(A/N): Sorry this is so late (over a month!). It was actually mostly completed like 2 weeks ago. But due to, yet again, some heavy issues and annoyances offline, I just couldn't focus on finishing this chapter until the other day. Hopefully this chapter doesn't come out too bad because of that (it's a bit longer than usual as well).
Also, to the 2 reviewers and half a dozen PMers who sent me messages about how I was "wrong" about how Metamorphmagus transformations work: This is an AU in many respects, so Metamorphmagus abilities work a little differently, but mostly the same except when used in a certain way. Tonks will explain it in a couple of chapters. But if you're interested, chapter two briefly indicates what the difference is.
Also I'd like to thank my new Beta, Warryn, for fixing the many errors in my initial draft of this chapter.
(October 13th, 1988, Noon)
"Alright James, Cam and Mitch are in place. You ready?" the redheaded Gwen asked expectantly.
Harry nodded, to nab the goods with the level of professionalism his friends had gotten used to.
Which is to say, as soon as Cameron and Mitchell had stowed a couple of boxes of snack foods and drinks underneath their large coats, a teenaged-looking Harry concentrated on a shoulder-high stack of cans of food on the other side of the grocery shop. Harry felt for the response from his magic, indicated by a pleasant warmth and slight rumbling in his abdomen. Harry pulled back his right index finger, directed the feeling of his otherworldly power at a group of cans near the edge of the stack, and flicked his finger forward.
Harry had invoked his Pushing magic, and caused the targeted cans to be nudged out of the stack as if hit by an invisible hand, making the entire construction collapse. As the dozens of cans spilled out in every direction, Harry and his group walked out of the shop calmly while the store workers were distracted by the mess they'd left behind.
Once the four of them had exited the store and rounded the corner to hide in the alleyway the next street over from the Brixton Wholefoods they'd stolen from, Gwen began laughing and said "Whew - this magic business sure does make things easier James. These two were able to nick loads this time around."
"You could say I've got… the magic touch."
Gwen and Mitchell - the blonde teen - both groaned at the joke, while Cameron simply looked as if he hadn't understood the attempted humor.
"Do us a favor and stick to the hocus-pocus, James. I know you're younger than you look, but the rest of us have known what a pun is for more than a couple o' weeks," Gwen said.
Mitchell nodded in agreement. "I'm the planning guy, you and Gwen are the distraction crew, and Cam is the comic relief. Acting outside our roles is just asking for trouble," he said sagely. For emphasis, he fixed Cameron with a raised eyebrow.
"Am I just a clown to all of you? How could you treat your friend with such callous disregard?" Cameron said in faux anger.
"Gwen says it's because you're too unliable and get them found out", Harry volunteered.
"It's unreliable James; as often as you go to the library, we need to get you a dictionary," she said distractedly. "Cam is unreliable and has a history of 'winging it' in the middle of a perfectly good operation, forcing us to make a run for it."
"Hey, come on, my plans aren't that bad…" he grumbled.
"Last time you thought faking a seizure was a stroke of genius," Mitchell deadpanned. "I'm no expert but I doubt real seizures involve babbling lyrics from New Order while you flail around on the ground."
Before the group of four could continue, the impending rain began coming down, promising to turn into a downpour in short order.
Mitchell quickly covered his neck-length hair with the hood of his coat and turned to Harry. "James, you think you could magick us back to base? I don't fancy trying to make it on foot in the rain while carrying all of this," he said while gesturing at what he and Cameron were carrying.
"Yea right Mitch, you just don't want to get your delicate hair soaked. You're such a girl," Cameron said cattily. The observation wasn't entirely without merit; Mitchell had a habit of stealing expensive bottles of shampoo from time to time.
"There's no need for this guys, I can get us back. Just put a hand on my shoulders and give me a bit."
The three did as he asked and waited as Harry closed his eyes and thought about the location he wished to Squish to. The four of them were holed up in a condemned apartment building near the southern limits of Brixton. Harry still wasn't used to transporting more people than himself this way, so he always took the safe route and waited until he was absolutely sure he could bring everyone along with him whole. After nearly a minute had passed, the foursome were sucked through the darkness and appeared at their base of operations in an instant.
Once the jump to their meager home was made, Harry collapsed on the floor of the first floor apartment the group had taken up residence in. Or to be specific, where Harry, Cameron and Mitchell stayed. Gwen picked an adjacent unit, citing "time away from you hooligans" as the reason. The apartment had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, so it was rather roomy, although the plumbing was no longer functional, so they tended to take care of their business elsewhere.
"Uhg, I hate Squishing all of us like that. It's really tiring," Harry complained in a muffled voice. "I don't think I can stomach any more of it today…"
"James, you've got to come up with a new name for that magic. You're making me uncomfortable saying you're 'squishing' me," Cameron said as he held his head in a bit of pain, dizzy from the teleportation.
Before Harry could ask what he meant, Gwen smacked Cam in the shoulder and said, "Don't talk like that around him. I am not going to be the one to explain this to him - and let's be serious, you would poison his mind if you had to do it - especially not at his age."
As the two receded into their usual bickering, Harry left the living room for his room and grabbed some clothes from the closet for his regular, eight-year old self and began to shapeshift back to his real age.
Once complete, he sat on the ground to catch his breath. As much as he liked having a different body, spending more than a few hours in one that was different from his normal one left him feeling a bit disoriented and tired, and he had spent the last six or so hours looking twice his real age. Even still, Harry found looking at his real self in the mirror to be uncomfortable.
