Disclaimer: I dont own any copyright material including Harry Potter and his friends/enemies.
underline - thoughts
underlined italics - non-english speaking
Okay note time; first I realise I forgot to post the review replies in the last chapter so they will be combined in this one. Second as an apology for forgetting it, and for taking so long in updating I have written a little omake which can be found at the bottom, tell me what you think.
Also after reading through the first chapters of this fic I discovered that chapter two had part of the beginning cut off so I will be replacing that chapter with the full one; it won't make to much difference over all but it will explain what I am actually talking about in the beginning there.
Finally, as there is a problem with my laptop I am currently working off 'docs to go' on my BlackBerry PlayBook and the dictionary/spell check isn't the best so please bear with me.
Kearia chewed on her lip absentmindedly as she focused on the potion brewing in front of her. She was currently on her second attempt after the disastrous and embarrassing, yet harmless failure the day before. It wasn't like the potion she was attempting was incredibly difficult or complicated, in fact it was quite the opposite; so easy a first year student could probably brew it with ease on their first attempt. No, the problem was that for every potion she ever tried to make, even those simple, first year grade ones her grandparents tried to teach her, something happened that distracted her, in turn causing her to mess up the potion to be. It didn't even matter how easy/complicated or how much/little time it took to brew, something happened and eventually her grandparents decided enough was enough and banned her from attempting to make anymore. Her failures weren't exactly dangerous; no fiery explosions, no acidic substances melting the floor and definitely no flying shrapnel. No, the reason why she was given a ban was because every attempt and therefore failure always resulted with anyone in the blast perimeter, which happened to be the entire room the potion was brewed in regardless of size, to turn entirely a different colour for at least two days before it wore off.
Take yesterday for example, when she was surprised by the Gringotts mail owl alerting her of. It's presence she accidently added just a tad to much dragon blood, causing an explosion that turned the entire room, and everything in it, a bright shade of fluorescent pink. Luckily she was able to dive out the room in time, unluckily though the owl didn't. She really didn't want to go see the goblins in charge of post anytime soon, but unfortunately she had to visit Gringotts as she had a meeting with Narcissa at Gringotts in a few hours, hopefully Nightclaw either found it amusing or wouldn't be informed.
She was brought out of her thoughts as the potion started hissing, the indicator that it was time to move onto the final step; take it off the flames and then add the last ingredient while stirring steadily as the potion cooled. Quickly, she tapped a rune carved into the floor with her wand and began stirring as she sprinkled in the last ingredient; a few grams of some fiery red coloured crystals which surprisingly, was fairly hot to the touch. She had absolutely no idea what the ingredient was, nor what animal/plant it came from but it was supplied along with the instructions to make the potion; though she had no idea what the potion was for either, just that she needed to take it before she could access the next set of memory spheres; a glass ball containing a collection of memories and once activated, played the memory much like a pensieve.
As she stirred, letting the potion cool down to drinking temperature, she thought back on the first time she opened the green trunk she had retrieved from her mothers vault. It had tuned out to be a multi-compartment trunk, and contained twenty different compartments, each with multiple rows of shelves containing various different sized drawers. So far, the two drawers she had accessed were only small and had only contained potion ingredients and instructions/messages in the form of memory spheres. The thing that rankled her a first, but soon relieved her was that all the compartments and drawers, bar the very first, were locked and would only open when she had sufficiently achieved the necessary requirements, given to her by the previous drawer's memory sphere. While it frustrated her not being able to move forward sooner, she understood the necessity of completing a task fully and not skip corners. Plus, with the amount of drawers in just the first compartment alone, she wouldn't know where to start, never mind what to move onto when she had completed a lesson.
