Welcome back all! Neolyph here with another chapter of A Broken Wizard and a Broken Magus! Sorry this one took so long. Hit a roadblock about halfway through that I just could not get past. Ended up rewriting half the chapter just to get around it. Once again, loving the attention this story is getting. Every time I think this story's popularity is hitting a ceiling, you guys go and smash it. I love you all.
Review time!
FuZzvKiNgZz: Ehh, when I started writing that scene, all I could think of was every single "hot teacher" porn I'd ever seen. It just kind of rolled from there.
VentXekart: Harry doesn't quite have the entire loyalty of Slytherin. He has the loyalty of a respected and feared group of Slytherins. Smart Slytherins will follow the lead of the council, but few suspect Harry's involvement in it. Also, not all in Slytherin recognize the authority of the council. As for the other girls, their time is coming.
Generatedname: The issue with Saber is due to my interpretation of Fate/Stay Night. In the course of a single Grail War, Saber undergoes a massive character change due to her relationship with Shirou. In my opinion, this indicated that Saber is susceptible to manipulation via love. She fell for Harry before she truly understood his nature and is attempting to reconcile that with her morals, and her morals are losing. I mostly keep some of the character (cough Orion cough) because this is my first fic and I'm trying to keep with the books. If you read the HP series, most of the characters start out out very 1 dimensional and get fleshed out as the series goes on. Dudley and Draco both start out as whiny fucks before eventually becoming much more complex characters in the later books. For example, Orion is currently getting his ass handed to him, but that's only going to go on for so long before he wises up and starts throwing his own punches back. Canon Harry did get offered Slytherin after all, and Orion isn't that far off. As for the "Sue-vibes", Harry is an exercise in self-restraint. If he fully activates his circuits, he channels power like the fucking Emprah, which is what he was doing during the Slythering meeting. I actually meant to stick that in, but forgot about it. Good to get a legitimate critical response though, and I hope I didn't miss any points.
Mangahero18: It was a bit of a dramatic character shift wasn't it? That's kind of what I was going for. I wanted it to be clear that Harry is by no definition a good person, while still keeping him somewhat likeable.
Paxloria: Glad to know you're enjoying the story. Stuff like geass scrolls and the like get brought up a lot for this story, but I don't see that as in character for Harry. Harry in this story enjoys having power over people, but it's all about the finesse to him, not brute force. Just mind-controlling someone had appeal, but manipulating them into unconscious obedience is so much more satisfying.
plums: Harry is focusing on Hogwarts because most of the people on his list are centered there. He already currently has the power to pull whatever strings he likes on the Wizengamot, but I've already explained why he hasn't used that to take Dumbledore out of it. As for the ICW, he's currently eleven. He doesn't have the international pull to mess with Dumbledore's ICW position. He doesn't need to buy up property and the like, as the dark families he's financing are basically doing that for him. Trust me, there will come a moment where the curtain will be pulled back and people will realize that England has been invaded, occupied, and remade in secret.
Heika: They killed the guy because while a dead body does raise questions, planting the correct evidence will also answer the same questions while a bribe leaves openings for mistakes. I'm not particularly religious. Rider was referring to her venom acting as a sedative and aphrodisiac. I never watched Illya's magical girl show, so no. (Spoilers) Pettigrew did not have a dark mark, so he wasn't stored in maximum security. With Harry distracted looking for Flamel, he went into his rat form and booked it out of there. Being a death eater spy, he was counted among the escaped by investigators. Bear in mind, Sirius was coherent enough in Azkaban to recognize Pettigrew's rat form in an old newspaper and plot his escape, so Pettigrew probably was too. Unicorns aren't the same in Potterverse, same with dragons. While they're badass in Nasuverse, unicorns in Potterverse are just magic horses.
xxOblivionxxx: Harry has had the mother of all shitty childhoods, so he wants those responsible to suffer. And he wants a front-row seat when they do, thus Hogwarts. As for the Homunculus, that's what that little baby-looking thing Voldemort is before his resurrection.
Araytigre: Pettigrew didn't make it past the Servants, he just waited for them to leave.
Biblio388: Oh yeah, on a D&D alignment chart, Harry is pretty much checking boxes off for Lawful Evil. I try to make him more likeable by not following the traditional route and making him an angsty cunt.
Chapter 23: A Bump in the Night
In a dark, abandoned warehouse in a dilapidated section of Muggle London, Harry and Caster were leaning over a workbench. Occupying the center of the warehouse was a large stasis tank filled with a bubbling blue fluid. And in the center of the stasis tank was floating someone, a magus by the name of Nicolas Flamel.
Preservation of materials was an important part of Magecraft Research, after all, and not to mention the security bounded fields placed on and around the tank were generally agreed upon in Magus circles to hold all the stopping power of a well-aimed halfbrick, so there would be no escaping and no intrusions. Even if Flamel was too weak to make any attempt to escape, he was not willing to give the man, a magus, the benefit of the doubt. He wanted answers, and he'd get them one way or another.