Harry walked back into the living room wearing a coat fit for his current size. He sat down on the floor to eat with his three friends as they binged on the food and drink they had gotten from a hard, hard five minutes of work. They had settled down in front of the small TV Harry had taken from an electronics store on the other side of town. The program was the one with that time-travelling doctor that bored Harry to sleep whenever he tried to join them.
The four of them were all, for one reason or another, runaways from their former homes. Gwen and Mitchell were both seventeen while Cameron was sixteen; Harry had tried to do the same when they found themselves all running out of a store with food in hand. It had only taken a few days before their growing suspicions with Harry's manner of speaking and his general lack of understanding were validated. They had found a sleeping James in his room... looking about half the age he claimed to be and in the clothes they had seen him wearing hanging off his smaller body. They were rather shocked initially, but then the potential benefits of having a wizard in their fold allowed them to calm down and get the whole story.
After a good ten minutes of silence from all besides the television, Cameron broke it, saying quietly "Do any of you ever, ya know, wonder if what we're doing is OK?" His eyes were focused on the ground.
Harry, Mitch and Gwen looked at each other briefly. Cameron had only run away from his father a month and a half ago; the thin scars on his arms and bruised neck didn't incline one to press him for details. He still had a hard time accepting the less moral aspects required to survive life on the streets, and he had yet to go a week without suffering doubts of varying degrees.
As their unofficial leader, Mitchell answered for the group. "We have to do whatever it takes to survive Cam. Unless you want to bunk at an orphanage, I think lifting some excess from a shop every few days is a lesser evil." Unconsciously, Mitch had been itching the lower left part of his stomach.
Gwen had told Harry in private of her and Mitch's experiences in foster homes and orphanages, so the silence that descended from the latter's response seemed unimpeachable. Harry's own experience with a family led him to nod his head at Mitchell's statement.
"Besides Cam, it's not like we'll have to do this forever…" Gwen said quietly.
Cameron lifted his head and glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, a silent gesture to explain.
"Mitch and I've been looking for actual jobs lately. We were hoping that once we had enough quid for a proper home that you two might come live with us."
Harry and Cameron looked at Gwen and Mitchell in surprise. The pair were holding hands and looking a little embarrassed at their hope being aired out in the open. It wasn't a secret that the two had been dating, though they usually liked to delude themselves into thinking they were discrete.
"I-I think I'd like that," Harry said while rubbing the back of his wild head of hair nervously.
Cameron agreed. "Hah, I suppose it wouldn't be much different than our current arrangement. Though at least we might have actual plumbing for once…"
While Cameron continued to wrestle with his doubts silently, Harry stood up and made for the exit, prompting Mitch to ask, "Where are you off to, James?"
"Ah, well, I found a magic place while you three were at the cinema yesterday - thanks for that by the way-"
Cameron interrupted, "You're too young to see horror films. It's Mitch and I who'd have to put up with any Dream Demon-inspired nightmares, no thanks..." Cameron seemed rather offended at the idea that he wouldn't get his eight hours of sleep.
"Anyway, I was dressed up as 'Harold' to get around more easily and I spotted this weird sparkly dome thing. It was really odd, everyone near it ignored the thing and whenever someone almost touched it they were bent around it, if that makes sense," Harry explained. It was difficult to explain without seeing it and given the looks of bewilderment on the faces of his friends, he was sure his description wasn't the best.
Pressing on, he pulled out the photograph he'd previously placed in his coat pocket and said, "It gets even weirder though. I tried to take a photo of the place so I could check it out later, but…"
Harry held the photograph out for them to see and their confusion remained.
"But there's nothing odd here," Mitchell said. He was quite right. All that was present in the picture were a few office buildings, and the foot traffic at the park situated between them.
"I don't see a dome," Cameron stated. He tried squinting at the picture to make it appear, to no avail.
Harry nodded. "Exactly. I told you, no one else seemed to see it either, besides me. It's right in the middle of the park, but it didn't show up in the picture. I've got to see what's inside," he said with a bright smile.
Cameron was staring intently at the photo Harry had taken when he suddenly paled.
"Hold on. An invisible house that can't be seen or touched and doesn't show up in photographs… It can only mean one thing…" Cameron said in hushed tones.
He switched between glancing at each of his three friends. "A vampire lair," he said. A flash of lightning and a roar of thunder conveniently followed his conclusion for dramatic effect.
"Not a problem!" Harry said.
Harry could not refute Cameron's airtight logic, and so he did the next best thing. He moved to the bathroom and called on his shapeshifting magic to begin altering his appearance to that of a typical depiction of a vampire. His already pale skin didn't need much alteration, but he did get to morph his hair into a slicked back style. The next part was trickier. He repeatedly tried to lengthen and sharpen his canine teeth, but he kept making them too long and they would poke into the inside of his lips annoyingly.
After finally getting the length and positioning to be manageable, he went back to the three in the living room around and said, "Ta-da! I'll blend right in, don't you reckon?" He flashed his new set of teeth for clarification.
The three began to laugh in earnest at his plan to hide among the locals. Cameron calmed down first. "Somehow I doubt it's a den of vampires. Might be some weird government project or some such. I want to stop you from going, but I know you'll just magick yourself there once we've all fallen asleep. Seriously James, if it's dangerous there you need to pop back over here immediately."
"No need to worry. What's the worst that could happen?" Harry asked.
Gwen groaned in response. "You need to watch the telly more often. Anytime someone says that everything goes wrong."
