Father's World
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1. Reviews are welcomed, flames aren't.
Chapter 8:
A few days before term started Harry heard back from both professors; who were curious as to what he wanted to talk to them about. The owl arrived one morning and of course, the adults at Grimmauld Place wanted to know what was going on since Harry seldom got mail. Molly was one of the more vocal about it.
"Harry! You don't know who sent that, you must let an adult check for spells!" She shrieked grabbing for the letter.
Harry shrugged, dodging her grasping hands. "And this is your business why?"
Molly sputtered and demanded to see the letter which Harry quickly destroyed in front of her. "As I said, Mrs. Weasley, and meaning no disrespect, it isn't any of your business. The letter was addressed to me." He quickly excused himself from the table.
"Brass ones, our little Harrikins has grown a pair of big brass ones!" exclaimed one of the Weasley twins, stepping around their irate mother as they followed Harry out of the room.
"Definitely brass ones," the other agreed with a snicker.
Ron ran to catch up with his best mate as he didn't want to be anywhere near his mother at the moment. He silently agreed with the twins, but even he wasn't too sure about this new attitude.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Albus Dumbledore stopped by several times in the ensuing two days to try and get information from Harry. What puzzled the teen the most was that the headmaster would not meet his gaze. It wasn't until he talked with his sire in a dream that he figured it out. The headmaster thought he still had the soul leech in his scar! Well, Harry had news for the old geezer. It was gone, and he might mention that fact to the headmaster-as soon as the old git would stop playing his stupid, manipulative mind games!
Sirius and Harry met secretly the last evening before term started, after everyone went to bed. Molly had tried, once more, to keep Harry away from his godfather, but they ensured she failed yet again. She had no way of knowing that the two were on to her schemes.
Sirius and Harry went over any last minute details while reliving old stories of happier times and people now gone.
As for the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's little band of merry misfits, Harry knew everything they knew. Sirius kept him well informed of their activities.
Harry was also still having his demi-god dreams. In them he saw the meetings, and what everyone reported. It amused him to know they were still guarding the Department of Mysteries, talk about being 'a day late and a knut short'!
As for the prophecy, well, Harry knew what it said and where it was. Flintlock still had the sphere in his office. Harry thought it fitting, and slightly amusing, that his goblin account manager was using it as a paperweight.
0o0o0o0o0
Harry stared up at the ugliest-looking horse-like creatures he had ever seen. 'So this is what pulls the carriages,' he thought as he stepped off the train platform once the express had arrived at Hogsmeade station.
"I can see them too," came the dreamy voice of Luna Lovegood, a spacey blonde Harry had met on the train. "Anyone who has seen death can see them. They're called 'Thestrals'."
Harry gave her a puzzled look. The blonde girl seemed very lost in a dream-like state and yet, very intuitive; he would give her that. He was pretty sure she had seer blood in her, there were several kids at camp that had the same, surreal quality about them. He didn't think she was a demigod. But the only way to confirm that, according what he learned at Camp, was to have a satyr confirm it, or have a monster try to kill her. Harry didn't have someone like Grover handy and he definitely didn't want deal with a monster tonight...
Feast was great. Harry had been looking forward to, and dreading, the meal all day. He had to come up with a way to deal with his mealtime sacrifices. He was sure someone was going to notice, but it couldn't be helped. He was also certain Hermione was already suspicious.
The speeches during the feast were not so great. According to Flintlock Delores Umbridge, a Ministerial toady, was to have been be the new DADA Instructor. After she was caught for sending those dementors to Surrey she was removed from office. The unfilled teaching position was then given to John Dawlish, an auror on recuperation leave. His Ministry approved speech proved he just didn't know when to shut up; and he came across as a brown-nosing loser in Harry's opinion.
Back in the dorm, once the Welcoming feast was over, Harry was forced into a confrontation with his dorm mate, Seamus Finnegan.
"Me mum din't really want me to return," Seamus told everyone as they tried to get ready for bed. "She din't know what ta think, what with the Prophet switchin' back and forth in its opinions."
"Whatever." Harry waved Seamus off in disgust. "I could care less. The Wizarding World never could think for itself!" He snorted, rolling his eyes. "Bloody Sheeple! The lot of you! Stand by and bleat while you're butchered, one by one! I'm going to bed."