After an exhaustive amount of research, Harry had made a few discoveries.
The first was that Flamel was very old, as in only slightly younger than the Ministry of Magic, which was established in the late 1600's. He'd used the Stone, or at least earlier prototypes to slow his aging process, but it couldn't fully halt it until the full Stone had been synthesized.
The second was the nature of the stone. Through a combination of analyzing Flamel's circuits and incorporating Panzer's analysis of the Stone itself, he'd reached a startling discovery.
The Magus' Stone was made of pure, refined human souls.
Materialized.
Flamel was technically a True Magician.
And through purely technical means as well. Once he'd discovered this information, he'd checked to see if Flamel had formed a connection to Akasha but found none, which made the discovery all the more impressive. The man had done it all by himself, and without even becoming a Sorcerer. Had he been able to show his work to the Clock Tower, it would have caused an uproar of epic proportions, given that nobody had ever conceived the idea of managing a True Magic this way. It was a shame that the man's mind had been destroyed by continued Dementor exposure, but c'est la vie.
Now he just needed to figure out how a sole magus with no magecraft libraries nor Association resources had managed to stumble across a True Magic, one powerful enough to grant immortality.
He needed a look at Flamel's notes, hence why he and Caster were looking at some... acquired records from the Ministry of Magic, dating back several hundred years. Flamel had changed his name several times over the years, but if you knew what you were looking for it wasn't particularly difficult to trace his various identities. Magus were cautious, yes, but it didn't mean that they were particularly imaginative when it came to setting up new identities. Even if they were thorough in no leaving any traces behind, simple logic was often enough to figure where to search.
Several places stuck out as possible places where a lone magus might set up a covert workshop, from old homes to a muggle office building he'd purchased.
Looking through employment records, he finally discovered something of significance.
Flamel had taken a position as Professor of Muggle Studies at Hogwarts around 1943 under a pseudonym. Presumably, this is where he first came on Dumbledore's radar. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Riddle's memories of the year. It hadn't stuck out because Riddle had viewed Muggle Studies as a completely useless and pathetic class, and thus had attached zero significance to its Professor. It was ironic that in doing so, he had ignored a man who would create a way to cheat death without having to split his soul.
More memories caught his attention, such as Riddle setting a Basilisk on students and causing mass panic.
Except something had confused Tom at the time, that being the disappearances, instead of petrifications. As far as he knew, the Basilisk was not eating them, it had even told him so. Students were instead simply disappearing, although they were all mudbloods so he hadn't really cared at the time since they were still being attributed to the Heir of Slytherin and causing panic. Obviously, Flamel had been clever enough to stay away from the Purebloods and Half-bloods, who if they had disappeared, would have caused the Ministry to investigate the matter more thoroughly.
There was also Riddle's increasing paranoia that something else was in the Chamber of Secrets. Nothing concrete of course, but sometimes things weren't quite as he had remembered leaving them. Nothing ever came of his investigations though, and he figured that the Basilisk would kill anyone who didn't belong so he had dropped it. He had not even bothered to put up wards, just in case, figuring that the Chamber was too well hidden to be found, and that in the event of someone finding it, that the Basilisk would have eaten them.
A series of unrelated and inconsequential incidents to Riddle, but to an outsider with proper perspective and background knowledge the pieces very slowly beginning to show a picture.
It was a well-established tactic for less ethical magi to use events such as natural disasters or the lurking of a serial killer to cover the disappearance of unwilling test subjects. To a struggling magus in need of human materials for his experiments, a series of monster attacks in a school might as well be the grand opening of a magus supply shop.
As for Riddle's paranoia, a place called the Chamber of Secrets did sound like a pretty good place to set up a workshop, particularly for a prideful traditionalist magus.
Although, supposedly the ability to speak Parseltongue was a requirement to enter the Chamber and control the Basilisk within. Not to mention that hypnotizing the Monster would have been impossible, since it would require Flamel to look into the Basilisk's eyes.
Hmmm...
He could take a look a Flamel's body once again. The ability to speak Parseltongue was supposedly a genetic one, so theoretically a magus skilled in medical alchemy or flesh manipulation could modify the language center of their brains to permit the speaking of a magical language so long as they knew what they were looking for and what they were doing.
Dangerous and improbable, but possible. It wasn't even as mad as it sounded, particularly to a magus with several hundred years on his hands. The abduction and dissection of a Parselmouth wasn't even something that would be out of character for the Clock Tower.
There was also the possibility that he had simply learned the language slowly over many years. Theoretically, it was also a physical language that could be learned though exhaustive and extensive study.
Of course, his knowledge of Parseltongue all came from Riddle. He'd never personally done research into it. The possibility also existed that Riddle had been Imperiused and Obliviated to gain access to the Chamber and keep the Basilisk pacified. That had been before Riddle had researched Occlumency enough to develop shields capable of resisting Obliviation.