The first drawer, which thankfully was already unlocked, contained a memory sphere explaining the purpose of the trunk, how to progress further and a brief overview of the sort of things she would be learning. After that she had found several memory spheres, books and rolls of hand written notes, all teaching her Occulamency and Ligillamency; both of which she was already proficient in but she still learned a few handy tricks from it. The second drawer, which had unlocked after a burst of magic had first scanned her, then tested her shields somehow, contained the recipe and brewing directions for the potion she was currently making as well as some of the harder to obtain ingredients including the weird red crystal. Unfortunately, her good luck seemed to have ended their; at the end of the recording from the second drawers memory sphere she was told of the two requirements to open the third drawer: firstly she needed to have taken the potion, a problem in itself as she couldn't brew to save her life and secondly, she needed to be within the wards of Hogwarts. She didn't understand the magic used to test her, ensuring she had completed the required tasks, and certainly didn't understand how it was sentient enough to test her Occlumency but no doubt it was highly complex and unknown; her mother had probably invented it for the express purpose of teaching her, and didn't leave any notes or teach it to someone.
After ten minutes of stirring, the potion had sufficiently cooled enough to drink. The resultant colour of the potion was a mixture of randomly splattered shades of red and orange, and looked to have a consistency of water with none of the chunks usually found in potions. Due to the recipe, and ingredient count was only for one person the cauldron she used was a specialised one, usually bought for newt level potions and above, wasn't much bigger than your average saucepan and had a cornered lip designed for easy pouring into flasks and vials. After she had poured the contents into a flask, charmed to be unbreakable of course as she didn't want to risk ruining her first ever successful potion by breaking the flask, she deactivated the security seals she had placed in the room earlier. The seal array was included with the potion recipe, unnoticed until she viewed the memory for a second time and upon hearing it, she could have kicked herself; two years of being a runes mistress and not once did she even think to use something like it. She had to admit though, after getting the idea from her mum the seal array she came up with was a stroke of genius and extremely complex to write out; first it blocked of everything but air from entering or leaving the room and even silenced the air entering and removed all odours. Next it put all creatures that got within a metre of the boundary, bar those keyed in, to sleep so she wouldn't be disturbed that way.
As she drank the potion she realised she had made a slight mistake; the consistency wasn't of water at all, but rather that of slime and to make things worse: it was cold. She had thought the worse thing she had eaten/drank had been the cold custard in the trifle she had tried once but this potion completely smashed that experience to the curb. The only thing that stopped her from throwing up, thus emptying her stomach of the potion before it could take effect, was that the texture had been redeemed by the taste which surprisingly, was rather nice; oranges, cinnamon and a hint of something that was slightly spicy. Well, that and the fact she really didn't want to have to attempt to re-brew it.
Just as she finished the last of it, miraculously managing not to be sick, she became hyper aware of her magic and how it moved throughout her body as slowly; she shrank and started changing form while her mind memorised the process involuntarily but precisely as it happened. Looking in the dress mirror, she was startled to find that the potion she took; the potion her mom had created and left for her was a much simpler process to becoming an Animagus, cutting out the months to make the form revealing potion, then the years it took to research the animal, make and perfect the change then master the animals instincts.
After the agonisingly slow, yet painless process the mirror showed her to be about three inches tall; black eyes, hair, nails and shadowy wings; dark blue skin with dots and lines of black forming a mesmerising pattern and long, sharp teeth and nails. After changing back to her natural human form, again slowly, the process repeated itself several times before it finally settled down and she had stayed in her human form for two minutes without her magic changing her. She smiled to herself and was about to leave the room when suddenly, she was stopped by her magic flaring again. This time instead of shrinking, her limbs elongated and turn a fiery red with some sort of brownish scales forming on certain body parts such as her fore-arms, torso, chest, crotch, upper head and other high risk/revealing areas. Next her core temperature started growing extremely high; way past what would normally kill a person and she began to float on a ball on fire beneath her feet. Finally her skin seemed to become half liquid, half solid and flames began flickering around her as they spread along and licked her skin.
