The next great annoyance 2
"Prevent a war?" Harry asked in surprise.
"Yes, why else would we have summoned you?" Albus asked, waving a hand to include the assorted wizard and witches.
"I thought it was to fight a dark lord and win a war you were losing," Harry admitted, with a shrug.
"We're hoping to avoid a war," Albus said. "And really, who would put all that weight on one persons shoulders?"
Harry reached into his shirt and pulled out a hand mirror and held it up to Dumbledore's face.
"Me?" he asked in shock.
Harry put the mirror away. "You had me fighting dark lords since I was eleven and seemed hell bent on putting the weight of the magic world on my shoulders."
"The other me wouldn't happen to be insane or senile, would he?" Albus asked.
"Dead actually," Harry replied. "He had Snape kill him to save Draco Malfoy's life and cement his position in the Death Eaters."
"Well, that's not good," Albus said after a minute of stunned silence.
"Meh," Harry shrugged. "I've been tortured by all three sides: light, dark, and ministry. So I'm rather glad he's gone and can't have me tortured anymore."
"What kind of leader of the light was I?" Albus asked in horror.
"The kind who wasn't afraid to sacrifice my life and sanity in the name of the greater good," Harry explained, taking a bit of satisfaction in how pale Dumbledore became and the murmur of the crowd surrounding them.
"So, when can you send me back home?" Harry asked, when he grew tired of waiting.
"How can you be so selfish?" a pale, lanky, redheaded woman with greasy hair demanded.
"So, I can assume you're going to reverse whatever ritual you used to summon me here to send yourself to solve another world's problems?" Harry asked.
"It's not the same thing," she quickly said.
"Yes, because in that case no kidnapping would be required," Harry said blandly. "None of you, who are not planning on sending yourself to alternate universes to solve their problems, have the moral high ground. Make no mistake, you've kidnapped me and are basically planning to use me as a human sacrifice. It's not much different than a dark lord grabbing a random muggle for the same reason."
"Human sacrifice?" Dumbledore asked, paling.
"You did summon me here to put myself in harm's way, fighting your battles for you, wading knee deep in blood, and causing massive amounts of collateral damage, right?" he asked.
"Good lord, no!" Dumbledore exclaimed.
"Then why the hell did you summon me?" Harry demanded. "That's all I'm really good at."
"I- The spell would only have summoned you if you were the solution to our problem," the old wizard explained.
"So, no prophecy or dark lord?" Harry asked.
"No just a possible war, which we wish to avoid."
"I'm really better at causing massive amounts of damage and bloodshed than preventing it," Harry admitted.
"What kind of monster did you summon?" one of the wizards in the surrounding circle demanded.
"Not the kind that kidnaps people to sacrifice," Harry shot back, making the group flinch. "Well OK, not innocent people uninvolved in the conflict," he corrected himself.
"If your only skills are battle and bloodshed why would the spell target you?" Albus said thoughtfully thinking aloud.
"They're not my only skills, they're just my greatest skills," Harry said. "I'm a troubled magnet, have a 'saving people' thing, and am quite a prankster."
"A prankster?" Dumbledore asked excitedly, while the circle of magic users groaned.
"He looks a lot like James Potter," a wizard growled.
"I'd recognize that sneer anywhere," Harry said excitedly. "Snivelus, come out and take a bow. Would you like to see the Patronus I can generate from witnessing your death?"
"You monster!" the red haired woman spat out.
"Why, because I was happy to watch a man die? A man who tortured me and used his position of power to torment me from when I arrived at Hogwarts until his death some six years later – a man who held a grudge against me because of who my father was and in fact was responsible for setting a Dark Lord on my parents leaving me an orphan at a little over a year old?"
It was Snape's turn to pale.
"How about the fact that he was the single worst potions teacher to ever exist? Who poisoned generations of potions students and I once witnessed him telling a muggle born girl that he'd be doing her a favor if he snapped her wand," Harry said cheerfully.
"I'm not a teacher nor would I ever be!" Snape defended himself. "I don't have the patience nor the temperament to deal with children and my wife is muggle born."
"Then you are loads better than the Snape I dealt with, but just understand this Severus Tiberius Snape that if you start messing with me because of who my dead father is I will gladly-" Harry stopped as he felt a familiar pull.
*POP!*
The ghost of a stern looking woman appeared.
"Mother?" Snape asked, paling even further.
"Son," she smiled softening for a moment before sending him a hard look. "And why am I not a grandmother yet?" The ghost corralled Snape and the greasy red haired woman off to the side while the rest of the surrounding magic users stared at Harry in horror.
"What was that?" Dumbledore demanded.
"What was what?" Harry tried to play innocent.
Dumbledore gave him his best disappointed look.
"Don't give me that!" Harry defended himself. "I may have forgotten to have mentioned an ability or two that foolish and ignorant people consider dark, but that's just because I don't feel like dealing with them."
"Summoning the dead ..." someone started.
"I summon no one!" Harry defended himself.
Everyone looked over at Snape and his wife who were being browbeaten by his departed mother and then back to Harry dubiously.
"I did no rituals and used no magic! She summoned herself … which is easier for spirits to do around me," he admitted.