"You aren't even going to defend yourself, mate?" Ron sputtered. The redhead shared a look with the others in the room.
"Why should I?" Harry scoffed, as he climbed into his bed. "The Dark Tosser's back, thanks to a bloody dark ritual. If people refuse to see what's happening right under their noses, their stupidity's not my problem."
"What about Diggory? Is the Prophet right? You killed him?" Seamus shouted at him.
Harry sighed and shook his head. He'd spent a lot of time with Sirius, and later with his parents in demigod dreams, dealing with what happened. He was past all that. It also helped that he'd spoken with Cedric's shade as well. The Seventh Year's shade hadn't blamed Harry for his death.
"Whatever," he repeated tiredly while pulling his bed curtains closed. "Cedric Diggory was slaughtered with a Killing Curse. My wand was checked when we re-appeared after the Task, it was clean. Now, I'm going to sleep. Effen morons, the lot of you!"
"That's it?" Seamus demanded at Harry's closed curtains. "That's all you're going to say?"
Silence was Harry's answer. The rest of the boys exchanged a knowing look and decided to follow Harry's suggestion.
0o0o0o0
Hermione was a witch on a mission. Harry was not acting like the Harry she knew. He was more confident, more sure of himself. She didn't know what to make of this new Harry James Potter.
Ron told her about the confrontation between Seamus and Harry in their dorm the night before and how he had dismissed Seamus' arguments. The old Harry would've tried to make Seamus see reason. He would've done his best to prove he was telling the truth. This new Harry didn't seem to think they were worth the effort.
No, something wasn't right and she was going to find out what. Hermione huffed as she headed for the library.
0o0o0o0o0
Harry met with Professor Vector first as she had the earliest office hours. He presented her with a stack of parchment and workbooks.
"What is this, Mr. Potter?" Prof. Vector asked, taking the stack.
"This is all the assignments from the ends of chapters in the texts you assigned last year," Harry explained. "As well as self-study work books that home-schoolers use. I want to take my OWLs in both Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. I had it brought home to me last year that I can't hide anymore. Voldemort is back, whether people want to believe it or not. My parents were intelligent people but, because of my relatives, my desire to learn was beaten out of me. Well no more!" His hand slapped down on her desk.
He sighed as he visibly calmed himself. "Can you help me or not? I used the workbooks. Do you think I have a chance?"
Professor Septima Vector glanced through the workbooks and frowned. "Why are you showing this to me now? Why haven't you shown this ability when you were younger?"
"My relatives, the ones Dumbledore placed me with, hated magic, hated me," he went on to explain, even though he was loathe to tell anyone what he suffered as a child. "When I went to primary school I was punished for doing better than my cousin. It got to be a habit, hiding my true abilities,"
He ran a hand through his already messy hair, looking around the office before turning his striking green eyes on her. "When I came to Hogwarts, I was so full of expectations, of being able to be myself; but it had been drilled into me that I would be punished for doing well. By the time I realized that my relatives would no longer care, it was too late. I was labeled as a mediocre student.
"Not to mention Snape, who killed any passion I had for potions with his hatred and vicious persecution of me in an attempt to punish my long deceased father. And to top it all off, Dumbledore knew about it and actually encouraged it! So I had to hide behind an innocuous, inept persona, or be labeled 'The Next Dark Lord in Training'."
The shocked Arithmancy professor absent-mindedly leafed through the workbook. The professor frowned, trying to make up her mind based on what she knew of Mr. Potter and what she was seeing here in her office.
"Come back Friday, Mr. Potter. I want to test you to see where you are in your studies. Some of these workbooks are NEWT level," she looked up at him as she sat the bundle on her desk. "Frankly, I would like to believe you did these on your own and that no one helped you with them. If you pass, we can set you up in a self study program."
Harry gave her a curt nod. "Fair enough, Professor."
The conversation went about the same in Professor Babbling's office that afternoon. She, too, seemed skeptical of Harry's claims but also willing to give the teen a chance.
0o0o0o0o0o0
The first DADA class was different. For one, Dawlish knew his stuff. He explained that he had a mandate from the Ministry to comply with new guidelines. He picked up the pile of books on his desk and scornfully threw them on the floor. A quick Incendio spell and they were nothing but a black spot.