(Hogwarts, Midday)
Minerva had taken her lunch break in the staff lounge after a trying class period. Transfiguration was ever her passion, and publishing the occasional piece of research in top European transfiguration journals was gratifying after all the hard work she put into attaining her Mastery in the field, but teaching was unwaveringly trying.
It almost didn't matter what year she was teaching. First years never failed to show great interest in the possibilities this branch of magic opened up to them. Their eyes were aglow for the initial few weeks, even if progress was difficult. But all too soon they would become frustrated at just how much practice and study was required to come to grips with the fundamentals alone.
And then there were her N.E.W.T. students. They were all competent, to be certain; she would accept no less for students seeking to progress beyond O.W.L. coursework. But sixth-year entailed covering Human Transfiguration, perhaps the most difficult branch of the discipline. Yes, transfiguration involved altering the properties of an object or creating objects with the desired attributes, but living beings are enormously complicated. Altering them in any substantial way was delicate work given how complex their underlying parts were evolved to be. Many a sixth-year felt as if they had gone back to first or second year once they moved to this level. Even amongst her own house - who tend to specialize in Human Transfiguration - success was fought for tooth and nail.
And naturally McGonagall had to have a student who managed to turn their work partner's hand to stone. He apparently had been grumbling about 'how hard this was' while spellcasting… McGonagall had untransfigured the hand once she heard the screaming student flailing about with her unmoving left hand.
But these events were to be expected, and having taught this course for decades now, they weren't really what had her feeling down. No, the blame for that was her lack of progress locating young Mr. Potter. He had been missing since June, and despite knowing his general location, she hadn't caught any more than the occasional scent diluted though it was. Whatever magic he was using, she knew he was altering his scent somehow.
Sighing, she muttered "If only it weren't the middle of the day or I might brought out the brandy..."
"Trouble with hooligans you call students, Minerva?" asked a voice from the doorway.
McGonagall opened her eyes to see her colleague, Severus Snape, at the doorway with his nose upturned and an arrogant sort of smile that could irritate like no other.
"Well you see Severus, not all of us seek to run out students who can manage the coursework, even if it can be… trying to get some to that point," she replied evenly.
The man snorted as he made his way to the seat opposite McGonagall after closing the door to the room. "I've never taken you to be the nurturing type. Are the years softening you after all?" he asked in a humorous sort of voice.
"In your dreams," she replied after rolling her eyes. After pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment, McGonagall said, "I've just been out of sorts since he ran away from his aunt and uncle."
Snape raised an eyebrow. Before he continuing, he cast a quick Homenum Revelio to ensure no one else was nearby. His previous work as a spy for and against the Order ground into him the necessity of ensuring security.
"So I'm too assume there have been no leads?" Snape asked quietly after his spell confirmed no other presences were near them. When he had first been made aware that Harry had run away, he made a snide remark about "Harry doing James one better" in the attention-seeking department. McGonagall's scathing reply regarding Harry's circumstances had shut Snape up rather quickly.
"I just don't know how he's doing it. I've scoured Brixton in my Animagus form for months. I've picked up his scent here and there but anytime I think I'm on to him his scent begins to dissipate before I can no longer find it," McGonagall said tiredly. "Initially, I thought it might have been his Apparition, scent trails end abruptly at the point of Disapparition. He must be changing his scent somehow, I can't think of anything else he might be doing."
Snape's eyebrows furrowed slightly. "How… odd. This is rather unlike accidental magic. And what eight-year old would think to change their scent routinely?" he asked more to himself than to the Transfiguration professor. He had been surprised enough to learn a child was Apparating around the Greater London area. But the notion that he repeatedly produced a magical means of changing his own scent seemed ridiculous given the fickle nature of accidental magic usage. But given the apparent abuse dealt by Lily's sister's family, he could understand the drive in the boy to develop his abilities as fast as he could.
Minerva broke Snape's contemplation, saying, "I think something else is going on here, and I've called one of the students in to assist me. The odds aren't in my favor, but it's the only idea I've got at the moment."
"Who did you send for, may I ask?"
A gentle knock on the door would soon answer Snape's question.
"Enter," McGonagall said loudly.
In walked a student Snape recognized as a fifth-year Hufflepuff. It was a young girl with bubblegum pink hair. Snape never understood the attraction of the hair color, nor how she maintained the coloration so well; it went down to the roots of the hair.
"Hello Nymphadora. Thanks for coming, I'll try not to take up too much of your time before you head off to Pomona's class," McGonagall said with a slight smirk.
"Wotcher, professor. I'll be glad to help out however I can", Tonks said pleasantly, managing to avoid sounding irritated by the use of her name.
Snape looked rather confused, so McGonagall continued. "Tonks, is it alright if I tell Severus here about your ability?"
Tonks shifted a bit uncomfortably before answering. "I-I guess so. I try not to advertise it if I can," she said in a quieter voice.
"You see Severus, Tonks here is a Metamorphmagus," McGonagall said. Tonks changed the color of her head to auburn briefly to emphasize McGonagall's words before returning it to pink. Snape's confusion quickly cleared, understanding McGonagall's train of thought. "Don't worry Tonks, neither of us will say anything about your gift to anyone else."
The young witch seemed relieved. "Would you mind letting me know what my ability is needed for?"
McGonagall hesitated for a few moments before she said, "I can't tell you everything at the moment, but I can say that we're trying to find someone. We've tried tracking them by their scent, but we've run into an issue where the scent changes too often. I suspect they're like you, but I need your help to check."
Tonks nodded. "Well, er, I've never thought about if my I smell changes when I shift," she said awkwardly.