"Caster," he spoke up, "scan Flamel's brain. I need a look at it."
Nodding, Caster approached a runic panel on the tank and manipulated it until a glowing circle rose from the bottom and scanned Flamel like a Muggle M.R.I machine. Instead of physical readouts, the machine transferred the full results of its testing to the consciousness of Caster, who then sent it through their link directly to Harry.
"Hmmm," Harry hummed as he manipulated the three dimensional model in his mind. It seemed his hunch was correct. The language center of Flamel's brain was slightly resonating magic, indicating both the presence of a magical language and the modification which allowed it too. Flamel must have been very desperate to use the language to undertake such a dangerous procedure on himself, though he might have practiced it on some willing or unwilling participants. Likely the latter. Magi were prudent people, after all.
Regardless, it further confirmed his suspicions. Flamel had access to the Chamber of Secrets during the initial attacks, and a series of disappearances ensued right around the time he stopped aging.
The Stone had been crafted from those disappeared students, likely within the very bowels of Hogwarts. In the Chamber of Secrets.
He'd found his workshop. Or rather, Flamel's.
-Break-
Harry couldn't help but sigh as he followed Riddle's memories of the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, which was located in a girl's lavatory. He hoped by the Root that it hadn't been so when Salazar Slytherin had first established it, or his respect for the man would be forever tarnished. No matter how clever it was, there was a limit. He could have just as well used the men's loo to hide it.
"What are you doing in here?" asked a nasally, feminine voice.
Harry and the girls whirled around instinctively to confront the voice and viewed the ghost of a young teenage girl. She was apparently relatively new, as Riddle had no memory of her. Well, technically he did. This was... Myrtle Warren. A rather unpopular girl from Riddle's years that...
Ah, Riddle had killed her with the Basilisk. That explained why she was haunting this bathroom.
Damn, this was going to be irritating. Having a nosy ghost reporting on his movements could ruin his chance to use the Chamber.
Well, unless he went with the Binns option. Ghosts moved on all the time; nobody would miss this one.
"Sakura, could you do me a favor?" he asked, ignoring the ghost. She turned and smiled sweetly at him, catching on to his line of thinking easily.
"Of course, Harry. Whatever could it be?"
"Would you mind killi-"
"STOP IGNORING ME!" the ghost wailed, bursting into tears and retreating down one of the toilets.
Well, Harry supposed that worked too.
Unimpeded, he and the girls advanced to the area that marked the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. There were two primary entrances: the first tunnel used for the Basilisk to get in and out, and the second staircase for human use. The tunnel simply opened with the command to open so that an animalistic Basilisk could use it while the staircase required a password.
"Open the door to your secrets, Father," he hissed at the seemingly plain wall. With a grinding of ancient gears, the wall slid open to reveal a narrow staircase.
He was several steps down when he realized that Rider wasn't following them. Instead, she was standing stock-still with a shocked expression on her face. She was fidgeting a bit, quite surprising considering her usual unflappable countenance.
"Are you alright, Rider?" he asked, concerned. After a brief moment she touched her hand to her forehead and shook her head rapidly.
"Yes, Master, it's just... hearing you speak like that was... odd. It was like your words resonated in my very being. It was..." she paused for a moment before smiling dazedly, "nice."
This was something for Harry to consider: the effect of Parseltongue on a Gorgon. Rider did bear heavy similarities to a snake after all, and legend had even depicted her as having snakes for hair. She also shared mystic eyes with the Basilisk, another great snake. It was said that speaking in Parseltongue could compel any snake into obedience. He imagined that the effect would be greatly lessened on a Servant like Rider, but it seemed that she wasn't entirely unaffected by it. He'd have to be cautious with its use.
"Interesting," he noted aloud, "we'll have to look into it later." Rider nodded, still dazed, and they continued.
Single-file, the group descended into the Chamber, the door slamming shut behind them and plunging them into darkness.
"Show me the way, Father," Harry hissed once again and green lanterns sparked to life on both sides of the staircase, bathing the path in an eerie green light.
After several minutes of descent, making their way down to what Harry could only imagine to be the level of the leylines, they finally came out into a large, decorated chamber. It was a long, stone walkway flanked on both sides by rows of ornate snake heads with what looked to be blood spewing from their mouths like a fountain. The fluid didn't smell of blood, but instead of minerals. Perhaps it was some sort of underground reservoir mixing with certain minerals in the ground to produce a red color.
At the very end of the hall was a massive depiction of Salazar Slytherin's head, looking down balefully at all who dared intrude on his Chamber. To the keen eye, faint creases on the statue's mouth indicated the presence of a hidden door. Contained behind it was the Basilisk. He'd have to take a look back there, but only after trying to find alternative routes. He wasn't sure how well he'd be able to control a creature that had apparently been under the influence of both Riddle and Flamel. Killing it might be the safest route for all involved.
