Disclaimer: Anyone would think the fact that this is on a fan fic site would be enough to tell you all that I own nothing JK Rowling and the Warner Bros trolls own. That being said, I am also riffing off a story called The Power of the Press, whose author would know what is his.

Rating: I'm a little confused by this system. I suspect PG:13 would be best for anything I write, though

Notes: Don't expect regular postings, sadly. I write in fits and starts.

Chapter Seven: Words

That night, it took Henry an unusually long time to fall asleep, as he kept waking up, sure he'd had a nightmare, only to be able to remember nothing of the kind. Fortunately, Monday morning, he didn't feel any particular listlessness from that, which was good, as Lowell's class was introducing the first set of runes they'd be learning at this school. He'd decided to start them on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which he said was due to their picture based nature, on the hopes that it would get them into the habit of recognizing and interpreting runes. That, and because there was no spoken Egyptian remaining in spoken form, so they wouldn't have to learn pronunciation.

"Now, as a starting exercise, just to help us get a feel for how hieroglyphs work and were invented," the professor said after his little intro to the topic, "I want each of you to write a note to a friend without using any letters or numbers. Nothing private, or for a particular person, as I'll be collecting them in ten minutes and enlarging them so we can all try and figure out what you were trying to say in your notes."

Everyone thought this was great fun, and there was a lot of giggling and whispering, as kids took out spare pieces of paper and started to doodle on them. Henry didn't know what to do for a while, before smiling slowly. He drew a sun, then a few kneeling stick figures, then a dagger, then a heart, then a pyramid, then a fire, then a falling man, then a small sailboat, then a cross, then a few men with swords, followed by a lot of people laying on the ground, then chains, then more people, a money sign, a gun, a flag, and a stick figure with a chain standing on a man laying on the ground. He did this very quickly, with almost no pausing. Henry would have done more, but the teacher called time and collected them. Most of his classmates had drawn stick figures doing things, and hearts and arrows along with poorly disguised letters and numbers. It was kind of fun when his finally came up, seeing what everyone thought of his little sequence of events.

"It's obvious whoever did this was some kind of sociopath," said Crawley, "there are way too many people dying for a simple note, otherwise."

"Which only means it isn't a note, idiot," said Marie, "but some kind of story, with people fighting."

"Let's just look at in order, like all the others, shall we," said the prof, "what could each symbol mean, if it were a story, ok?"

"Sun, kneeling, knife, heart, triangle, flame, falling, boats, cross, knights, sleepover, chain people, money, gun, flag stomping," Maria's friend rattled off immediately in a monotone. "Don't ask me what it means, you guys are the ones who think it is a story."

A bunch of people chimed in at the same time with stories, some lifted right out of action movies. "Alright," Lowell said when they fell quiet, "would the note writer like to tell us how wrong or right we are?"

"Sure," Henry said, trying to ignore Crawley muttering about him, "it's what I remember of the history of the Americas from a TV program. Sun worshiping Aztec's cut people's hearts out and burned them on their pyramids, then threw the bodies down. Columbus had three ships, then Catholics came to convert with conquistadors with swords or something, and lots of people died. They brought in slaves to work for them, then there were bloody revolutions in South America, and they became countries and banned slavery."

Everyone stared at him, including the professor, who struggled to continue after that speech. "Well, thank you Mr. Carpenter. I imagine your friends hope you don't always pass notes like that. Let's um, look at the next note, shall we?" Fumbling, he pulled one out, and muttered, "oh look, I can see flowers already."

When class was over, Henry slipped out as fast as he could, worried his teacher might try to talk to him after class. So he'd confused note to a friend with notes from a pretend class, on mistake. The in-class project had taken so long, they'd only really gotten a hand out covering what the hieroglyphs were, with a few pictures of ancient markings on walls and monuments. Henry was already vaguely familiar with what they looked like, having spent a very lovely afternoon in the library once, reading all about ancient Egypt, especially its gods and architecture. Now he wondered if any of the myths about their curses had been real, and added the culture to his study list, before remembering that they would likely cover this topic in history, his next class, eventually, at least.