McGonagall laughed a little. "Well, perhaps make the change a substantial one, just so we can be sure. Shift and then walk out of the office and I'll see if the scent change is like the one we've been looking for."
McGonagall transformed into a cat and got a whiff of Tonks's usual odor. Tonks them altered her appearance to give her a different face. Her nose was somewhat like a pigs nose, her face had become rounder than usual and her weight increased a bit as she widened. Her hair had remained the same pink as before.
Tonks walked out the staff room to give McGonagall room to check out how the old scent transitioned into the newer one. McGonagall had walked only a few feet before it became obvious to her that this was the answer to her dilemma. The way Tonks's original scent quickly transitioned into the newer one was exactly as the same as how Harry's scent had changed whenever she attempted to follow his scent to the source.
Quickly returning to human form, McGonagall ran up to Tonks (now returned to normal) and gave her an uncharacteristic hug in the corridor outside the staff room.
"Thank you so much, Tonks. It was exactly the same. Of course, we still have to catch them but this is a good first step," McGonagall said excitedly.
Tonks was a bit out of sorts, what with the usually stern professor being so happy. "Oh, it was no problem, professor," she replied after the brief hug. "Say, since I helped you, isn't that worth some House points?"
McGonagall looked at her for a moment, and considered docking a couple of points to keep her reputation. But she couldn't be harsh after Tonks had given her help freely.
"Oh why not. 20 points to Hufflepuff for selflessness… but if you don't get an E on all your transfiguration work for the next two weeks you may find my sudden kindness slipping in the future," McGonagall said with a neutral face that masked her inner smile.
Tonks head drooped a bit despite the points. "Yes professor..." she muttered before she walked off to her next class.
As McGonagall walked back into the staffroom, Snape set down that day's edition of the The Daily Prophet and asked, "From your, ah, positive reaction I take it you were correct about Potter being a Metamorphmagus?"
McGonagall nodded. "Yes, the scent transition was the same as Harry's. And with that we may just be able to come up with a way to find him." Having said that, she walked over to the handbag she had brought to the staffroom.
Snape was curious about the matter. "Just how did you suspect that Potter was a Metamorphmagus in the first place? The ability is ludicrously rare; Tonks was the first I'd seen in person. I would have expected a less exotic explanation."
Rather than answering verbally, McGonagall pulled out an old magazine cover. It was the 2579th edition of the scholarly journal,Transfiguration Today. The publication year of the edition she was back in 1926.
"I had seen Tonks's hair color briefly change the other day when she was frustrated in class and it reminded me of the possibility. And that led me to recalling a certain someone having written an article on the issue we're having," McGonagall said. She pointed to the bottom of the magazine cover.
'Is Vanishing Without a Trace Possible? My view on Metamorphmagus by new contributor, Albus Dumbledore', Snape read silently.
"Well I'll be…" Snape said in surprise.
"I only have one more class for the day, so I'll be informing Albus about this soon," McGonagall said. "As he wrote the article, he's sure to have insight on this problem, ironically enough."
Snape 'tsked' and said, "You may have to hold off on that until tonight, Minerva. The headmaster's schedule is likely to be quite busy during day times in the foreseeable future."
Snape handed McGonagall the newspaper he was reading and she glanced at the top headline of the day.
'Goblins Get the Wand! Wizengamot Vote to Pass Bill lifting ban on Goblin wand ownership,' the headline read.
McGonagall was rather surprised at the news. Dumbledore had been pushing for this for decades. It wasn't until goblin assistance was given in the last War that he had begun making any real progress beyond verbal support among other Wizengamot members. That Gringotts had also assisted in finding hidden Death Eaters by tracking suspicious monetary transactions only made it more difficult to justify the more than three-hundred year old legal ban, not to mention the even longer informal ban prior.
"This is quite shocking to say the least," McGonagall said. She read a bit further into the article before saying, "Can't say I'm shocked to see it was a near split vote down party and blood lines. All but but a handful of purebloods voted against passing the lift. A 28-to-25 pass with 4 abstentions."
Snape nodded. "You might be surprised to learn the Lucius was among the few purebloods who voted to pass it."
McGonagall gaped at Snape, a sight the man couldn't help but find quite humorous given her usual composure.
"Don't look so surprised," he said in amusement before she could reply. "Lucius works in both the Ministry and in the muggle House of Commons, so he's a master of reading the winds to gain an advantage. No doubt he caught word of the near unilateral support from the New Bloods and picked the side that would benefit his family most. And the goblins are notorious for remembering their friends as well as their enemies."
McGonagall lips thinned at Snape having a laugh at her reaction. "Still, I would expect one of his… station to be more averse to being level with goblins than he would be to growing his wealth," she said.
Snape shrugged. "I'm sure his unfortunate predicament in the last War left him feeling rather guilty. Siding with Dumbledore, in part, be his way of trying to rectify things in his own mind. Then again, Lucius does enjoy his affluency so I wouldn't discount that benefit."
McGonagall opened the full article on the history-making Wizengamot decision. Several of the so-called Sacred Twenty-eight were making moves to retaliate against court's ruling. Although this "esteemed" group held no greater formal power in the Wizengamot, they had long since successfully positioned themselves as the moral pillar of the wizarding community of the UK. Even McGonagall had to hand it to them, they were able to utilize the media to push their political agendas rather effectively and firmly establish themselves a dominant political force.
