Harry was going to go under the assumption and he doubted that he was wrong that Riddle had the place completely booby trapped. And he had a plan to escape just in case of the off chance he got caught.
And if he was right, he had a plan to counteract it and if he was wrong, well it would be far easier than he thought.
"We have back up if we need it," Kara whispered to Harry and the green eyed wizard peered over his shoulder to his girlfriend.
"If we need it, but the less hands in the fire, the easier that this is going to be," Harry said, he also knew that if he captured Wormtail, he might be able to get Sirius his fair day in court. The man did deserve justice regardless of how impulsive he was. Then again, he was a Gryffindor, so there you go. The problem was doing all of this to a point where Dumbledore and Fudge would not be able to know what was happening, until it was done.
Fudge was the Minister and Dumbledore was Dumbledore. Still Harry's solicitor had been going over options with him during their correspondence, so he had a general idea of where he was going to go now.
"Keep an eye out for a snake, and if you see it, we have to neutralize it," Harry said. He was going to assume, perhaps wrongly, that the snake known as Nagini was Riddler's familiar and if she was used as a Horcrux, then the connection would be stronger than the normal master-familiar bond.
"I know," Kara said, biting down on her lip. She left a slight impression on it but so far, so good, or so far, no snake.
Harry thought that he had seen a rat and the two of them hovered in the sky, keeping to the shadows. It was all a mission of stealth. It was not something that most teenagers would be capable of but it worked out well.
They did catch a glimpse. The green eyed wizard pried open the window and the two slipped inside. There was dust in the hallway and they tried not to gag because of it.
"Okay, we're getting closer, if I remember correctly, the sitting room is down here," Harry whispered to Kara.
Kara used her X-Ray vision and she could see Wormtail.
"Yeah, he's downstairs alright."
"Be careful, I'm checking for monitoring spells, there might not be any on the outside but on the inside….."
Harry waved his hand and the wall glowed lightly, indicating a positive. Harry knew the moment he opened this door, the spells would go wild.
He would have to disable it and disable it the right way. One wrong move, and he would be on the road to doomsday.
Kara waited anxiously, hands placed on her hips as her heart sped up just a little bit more.
Harry successfully disabled the charms. It was times like this where waiting was the worst thing in the door. With another nudge, the door opened.
Shaking his head, Harry pointed at the floor. Kara got the message loud and clear and they were almost down the stairs.
There was another door and the stairs, which Harry suspected were charmed to collapse the second that anyone stepped foot on them.
"Snake at twelve o'clock," Kara whispered in Harry's ear and the two went back into the shadows. Nagini was on the hunt in the shadows and the super powered couple waited several tense moments to see if she would pass.
When she did, they made their way into the next room, down the shadowed hallway. The chair that Harry once saw from Riddle's vantage point was there.
Wormtail was in the room and Kara lifted her hand up. With one swift shot, she smacked Wormtail in the back of his head, knocking him out.
Harry stepped forward, into the room, in front of Riddle, with a smile on his face.
"What?" Voldemort hissed. "Harry P….."
ZAP!
The Phantom Zone projector was operated by Kara when he was distracted by Harry. He never really got another word out as he faded off into nothingness.
"I would say that's anti-climatic but…"
"No, I'm not going to really complain about not nearly dying, are you?" Harry asked Kara and there was a second where they could hear something hissing from the next room.
Kara picked up the unconscious Wormtail and she and Harry flew through the opened window.
"Guess, it's master getting trapped in the Phantom Zone didn't agree with Riddle," Kara whispered, as Harry made sure Wormtail was unconscious. The last thing they needed was what happened the last time.
As for the Riddle House, it went up in smoke. The Horcruxes had terminated themselves when their master was no longer on the same plane.
Riddle ceased to exist essentially, and given how much he split his soul, Harry had a feeling that any afterlife he had, would not be a pleasant one. Not that he honestly cared.
"You did it, you defeated him," Kara yelled, nearly dropping Wormtail to the ground but Harry slowed his descent with a spell, as Kara threw her arms around him with a nice hug.
"No, I didn't do it, we did it, it was a team effort," Harry said. "It was so easy as well….."
Some might say that it was cheap to defeat Riddle when he was nothing but a soul shade. Honestly, Harry didn't care what they thought.
"Oh, well if you say so but….we actually did it, I can't believe it," Kara said, as she gave Harry a searing kiss, their arms and legs wrapping around each other.
Harry's one obligation to the magical world was gone and he performed a stasis spell to freeze Wormtail's dark mark. Just in the nick of time as well, as Wormtail was about to be the victim of the dark mark bomb that would wipe out all of the remaining Death Eaters on Riddle's demise, his true demise.
Well all of those who had been privileged enough to take the mark anyway. Harry was sure that he had some other supporters who didn't and they would go on with their ignorant lives, blissfully ignorant.
"He did do magic that very few would dare try, but in the end, that was the magic that ended up screwing him and his disciples over in the worst way," Zatanna said, when Harry and Kara reported back to her. "So….I thought that would be harder….."
