The Plague Ship
Synopsis: What might have happened if Sirius had been a bit more proactive after the dementor attack on Harry and Dudley? AU, and Hermione had not gone to Grimmauld Place, deciding to spend time with her family. No super-powered Harry.
Timeframe: Starting early August 8, 1995, then continuing afterwards
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Potterverse, so quit asking for loans or donations.
Warning: No mention of removal of knickers (except here)
Chapter 10: Flying and Crashing
In later years, Harry Potter would conclude that assuming that his problems were over, once Voldemort was no longer, had been a mistake. Possibly the biggest mistake of his life.
Had Hogwarts been obsessed with ancient Roman History as with other British boarding schools (believing that the British Empire was the divinely ordained successor to the Roman Empire) and had actually taught ancient history, which did not involve goblin rebellions taught by a boring ghost, he might have taken a lesson from the story of Julius Ceasar and Cassius. Unfortunately, the curriculum at Hogwarts appeared to consider anything beyond the founding of the school in the mid 900's not worthy of mention, unless it concerned just how ancient one of the Ancient and Noble Houses of wizards was, and even then the 'quality' of the documentation was highly suspect.
Harry had been highly annoyed and suspicious of Draco Malfoy since the two had first met on the Hogwarts Express, but with Voldemort trying to kill him, he did not have the emotional energy to spare in working up his distaste to actually hating the pompous fool.
Draco, on the other hand, had spent his formative life being told that, as the Heir to the House of Malfoy, he was the pinnacle of existence and deserving of all good things (and that through no particular effort on his part). To have Potter achieve where he failed, repeatedly, and worse to be bested at every turn by a first-generation (aka mudblood) witch, who he 'knew' to be beneath him in every sense except the sexual one, was utterly intolerable. Having his father and his father's Dark Master destroyed, if not by Potter personally (as such an event was unthinkable to the young pure-blood fanatic) just made his hunger to resume his rightful place at the top of the wizarding world the more intense.
When Harry suggested to the teachers that a flying club was a good idea, and that he and Draco (as the best flyers at Hogwarts, barring Madame Hooch herself) should be the students in charge, Draco saw his opportunity. At the first practice, he made sure that Potter's broom had been charmed with the deadliest spells, to make control impossible.
Harry started the first meeting of the flying club by introducing himself and the purpose of the club. Harry announced, "Welcome to the first gathering of the Hogwarts Flying Club. Most of you know my name, but for those who don't, I'm Harry. I play quidditch, but more important, I love to fly, and that is the purpose of this group. Quidditch is a rough sport, and not everyone is suited to it, but everyone can learn to enjoy handling a broom. You may have heard a lot of things about me, like that I'm a Parceltongue – I assure you that the ability to talk with snakes is vastly over-rated unless you are excited by long discussions about how good mice taste and where the best rats can be found. These other things don't really matter to me, and they don't matter here. We are here to enjoy, or to learn to enjoy flying. Madame Hooch is in charge of the club, but Draco Malfoy and I are here to help you learn the skills of flying a broom. Draco, here with me, is the seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team, and an expert flyer. We'll show you how it's done while you get good at it."
With this, Harry left the podium, and mounted his broom. Instead of the smooth simple flight he expected, his broom zoomed off erratically. As he went through an incredible set of gyrations and then landed safely beside Madame Hooch, quietly asking her to check his broom for jinxes, Draco was mortified. When later that evening, Harry was praised by the other students in the club for the fantastic display of flying prowess, Draco spent the next several hours in the Slytherin dorms screaming his head off. Madame Hooch, who was now the Head of Slytherin House, had to spend the better part of the night rounding up her students who had fled the dungeons in search of some peace.
Before the next meeting of the club, Draco had further increased the potency of the spells on Harry's broom, having spent several non-approved hours in the restricted section of the library, consulting books on the darkest magics. To this course of study, he had also consulted several books in his father's private library, which had somehow managed to avoid being impounded by the aurors after the fall of Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
When the club met, Harry proposed a demonstration of the fact that it was the flyer who was in control and a high performance broom, although a useful tool in the hands of an expert, was not the be-all and end-all of flying. Any broom would do, and the fact that most of the students would never be able to afford a competition-level broom was not reason to prevent someone from loving to fly. In order to demonstrate this fact, he insisted that he and Draco exchange brooms, so that Draco would have his Firebolt, and he would fly Draco's Nimbus 2300.
Draco realized he could not refuse Harry's broom, as it would be obvious that it had been tampered with. However, in his heart (which was as little in contact with reality as his brain), he knew he was at least as good a flyer as Harry, if not better, and it was just impossible for him to allow Harry to show him up.
As Draco healed slowly under Madame Pomfrey's expert care, his reputation as an expert flyer now in tatters, his rage increased another tenfold, until the medi-witch decided that a strong blood-pressure reduction potion was in order.
By the Christmas break, Mad-eye Moody requested a meeting with Harry, Headmaster Dumbledore, and Minerva McGonagall. Rolanda Hooch also attended, at Dumbledore's request. Moody informed them that he and his 'staff' had foiled thirteen assassination attempts so far, (Harry had wondered what the frequent whoosh and pop sounds that he had been hearing had been, when his attacker was quickly stunned and apparated away) and that it was probably unwise for Harry to continue at Hogwarts.
Harry had returned to Hogwarts, and wanted to stay at Hogwarts, as it had been his first real home and the only place he had ever really felt at home. Besides which, his French was not really adequate to join Hermione Granger at Beauxbatons. Besides, except for her, all his friends were at Hogwarts.