"They're pushing for a tax hike," Snape interrupted as McGonagall skimmed the article. "I'm sure the Goblin Liaison Office does require greater funding now that wand possession is legal, but the level of increase seems suspect."
"It's certainly irritating, but a bit tame if it's intended to generate significant blowback."
"I expect most others in the Twenty-eight assumed the legislation was stillborn and so gave little consideration on what to do should it have passed. They'll no doubt draft further legislation to indirectly combat this in the coming weeks, hence Albus's attention must needs be focused on deflating whatever proposals they make."
"Even still," she said with a hint of finality, "Albus will undoubtedly have much to say about what we've learned. I'll meet you outside his office at half-past eight."
After walking for about a half hour in the strong rain, Harry had taken advantage of the brief lapse in rain to make his way across the street to the odd sight now before him. At the small park in between the three buildings, he found the sparkly object from before. He didn't know how to describe it very well. It resembled a large snow globe and was a little shorter in height the the office buildings surrounding it; everything around it - the ground, the sidewalks, the plant life - was curved around the thing unnaturally, as if the very air was being bent around the strange object.
The dome itself was whitish and bright, and the surface shifted around smoothly, as if it were a liquid. It was a transfixing sight to behold, a bit like a massive tank at an aquarium. The area inside only appeared to be as wide as a building, but the inside of the dome was obscured so he couldn't make out anything inside of it.
Harry had noticed the people and animals walking past the bubble dome were being warped around the structure whenever they walked into it. But the people didn't seem to notice it at all, they simply continued on as if nothing happened. Birds that flew towards it either skirted around it or popped to the other side of it and continued on their way. The closest thing he could compare to it was a game he played at an arcade once. Whenever the game character would walk off the side of the screen he would appear at the opposite side he came from. However, he noticed that every so often someone would walk into the dome rather than be transported around it and he couldn't see where they could have gone other than inside it.
'Was Cameron right? Is that place… a vampire lair?' Harry gulped at that thought; it was a lot scarier to think about now that he could actually see for himself. He'd seen an old, cheesy Halloween film on the television recently and the vampires didn't have reflections in mirrors and such.
"Well, if vampires live here I better look the part," Harry said. He shifted his appearance back to the look he had done at the apartment, but he decided not to change his hair; slicked back hair just looked too silly.
Figuring that was the best he could do for the moment, Harry took a steadying breath and walked through the barrier. The moment he entered he gasped in shock.
"It's bigger on the inside?" he said in surprise.
From the outside, the dome couldn't have been any wider than the buildings that surrounded it, maybe 50 feet in width and length. But within the dome was, for all intents and purposes, a whole town unto itself. The town was, much like the dome containing it, circular and composed of a series of interconnected, concentric, circular streets that converged at the center of the town, where there seemed to be a number of food vendors and shops that Harry couldn't make out.
Off near the horizon of the placed seemed to be a few rocky outcroppings, but the several-story buildings of the town obscured all but the tops of them.
The street Harry walked into was mostly composed of what appeared to be a series of multistory apartment buildings. Harry proceeded to walk up the street, and found himself listening to a myriad of strange and bewildering conversations that the residents of the town were engaged in, some rather animatedly.
"I can' believe they're givin' the gobbies the wand," said a middle-aged man in an old bomber jacket. He was gesturing at a newspaper he was reading.
The younger man in a plaid sweater he was speaking to said, "Oh come on, there's no need for that. The goblins down at the mine are good people. This ain't history class no more, the rebellions didn't happen for nuthin'."
"Come off it, it's not like goblins even need wands to do magic. I tell you, this is all political favor trading."
Harry didn't understand what they were talking about, but he heard them mention 'wands', which made him to remember the people who would Squish near him whenever he was practicing magic months back.
Just as Harry was beginning to put two-and-two together about what sort of place he was at, he saw a nearby elderly woman who had walked out of one of the buildings wave a stick she was holding and mutter a funny word. The rubbish she was pointing at vanished into nothingness.
Harry watched with widened eyes, recognizing it as the same sort of spell he used to free that snake at the London zoo to disappear the glass. But if it that was true then…
"This is a magic town!" Harry said excitedly, startling the woman he was standing near. Of course it was, how else could there be more room inside than the container outside. At the realization, Harry began to giggle at his assumption that it was the home of vampires and so undid the minor shapeshift before everyone there thought he was a vampire.
Harry felt something entirely foreign to him after his time with the Dursleys, a sense that he had found a place to belong to. These people were just like him, they wouldn't see him as a freak if he asked to stay, right? But then he began to feel guilty, what with having already been offered a future home with Mitchell and Gwen.
Before he thought on it any more, Harry's stomach gave a pronounced rumbling from having walked most of the way to this place. Harry followed his natural inclination to search out a food stand or shop to pilfer from. Recalling that he had seen food stalls at the center of the pinwheel-shaped town, Harry happily jogged down the road toward the town center, at having come across this place.
Upon reaching the the town center, Harry crept to the side of what looked like a candy shop and began scoping out what target he could most easily steal a bit of food from. Besides the various shops that ringed the outside of the town center, there were at least ten stalls selling foods of various sorts. Most of the stands were run by somewhat older women, who seemed to be entertaining themselves through conversation with the numerous groups of families and friends milling about in the early afternoon hours.
One such food stall was selling fruits the likes of which Harry had never seen. There were trays of berries colored in exotic pinks and purples - and unless Harry was seeing things - some of them had alternating colors, making for quite the distracting sight as the pink and purple seemed to chased each other into and out of existence.