Looking in the mirror again when the process had finalised, she found she looked remarkably like a type of flame demon that was drawn and revered in ancient Maiyen civilisations. What surprised her the most though was the fact the Goblin test didn't reveal this second form; she didn't know if it was due to the potion and/or its mysterious ingredient or if the Goblin test was simply unable to reveal any second possible forms. Seeing how the test was Goblin magic, which was much stronger and accurate than human magic, Kearia was putting her money on the potion that caused her second Animagus form. Regardless, she decided to put it out of her mind and not let anyone know about it as it could become a really useful trump card if she ever found herself in a tight spot. When the process had finally ended for the second time and she was sure it wouldn't start up again with yet another form, Kearia left the room to get ready for her impending meeting; her last meaningful thought being that she needed to obtain a house-elf, even without her unique potion incidents, potion making always left a great deal of mess that needed cleaning, and household maintenance spells were among the many sets of spells her grandparents had decided not to teach her.
Half an hour later found Kearia in Nightclaw's office once more, however this time she had the hood of her cloak raised and its enchantments activated to shadow her face and distort her voice in order to hide her identity in case the impending meeting didn't go in her favour. While waiting she was arranging her thought for different scenarios, hoping to achieve the best results possible no matter how the meeting went. Nightclaw on the other hand was simply sitting there grinning at the thoughts on how much trouble he could legally cause the stuck up, arrogant pure-blood house of Malfoy from this upcoming meeting, his best scenario yet led to the financial and political ruin of the family with them having to serve the goblin nation as slaves in order to survive. The thought would have him chuckling for days; in private of course, no need to be thought of as mad by his fellow goblins. They were both interrupted from their thoughts, and one daydream, by a brief knocking on the office door. Upon Nightclaw's command of "enter", an armoured goblin leading a witch in high class dress robes walked in, bowed then span around and left, leaving the woman behind and shutting the door behind him.
"Narcissa Malfoy nee Black I assume." Kearia spoke, her voice still sounding feminine despite the distortion,"this is Nightclaw, manager of the Black family accounts, I as you must have already gathered by my presence, am the new Lord Black."
"A pleasure to finally meet you my Lord," Narcissa replied, giving a quick curtsey "you said you wished to speak about some family matters?"
"Yes. This here," Kearia said, sliding a rolled piece of parchment across the table to her, "is the marriage contract between yourself and one Lucius Malfoy." She let Narcissa read through it for a few minutes before continuing. "The section pertinent to our meeting is clause five; a male heir to the Black family must be born and declared within five years of the marriage, failing to do so would allow either family to dissolve the marriage should they see fit. As you and Lucius have conceived only a single child, who has been named Scion of the house Malfoy, the contract has been breached. By the end of this meeting we will have gone down three possible routes, so think hard and carefully on your choices; after this there is no turning back."
"I see. May I know my options? Also the contract talks about monetary penalties if the contract is broken, who pays for it and receives it?"
"Your second question first," Nightclaw answered, "since it was the house Malfoy that broke the contract in failing to produce and name an heir for house Black, they pay they penalty should the contract be dissolved. The penalty in this case consists of half the Malfoy family assets, including investments and you, being the injured party, would personally receive it."
"As for your first question," Kearia took over when Narcissa indicated she understood, "by the end of this meeting we will have chosen and gone down one of three possible routes. Before I start, keep in mind that your choice will be final and there will be no going back. Your first option will be that you decide you love your husband and support him as wells as his views and decisions. If you choose this it will be seen that you are against the house of Black and you will be disowned from the Black family and have this meeting obliviated from your mind." Kearia stopped then, letting Narcissa think over the information she had just received, continuing at Narcissa's nod of acknowledgment. "Your second and third options both include divorcing your husband, but are different after that stage. Your second choice would be that you decide you don't support Lucius's ideals and actions and choose to divorce him, but neither do you support the ideals and actions of the house of Black; in that case after divorcing Lucius then I will provide a house for you and give you the money and investments gained from the divorce but unless you find yourself in a life or death emergency, you will gain no aid from me or the house of Black. As you will be accepted back into the house of Black you won't be obliviated as the family magic will prevent you from sharing secrets, but neither will you be told any new ones either."