"Was just a simple of matter of getting the drop on him," Harry said, closing his eyes. "His Horcruxes went nuclear when the master soul piece had been removed from the equation."
"Not sure how that works, honestly," Zatanna said, but then again, magic was something that defied all common sense and logic.
Kara piped in with a few words of her own. "Well it's magic, if we explained it, it would lose its charm….pardon the pun."
"That was a really bad pun," Harry said and Kara just playfully messed with his hair. She thought that Harry looked wrong with straight hair to begin with, the messier the better as far as she was concerned.
"And his followers….."
"Seems to me like the Ministry is going to be distracted by other concerns, as is Dumbledore," Harry said, the fact that his pet potion master would have dropped dead was not something that Harry mourned in the slightest.
"So, who do you think put your name in for it anyway?"
"Could have been anyone, but I'm sure the person is dead right now," Harry said, with a smile, and Kara curled up onto his lap.
"You know, you'd be a good fit in the League….."
"As much as the invitational sounds enticing, I don't see myself as the hero type oddly enough," Harry said as he smiled. "I have far loftier aims then putting on a colorful costume and chasing down outlandishly dressed villains. Not that I'm saying that the work the League is doing is bad."
"Fair enough," Zatanna said, she could see that a free spirit like Harry would be hard to work together with a team, unless he was running the show.
"Yeah, I've had a lot of fun doing the hero thing, but it's been in my cousin's shadow," Kara said and she smiled. "That can be a looming place to be, and funnily enough, it was supposed to be the other way around, given the age thing, or how it should have been….but you'd understand that better than anyone else, wouldn't you?"
"Completely," Zatanna agreed with a wide smile on her face. There was no doubt about it, her father's shadow was one that loomed rather nicely over her. "But I found my own path and I think that it worked out pretty well."
Kara and Harry had some ideas of what to do next. They'd just have to wait and see how things went after that.
"So, what are two going to do next?"
"We're going to Disneyland," Kara said with a completely straight face and Zatanna gave her a strange look. "What, we can fly or teleport anywhere in the world, why not?"
"Point well taken."
"They never truly knew me honestly, they had this larger than life legend that they built up in their mind," Harry said and he smiled. "Fairy tales, they were but….."
"You have a chance to become greater than what they even thought you'd be in life," Kara whispered to Harry and Harry smiled.
"I've got a chance, yes," Harry said and the two of them hovered, floating over Great Britain. No doubt there was going to be a lot of chaos, but the Ministry had no idea why. They would never know why. "And I'm going to take it. They were honestly holding me back, you know."
"Oh believe me, I know."
"The shit's going to really hit the fan when you don't show up for class next week," Kara said and she could not get the smug look that Harry had on his face out of her mind. The blonde's eyes flickered onto him just like that. "But you enjoy that, don't you?"
"Hey, I beat their Dark Lord for them….half of them thinks he's dead, anyway, you know, and the other half….well they deserve to think he's alive. Fear never hurt someone. I'm sure that Dumbledore might be shrewd enough to piece together the puzzle."
"Do you think that he'll even tell anyone what they know?" Kara asked.
"Dumbledore likes to keep his cards close to his chest, I'll never know why that man does half of the things that he does," Harry said, as the two took one more lap around. "They can comb the entire world, but they'll never find me. They'll never look me in the eye again. If I don't want to be found, I'll never be found."
"You know, there's no way that I'll let them take you anyway."
"I know," Harry said, as the two did one more lap around the world, just enjoying the flickering of the sights and the sounds all around them. It was a peaceful, beautiful world, and it was amazing. They felt so much peace with that. "But I think that you'd find that I'm extremely capable myself."
"Oh believe me, I know," Kara said, she had her ear out for anything. It was tempting to spy on Dumbledore right now, the risk of them getting caught was amazing.
Then again, Kara was good about not getting caught by anyone, especially Dumbledore. The Hogwarts enchantments were kind of a joke to be honest, but then again most people would try and use magic to break down the walls.
"Psst, Harry," Kara whispered to him, hovering over his bed in the dead of the night. It was during his first year, actually the night after the Hogwarts school sorting.
"Kara, do you realize how risky this is?" Harry whispered as he put his glasses back on but his four dorm mates were sleeping with each other. "So much for Hogwarts being secure."
Harry cast a handy silencing spell that he found in a book. After Hagrid dropped him back off at the Dursleys, Kara returned and picked him up, with the two of them going shopping. The Dursleys were quite accommodating when they were threatened being flown up to a really high place and left there.
"Well, I heard some kind of security spell…..it's kind of hard to explain really," Kara told him, sitting on Harry's bed, her legs crossed. "So, how are you? I see you got in the Gryffindor house."
Harry wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, the snoring…I could do without it, really I could. And all they could do at dinner was stare at the scar on my forehead."
"Childish of them really," Kara said, shaking her head, with a smile on her face, placing her hand on his.
"The Sorting Hat wanted to put me into Slytherin," Harry said and Kara looked at him strangely. "It wanted to and I considered it but…..there's a few people in the house that don't really give it an accommodating reputation. Actually all of the houses seem to be….well there's something about it that I don't like."