Now, if he were an experienced and paranoid magus, where would he put his workshop?
There had to be some other areas to this little underground area, otherwise what would have been the point of making it so ornate? You didn't build something that resembled the entrance to a palace just to house a giant snake. There had to be some other purposes, but the only visible door was the Basilisk's door in Slytherin's face.
"Any of you see anything that resembles a door or entrance?" he asked the girls. Rider, Assassin, and Caster were heavily scrutinizing the walls, but shaking their heads. The maids were doing the same.
"Time to do this the hard way," Harry thought grimly to himself as he approached the statue of Slytherin. As a precaution, he summoned Berserker and put him on standby. In the event the Basilisk became hostile, it would be a good idea to be prepared to put it down. He recalled the opening phrase from Riddle's memories and intoned it cautiously, "Speak to me Father, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four."
It was worth noting that in Parseltongue, a language rumored to have been invented by Salazar Slytherin himself, the words "Slytherin" and "Father" were interchangeable. This was one of the primary reasons the language was attributed to him, as it was very unlikely to have been coincidence. Really, the speaker's interpretation of it depended on their views on Salazar himself. As his heir, Harry saw Slytherin as an ancestor, and thus referred to him respectfully in a paternal fashion.
This time, there was no scraping of stone or grinding of gears, but a door nonetheless opened silently. Giving a glance back to the girls, Harry advanced towards the doorway cautiously. Well, it wasn't exactly a doorway, it was more a genteel hole in Salazar's mouth that led to a black abyss.
He made it about four steps into the opening when he came face to nose with the Basilisk. Instantly, he dropped back, closed his eyes, and activated Panzer's combat mode, but it was unnecessary as the Basilisk's eyes were shut. As a matter of fact, he could barely even tell that it was alive.
"It's hibernating," Rider deduced, looking in.
"Hibernating?" Harry asked, bewildered.
Rider glanced around the Chamber for a second with a critical eye. "Yes," she said, "it makes sense. A snake of that size and magnitude would need an enormous amount of prey to sustain itself, but there's none available but the occasional rat down here. To compensate, I imagine that it induces a comatose state until a Parselmouth comes down here to wake it up."
Harry hummed to himself.
"Convenient," he finally muttered, stepping past the snake and approaching the back wall. Not needing him anymore, he dismissed Berserker.
He looked back towards the girls and indicated towards the wall. "Assassin," he asked, "could you move through this wall to look for anything on the other side?" Silently, she astralized and glided through the wall. After a brief moment, she came back and nodded her head.
"There's an extensive section on the other side, but I couldn't find an opening mechanism on that side. It must be magically keyed somehow."
Caster stepped up and placed a hand to the wall, sending a pulse of Structural Analysis through it. Her magical prowess made her far more adept at searching for opening methods and potential booby traps. It had been used by a magus as a workshop, after all.
"This entire entrance is coated with so many defensive spells and wards that it makes me doubt Flamel's mental stability during his time at Hogwarts."
"Hmm," Harry thought to himself. "Can you disable them?"
The insulted look Caster shot him made him realize that this was a silly question.
He put his hands up in surrender and apology, "Right, right. I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget. Go ahead and get it open then." Caster huffed in exasperation, but moments after she closed her eyes once again the wall open up a much more discrete entrance to an unlit room.
With a wave of Harry's wand, the various candles and torches littering the room lit up to reveal an enormous study, with bookshelves outlining the walls and several central tables. It was somewhat reminiscent of the Hogwarts Library, but also had elements of a laboratory. Of course, there were also the obvious traces of its use as a Magus Workshop. Several sections of the floor had runes and arrays painted onto them while a row of vials littered a nearby table. They seemed to be filled with blood.
"Or not," Harry thought as he picked one up. Cautiously, he uncorked one and smelled it. Rather than the metallic scent of blood, this smelled... earthy. He looked up and saw around a corner that there was a small fountain trickling the same substance that filled the pools outside. He structurally analyzed it and was astounded by the results. It seemed that water being mixed with magically-altered chemicals from the leylines had created a profoundly magical fluid. Truly, this fluid was a better conductor of prana than mithril, and stored it even better than Rin's gems had.
Something was... reminiscent about this fluid though. The color of it...
The Magus' Stone.
This fluid shared the exact same color as the Magus' Stone. Even the texture was identical, albeit in a liquid form. Flamel must have thought he struck gold when he first found this Chamber, and it certainly explained why he chose to set up a workshop here.
He really needed a look at Flamel's research notes. They should be in here somewhere...
The only problem was that the number of bookshelves rivaled the Library's, any one of which could be hiding the secret of the Magus' Stone. A quick Tempus spell showed that he would be expected at breakfast in six hours. He could keep himself going, but Sakura and Illya would need their sleep. And they wouldn't sleep without him.