Narcissa sat silently for several moments, intrigue evident on her face, "well that certainly sounds promising if I get to divorce my useless milksop ponce of a husband. I'm guessing the third option would be to work for you? If so I would like to hear at least the general aim for your plans and views before I decide what to choose," she stated.
"Of course, however I should warn you beforehand; as the named Scion of the house of Malfoy, should you divorce your husband then you also give up any and all rights to your son and only him and his father can choose whether or not you will be allowed to be a part of your sons life. Now, my goals include total control of the wizarding world, much like your husbands former master though my approach is subtle and does not include going around persecuting any groups such as muggle-born or purebloods. Nor will I stand for the persecution and inequality of magical creatures and finally, I hope to drag the wizarding world into the next century so we're not so ridiculously far behind the muggle world. That brings us to your final choice, after divorcing Lucius you will support and work for me; though be warned, you will need to leave behind any and all prejudice of half-bloods, muggle-borns and magical creatures you may have. Finally, as you will be put in positions of power I will require a magical oath of secrecy and loyalty. I would also like for you to give me a run down on any and all skills you may have gained and developed so I will know what tasks best to assign to you."
As kearia explained the last choice, Narcissa's smile kept getting bigger and bigger and when the explanation had finished, she took a few minutes to think it over in depth and organise her answer, "You won't have worry about me being prejudice against people as I never really understood the basis behind it, also as sad as it sounds; i've never been a part of my sons life and despite my best efforts, Draco has become a clone of his father in personality as well as looks, though Draco is much stupider and more out-spoken. Moving on," she said, clearing her throat as she tried to remove the look of sorrow and regret from her face, "my skills, at school I was rather good at potions and charms, though nowhere near as gifted as Severous Snape or Lilly Potter, but my real talent lies within politics; though I didn't often accompany Lucius to Wizengamot or school board meetings, I often put scrying spells on him and was able to accurately predict both his and his opponents next moves and arguments as well as picking up on the mistakes they made and coming up with ways to exploit it. If thats sufficient information for you, I would like to choose the third option and make the oath now..."
kearia nodded before agreeing, and despite her cloak disguising her face and voice, the joy and satisfaction practically flowing off of her could easily be sensed by the room's other two occupants.
"Very well then," Narcissa said, drawing her wand and pointing it at her heart, albeit slowly to ensure she didn't accidently do something the goblins would perceive as a threat, "I, Narcissa Adrastea Malfoy nee Black do hereby swear upon my life and magic to support the head of house Black in all goals and ideals she may have and I ask upon my magic to aid me in ensuring I don't reveal any secrets I may learn to those not authorised to know by the head of house black. So mote be it."
Upon seeing the flash of magic as the oath was accepted, kearia pulled down her hood, smiling at the surprise on narcissa's face when she introduced herself,
"I guess I should let you know the identity of your head of house then, I am Kearia Hailey Potter; the true face behind the ridiculous tale of the 'boy-who-lived' and head of the ancient and noble houses of Potter, Black, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Gryffindor."
"what...how...but..what?" Narcissa stuttered with a shocked look before she burst out laughing, tears forming in her eyes. Both Kearia and Nightclaw watched her bemused, though Kearia was slightly worried as well; it wouldn't bode well for her if she went slightly mad by the mere mention of what everybody perceived to be the truth about her.
Eventually, Narcissa had calmed down, though her amusement didn't fade and she was able to talk rationally again. "My apologies for my outburst, it's just that dumbledore has reported so much 'truth' about what happened that night, and how he's regularly visited 'Harry Potter the-boy-who-lived', I just found it funny how much the press and wizarding world will eat him alive after you reveal the truth."
"that was my thoughts exactly, which is why I've already set the ball rolling by getting Rita Skeeta on board. Now then back to business, I want you to go home and prepare any belongings you want to take with you and remember, you're still a malfoy; what belongs to Lucius belongs to you, I'm sure he won't miss some things when you leave. When a house is available for you to move into, Nightclaw will contact you so you can move all the belongings you wish to keep there. Once you've accomplished that we will push the annulment through. What I would like you to do in the meantime is think on and compile a list of characteristics your sister Bellatrix had as a child and growing up, then how it changed after she was married to Lestrange. Unless you have something further you want to say or ask, you may leave so you can prepare. Narcissa gave a brief, curt nod before bidding them goodbye as she got up and left the room, a goblin escorting her back to the lobby.