"It's almost like they want to divide you," Kara said and Harry smiled at her.
"Yes, it is," Harry said, as he took out one of his books underneath the covers. "I'm studying beyond what I should…..but I think that I should downplay my intelligence, because…..well I don't think they expect me to be so on the ball."
"Their mistake, you had to downplay your marks in primary school, even if you were wise years beyond your age," Kara said and Harry smiled.
"Apparently, my mother was one of the smartest students that ever went through Hogwarts and my father…..well he wasn't too bad in the brains department either, although lacking in the sense department," Harry said and Kara raised her eyebrow. "You'd be surprised how much Hagrid would spill once he's had a few drinks in him."
"Taking advantage of adults under the influence, I have taught you well," Kara said, smiling as she placed her hand on Harry's. "I'm not…bothering you, am I?"
"No, it feels warm," Harry said with a smile and he shook around. "Have you ever been in a place, where everything felt so….false?"
"I don't know….you think that Hogwarts is not what it seems," Kara whispered to him and there was a few seconds where the two friends stared each other down. "I mean, beyond magic obviously never being what it seems, and all that stuff."
"I'll see, but the Headmaster warned that there was something on the third floor corridor, that lead to a most painful death," Harry said and Kara looked outraged.
"Yeah, that will pique no one's curiosity in anyway," Kara said and then she smiled. "Sooo….do you want to go and see what it is?"
Harry gave her a scandalized look and she laughed. "Joking, just joking, chill out alright."
"Yeah, I know, but I'm sure many people won't be joking," Harry said and there was a nice wind outside. "Classes seem interesting enough but…"
"You don't see them challenging you enough, do they?" Kara asked him and Harry nodded. "Yeah, I get that with my classes at Smallville High as well. I mean, I get my homework done in like three minutes."
"Kryptonian qualifications don't matter on Earth," Harry said and Kara sighed deeply.
"Unfortunately, feels like I wasted all this time, but….never mind, it doesn't seem like a magical education matters in the real world either," Kara said and Harry nodded. "So, you're going to have to go through that hell if you ever want a fallout plan."
"We'll see, maybe I'll have to give Hogwarts a chance….what's the worst that could happen?"
"If I answer that question, I think I'll depress both of us."
"Three headed dog," Kara whispered to him and Harry nodded.
"Yes, massive, and with far more teeth that could be allowed by law," Harry said, shaking his head. "I want to throttle Ronald Weasley for what he got me into."
"No, no, remember, you have to try and be his friend," Kara said and Harry sighed. "Just don't become the mask, Harry, because I don't want to have to haul you in for deprogramming."
"I had a feeling of dread before I went down there, and then there was Longbottom and Granger…" Harry said, wanting to bang his head against a desk, but Kara stopped him from doing so.
"Conserve those brain cells Harry, it'll put you miles away from everyone else in this place," Kara said.
"Right….anyway Granger is a living breathing tattletale and Longbottom…..the only thing he's lacking is a spine to hold him upright. Alright guy, well better than most other guys in this place."
"Talk about damning someone with faint praise," Kara said to him and Harry smiled. "And as for Granger….."
"Absolutely insufferable…." Harry said to Kara and she raised an eyebrow. "Not that I'd ever say that to her face. Because someone would be a complete idiot without any sense of tact to say that in her face when she doesn't have any self esteem whatsoever. Why do you think that she buries herself in books? So she doesn't have to face a world that has stomped on her before…..I think she has pressure from someone, whether it's herself or one of her parents, to be the very best at what she does and not accept the rest."
"Wow she's got…..well she's got things she needs to work out," Kara said and Harry raised an eyebrow towards her. "You seem rather annoyed by her."
"Well not necessarily annoyed, but I kind of understand where she's coming from," Harry told her. "People like that, they don't really get too far. I read all of the books on magical culture, and I know that she's putting herself in a very small box that she won't get out of…at all."
"You are wise beyond your years," Kara whispered to him and Harry smiled.
"Well….it's not just that….have you ever had a strange feeling of Deja-Vu?" Harry asked Kara and she pondered on that fact for a few seconds. "Because it just feels….."
"Someone's coming," Kara whispered. "I'll talk to you later, keep writing, and I'll be here when I can."
Harry was very annoyed about who was there and he slipped into the corner, just in time to miss, Mrs. Norris who had showed up.
"We never finished that conversation, did we?" Kara asked and Harry raised his eyebrow. "I mean, it never had a chance to come up, three years ago."
"You mean the conversation about Deja-Vu?" Harry asked her and Kara frowned.
"Exactly, I mean, I'm sure we should have gotten back to it eventually but….."
They heard something and once again, that conversation would have to weight, as they heard broomsticks approach from behind them. The two teenagers waited to see what was happening.
"Stop where you are, you're under arrest for the abduction of Harry Potter!"
'Oh for fuck's sake,' Harry and Kara thought both at the same exact time.
To Be Continued.