AN: I've spent a lot of time sick and/or lacking motivation lately, which explains why I haven't finished posting this story. The tale is finished, and I just have to put it up… however, I'm going to just throw up the original versions and not slave away editing them (else you'll probably never see them).
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Dancing With Myself
Chapter 4: Sink Another Drink
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Two days on the beach near Sydney did a lot to put Harriet in higher spirits. Out of Hogwarts, they'd done the normal "I'm Harry Potter and don't follow the normal rules of magic" trip around the globe followed by a quick stop in Italy to dispatch a note to Professor McGonagall and pick up a few things. After a quick chat, Harry and Harriet had decided that Dumbledore was going to try something and having the Professor as a tentative ally might help prevent major issues. To that end, they let her know about a secure Gringotts drop box that Harry had established for important correspondence.
Harriet spent much of her time on the beach trying to seduce Harry using the skimpiest bathing suits she could find. She found more uses for hair removal charms in those two days than in three years at Hogwarts. For his part, Harry did his best to maintain his composure around his twin and kept his own counsel about exactly how close she had come to getting ravished. Only the fact that he was disturbed by his attraction to her and his uncertainty that she really wanted what she was hinting at kept him in check.
After the first two days, they changed to a different resort a few miles up the beach and resumed their training.
"What Dumbledore doesn't realize, and I doubt Voldemort does either, is that we are Animamagi, emphasis on the 'ma'. Roughly translated, an Animamagus is a 'soul mage'," Harry lectured on their first day of training. "It certainly sounds a lot more impressive than it really is, though, unless you're willing to go darker than dark. The process of creating one was a secret of the ancient Egyptians, though a handful of cults have discovered it since. Voldemort and Dumbledore, being the fools that they are, still managed to do a rather perfect job on us. I'm not sure the prophecy didn't do a bit of it, too, since pure luck doesn't really seem likely."
Harriet grimaced at the mention of the prophecy. Ever since Harry had filled her in on it, she'd been blaming it for her ruined life and rightly so.
"Making an Animamagus is a three step process. First, you implant a soul fragment into the victim and weld it to their essence with a killing curse. Secondly, you have to temper them to the point that they have a will of iron. Typically, that means repeated beatings, starvation, and confinement. Third, you have to apply a second killing curse, which they have to find a way to survive. The method the Egyptians used for surviving the second curse is one of the things that has been lost to time, but the Hallows did a good enough job of it for us. If you do the job right, the person comes back to life and viola, a new Animamagus. If you mess it up… well, the Dementors are the result of a failed experiment into this. Most often, you just end up with a corpse."
Looking a little green at the thought of Dementorhood, Harriet broke in. "What does it do, though?"
"Good question," he said with a wink. "Well, there are two parts to it… one can be very, very dark, and the other is grey or even light. The dark part is the consumption of someone's anima to gain the knowledge and skill of the person. The anima is kind of like the soul, but it's both more and less than that. You've already done that once with Voldemort's fragment inside you. I've done it a number of times, including with an ancient Egyptian Horcrux, which is how I learned a lot of this stuff. You can even suck the soul out of a person, if you want to… but I caution you against it. Destroying a fragment is one thing, but to actually devour all of a person would likely destroy your personality, remaking you into something else. I think, anyway, as I've never tried it and the information I gained from the Horcrux indicated that it wasn't done back then."
"The light stuff is more useful, in general, and is mostly internal. Primarily, you can become more aware of how your own anima is affected by spells and potions and then mimic that later. On the plus side, it saves you having to actually have the potion on hand. On the down side, it uses your magical energy to get the effect and you have to be able to concentrate enough to get it started. That's why I'm going to be brewing some potions while you're learning to mediate. We'll cover Occlumency to some extent while we're doing this, but we'll still have to come back to that later."