Harry briefly considered going for some other nearby food, but while a fresh, warm pie would go well with the chilled air, he doubted he could get away with an entire pie…
'Oh well, those berries will be plenty good I bet,' Harry thought with a grin.
From his hiding place, Harry outstretched his left hand towards the mesmerizing berries and began invoking his "Gimme" magic as the woman was distracted by a man who had come up to her stall. It had taken a few weeks of practicing the magic carefully and at low levels to avoid the No-Fun Police, but he was confident that he could call nearby objects to him successfully as long as he activated the magic slowly. For whatever reason, if he tried to do so quickly the object would still fly at him uncontrollably.
Harry felt his magic begin to pull the berries to him to satisfy his hunger; the fruits began to wiggle as his magic took hold of them. But then everything began to go wrong. He felt "the tug" give a lurch as his magic failed to bring his target to him, making him somewhat queasy, not unlike how Squishing felt when he was just starting out. Then a klaxon-like sound began to blair repeatedly from Harry's position as if he were an oversized alarm bell; his ears did not appreciate it.
He knew he'd bungled it and so made an attempt to back away quickly, but the telltale cracking sound behind him made it all-too-clear he had been caught. Harry turned around and came face-to-face with the woman he had been trying to steal from. She seemed like a nice enough person; warm brown eyes, freckled, slightly wrinkled face and long, wavy brown hair stretching past her neck. However, she was looking at him with a bemused expression.
"Now what have we here? You set off the Anti-theft charm on my crazyberries?" she asked.
Harry gulped. Hoping to reduce whatever trouble he was in, Harry began, "I-I'm sorry. I was just hungry and my magic got away from me a bi-"
"Not to worry lad, not to worry. We all have trouble keeping the lid on our magic when we're young, you've just got to channel it into something silly and time wasting. Before you know it, you'll be off to school and it'll be reigned in right and proper," she said confidently.
"R-right. Well, I'll just be…" he said quietly, hoping he had gotten off scot-free.
"Hang on," she said. She was eyeing him up and down to try and see if she recognized him at all. "I've not seen you around town before. " As her eyes reached his hairline, she seemed to recognize something there but didn't comment on it for some reason.
'Use what you've heard to make a believable story,' he thought. It was perhaps the most crucial lesson he had learned. Since he couldn't stay shapeshifted all day, he tried to keep his ear to the ground for stories he could repeat or modify to deflect suspicion for why someone as young as him was out and about by himself. And he didn't like the odd look she began giving him upon seeing his scar behind his long bangs.
"Well, you see, my dad is over talking to… to the goblins and he let me have a look around. We, er, we were just passing through town," he said in as calm a voice he could manage. "I'm James, James… Dursley."
"Then welcome to Galena, James. My name is Isabelle Gibbon. If you get lost just let me know and I'll get you where you need to go," she said in a pleasant tone.
Harry jumped at the opportunity to get away. "Well actually, I've gotten a bit mixed up in town. Could you point me back to where the goblins are? My dad will be worried if I'm away much longer."
"Just north of town at the mines." Isabelle pointed at the rocky formations in the distance behind her. "Be safe!"
Harry nodded and took off in a jog towards the mines the witch in town had indicated. They were just down a path leading away from town through a small wooded area. After a few minutes they came into view and Harry began to feel somewhat nervous upon seeing these 'goblin' people.
The mines were surrounded by many figures about the same height as Harry and their skin was about as fair as his own, but that's where the similarities ended. Many of them were balding which made their elongated, pointy ears all the more prominent as they scurried about the scaffolding and structures dotting the landscape. Their eyes were slanted and black, making them unsettling to look at from the trees Harry was hiding behind.
Harry might have let his nervousness at their appearance scare him off had he not seen what the goblins were doing. A group of ten or twelve goblins were being handed what looked like metal helmets and matching silvery armor from a goblin that was a head taller than the rest; they promptly placed the protective gear over their clothing. The group then walked toward a huge opening in the large rock plateaus Harry had seen from town, which Harry assumed was the opening to the mine Isabelle had mentioned back in Galena.
But Harry spotted an obvious problem. The mine entrance was blocked off by a massive boulder, perhaps 20-feet in height and a width exceeding the that of entryway to the mine. Despite the barrier to entry, three goblins from the group stepped forward a directed one hand each at the boulder.
Harry watched in fascination as the goblins let out a war cry and began to use magic to levitate the boulder away from the entrance before gently lowering it to the ground.
"How did they move something so big?" Harry asked with stars in his eyes. Harry had a moved a large truck before, but he could feel his magic straining at the weight. Even with three of them, he didn't know magic could lift something as tall as a house.
Quickly getting over his nervousness, Harry left his hiding place and ran after the goblins descending into the mine. Although seeing wasn't much of an issue because of the magical orbs the floated in the air abovr, Harry soon found himself lost amongst the numerous branching paths that he came across. It wasn't for long, however, as the guttural sounds made by the goblins led him to them in short order. Upon seeing the goblins at the of the pathway, Harry held back a ways so as to remain undiscovered.
Harry couldn't understand the language the short beings were speaking, but their goal became clear when several of the goblins directed their hands at a particular part of the mine wall and drained some sort of liquid substance from the wall at a rapid rate. It rather resembled water expelled from a firehouse given the speed with which the goblins removed it and directed it into a nearby piping entrance.
The process was apparently quite intensive given the growing perspiration and heaving breathing of the goblins doing the work. The dangers of their work revealed itself when the area they were in began to shake and dust and debris began peppering down from the ceiling.