As soon as the door shut, Nightclaw spoke up bringing Kearia's wandering attention back to him, "Now then, before we move onto our next piece of business I have a quick question for you; just what part of the seer arts is your friend gifted in?"
Kearia blinked at the randomness of the question before answering in a confused tone, "She calculates odds and possibilities, why?"
"That explains it then, when I was making inquiries into buying shares of the companies you wished me to, I discovered that a few of them hadn't been established yet and upon discreetly looking into it, they won't announce themselves for a few years yet. The ones that were already established were easier to deal with and I managed to buy all the shares you wanted for thirty thousand galleons. It is expected to earn that back within a year and a half, then a total monthly profit of 10% after that."
"I see, thanks for doing that for me and when the others finally go public I would like you to buy the specified shares in them. My last business for day is that I need to visit Ravenclaw vault, there are certain forgotten magics that would be useful but all known copies have been lost and the family of the author that crafted and documented them has long since died out, meaning the library should have a copy."
"Of course, I will take you down my self." Nightclaw said as he got up and led her out of the room and down towards the carts.
Omake time!
Albus sighed in bliss as he relaxed in his ornate golden hot tub, sinking slightly to allow the bubbles to rise up to his chin. This was probably his favourite of the Potter artifacts head err, cough 'liberated' cough; it truly was a work of brilliance and who deserved it more than him, Albus Dumbledore; vanquisher of Gallert Grindalwald, chief wizard of the wizengamot, supreme mugwump if the he ICW, headmaster of Hogwarts and the only person Voldemort feared? What made the hot tub so brilliant was that for every minute you stayed submerged in its magic infused water, you were de-aged by a year and it didn't have that mast side-effect of leaving you sterile like the Philosophers Stone did. Like all powerful magics it did have a downside to it though; for every minute spent in the water, and subsequent extra year of life; your magical core was depleted to just enough live for the duration of a day, meaning five minutes meant five years knocked off but five days without magic, a fair trade in his opinion. Fortunately he had came up with a solution; using diamonds as magical foci, he would pump magic in them and during his magicless days he would yous them to power his spells.
He sighed again then as the healing magic healed the mast bruise on his glutimus maximus before he grinned, the goblins could try all they liked to retrieve the bath or the blade next to him which he had taken from the Potter vaults; this room had been heavily enchanted to prevent any non-authorised magic from working in this room and it was under the Fideleus so no one else knew of it. Such a pity Dumbledore underestimated just how powerful goblin magic was compared to wizarding magic... Oh well.
Dumbledore picked up the blade that lay next to him then; it was probably the only piece of goblin wrought metal that they had completely surrendered all ownership ties to admit was the only other thing, bar the bath he was currently in, that rightfully belonged to the Potter family. It was a marvellous work, incredibly balanced and always razor sharp. The dagger was named the vampires Fang' and aptly so; whenever it cut something it would fill a 20ml vial that was located in the hilt with the victims blood; perfect for stealing a persons lifeblood to get past wards or to use as a conduit to put some nasty curses on the person the blood belongs too, no matter where they were. 'If only he would get the chance to steal some vampires blood' he thought wistfully, 'their natural resistance to mind magics would be nullified and i could gain some powerful pawns for my live games of chess.'
