
He could tell that it had a much colder feel than the one that his Merope had owned in their last timeline, of course, it was obviously because hers had never been corrupted and turned into a horcrux. As Harry turned the locket over in his hand, he attempted to cleanse it without opening it and discovered that if he wanted to salvage any of the original enchantments on it, he would need to use parseltongue to open it.
So Harry hissed, "Open," and the image of Tom Marvolo Riddle came out saying, "I have seen your heart —"
"Yeah, yeah," Harry said, waving off his words and cutting it off, which shocked the horcrux into silence. Then Harry began the process of using the power of the stone to draw the soul out of the locket, which brought the horcrux back out of its stupor.
The horcrux screamed, "What do you think you're doing?! Do you know who I am and what I could do to you?!" Harry just ignored him and continued. The horcrux screamed again, "Stop! I can give you power! I can grant your every wish! Just stop doing whatever it is you are doing!"
Without stopping what he was doing, Harry said, "Tom Riddle, shut up. You don't have the means to give me any more power than I already have as Master of Death. I have no wishes that you can fulfill, other than your entire soul moving on to the afterlife. And lastly, no, I won't be stopping what I'm doing, as I'm nearly done." And with that, the soul that became the locket horcrux was vanquished and now the locket was once again just Slytherin's locket.
Well, he had done everything he could to destroy the horcruxes. Now, he just needed to wait to hear back from the goblins about Hufflepuff's cup from the Lestrange vault, but he could wait a few days to give them the time they needed to take care of it.
So, he placed the locket in the bag with the diadem and stored them in his backpack for safekeeping. Then he dismantled all the wards he had on the area and made his way to the tent to spend the rest of the day with his family.