"You are here to learn Defense Against the Dark Arts, and if the Ministry wanted someone to shovel this shite, then they should've sent someone else!" he huffed as the entire class sat in awed silence.
"Potter! You will behave in this class or get out. I don't much care for liars. I don't know what happened in that maze, Potter," he sneered. "But, by Merlin, I intend to find out! And I won't put up with any of your grandstanding. You are here to learn and I won't have you showing off."
When class was over, Harry was impressed with the man's skill, but disgusted with the way he clung to the Ministry's hard line denial. In Dawlish's opinion, You-Know-Who was killed in 1981, when Potter was a toddler.
0o0o0o0o0
The Staff Meeting after the first week of term was interesting and when the first item on the agenda was Harry Potter. . . professors Babbling and Vector now knew that the headmaster took a very unhealthy interest in the lad.
Both of them had their heads together at one end of the table, comparing notes. They had tested Potter and had been amazed at how well he did. They were now working out a schedule for him to continue his self study in their respective courses. And both were questioning whether or not to mention this in the meeting.
Then there was Minerva. They knew that she was a very hands-off Head of House. The deputy headmistress was so busy doing her administrative duties, and teaching, that she didn't have much time to deal with her lions.
It had been noted in the past that she allowed her 'cubs' to run rampant in the school with little to no supervision. Although Potter seemed to be her current favorite, she did little to help him, or encourage him in his studies.
Then there was Severus Snape. All the other professors knew that the man, although highly skilled in potions-making, was a horrid teacher. They did grant that the man took extreme care to keep his students from blowing up his classroom, but he had no real teaching skills and was extremely poor at passing on that knowledge.
"Look who made fifth year Gryffindor Prefect, for Merlin's sake!" Septima Vector groused privately to the Arithmancy Professor before the staff meeting. "Ron Weasley is the last person I would pick. That lad is little more than a lazy menace. He has only two things on his mind—food and Quidditch."
Giggling, Bathseba Babbling agreed, but before the discussion could go any further, the headmaster called for attention. Both professors looked at each other silently and decided not to bring up their dealings with the Potter heir.
Harry James Potter had not only impressed both of them with his scores on their tests, but with his very mature and cynical attitude about this school. He was well into NEWT level in both their fields of study.
No, both professors decided not to mention anything, to either Albus or Minerva, at this time. They would give the lad this one chance and he'd better appreciate it!
0o0o0o0o0o0
'Finally!' Harry thought as he disappeared into a little used hallway after supper. It was two weeks into the term and finally time to deal with the soul leech here at Hogwarts. From what his grandfather told him, there were only two fragments left after this one: Riddle himself and his snake, Nagini.
Getting away from Hermione and her 'crusade of studying for their OWLS and obsessive demands about his summer' had been difficult, to say the least. She was dogging his footsteps everywhere but the loo, giving him no chance for privacy. Of course, if it wasn't Hermione's badgering, it was Ron's constant whining for Harry to talk Quidditch, or play chess. It was as if the redhead wanted Harry to fail.
Not to mention, Harry now had the extra independent studies he was doing piled onto everything else. He couldn't get a moments peace!
Tonight was the first time he was able to get away under his invisibility cloak. With compass in hand, he moved unseen through the castle.
'Now what?' He thought as he stared at the blank wall in front of him. The compass had led him to the seventh floor. He needed to think—and to think he usually paced. As he pondered what to do next and how was he going to get to the soul leech, he paced back and forth in front of the blank wall.
Suddenly a wooden door appeared in the wall, causing Harry to stop. 'That wasn't there before!' he thought as he pointed his compass at it. 'Yep, it's behind that door! Well, nothing for it….' He swung the heavy wooden door open cautiously and stepped inside.
Behind the door was a dark room full….well … full of junk. Harry cast a 'lumos' spell as he entered. He followed the compass until he found a bust of some long forgotten wizard and on its head sat a tiara. The compass was pointing right at it.
The urge to put it on was strong, but before Harry could act on that urge, he quickly levitated it into the silken bag he had with him. 'That's done,' he thought, as the urge faded. 'Only Riddle and his snake are left.'