With Dumbledore's recovery from the potioned lemon drops (having been replaced with a bowl of licorice all-sorts on his desk), his lessons with the Headmaster had improved greatly. However, the social atmosphere at Hogwarts still left much to be desired. The removal of the Dark Lord had not completely removed the attitudes which had given rise to a new dark lord very couple of decades.
This had been driven home to Harry just after the Christmas leaving feast, before the students returned home for the holidays and before his meeting. Millicent Bulstrode approached him to thank him for killing Vincent Crabbe. Harry was rather shocked, and explained that he had not killed the boy, but Millicent was insistent that, if he had not done the deed himself, he had either given the order, or been otherwise instrumental in the process, and for this she was thankful to him.
Harry was puzzled by this attitude, and asked for a clarification. Millicent explained that she and Vincent (as the oldest son of the Crabbe family, had been bound together by a marriage contract. Although she accepted the existence of the contract, having really no say in the pact between her father and Vince's father, she was not happy with the younger Crabbe's hygienic practices (or lack thereof) and among other things, his love-making. She complained that he would just climb on her and lay there waiting for her to move, even after his father had repeatedly demonstrated the proper techniques. When Harry was shocked by this admission, Millicent explained that it was quite the proper way in the pure-blood families - after all, how were the young to learn if they were not taught by their elders? Most of the 'proper' high-born families had similar clauses in their contracts, and the Bulstrodes and the Crabbes had been intermarrying for hundreds of years, the same as the Parkinsons and Malfoys, and she knew Pansy and Draco had been sharing a bed since second year.
Harry asked if she had not tried to get out of the contract, and she explained that the only other options were half-bloods or pure-blood blood-traitors, and that would have been absolutely intolerable to her family and to her personally. She said, at least with Vince's younger brother (Fiddler) she might be able to teach him how to make her happy.
Harry left this encounter deciding that the previous summer had been for nothing, and that the British wizarding society was apparently not worth saving. As he thought about Millicent's comments about the long-standing family alliances, he decided that it explained a lot about some of his classmates, and the society in general. As he met with the others in the Headmaster's office, he recounted his encounter with the Slytherin girl, and nodded sadly as Moody told of the attempts on Harry's life.
Dumbledore nodded at Moody's observations. Madame Hooch nodded as well, and pointed out that, from her examination of Harry's broom after Draco's 'accident', it was apparent to her that Draco, or parties unknown, were definitely trying to kill him.
Dumbledore sighed deeply. "Harry, since you disposed of Lord Voldemort and the Europeans instituted the economic quarantine, a lot of people lost their power, their money and their status, and they blame you. No matter that their support of the murdering madman was the reason for their downfall, they always are looking for someone to blame. Draco Malfoy is a prime example. I am afraid that the process that you and your godfather set in motion last summer is not yet anywhere near finished. The quarantine needs to continue, and while it does, Britain is not a safe place for you.
"Our actions of this last half year have left a vacuum at the top of our political hierarchy, what they call a power vacuum. And they say that nature abhors a vacuum. People want their power and their privileges back, and they will try to hold you responsible for their loss. And they will try to punish you for these losses in their positions.
"Harry, denial and self-delusion are unfortunately a very common problem. Over my long life, I have seen it bring down many powerful people – Napoleon, Cardigan, Chamberlain, and so many others. I find that I myself have fallen prey to them too many times over the last years, largely to your detriment. For your continued good health, I cannot continue doing so.
The old guard will blame everyone but themselves for their problems. They will deny any responsibility for their own situation – the grief they suffer is always somebody else's fault.
As long as you stay here you are at risk, because they know you are here. For your own safety, you cannot stay. Harry, as you will recall from our meetings last summer, this land has some serious adjustments to go through before it is really a fit place for you, or for anyone like you and your friend. There are just too many who still need to come to terms with the way things needs to be, and not how they used to be."
Harry turned to Dumbledore and asked, "Is there something we can do for Millicent Bulstrode? She seems trapped in this marriage contract, and she actually seems happy about it."
Rolanda Hooch spoke up at this point. "Harry, since I took over as Head of Slytherin, I have spoken to most of the students in order to get to know my charges better. I have spoken with Miss Bulstrode, and she is indeed happy with the marriage contract. That is the way family alliances used to be confirmed, and that is what she had been taught since her early childhood. She is as much imprisoned by her own family's traditions and her own mind as by magic of the contract.
"The only ways to 'free' her from the contract is either to kill her or to kill every male in the Crabbe family. Doing that would make you, or us, as bad as the evil you are trying to eradicate. Further, if the contract is written in the typical fashion, all that will do is pass the obligations to the next generation of Crabbes and Bulstrodes.
"Mr. Potter, all we can for her at this point is educate young Mr. Crabbe and Miss Bulstrode that this kind of thing is not in the best interest of their children, and to prevent the next generations for having the same thing happen to them.
"Mr. Potter, changing the people at the top of the power structure is easy. Your French friends would call a coup d'etat. What you are wanting is a true revolution, a change in the way of thinking, what they call a paradigm shift, and I am afraid, young man, that takes time!"
Professor McGonagall shook her head and asked, "Mr. Potter, may I ask you exactly what is wrong with Miss Bulstrode's marriage contract, and why you are so keen to overturn it? I would have thought that she was one for whom you would wish nothing but ill, and yet you wish to help, or to do something that you think will help. With your best intentions,.of course, but what is it that you find wrong with it? What precisely is wrong with it, in your eyes?