With that, the lecture ended and Harriet spent a very long week getting in touch with her inner self while Harry brewed potions and watched over her. She was disappointed when he informed her that one side effect of the Animamagus creation was that she would never be able to become an Animagus because the two magics interacted poorly. It was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the effects of Polyjuice Potion could be mimicked, though each form had to be 'learned' separately.
By the end of the first week, Harriet had just managed to 'feel' her soul, magical essence, magical core, or whatever the anima really was. Harry was done with a great number of potions and at the "stir every few days" point with others. All-in-all, things were going very well. Too well, in fact.
On the seventh day since the first task, a secure Gringotts owl delivered a mail packet for Harry. The Gringotts owls could, of course, find anyone with a vault key, which made most mail wards ineffective against them. Fortunately for Harry and Harriet, however, Gringotts was treaty bound to not abuse that power.
The package, wrapped in plain brown paper, was from the Transfiguration professor and contained two things. First, a short notice which informed Harriet of the time and date of the ball. Apparently, Dumbledore had declared it to be an official part of the tournament, making her attendance required by the magical contract. The penalty for her absence wouldn't be as severe as if she missed a Task, but it would not be pleasant. From the tone of the letter, it was clear that Minerva doubted the wisdom of this and was starting to see Dumbledore's actions in a less favorable light.
Though she still didn't know Harry's name, she did mention that "her Master" might have done more harm than good with "his little dark wizard act". Also in the packet was a copy of the Daily Prophet. One look at the headline was enough to make Harry utter some rather colorful phrases.
Harriet snatched it from his hands and her face immediately lit up in a smile which faded to confusion as she noticed how upset Harry was. "'Sirius Black cleared of all charges'," she read. "What's so bad about that? My godfather's a free man."
Harry nodded. "Sirius being free is a good thing, but this has Dumbledore's fingerprints all over it. With Sirius never having been charged with an actual crime, your guardianship was inappropriately awarded to the Dursleys. Now the courts can retroactively shift the guardianship, and all decisions that were made concerning you will be under review by Sirius. That means that the loopholes I used to free you from your British citizenship will have to be exploited again… and I highly doubt they'll still exist by the time we could convince Sirius to go along with it. Damn."
"You mean…" Harriet managed, her mouth hanging open in shock. "I'm going to have to go back to Hogwarts?"
"Actually or legally? Legally, yes, but I'll fight tooth and nail to keep you out of there if you don't want to be there. That little dust up with the Aurors was obviously a set up by Dumbles. He wanted to either get you back or cement the Ministry on his side in this matter. Looks like I gave them just what they wanted," he growled and put his hand to his forehead as though warding off a headache.
"We still have three weeks till the Ball, so I suggest that we finish with these potions, finish the training we're going to be doing, and then head back a little early to see Sirius. I just hope we can find the old dog," Harry said after a time, his voice betraying how annoyed he was with the whole situation. "Oh, and we'll have to get you some dancing lessons, too."
Harriet was a fourteen year old girl who had been abused her entire life, been turned into a Animamagus through a rather reprehensible process, died, chatted with a dragon, and was currently trying to seduce a male version of herself from another dimension. Even with all of that, the fourteen year old girl part lit up at the thought of getting to wear a set of dress robes and go to a formal ball. A goofy grin spread across her face.
For his part, Harry just groaned.
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The week before the Yule Ball saw Harry and Harriet packing up their things in Austrailia. They'd both spent the previous day downing potions as Harry discovered that his Anima had changed significantly since his trip across dimensions, making much of the soul magic he'd learned there useless. There had been the requisite battery of healing potions, as well as a number of harmful potions and their counters. Poisons and their antidotes were not covered as Harry indicated that his blood held a mix of basilisk venom and phoenix tears that was sufficient to keep him safe from any other poison for the rest of his life. They assumed that Harriet would be the same.
They had also spent a large amount of time training underwater. Gillyweed was another substance that Harriet could mimic after experiencing it, which made it even more useful as she was no longer beholden to its duration. The two practiced with a wide array of spells useful for underwater combat, detection, and defense, using the plentiful jellies and sharks of the Australian coast for practice.