It was just as he thought that when the goblin magic finally broke through his enchantments and wards and in a flash of gold he vanished, the bath and dagger going with him. In another part of England, though an alternative universe, a female blond police woman was the hostage in what would appear to be a normal hostage situation; that is if there wasn't dead zombies around them while the man holding her had red eyes, fangs and was speaking of vampires while the one who should be rescuing her, who also had fangs and red eyes, had just been shot to pieces, reformed, killed all the zombies and was now asking her if she was a virgins of all things! Before she could answer him, all three were blinded by a flash of good light while above them a golden bath tipped over; ejecting a naked wrinkly old man who landed on the police girl and hostage taking vampire, forcing them to the ground while the blade in his hand stabbed the vampire in the heart; turning him to dust when it killed him, while his crotch landed just in the line of sight the girls recently recovered eyes, only a few millimetres from touching her. In another flash the bath and dagger disappeared while a flaming bird appeared, grilled apologetics the disappeared again taking the old naked man with it.
Alucard just stood there stupefied before cursing,
"dammit, this isn't going to plan," he said gaining the girls attention, "I was supposed to embarrass you into admitting you were a virgin, even though I can tell by your smell; so pure and fresh, so i could shoot you through your lung to kill the vampire holding you, even though a head shot was available and clear of obstacles, then in the throws of blood-loss you wouldn't be thinking straight and you would have consented to turning into a vampire where you would go on missions while learning to be a true draculina, me tormenting you all the while. After a few months you would get horny and want me sexually while being in a relationship with a master witch from an alternative universe; who would need to turn in order to live after being in an accident, eventually my master would be turned as well and we would all live happily ever after while I finally got my harem of three!"
"Erm.." Seras spoke up, "would you be able to erase my memories of the last few minutes? I really don't want to remember his wrinkly balls" she said, going green.
"sure why not?" he replied. Suddenly Seras had thrown herself at his feet, hugging his legs as she sobbed for him to turn her and erase the last five minutes from her memory. Grinning, he lifted her to get better access to her neck, his plans are back on track! He sighed in bliss at the taste as he drank her blood; his hunch was right, Seras Victoria would make a fine draculina.
Okay like it? Please address to favourites and alert list and for gods sake REVIEW! This isn't me being vain but without reviews saying what you like/dislike or pointing out errors I can't improve the story. No flames though as they will be ignored as always just like constructive criticism will be gladly accepted.
Now, review response time!
Raw66: yeah I was intending to let voldie live a bit due to possessing Quirrel, the rest is a secret for now though
waukeepaintballer: to be honest I didn't know what Umbridge's wand looked like but after checking the link you game me I can say Kearia's looks nothing like it, I would say Umbridge's is ribbed, 'shudder' while Kearia's is a black and white drill piece with finger grooves for the handle, and a black and white wand shaped cheese-string for the body, though obviously made of wood not cheese.
Music26401: yeah she's only eleven but she's been raised by purebloods of an ancient and noble houses to be trained to take over at least the Potter house. In my opinion purebloods would have been raised like kids in middle aged britain: trained to take over the family business at a young age and since she would be taking over earlier than that her grandparents accelerated her education in business matters. Also, apart from having a mastery in runes and blood magic, the details of which are secret for now, the only spells she knows how to use are the 'feather light charm' and the 'shrinking charm'.
schnookums: what does any person of influence use the media for? Give the press stories that puts them in a good light while bashing her opponents lol. Imagine the summer and school year after harry declares Voldemort's resurrection how harry gets bashed and you'll sort of get an idea of what I'm planning and sorry about the spelling errors; that was my spell checker trying to be smart despite the fact I had customised it for name spellings.
917brat: thanks and yes, she probably will be the ultimate snake. She won't be in Slytherin though cause honestly, what cunning person would let themselves be sorted into a house that screams 'I'm cunning and manipulative, don't trust me!', besides she's already going to cause a scandal by revealing the truth about her gender, why add to that by declaring herself dark as all Slytherins are thought off as.
stormingnight: I might not have made that clear enough, what I meant was she was a Horcrux for one of seven soul pieces, only five were summoned because there were six Horcruxes, they didn't want to bring the main soul piece which was the one possessing Quirrell so that accounts for one soul piece, she was already there so that accounts for a second leaving only five soul pieces that needed summoning. And yeah Sirius will come up eventually but remember, Dementors are dangerous and uncontrollable, it's a wonder no one ever died in Azkaban.