With a sigh, he looked back at the girls. "We don't have enough time to go through all of this tonight. Let's go to bed." A sleepy Illya quickly agreed with his suggestion and leaned against his side in exhaustion. Sometimes Harry forgot that they didn't have the same advantages he had, and in fact required nightly sleep. He smiled and wrapped his arm around Illya before teleporting the entire group back to his dormitory.
He could hardly contain his anticipation as he laid down in bed, feeling the comfortable weight of the girls settling on him. Without doubt, Flamel had been a genius magus, and Harry was positively dying to get a peek at his notes. He himself had somewhat cheated when it came to the acquisition of his True Magics, but Flamel had come across one through purely academic means. He had earned a True Magic. Just to follow the research process behind such a discovery would drive his own work with Alchemy forward by decades. Admittedly, it was a somewhat cheap way to advance his research, but he never claimed to possess honor.
The thought of honor and the sleepy shift of Saber next to him brought his thoughts to his most troublesome Servant. The storming of Azkaban had highlighted an underlying issue, and he was... unsure of what he should do regarding her. She had always been the most... incompatible Servant when it came to him, which may be due to both her Class and that she was the only Servant summoned by someone fundamentally different than him. Harry loved Kiritsugu like a father, but he lacked the man's ideals. He had no pretensions of being a Savior.
Berserker had been summoned by Illya, a little girl with a vicious streak a mile wide. The giant's madness was matched only by his loyalty however, so Berserker cared little what orders he was given so long as the right person was giving them. Archer was an anti-hero, summoned by Rin, who was the epitome of a proper Clock Tower Magus: Ruthless, unfeeling, and cold. Archer cared only for his own entertainment, only bearing the slightest hints of any moral code.
Saber though had been summoned by Kiritsugu Emiya, a man defined by his ideals. Had she known his true nature from the beginning, she would likely have opposed Harry, but thanks to the circumstances of their meeting, he had unintentionally made it past her guard and struck at her weakest point.
Her heart.
A lifetime of masquerading as a man and forcing herself to shut out her emotions had left Saber doubting her capabilities to feel love and her heart longing for someone to love it. This continued even after her summoning, right until she had met and fallen for her soon-to-be Master. She fell hopelessly and completely in love, but didn't know how to cope with it. It was a feeling she'd never experienced before, so she acted rashly. She swore loyalty to him, just to be closer.
Then came the problem of discovering his true self. Suddenly her ideals and her heart were clashing violently. Her noble ideals chanted for her to slay him, or at least abandon him while her heart screamed for acceptance. Fortunately for Harry however, while her ideals were old and weary, her heart was young, wild, and untamed. It had seen the weakness presented by Harry, and thrown its full weight behind him. Her heart wanted to be with him, no matter the cost, and was compromising her ideals to do so.
Harry knew that by pushing just the right buttons, he could sway her to his way of thinking irrevocably.
Perhaps it was cold and cruel to think about his love like that, but Harry did love Saber in his own way. He wanted to make the relationship work, and for that to happen he needed them to be on the same mindset.
He didn't need a golden crusader, he needed a black knight.
He'd seen that mindset in Saber before, and knew how to draw it out. She needed to independently reach the conclusion that her ideals and love were incompatible, at which point he would swoop in and assist her in making the decision. On that day, he would truly possess Saber's heart.
Smiling slightly, he reached over and smoothed Saber's hair, drawing a smile of contentedness from the Servant.
He loved Saber, just like all the girls, but for the relationship to work some changes had to be made.
Even if it seemed cruel.
-Break-
As Harry slept, others in Slytherin were waking. They had smelled an opportunity and were going to take it! While Harry had control of the Council, not all in Slytherin recognized its authority, or were even aware of it. Three boys in particular leaned in on the "brutish" end of the Slytherin scale. Theodore Nott, Jugson Ivanoff, and Aiden Bragge were these three boys.
While some in Slytherin had forgotten the resounding beat-down they were given on the first day, the boys themselves certainly hadn't. Ever since then, they'd been seeking opportunities for revenge.
They wanted to go after Harry himself, but he was too well protected by those maids of his. They knew from experience what those things could do in a fight. The next logical conclusion were those two bints he always kept around as hangers-on. Sakura and Illya Emiya. Unfortunately, they didn't work as targets either. They'd kept careful out for openings, but Harry was paranoid or something. The girls never left his side without at least one maid accompanying them.
Then Daphne Greengrass had joined his entourage, but they didn't even think of taking a shot at her. Even as a first year, she had a reputation for brutality when it came to revenge. Rumor had it that the Cruciatus curse was the first spell she'd ever been taught.
Now though, a golden opportunity presented itself.
Dudley Dursley. Harry's precious cousin.
They were obviously close. According to the Devil's Snare, he had even arranged for Dudley's sorting into Slytherin. What reason existed for this other than that Harry desperately wanted his cousin to be in the same house? They were even around the same age too, although Dudley clearly hadno idea how to use his wand.