"And what did you do to make that happen?" Dumbledore asked.
"Nothing!" Harry declared firmly. "See, I had to defeat a Dark Lord who hit me in the face with a killing curse as a child. Dumbledore decided I needed to be the Master of Death to survive a second one, so voila!"
"I made a teenager the Master of Death?"
"Yep, and keep in mind that this was a teenager you ensured was raised abused and treated like a house elf."
"Why the hell aren't you a Dark Lord?" one of the wizards demanded.
"Because the hero gets the hot threesomes!" Harry said righteously. "Err, I mean because I have always chosen what was right over what was easy."
Dumbledore gave him a doubtful look.
Harry rolled his eyes. "So I have a saving people thing," he admitted. "I just can't stand by and watch while innocent people suffer."
"I can't believe I went through with my crazy idea," Dumbledore groaned, closing his eyes like he was in pain.
"Pardon?" Harry asked confusedly.
"When I was younger I found myself wondering why Dark Lords always attacked the innocent," Dumbledore explained. "I thought up a way to create a Dark Lord who would only go after the guilty and my insane analogue apparently went through with it."
"Hang on a tic!" Harry yelled while the witches and wizards shrank back from Harry's presence. "I'm not a Dark Lord; I have no followers, no dark marks, nada! Oh Dark Lord of Lemon Drops."
"Harry, Harry, Harry..." Dumbledore shook his head sadly.
"I'm not!" Harry protested.
"Even as we speak a young veela has gone missing," Dumbledore said in a seeming non-sequitur.
Harry froze, seeing a pair of deep blue eyes looking up at him with water dripping from her robes in his memory.
"If you don't save Gabrielle Delacour, who will?" Albus asked.
Everyone shrank back from Harry and the fury in his eyes as his aura flared around him. A split second later he vanished with a crack.
"Headmaster?" Hagrid asked.
"He's the one," Dumbledore assured him. "Despite what he said, as soon as he heard an innocent was in trouble he acted."
"He's a Dark Lord?" Hagrid asked confused.
"Yes," Dumbledore admitted gravely. "We of the light are limited in what we can do at times, so I thought to myself wouldn't it be grand if I wasn't so limited … but that way lies corruption and madness. No, I had to stay true to the light. It'd take a soul forged in suffering and pain, one who'd been bathed in the dark and refused to yield, who could be a Dark Lord whose goal was similar to my own. My analogue made him into that Dark Lord."
"Like the difference between a wild dragon and a watch dragon?" Hagrid asked.
"Exactly!" Dumbledore agreed. "He'll still breathe fire and eat people, but only trespassers. You saw his reaction to a child in danger."
"Yeah," the half giant agreed, satisfied.
0oOo0
The Delacour family was nervously awaiting a ransom call. Gabrielle had disappeared the day before and they'd had to wait 24 hours before the Auror's would declare her missing and run her picture in the paper. But as soon as they had, they'd received a ransom note telling them to await further instructions.
It was probably just a crank or an opportunist, but they couldn't take the chance that it was real, so the family waited nervously near the fire with a couple of hit wizards hiding under invisibility cloaks.
Feeling the house shudder as something tore its way through the century old wards was not something any of them expected.
"Something has broken through the wards!" Michael said in English for the benefit of the hit wizards.
"Freeze everyone!" Moody hissed, staring into the shadows in the corner of the room.
Heads slowly turned to see what the paranoid wizard had spotted with his enchanted spinning blue glass eye.
A pair of green sparks became eyes as a large black canine stepped out of the shadows.
"A grim!" the other english wizard hissed and crossed himself.
"You won't take my daughter!" Michael Delacour shouted as he drew his wand and cast. "Avada Kedavra!"
The green eyes glowed brighter as the spell hit … but did nothing, much to everyone's horror.
The black dog walked forward and pulled the wand from Michael's limp hand dropping it on the floor, before sniffing the air and following his nose to a little brown teddy bear.
"It's Gabrielle's," the mother said worriedly. "What is it doing?"
"Detecting the scent," Moody said.
"Since when are grims immune to AK's?" the other british wizard hissed.
"I can't say I've ever heard of one being hit by one," Moody replied before casting a spell under his breath that caused a thread of blue light to extend from his wand to the dog.
Fleur being all of fifteen stepped forward bravely. "I'll give you anything!" she begged. "But please find my sister!"
The grim chuffed and nodded his head before pawing at the door.
"Why does it not go through the shadows?" Fleur asked.
"Because we couldn't follow it," Moody said guessing something strange was going on as he opened the door and everyone followed the dog's nose.
The group went up three floors and across an upstairs ballroom, frequently losing track of the dark hound whenever it stepped into a shadow, but easily following Moody's blue thread as the hound slowly traveled to allow Moody to keep up.
0oOo0
*CRACK!*
Harry reappeared wearing a pink ribbon in his hair and with his nails done in sparkling red polish.
"What happened to you?" someone blurted out.
"Rescued a five year old veela," Harry replied. "Turns out she'd just locked herself in the attic. I have no idea how she managed to get up there. Apparently being her rescuer involves letting her and her sister play makeover while she recovers from her ordeal."
TN: Typing by godogma the ever living!