Apparently, Omagachi had found out what his fellow teachers were working on, so they did talk a bit about Egypt, and some of the modern curse breaking work being done there. He ended by assigning them to find one hieroglyphics-based curse and write about how the meaning of the symbols related to its function. Some of the others in the class were still groaning about having a paper on a weekday when he left lunch early to got to Merlin's field for archery. Like everyone else there, he was looking forward to getting to shoot things, but it turned out that the whole first meeting was mostly about safety rules and how to pick a bow with the right weight. People were pretty inattentive, until one of the senior students shot an arrow that punched halfway through a heavy wooden door standing nearby. Suddenly, nobody wanted to risk being in the path of a stray arrow.

The older students then demonstrated both the western and eastern shooting styles, since they would learn both, and revealed that in a rare occurrence of club cooperation, the school had just started a time for kids who'd learned both archery and horse riding would get to try horseback archery, in the style of Genghis Khan, Attila, and all of the Huns in general. Then they offered to answer questions. At first, these were mostly about when meetings would be, and purchasing equipment. Then a snotty looking older kid who was new to archery, despite not being in Henry's class spoke up.

"What good is knowing any of this non-magical stuff, anyway?" He sneered, "especially something so outdated as archery. Even the mundanes haven't used bows in centuries for warfare."

"I'm surprised you need to ask us that, Jamison," replied the girl who'd shot the arrow through the door, "I mean, you've been here at the institute as long as me, and came out here to learn for a reason. Why don't you tell us?"

"Don't get so huffy, Mel," another older kid chided, "Jamison, was it? Look, how many spells do you know that have a five hundred yard range, without being slow rituals or wide-area effects?"

"Well, just cuz I don't know any doesn't mean there aren't any. Wouldn't a good sniper rifle be better, anyway?" Jamison crossed his arms.

"How about magical areas that scramble advanced machinery, like a magical creature preserve. I mean, the school is built on one, you should know."

"I'd do what the handlers do—get closer using concealment magic, or something, and use a spell, or ward the gun against magic," Jamison retorted, "I'm only here cuz I can't join the gun club without basic marksmanship from an archery section."

"How many creatures are magic resistant," insisted Mel, "or can sense magical disguises or other magical beings, like wizards? How do you think they hunt the demiguise? Even those gun wards are magical enough to effect the electronic sighting on a sniper rifle, you know."

The boy shut up after that, though he didn't look happy about it. One kid asked about protective equipment that she'd seen before at a sporting goods store. Apparently, they would be using the finger guards she mentioned, as well as another type for the eastern style. Arm guards, however, were professed to be "designed to encourage weakness and bad form," and were forbidden. Another kid asked if any former students had gone on to the Olympics for archery, which the older students seemed to find so hilarious they didn't answer, and only shooed everyone off to dinner when they had finished laughing.

Henry grimaced, as Mondays were basically curry days, which he already hated, and pretty much meant he had to fill up on side dishes. That quantity of burning spice was not worth the ice cream they served afterward, for all that most everyone else seemed to like it. Disliking and therefore not eating a food was still kind of a novel experience for Henry, and he kind of enjoyed turning down the cafeteria ladies, for once. Some of the other boys had dared each other to order the extra hot version, and eat all of it. One of them tried to get him to join them.

"Course, Carpenter is too scared to even eat regular ol' curry, isn't that right?"

"Yeah, you chicken Carpenter," they chorused, teasing him.

"I don't need some stupid curry to breath fire," Henry retorted, and with only a little redirection of his magical focus, blew out a stream of orange flames from his mouth. "How's that, lads?"

"Shit, how did you do that, man? Some trick candy you slipped in while we weren't looking?"

Henry opened his mouth wide, "no trick, see? Just a bit of the ole magic." For fun, he snapped his fingers and made a flame appear in one hand, then the other, before blowing another line of fire out his mouth.

"You a fire elemental, or something? Nobody's that good with fire otherwise, I think," said one of the boys.

"Not that I know of, as of now. They won't let me take the talent tests till I'm done with these nutrient potions," he replied, then grimaced and downed one, and everyone nodded sympathetically, "I'll tell you all when I know, ok? Anyone ready for ice cream yet?"