Easy pickings.
He was defenseless, alone, and vulnerable. It was time for a power play. Some of the upper years claimed that the boy was off-limits, but who cared what they thought?
Silently, the boys slipped out of their dorms at the appointed times, meeting in the hallway. As a group, they made their way down to the door marked for Dudley. They easily opened it with a simple Alohomora. Idiot hadn't even warded his door.
They crept up on the enormous sleeping form of Dudley, wands drawn. As the door swung shut, pitching the room into darkness, it illuminated for the briefest moment three wicked grins.
-Break-
The next morning had a sleepy Harry stepping out of his room to see quite the sight. Stuck upside down to the wall across from his door was his cousin Dudley, looking like he'd been worked over by a team of day-laborers with cricket bats. Swollen bruises covered his entire body, teeth littered the ground, and he was completely naked. His body also bore evidence of being heavily hexed. It was like someone had gone through the entire first year hex book and tried them out on Dudley one at a time.
Written on the wall next to Dudley were the words, "Slytherin is for the Pure."
Harry was livid.
It wasn't that he held any love for Dudley, Root no. It was that someone had not only defied his authority but also took such an overt action. Now Dudley would require treatment at the Hospital Wing, and word would get out that Slytherin was still just as elitist as ever. All his work undone by the actions of a single individual or group.
His rage burned, but for the moment it was important to keep his image up.
"What in Merlin's name happened here?" he exclaimed to the assembled first year Slytherins, all of whom were crowding the hallway to check out the opening volley launched by the subversive Slytherins.
He pulled out his wand and unstuck Dudley from the wall, making sure to catch him when he came tumbling down. Turning to his year-mates, he calmly instructed, "Someone keep an eye on him. I'm going to fetch Professor Snape."
One of them nodded, so Harry stood and went in the direction of Snape's office. He was furious, but vengeance would have to wait. For now, it was vital that damage control be carried out, and damage control included acting the part of the concerned cousin of the victim. On his way, he encountered the Illya, Sakura, Daphne, and the maids. After he recounted what happened, he pulled Daphne aside.
"Call a meeting of the Council. I'd like a word." he ordered her. Something about his voice, perhaps the clear murderous intent, seemed to excite Daphne. With the largest smile he'd ever seen her sport, she caressed his cheek before giving it a quick peck.
"Oh, I'll ensure they understand the urgency of this request," and with that, she spun around and walked off to carry out his mandate.
Minutes later, Harry was knocking on Professor Snape's door. There was some shifting on the other side, before an irritated voice called out, "I swear by everything that is magic, if it's one of you little brats needing help on you Potion's homework, I will make what I do to Longbottom on a daily basis seem like doting compared to what I'll do to you!"
Amused, Harry called out, "It's me, Professor. There's been an incident."
The room was silent for a moment, before Snape's voice replied, "I'll be right out." Several seconds later, a cross-looking Snape opened the door.
"What happened?"
Rather than explain, Harry led the Potions Master through the dorms to where Dudley was still slumped against the wall with the first year who had nodded his head earlier standing guard and keeping the gathered Slytherins back. After a moment to look over his newest pupil, Snape turned and barked to the assembled students, "What are you all gawping at? A house member has been hurt and you're all just standing here like a bunch of bloody Hufflepuffs! Has anyone even gone to fetch Madame Pomfrey?"
Awkwardly, one of the first years shifted and cleared his throat, "But um, sir, he's a... you-know..." before trailing off. Snape just glared and made an eye movement that was the facial equivalent of daring the boy to finish that sentence.
"It doesn't matter who the boy's parents are. You are Slytherins, and that is all what matters. You are not purebloods, half-bloods, or muggleborns. You are all one house now. Do you think the other houses will show you mercy because your parents were wizards? No. They will see that you're a Slytherin, and they will show you no mercy or kindness for it. To the other houses, we are vermin. Treacherous snakes to be crushed underfoot by the likes of the Gryffindors. We survive by sticking together. All of us. I don't care what notions your parents have given you about purity, but they stop here. Carry whatever views you like, but they stay in your head. Remember the biggest rule of the house: You back your housemates. Because the other houses won't."
Snape inhaled as he finished, surveying the now chastised group of first years.
"I hope I've made myself clear. Now get to breakfast."
The young Slytherins rapidly cleared the hallway, none wanting to be the last. Snape just sighed and rubbed his temples to clear them of his swiftly growing headache. "Every year," he said, "we get an incident like this. Every year I have to give the same bloody speech."
"Does it ever stick in?" Harry asked, curious.
For a brief moment, Snape's face looked like a Balkan carving of Satan, then it was gone. In its place he grinned wickedly, "Not until an example is made"
-Break-
That night, the members of the Slytherin council were not grinning at all. They were becoming aware that they were confronted with something that terrified them to the core: an angry Harry Potter. The assembled prefects and assorted members sat at the long, shiny and new table in the old meeting room and each one wondered precisely what it was about Harry that made them both respect and fear him.