When a large chunk of rock broke from the ceiling, two of the goblins not extracting the liquid from the walls yelled something unintelligible to Harry and used their magic to turn the sharp rock into dust, saving the lives of their fellows.
When Harry saw another chunk about to give way, he ran into the open to help them out as they didn't appear to see this new danger. When it broke free of the ceiling, Harry used his Pushing magic to deflect the falling stone into the wall, startling the goblins working. This resulted in the tremors increasing in intensity.
"Oops…"
The group spun around and spotted Harry, clearly shocked given their widening eyes.
"Urag, Gorlunk, Gatz, reinforce the area now!" shouted the mine foreman.
The three goblins he called out laid their hands in the ground and a pulse of lime green light went out from their hands and into the walls and ceiling. Whatever they did seemed successful as the shaking stopped, to the relief of the goblins working.
The goblin in charge walked over to Harry, armor clanking all the way, lifted Harry up by hood of his coat and walked Harry out of the mine's network of tunnels with his subordinates in tow. By the time they reached the surface, Harry was in tears due to realizing how much trouble he might be in. What with their razor-sharp teeth, he nearly panicked that they might want to eat him.
"Just what do you think you're doing, human? You nearly caused the place to cave in on us!" he growled. He unceremoniously dropped Harry onto his behind.
"I-I was just trying to help. The c-ceiling was coming down…" he said through the tears.
"And you didn't think we had it under control? The arrogance of some of you wand bearers never fails to amaze me. We've honed our craft across the centuries, and we certainly didn't need a child sent to assist with routine silver extraction," the goblin spat angrily.
"No one sent me, I came 'cause I heard someone say goblins could do magic without wands."
The goblin regarded him momentarily before responding, "And what's that got to do with me? Wanded magic not enough for you that you need to have what arts we created for yourself too? Forget it, your school's magic is all you'll be getting."
Harry wiped the tears from his face. "But I don't have a wand or a school, I just use my hands. Like you guys. I wanna know how to pick up big rocks and stuff," he said determinedly.
"How old are you?"
"Eight-years old."
The goblin stared at Harry in disbelief.
Thus far, his entourage had remained silent as they watched the exchange. However, one stepped forward and said "I believe he's telling the truth, Burmog. When I saw him in the mine, he had no wand in hand when he redirected that stone."
Burmog's stare turned into a frown at this. "A human Coarsecasting, and at his age? Ridiculous, unheard of even. I'll believe it when I see it with my own ey-"
A moderate wisp of red fire appeared above Harry's left hand, floating a foot above it.
"See? Told ya so," he said cheerily. "Now can you teach me magic or what?"
Burmog huffed before stubbornly saying, "Be that as it may, there's not a chance in hell I'm passing off goblin magical secrets to a human."
"So you're saying if I was like you guys you'd teach me?"
"Yea, whatever, it comes to the same thing. We goblins don't teach something for nothing and you've got nothing of equal value to trade so be on your way," Burmog said.
Rather than acquiesce, Harry set his shapeshifting magic to task to reshape his appearance. Other than the comparatively minor shift to look like a vampire, Harry hadn't changed into something besides other human beings before. He had tried turning into a dog before, but the change hadn't quite worked as one he had roughly gotten a dog's snout he felt ill and the transformation immediately broke.
The sensation of this change was rather different. He didn't feel sick as his eyes became slanted and black or when his teeth sharpened, nor even when his ears elongated. But as the change completed, there was the constant, slight headache he associated with staying transformed for too long.
Burmog was shocked at the sight before, but before he could say anything, his subordinates all began laughing themselves silly at the boy's cheek.
"Haha, we got ourselves a comedian boys!" said Urag.
"A bloody Metamorphmagus? Come on Burmog, that little number deserves a bit of concession don't it?" laughed Gatz.
Burmog sighed. "I hate this boy already. Inciting insubordination…"
Harry fell onto his back and let the transformation expire due to the strain of keeping it up. Luckily goblins seemed to be quite short so he hadn't ruined the clothes he was wearing.
"Well? Will you teach me?" Harry asked using the innocent face he had practiced as a means of distracting a middle aged woman he and his group of friends had stolen from once.
"Uhg, alright fine but if you're too irritating I'll gladly give you the boot."
"Alright!" Harry shouted. He jumped in excitement, but for some reason his magic saw fit to levitate him by the feet so he kept rising until he broke the tree line and had to grab a branch to anchor himself to terrafirma.
This time even Burmog laughed with his fellow goblins. None of them bothered to help Harry down from the tall tree.
"Be here by this Saturday at noon or the teaching is off," Burmog called from the base of the tree while the others set off back to the mine. "And shouldn't you get back to your parents? Surprised they let you anywhere near us."
Harry scuttled down the tree quickly. "I don't have parents, I live on the streets", he explained.
"Wait, you what? The town would never let an orphan live without a home..."
Harry shook his head. "I'm not from Galena, I just saw the entrance to town. I live in an abandoned building in Brixton with unmagic people," he said with a straight face, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Burmog was quiet for a solid thirty seconds as he considered his next question. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously. "You're real name, not whatever you use when transforming."
"My name is Harry, Harry Potter."
(Malfoy Manor, Evening)
Lucius sat down in his study to contemplate his next course of action, with his wife following a few moments after. Narcissa had received an owl from Mrs. Gibbon over in Galena not thirty minutes ago with a startingly bit of news. Naturally, such a wild story had been immediately rejected by Lucius until Narcissa showed him the photograph Isabelle had taken of her memory of the scene via her penseive.