Diverted, the whole group charged back up to the counter, and Henry added elemental magic to his list of topics to research that evening, before going to bed. He wasn't sure what they meant, besides not being about the periodic table, no matter how ridiculous he thought it was to think of fire as an element. His list was really getting a bit long, he realized. It seemed as thought the magical world was just full of mysteries that were common knowledge to those born to it. He simply had to catch up, somehow, Henry realized.

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That night, Henry shared a dream with a certain little red haired girl who lived on a distant island, and was taking an afternoon nap at the time, against her wishes, for the last time. In this dream, they saw what could have been older versions of themselves in a cottage, the dark haired man crumpling to the floor in the front room, glassy-eyed, the woman crying out wordlessly in an upstairs room, her back to an empty crib. With the sound of her voice, flames appeared, immolating the cottage, and covering her unharmed form. Almost all features of the place were destroyed in that sudden blast of flames, though the man was untouched, and the upstairs did not collapse, as it would have in an ordinary fire. The conflagration ended as she fell dead, save for a few soft flames in her hair, before they too winked out.

When the little girl woke up, every candle in her room had a brilliant green flame on it, which burned nothing, and could only be extinguished by her touch. Henry awoke to find, when he went to get one of his crystals to carry around, that all of them now had a small blue spark flickering in them, whether they had previously been charged with magic or not. He wondered, not for the first time, what his parents had looked like, if this dream had been based on some faint baby memory.

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The library had far more information on fire elementals than any of the other four types of so-called elemental mages, presumably because they were more interesting and destructive. This made the topic far more confusing, however, as they intersected with myths and other kinds of fire-based magical powers. Dragons, djinns, the firebird, a fellow from the Carpathians called Levan Firestorm, who was not a wizard, as well as various great historical fires all came up when he tried to search the topic. About all he could discover for sure was that fire powers tended to be innate talents, trainable, but generally not learned, aside from a few basic fire spells and the like, most of which had been designed to imitate the kind of thing fire mages and beings could do with their bare hands. Nothing was totally clear enough to tell him what kind of fire talent he had, which only had Henry anticipating the talent inventory even more.

Classes that day seemed to really drag, if only because Henry was anticipating his extracurricular meetings afterwards. They had to be doing the most boring thing possible in gym—running the mile. While trying, it wasn't as though the track was very interesting or diverting, and herbology/potions was almost as bad. Ordinarily, Henry loved the practical way the class combined knowledge and applications, but today, they were basically being used as free labor, having been assigned to either weed the basic greenhouses they'd been working in, or to scrub the lab tables. The professor was absent, but the class hadn't been cancelled, so the teacher's assistants, older students, were there to supervise and make sure they didn't do anything they weren't supposed to do to the plants.

Henry was a lot happier about how the morning had gone, when the track team immediately demanded running times from everyone, as they were the ones who had requested the gym classes to run the mile. After expressing pleasure at his time, and most other team members, the coach proceeded to spend the rest of the practice making them stretch, run short drills, and tearing their running styles apart, till they rant the way he wanted them too, with proper stride and posture. According to his rant, the older kids had gotten sloppy over break.

Fortunately, Henry did not have to experience much of the coach's ire, having a very economical way of moving, learned by necessity. He was already afraid of Thursday, though, as they would be doing hurdles, and he'd never even seen how anyone did that, noticing only that where they rested against the fence, the hurdles were higher than his waist, even with his recent growth spurts. All this exercise meant that at dinner, his appetite was completely thrown off—Henry felt like he was starving, but when he tried to eat, he was so agitate he could only eat a few bites before he felt some nausea. Luckily, the dance team decided to start off slow that evening, with some very simple rhythm exercises, involving sitting in chairs and snapping fingers, which was a huge relief for poor exhausted Henry.

By the time he went to bed that night, Henry felt much more calm, until the dream came. All night, as soon as he was asleep, he dreamt of a dark man shouting, "defend yourself," then hitting him in the head somehow, which woke him up immediately. Every time, he was unable to do anything but stand there and wait for the coming blow. This happened seven times before Henry gave up on trying to sleep. He spent the morning making a dream catcher from a pattern in a library book out of threads from some of his old shirts and fallen twigs from the edge of the jungle. He even rigged up a little frame to hang it over the head of his bed. With any luck, there actually was some inherent magic in what he had been told was a mundane craft object.