It wasn't that he was ambitious and cruel. Cruel men were stupid; they all knew how to use cruel men, and they certainly knew how to bend other men's ambitions. You didn't stay a Slytherin council member for long unless you were adept at a kind of mental judo.
It wasn't that he was bloodthirsty, power-hungry or especially wicked. These things were not necessarily drawbacks in a Slytherin. The Slytherins were, on the whole, no more wicked than, say, the committee of the average Rotary Club, and each had risen to the pre-eminence of their position, not so much by skill at magic or seniority, but by never neglecting to capitalize on the weaknesses of opponents.
It wasn't that he was particularly clever. Every Slytherin considered himself a fairly hot property, cleverwise; it went with the job.
It wasn't even that he had lineage. They all knew breeding when they encountered it, and when you looked at Dudley Dursley and Orion Potter, it was clear that Harry had all the breeding behind him of a troll. That was it, in fact . . . he wasn't good or evil or cruel or extreme in any way but one, which was that he had elevated greyness to the status of a fine art and cultivated a mind that was as bleak and pitiless and logical as the slopes of Hell.
And what was so strange was that each of the wizards, who had in the course of their childhood experienced an encounter with a Boggart or a Cruciatus at the hand of an angry parent, had never before had quite the same uncomfortable feeling as they had when, ten minutes late, Harry strode into the room.
"Sorry I'm late," he lied, removing his tie as he walked past the threshold. The council members couldn't help but note that his maids were following behind him and had locked the only door of the room, sealing the exits. The room secured, the took positions at his side menacingly.
With a slow, excruciating pace, he went around the table and sat down at the head chair. Only once he was fully settled did he fully drop the act, leveling a glare around the table that made Snape's shrivel in comparison. "Now," he began, "would anyone care to explain to me why the first directive I gave this council was defied days after I gave it? I said, 'Nobody touches Dudley Dursley without my explicit permission,' and here I find him beaten and unconscious outside my room this very morning."
"It wasn't one of us," Gemma Farley spoke up, attempting to salvage the situation, "We put the word out that your cousin was off-limits. Evidently, someone disobeyed. Given that they did, it was probably a group of first years."
Marcus Flint latched onto this argument, throwing his two-knuts in, "Yeah, we can't be held accountable for the actions of some stupid first years." Similar sentiments sprung up from around the table, until Harry's Panzer-reinforced hand smashed into the table, shaking the heavy oak table.
"Your purpose is to ensure that my will is carried out in Slytherin without directly tying the power to my face. Deniability. But if you cannot be trusted to carry out such a simple task, I will have to reconsider our arrangement."
The council members shrunk back at that. The very day they had sworn the council to him, all of their families had received Gringotts transfers get them out of their Muggle hideouts. Their dues to the Wizengamot had also been paid, restoring their families' seats on it. Unfortunately, the deposits were technically listed as "0% Interest Loans", thus insuring that if they displeased their new Lord, he could call on Gringotts to force repayment and cripple them again.
Harry was pleased to know that his power over the council had not been diminished in the slightest by this incident. "Fortunately," he said, smiling, "I'm a forgiving person. I'll offer you a chance to redeem yourselves..."
The council members were visibly relieved, and frightened at his next words, "Whoever brings me the ones responsible for this will be granted forgiveness. The rest will be used for a little job of mine." At seeing the silent panic overtaking the members of the council, he grinned reassuringly, "Don't worry, you'll survive it. I can't promise that it'll be pleasant though."
-Break-
In the remote warehouse that Harry had appropriated for an improved temporary workshop, Caster was furiously painting magical circles on the wall. She finally had what she needed to kill the vessel taken by the one who had caused her Master so much suffering.
She had the blood of Tom Riddle's vessel.
She had been one-upped and made a fool of repeatedly ever since she came to this world. First she'd had difficulty figuring out what the magus' stone was, overlooking the possibility that it was the work of a proper magus, then she'd failed to account for the aura of a Dementor being non-magical in nature. She was falling behind the other girls! She needed to prove that she was Caster for a reason. Hence the spell. The spell she was cooking up wouldn't just kill Riddle's vessel. It would make it suffer.
It just needed to accumulate enough natural prana to charge up.
-Break-
Harry's anger grew by the minute as he sat in the Great Hall the next morning. Most of the damage had been foregone for the first day due to a scarcity of information, but now it had been a full day since the incident and the rumor mill was churning at full tilt. Someone, and the prevailing theory was a Hufflepuff, had sprayed some rather... choice words regarding Slytherin outside the entrance to their common room.
Whoever had assaulted Dudley, Harry wanted their heads. All of his work using Orion to improve Slytherin's image was wasted by the act of a few idiotic first years. Instead of putting Dudley in his place, they had made him into a martyr.