The resemblance to his late father was uncanny and the scar was visible enough to be unmistakable once you knew it was behind the boy's wild hair. And his height was about the same height as their Draco, perhaps a bit shorter.
"So Harry Potter is wandering near Galena unattended. This is a rather vexing situation then, isn't it?" he muttered quietly.
Narcissa sipped the tea she had brought with her. "How should we handle this, Lucius?"
"Many of my old 'friends' would pay top dollar for this information," he mused. Both occupants of the study knew Lucius had no intentions of following through with that idea. The vote he cast the night prior at the Wizengamot - in addition to his necessarily public denunciation of the Dark Lord years prior - had inclined most former Death Eaters to curse him on sight if they thought they could. Even with this information in hand, they would likely seek his death for his having taken a leaf out of Igor's book after the Dark Lord's fall. They had even needed to improve the wards over their manor due to the no less than eight attempted attacks on their household by former Death Eaters.
"I confess I'm at a loss, Narcissa. Something must be done of course, but I've no legal claim to the boy; our blood relation is quite distant," Lucius said, his eyes closed as he thought on the matter.
"Even given his grandmother Dorea being a Black by blood, my chances of taking guardianship are slim at best. And Dumbledore would nix whatever possibility remained, irrespective of our high regard in society," she said in response. "And as I do not know who James and Lily named as his other guardians with Sirius out of the picture, I'm not sure who he has been placed with."
'Narcissa has the nearest blood claim to him that I can think of. Damn, no, Andromeda would have a better claim as her reputation is without reproach among Dumbledore's number is without reproach...' Lucius thought.
Then a wild, bizarre idea entered into Lucius's mind. It was as dangerous a path to take as one could think of, but the potential benefits - both in terms of political and social capital, not to mention intimidation - were enormous.
"Narcissa", he said to regain her attention after having gone silent for several minutes. "What do you say to an, er, Black Family reunion?" he asked tentatively, knowing her estrangement with many of her family members.
Narcissa regarded Lucius warily. "And why on earth would you ask such a thing?"
"The Blacks are one of the few families that could manage it, but perhaps if you could gather thirteen our argument for taking custody of the boy would be rather more persuasive," he said.
"Y-you mean a family coven? That's a rather extreme suggestion. Getting enough female Blacks to agree notwithstanding, it will paint an even larger target on our backs," she said. Her disdain for Lucius's proposal need not be stated outright, it was self-evident.
"Even so, covens are given special legal protections given the legal precedents that transferred over from the old Wizard's Council. Throw in their ability to perform otherwise impossible magic through ancient rituals, I'd say the benefits more than justifies the risk," Lucius said. Admittedly, he was projecting more confidence in his plan than he felt it warranted, but he was under no illusion that it fooled his wife.
Narcissa gave an uncharacteristic groan before agreeing. "But don't get your hopes up. If by some miracle we get at least thirteen witches no further than 3 or 4 generations apart, that won't entail a successful bid for guardianship of Harry. Wills still dictate such matters and there's not a chance in hell the Wizengamot will allow such a legal precedent to be made, if only for fear of attempted copycats."
Lucius accepted her statement with a slight nod. "True, but we need not have direct guardianship. Only that the one who does is -coincidentally of course - a Black who will agree to join the coven your proposing."
"Fine, but Andromeda is still a bitch so you're coming along with me tomorrow to do most of the talking. I'd prefer to start with her first thing in the morning to get that unpleasantness over with…"
(A/N): Phew, that's enough writing for now. I'm somewhat skeptical of the quality of this chapter. This but with the goblins felt a bit rushed but it was necessary for my overall intention with this story. And no, there will definitely not be the old "Gringotts knows everything" trope. Anyway, please Review and Favorite. I was rather pleased by the popularity and positive reception from the first two chapters. Keep it up!
I really wanted to do this coven thing for awhile. There seem to be so few stories with it. The main one - also the best one - is the popular "Reclamation of Black Magic" fanfic. And as great as that story is so far, I feel it skipped too much of what would be interesting to read about in regards to Harry Potter being raised by a coven of witches from the Black Family. The time skip to Hogwarts, the lack of exploration of the reaction to Harry bring a Parslemouth, not showing how the thirteen witches's respective personalities and parenting affecting Harry, etc. So that will be a plot point in my story that will have relevance, especially later on when he prophecy and Riddle's international political work (spoiler!) becomes relevant to the story. That latter point is also why I (perhaps unfortunately) ended up loading this chapter with more political themes and events than I initially thought I would. Not all of the "Sacred Twenty-eight" are members of the Wizengamot (since some of the lines aren't around (like the Gaunts, Riddle aside).
Yes I made Dorea Harry's grandmother (and Charlus his grandfather) to tie him to the Blacks. Yes I'm aware this is not the canon family tree. Story intentions aside, Dorea and Charlus are just cooler names than those of his actual grandparents.
I'm certain my description of how the town of Galena is hidden in Brixton was confusing. If you've seen the 'Order of the Phoenix' movie, recall how the Grimmauld Place seemed to expand the space between houses without the surrounding people noticing. Like that, but basically it's a magically extended space that non-magical beings cannot see nor enter on their own. They're magically warded from entering the barrier separating the towns and such towns even have a Muggle repelling charm so they're inclined to stay away regardless. It's not exactly the Undetectable Extension Charm, but it's a similar bit of magic. I have a name for it but this author's note is long enough as it is.
Thanks for reading, see you next time (and hopefully sooner so long as life cools down for me soon)!