"If you can handle a school of frenzied tiger sharks, I doubt merfolk will be a challenge," Harry noted just before conjuring raw bloody meat between Harriet and a school of the massive critters and Apparating away. She gave him a well deserved thrashing once she finally made it back to shore, one of her feet reduced to a tiny budding mass and magically exhausted from keeping the blood replenishing potion and tissue regrowth potions working. The foot had been usable again the next day, but she still spent a great deal of time glaring at Harry.
For his part, Harry found it quite entertaining and took to making comments about finding a Nundu at every opportune moment. Harriet was not amused.
While Harriet was swimming and meditating, Harry continued his brewing and went about shoring up a fake identity for himself. He secured from Gringotts new papers and sat his N.E.W.T.s at the Australian Ministry, coming through with quite a few Os. He even went so far as to visit his supposed hometown for a couple of days and familiarize himself with the sights. He had a fairly good identity as James Oslow, a young man born in England and raised in Australia.
In any case, three days before the ball, the pair returned to England wearing the faces and forms of a couple of Austrailian Muggles that Harry had filched hair samples from. Harry had a Plan. Unfortunately, that Plan involved finding Sirius Black and striking an arrangement before the Yule Ball, and there wasn't much time to do it.
The pair of them took a room at the Leaky Cauldron under assumed names and set out to find Sirius Black. For once, Harry's luck held and they found Number 12 Grimauld Place to be occupied and without a Fidelous. A rather wary and haggard looking Sirius Black answered the door to a young couple in cloaks, his wand gripped tightly in one hand.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Harriet chirped out and pushed the door open, slipping inside past her startled and confused godfather. Harry followed, ever so gently steering Sirius's wand hand aside as he moved and pushing the door closed behind her. Harriet's smirk only widened as she dropped the polyjuice effect, reverting to her natural feature and further shocking her host.
"Harr--Harriet?" he managed at last, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. She tackled him in a fierce hug, and tears streamed down his face. He didn't even seem aware of Harry's presence, a fact that he took advantage of to make sure no one else was in any of the nearby rooms.
Done with his inspection, Harry waited for the tearful reunion to finish, blinking back his own tears. Of all of the people he'd seen in this reality, none had affected him on the same level as Sirius.
"I thought you were kidnapped," Sirius muttered as he patted the shorter girl's hair soothingly. She pushed back from the hug a little at the suggestion and Harry could see her lips thin into a hard line on her teary face.
"Who told you that? Dumbledore? That old… nevermind. Some good came out of this, at least. He only got you released so I'd have to go back to Hogwarts and suffer more of his presence."
Sirius was startled at the venom in the girl's voice and blinked the tears from his eyes. It was then that he noticed Harry, standing unobtrusively to the side. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice calm but guarded.
"Me?" Harry asked. "I'm Harriet's teacher. The one who's supposed to have kidnapped her and all that hogwash."
Sirius raised his wand toward Harry, but Harriet's hands caught his wrist and forced it down. "No, Sirius. He is a friend. He's done nothing but tell me the truth about what's been going on and how I've been used. How you're being used, too, for that matter."
Sirius stopped trying to raise his wand and sighed. "Fine. That doesn't answer my question, though. Who are you?"
By way of answer, Harry let his polyjuice disguise drop and returned to his normal 17 year old visage. Sirius gasped out "James" and dropped his wand. However, a second look resulted in his face hardening. "You're not James."
"Got me there, Padfoot. Want to hear about the greatest prank in wizarding history?" Harry asked with a smirk.
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It took two retellings of the story for Sirius to believe what Harry was telling him. The fact that Harry knew secrets that even Harriet hadn't uncovered about the Marauders and the Potters did a lot for his case. When he was done, Sirius paled.