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That night, in a sprawling English manor house, a pale boy woke up sweating, having dreamt once again that he was a girl with tangled hair and a strange interest in slimy bugs and discarded bits of detritus like bottle caps, broken rubber bands, and firework casings, not that he knew what those odd bits of plastic were. He swore, as always, to do all he could to be nothing like this girl, afraid that it might turn him into one. Grabbing the brush on his nightstand, the boy combed and straightened his own blond hair till it lay flat in gleaming lines, before lying back down. He would not tell even his mother of these dreams.

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Henry, however, slept without dreams, though thanks to the ritual, he still woke up early. To his surprise, there was a bit of black slime on one of the strings of his dream catcher, though he was not sure, for it was gone when he tried to look at it again. Nor did he have much time to ponder this, for it was Saturday already. The week had just flown by, with the Thursday track practice revealing that he'd have to wait for hurdles till he'd grown a bit more, and really nothing else outstanding in Henry's mind. Now he had special permission and a direct portal scheduled from the school to the bank, so that he could go through the lineage ritual, as planned. He put on his best clothes, which were, of course, the school uniform, before gulping down a roll he'd pocketed the night before at dinner to speed up the breakfast process. He dashed down to the headmaster's office, where the jovial man was eating a huge breakfast at his desk.

"You're here awfully early, my lad," he chortled between bites, "in a hurry to find out if you've got any money, eh?"

"I do have a seven am meeting, sir, and don't wish to be late," Henry replied calmly, "may I have the portal activated?"

"Want a bite to eat before you go?" The man indicated the overloaded trays of his own repast.

"No sir, just the portal," he said, more firmly time, "I'm much too nervous to eat, and know enough about goblins to not wish to anger them."

"Alright then, lad, hold your horses. Here it is," he said, digging an expensive looking pressed card out of some papers, "don't forget to hold on tight!"

As soon as Henry took it, the headmaster tapped the seal with his wand, and before he'd gotten a good look at the seal, Henry had collapsed on the large version of it on the marble floor of the bank he'd first visited while shopping for school supplies. He could just see a few of the tents out the doors, still sparkling with morning dew, as he picked himself up off the floor. Without a second glance, he walked up to an open teller and silently handed the goblin the card. The creature glanced at it for only a moment, before shouting over his shoulder, "Ripstack, the boy from MPEd is here for his ritual. Come and take him back!"

The summoned goblin darted forward and under the counter to join Henry, and led him off down a gloomy torch lit corridor. It left him in a smallish side chamber with a number of uncomfortable leather chairs. Henry had just discovered that they squeaked when he sat down on them, when Ripstack darted back in and pulled him down the hall and into a gloomy office. "The is Gnarlfist, in charge of inheritance and bank rituals. Do what he says." With that, he was gone, and Henry was left alone with the white-haired goblin behind the desk.

Walking forward, Henry spoke tentatively, "Hello, sir, my name is…"

"Meaningless until the ritual has been completed," the goblin interrupted. "Give me your dominant hand."

Henry held out his right hand, and the goblin stabbed the palm with a silver dagger, before turning it down over a large goblet. Oddly, he felt no pain, and when the goblin let his hand go, he could see no sign of the injury that had bled into the goblet. Gnarlfist swirled the cup three times counter-clockwise, before throwing it onto the large blank wall opposite the door. It was made of crystal, and shattered in a shower of bloodstained glass shards, and Henry jumped out of his seat in alarm, having only just sat down. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a misty red vine seemed to grow out of the point of impact, spreading across the rough stone wall, filing it with fine branches and little curls. "Well," said the goblin, "that's more magical than I expected from a scholarship kid."

With that, he pulled open a drawer and took a scroll, which said, "Salient Points Pedigree" at the top, and affixed it to the point of impact. Names and other writing began to fill the blank space on the scroll, which unrolled almost to Henry's feet before it stopped. The goblin gave it a shake before Henry could read anything, and it rerolled. The vines began to fade, also. "Don't worry, lad," Gnarlfist said, "your family vaults will have tapestries to show nearly the same web. For now, we'll have a look at what's important."

"What do you mean by family vaults, sir?"