Now, the heavily-muggleborn Hufflepuff was right back to fearing and despising Slytherin as opposed to their previous tentative friendship. Apparently, a lot of them were hanging around the Hospital Wing as a show of support for the still-unconscious Dudley, and some claimed standing guard against further Slytherin treachery. Some of the Gryffindors were using this as an opportunity to escalate the hostilities between Slytherin and Gryffindor. Orion was leading the charge, often quite vocally accusing Harry of being involved in Dudley's attack.
That was the other irritating side effect of this whole ordeal: due to a rising scrutiny over his relationship with Dudley, he was forced to devote the entirety of his free time to sitting by Dudley's bedside. Meanwhile, the recently-unearthed workshop he'd discovered sat untouched in the Chamber of Secrets, holding amazing secrets just out of his reach.
It made him want to tear his hair out.
He was a traditional magus, and having the research behind the discovery of a True Magic sitting in a library that he couldn't access was agony. The only upside was that at least Caster was using this opportunity to tidy up the workshop, politely obliging his request that he be allowed to discover the research notes himself, and Assassin was continuing her "reconditioning" of the Death Eaters recovered from Azkaban.
A gentle hand on his wrist let him know that he'd been irritably rubbing his temples in public. Sakura was giving him a concerned, but sympathetic look. She had never really taken to magecraft with the same fervor he had. Of course, she had paid close attention to Zouken's lessons so that she could assist him when the war came around, but personally she had never taken the magus mindset of obsessively furthering her magecraft research and completely abandoning any pretense of morality or ethics to do so.
Still, she at least understood his pain.
At least he was taking a somewhat perverse amusement in watching the witch-hunt, if you'll forgive the choice of words, currently going on behind the closed doors of Slytherin. It seemed the Council were deathly afraid of the retribution he had planned for whoever didn't bring him those involved in the attack on Dudley, and were using all their connections in the lower years to put the word out trying to get information. Some of the middle year students were getting in on it as well. Though they were unaware of Harry's specific involvement, they were aware of the rapid change in relations between the various houses, and how much damage had been done to that by the one muggleborn in Slytherin being hospitalized. They wanted blood almost as much as Harry.
"Master," came Rider's oddly urgent voice in his head, "I believe we have a problem."
Unaccustomed to hearing such a tone from Rider, Harry had to exercise most of his self-restraint to refrain from snapping up in his seat before replying, "What is it?"
"The Gryffindor table. Two boys there, twins, I think they can see me," she answered seriously. Harry didn't look in that direction for fear of them noticing him.
"Are you sure?" he asked instead.
After a brief moment, Rider moved a few feet to Harry's right and he dared a glance upwards. Sure enough, the Weasley twins were, in what probably passed for "subtle" in Gryffindor, following Rider's movements with their eyes and occasionally glancing downwards at something they had laid out on the table.
"Something's not right," Harry told Rider, "there is virtually no possible way for them to see you like that. It must be what they have on the table..."
Finally, the solution came to him. "Try waving at them," he ordered. Rider obliged, exaggeratedly waving her arms in the direction of the twins, but they didn't even blink. Whatever they were using to detect her, they couldn't actually see her, which was an advantage. Regardless, it was a major security issue, one which would need to be immediately addressed.
She had said it was important not to be interrupted during this phase of the conditioning, but it was an emergency. "Assassin," he called out through his mental link, "I need you." Instantly, her reply came, "I hear and obey Master," accompanied by a small drain on his prana. Once it was done, he called up the Kaleidoscope and used it to summon her to Hogwarts. Doing it in the Great Hall would draw attention due to the swirl of colors that was the namesake of the Kaleidoscope, so he instead summoned her into an empty broom closet just off the hall.
"What is your bidding, Master?" she asked seconds later, kneeling before him in her astralized form.
Harry replied while subconsciously going through the motions of eating breakfast, "Over at the Gryffindor table, do you see the two twins there? They're using some sort of magical artifact or spell that's letting them detect Rider somehow. I need you to ascertain its nature."
"It shall be done, Master," Assassin swore obediently, rising and walking through the various tables and students to the Weasleys.
Knowing what was coming, Harry feigned sleepiness and propped his head up with one hand, closing his eyes. The second he did so, Assassin shared her senses with him and he saw through her eyes. She glided up behind the Weasleys, peering over their shoulders.
"What do you think it is?" one of them whispered.
"I don't know. I've seen ghosts on this thing before, but never these ghosts. I mean, King Arthur, Medusa, Heracles?"
"And they're all clustered around little snakey Potter..."
Both of them were pouring over a worn out piece of parchment with a detailed map of Hogwarts on it. Dotting the Great Hall were hundreds of footprints with names printed beneath them. Harry was shocked to see that the footprints were moving, and that all of the Servants but Assassin were on it.
It was a self-updating map of Hogwarts that also displayed names and locations of those within it.
Including Servants...
Oh Root this was not good.