"I think that I might have done something bad," Sirius groaned. "One of the conditions of having my name cleared was that Harriet would have to attend Hogwarts until her O.W.L.s. I didn't think anything of it because of, you know, the whole kidnapping thing, but… damn."
Harry sighed as he lost a little of his hope for a peaceful solution to their problem. "It's my fault, I guess. I didn't expect Dumbledore to be able to spring you that easily… I mean, in my world, he never managed it. I guess that little fiasco with the Aurors really did it, huh?"
Of the three, Harriet was the only one with any cheerfulness left. "Aw, come on, it can't be that bad. We'll think of something."
Harry and Sirius nodded, dejectedly, as the redhead flopped herself on Harry's lap. "I'll make them regret having me at school," she said with a wolfish grin. "I mean, I know where I can get gallons and gallons of basilisk venom and I know where the pumpkin juice is kept."
Harry sighed dramatically, though he had to fight back a grin. "Now, Harriet, what'd I tell you about killing people?"
"Don't get caught?"
"Besides that."
"Take all of their stuff?"
"No, besides that."
"Don't do it without a really good reason and only if there is no other choice," she sing-songed and then started giggling.
Behind her back, Harry stage-whispered to Sirius. "I think it's the red hair, makes her mental."
Sirius, who had been watching the exchange with a mixture of horror and amusement, broke out laughing as Harriet swatted Harry about the face and neck.
A few minutes later, Remus walked into the room having just let himself in and stopped to gape at the scene before him. His 'just cleared of all charges' best friend and 'totally not in a gay way' life mate Sirius Black was sitting on the floor, laughing his head off while a young couple that looked suspiciously like Lily and James Potter were wrestling on the floor. Well, the girl was wrestling, the boy looked more like he was trying to avoid a beating.
"Lily? James?" he gasped out and all action in the room came to a dead stop. Then Sirius started laughing again, even louder as Harry and Harriet separated and rose, straightening their close and trying to look dignified.
What followed was a repeat of their earlier telling and retelling of the story, though with Sirius 'helping' it took twice as long.
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Sirius wasted no time in contacting the solicitor he had already enlisted to have Harriet legally adopted, and by the afternoon of the Ball, they had a workable solution. Once the adoption was finalized, Harriet would be the official heir to the Black family, bringing an entire host of pureblood loopholes into play. As she had been raised by Muggles, it was expected that she would need a great deal of official training and thus was allowed an outside tutor during any hours not reserved for traditional classes. While with her tutor, she was able to leave school grounds as the tutor deemed it necessary. There were even provisions in place to prevent Dumbledore from using detentions or the like to make Harriet miss her tutoring sessions.
Harry was quick to sign on for that job, intending to find a place in Hogsmeade to stay and be near to hand should Harriet need him.
In the immediate future, Harriet was more concerned with finding appropriate dress robes, or as Harry soon learned, barley appropriate dress robes. Wearing his official 'James Oslow' face, Harry accompanied her to Madame Malkin's and watched as she had the witch shorten and shrink every aspect of the dark red number she was eyeing until even the seamstress was blushing a little. A blushing Harry talked her into a little more modesty, but not much. Harriet had spent years as a scrawny gawky thing and was quite eager to show off her newly developed assets.
The dress fit well with Slytherin's locket, which Harry had presented to her the evening before along with a coaching session in how to properly devour a the creamy soul center of a Horcrux. It'd taken her an hour with a toothbrush to get the taste out of her mouth, but the boost in power and skill was no doubt worth it. Harriet joked that she didn't think she could eat just one, and Harry just grinned and promised to find her another one.
When his turn came, Harriet kept trying to get him to make it all tighter and more form fitting, but he eventually drew the line. The form he was wearing was the one he intended to wear to the castle, but he might still need to shift forms at some point and clothing that was too tight would be a problem. Eventually, Harry paid for their purchases and they spent the last day getting ready to face the castle.