The goblin said nothing, merely held out the scroll for Henry to read.

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Salient Points Pedigree:

Harold Jamison Potter, also termed Henry Evan Carpenter, son of

James Tiberius Potter, son of

Tiberius Charlus Potter, son of

Charlus Stephan Potter, son of

Stephan Michael Potter, grand wizard and philosopher to the queen

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and son of Lily Anne Evans, also termed Lillian Potter, daughter of

Marie Anne Parker and Llewis Felonius Evans, son of

Archibald Howitzer Evans and Wednesday Friday Addams, daughter of

Gomez Charlus Addams and Morticia Nevus, also termed Mrs. Addams

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The lists were actually side-by-side, descending below each of his parent's names, but Henry honestly had to stop reading there, as he was thoroughly startled by these revelations. "A key to one of our standard trust vaults had appeared," the old goblin said, pulling the boy from his daze, "and the rest of your vaults would be blood keys, if you have any others available when you come of age. We will look into these relations of yours, and send post on results. For now, you may keep this brief form of your results. Would you like to access your trust vault?"

"Ah, yes, of course," he stammered. "I also kneed to know if my families allow me to complete the institute's standard talents test ritual."

"We will get back to you on that, Mr. Potter." The goblin then rang a small bell. "I'm summoning an assistant to take you to the vaults. You may expect a response from us within the week."

"I think I would prefer to go by Mr. Carpenter, for now. There could be a reason why my name was changed."

"We will do so once I am certain there is no prohibition against it in your family bylaws. What you are called at school and by friends has at this point less by way of legal implications, and is your decision."

Henry sighed, and wondered who his parents were, and if they were anything like his aunt and uncle. The trust vault held no clues, being nothing more than a pile of gold and silver. "British standard," the goblin had called the coins, "it would be best to get an automatic key pouch. Rather a bit like a credit card, if you know what that is, except you get real cash out of here, instantly converted into whatever kind of magical or mundane money needed, as selected."

"How expensive is something like that?"

"We actually make enough money on the exchange rates, we don't have to charge you anything for one," the little creature replied with a nasty smile.

"Then I suppose I had better get one, even if I can order from catalogues using just the key, right?"

"Yes, and that's how you'll have to pay for school, now that they'll get a report on you not needing their scholarships any more."

Henry frowned at that, but was distracted when the goblin brought him a small piece of parchment. "Found this buried under a pile of added interest money. Perhaps this isn't a completely standard trust vault. It looks like a letter for you, sir." Henry took it with trembling fingers, and broke the Potter seal to unfold the parchment and read something written by people whose very existence had been unknown to him until today's revelations.

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To my son, on the day this account was opened

Your father has told me that these accounts are standard requirements of his kind of pureblood family, and refill automatically from the family vaults, so you can spend as much as you want. I come from a more frugal tradition, and would point out that no fortune is bottomless, however great, and that it is also to pay for your education, my son, which is why you had not heard it mentioned by us till you started your magical schooling. So, happy eleventh birthday, Harry, and make me proud.

Love, your mother

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"But why did she think I wouldn't see this till I was eleven? Two years from now?" He was unable to process more important features of the letter yet.

"Because your trust is in England, as were the Potters, where they have started such educations at that age for centuries," said the goblin driving the cart, "We were only here as a result of a very special feature of the tunnels of Gringotts."

"Like the 'all forests are one' spell?"

"Yes, except that it only works for creatures like goblins who dig and delve beneath the surface for a living."

"Still, it is odd to think that for a moment that I was back in the land of my birth."

"Inside it indeed," chortled the goblin.

It seemed like only a moment later, before Henry was back on the surface, where he was told that the Gringotts port seals to the school were set to leave at certain times, and that the next was at noon, giving him perhaps two hours to kill, and that he should get out of the bank to do so and not get in the way. Outside, Henry noticed that there was quite a difference between the little shopping area when he had first visited it and now. Perhaps there was simply less now that back-to-school shopping was over for the year. Still, it was lovely, and he wandered around, buying only a thin and supposedly unbreakable chain, with which he hung his new key around his neck. Then, on a whim, he also got Chinese food from a little booth for lunch, rather than waiting to get back to school, before returning to catch his portal.