Chapter 11: Revealing ritual

All in all he felt his mind sanctuary was pretty well protected.

That night, when Harry was asleep, Voldemort tested Harry's defence, or more accurately, Harry's occlumency barrier. He had deemed Harry's mind was adequately protected (his words), but unless Harry can withstand another skilled legilimens attack, he must not be over-confident with himself. Voldemort had learned that the hard way after all.

xxxxx

The next day Voldemort decided that it was about time to check Harry for the presence of tracking charms and other things before learning any more magic. He had to resort to use a ritual, a more complex and tedious method since the boy had no wand. For the ritual, they had to use Aunt Petunia's decorative ceramic plates to serve as replacement for the stone slabs for the runes (Oh, if people ever heard what Voldemort was reduced to using...)

{You are going to perform your first ritual, Harry. We need a bit of your blood.}

Harry was understandably hesitant. But Voldemort explained that blood has powerful magical properties and thus an important element in many rituals. Since they neither had any wands to do the detection charm nor any potions ingredients, well, the blood ritual would have to do.

Voldemort made Harry practiced drawing runes, the strange inscriptions on paper until they were flawless. He explained the runes: body, mind, life-force (soul), magic, and blood. These would be the five base runes for the ritual. The other runes would be the aim of the ritual: track, compulsion, block, reveal, and remove.

Harry made a nick on his forefinger with a kitchen knife. With his finger, he used his blood to draw the rune for 'body' on the back of a plate. He drew the next base rune on a different plate so that he had a plate for each of the base runes. Then he drew the other five runes in a smaller size around the base rune. In the end he had five plates with different base runes: body, mind, life-force, magic, and blood and on each plate surrounding the base runes were the runes for track, compulsion, block, reveal, and remove.

That finished, Harry sat on the floor, cross-legged. Following Voldemort's instruction, Harry had arranged the plates in a circle around him and he faced the plate with the 'magic' as the base rune. Harry imagined and sensed his strands of magic reaching out and touched the plate. The blood runes glowed brightly, and he repeated sending his magic to the rest of the plates. When all five plates were glowing, without warning, a blood-red light emerged from each plate and criss-crossed with each other, forming a pentacle of light around Harry. The blood-red pentacle was humming with power and the air crackle with magic.

{Brace yourself.}

Harry opened his mouth to ask why when suddenly the lights suddenly rushed towards him, slamming directly into his body. Harry felt his body tingled with the magic; pulsing, pushing, prodding all over. It was a discomforting feeling, but thankfully not painful. With shock Harry realized that glowing blood-red runes were starting to appear underneath his skin.

{Don't panic. They will disappear as soon as we got out of this pentacle. Let's see.}

Voldemort clicked his tongue, {Someone must be really interested in you, Harry. Someone very powerful, from the look of these. That's tracking charm; he'd find you wherever you go. I wonder how far the range of the detection is... Now, that's life-force monitoring charm; obviously he wanted to know that you're still alive.}

Harry was conflicted. There was someone out there that cared if he was alive? But why didn't that person ever come to see him? Or at least check up on him? Hadn't the person realized he was about to die by Vernon's hands? Didn't they care at all if he was treated like a slave and was simply miserable?

{There's no memory-blocking charm...no magic-blocking charm... Ah, nasty one, a compulsion charm. Let's see... Hmm... it makes you consider this as your home and will never leave it for another...}

"But I've NEVER considered this my home!"

{That meant you resisted part of this compulsion after all. But Harry, have you ever thought of running away from this house, after all that they did to you? Or at least report it to someone?}

Harry spluttered, "But-but here at least I have a roof over my head! And at least I have something to eat! And I had no money to run away! How can I live by myself? And if-if..."

{Good, you're thinking rationally. So you're not as stupid as you look. But you see, a part of it was from this compulsion. You were afraid, afraid someone will make you leave this house if they ever found about how you were treated.}

Or perhaps, Harry had started to believe all the vile words Petunia and Vernon had spewed over the years, and thought that he was a freak, useless and hated, and that everyone else thought so of him as well. And that he had no place to go as no one would ever accept him anywhere. Why would anyone, when his own relatives hated him?

Harry was shaking when he asked, "Do you know who did this?"

Voldemort considered his answer carefully, {I'm not sure, but I can give a good guess. We have to discuss this later. Now Harry, we need to finish this first, much longer and those who placed the charms might come.}

"Well, let them come then!" Harry was indignant; he'd really like to meet the ones who would do such things to him.

Voldemort chuckled, {Letting your anger over your head again, Harry? Do think. You will be easily overpowered. You really don't want to answer their questions. And it is better not to show our hands too early. Don't you think it is better if they didn't know that you knew about these charms?}

Harry had to admit that Voldemort was right. "But the charms can be removed, right?"

{Yes. But I don't think we should remove the tracking and monitoring charms. Once we removed them, the caster will find out. Don't worry; we can transfer the tracking charm to something else.}

"The compulsion?" Harry asked.

{That one can be removed, I believe. Now let's start.}

The process required a lot of his magic and concentration that left Harry exhausted. He had to use his own magic strands and directed them to the runes of the compulsion charm on his skin, pushing it and pulling it off his body. Once out of his body, he placed the compulsion charm (now shaped like a long red string of different runes) on one point of the pentacle. It pulsed and then disappeared, absorbed into the pentacle's magic.

He repeated the effort to take off the tracking charm.

{Now transfer the charm to your glasses.}

"Wouldn't they be able to track it when I wear the glasses?"

{Well, you need to place it on something close to you, something important. You still have to carry the charm sometimes, otherwise it will be suspicious. Only when you wanted to go somewhere, ah, questionable, you don't have to wear it. Anyway, you can always get different glasses.}

Harry was doubtful about getting another pair of glasses, not when he hadn't change to a different pair since he was five. But he complied, reasoning that he could remove the tracking charm later. He only needed to perform the ritual again, right? Urgh, not more blood...

They finished the ritual soon after. The pentacle of light had vanished when Harry gathered the plates away. Harry's skin had also returned to normal as the runes disappeared. Harry decided he wanted to keep the plates instead of returning them to the cupboard after washing the blood away. With bleach, no less.

"So, can you tell me now who placed the charms on me?"

{I've told you the person who did them is very powerful. And I can say that there's only one person that can match my power; one Albus Dumbledore. But this is merely a guess.}

"Not Dumbledore again?" Harry knew about Voldemort's hatred for Dumbledore. He thought Voldemort can be a bit... biased.

{Oh yes. He's the most likely person. Let's see. He had all the power, he had the connection if he so chooses, and he practically hold the British wizarding nation in his hands! He can do anything and everyone will agree to it...}

"What do you mean?"

{I meant the fact that he holds three most influential positions in the wizarding world. One, he's the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the nation's school for magical children; also Head of Wizengamot, that's the British wizarding parliament (well, sort of); also Head of ICW, a confederation for all magical nations in the world! Imagine that! It's simply absurd how a single person can hold so much power!} Well, unless the person was him of course.

Harry frowned, "So, what's someone like that had to do with me?"

{You haven't forgotten the Prophecy have you? Add to that you were the only one able to survive the killing curse, from me no less, so yes; I think he had everything to do with you. The question is, when did he place the charms? Is he the one who put you here?

And Harry, I think it's about time we have a talk with your Aunt, don't you think?}

A/N:

I couldn't find anywhere that stated exactly when Dumbledore became 'Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot', and 'Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards', so in this story I assume he already hold both titles before and during the First War.

Next, Petunia and a glimpse of the truth...

Thank you for reading, and reviews are always appreciated.