He exited the junk-filled room. He now needed to find a place to offer this up to Grandfather and get the tiara to the goblins to see if they could return it to its original owners.
"Mr. Potter," the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw said as she and the Bloody Baron glided up to him when the door faded back into the stone wall. "I see you have found my mother's diadem. What do you plan to do with it?"
With the bag in hand Harry bowed politely to the pair. Ghosts were souls that could not, or chose not, to move on because they had some business left in the physical world. He remembered the rant his Grandfather liked to pull when a spirit refused to come before him to be judged.
"I have, My Lady, but it's been corrupted by evil," Harry said as he held up the silken bag. "I plan on offering the tainted bit to Lord Hades and pray he will cleanse it without destroying the item. Afterwards, I planned on giving it to the goblins, to find the true owners."
"I will be content to see it returned here," she bowed slightly. "Heir of Potter, it is noted that you've come into your inheritance. It was once known that Ignotus Peverell was a demigod of Hades. So I must ask: What about the ghosts here at Hogwarts?"
Harry smiled as he corrected her. "Grandfather, Lord Hades, claimed me over the summer. I am on a personal quest for him and as far as I know he has no plans for the ghosts here. As you know, Grandfather does not appreciate souls who refuse to come to him for judgment, but he can't come seeking them himself."
"Very well, Mr. Potter. I thank you for correcting the wrong and the slight done to my family heirloom. Might I suggest that when you clean it of its taint you give it to the current head of Ravenclaw? He will know what it is and where it belongs."
Harry bowed again to the pair of spirits. "I shall do as you suggest, my Lady."
"I am content," The Grey Lady whispered with a slight smile. "You have done well."
"As am I," the Bloody Baron agreed, bowing deeply. "You have our gratitude."
0o0o0o0o0o0
Harry asked Dobby about the room he'd found and Dobby explained it was the 'Come and Go' Room.
"It bes a magical room. Yous have to walk three times past the tapestry and bes thinkin' about what yous need
, Harry Potter Sir," Dobby told him.
"So if I pace in front of the hanging three times, thinking of the room I need, a door will appear? Inside will be what the room thinks I want?" Harry asked, remembering how he paced in the hallway before the door appeared.
"Yes Harry Potter, Sir," Dobby said, nodding his head vigorously.
It wasn't until two days later that Harry could get free of his 'friends' again to deal with the diadem. He was getting a little fed up with Hermione and Ron who seemed bound and determined to monopolize his time. He hadn't realized before just how invasive their clinging was with the way the two were always dogging him.
The room appeared again, just as Harry requested. Inside was his cabin from Camp. In it was a familiar brass brazier with a small fire burning.
"Perfect," Harry smiled. He called Dobby and sent him to ask the Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron if they wished to join him. "After all, they seemed concerned about it. It's only fair."
Dobby wasn't too keen on asking the ghosts, but did as Harry asked. "They bes on their ways, Harry Potter, Sir"
When they appeared, Harry lifted the silken bag up and bowed to the pair. "Thank you for coming. I thought you might wish to see this through with me."
The Grey Lady nodded as the Bloody Baron just hovered beside her.
Harry turned and dropped the bag into the brazier saying, "Lord Hades, please accept this offering. It contains one of the soul leeches of Tom Riddle. And if it please you, I ask you return the diadem cleansed of its taint, so I may return it to its rightful owners. Thank you Grandfather, for your support." The bag disappeared.
Moments later the fire flared and the diadem floated out of the brazier into Harry's waiting hands. The evil magic that had corrupted it was gone and the diadem sparkled in the firelight.
"Thank you Grandfather," Harry smiled, giving the fire a slight bow. The Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron drifted away without saying a word to Harry.
0o0o0o0o0o0
The next time Harry had Charms with Professor Flitwick, he waited until after class and they were alone.
"Sir, I need to speak to you privately. It's of the utmost importance," Harry informed his Charms Professor.
"I see," Prof. Flitwick said. "I will be busy up to the supper hour. Would eight-thirty tonight be alright?"
"Yes sir. I'll see you then," Harry said.
That evening, once Professor Flitwick invited Harry to make himself comfortable; "Now Mr. Potter, what is this all about?"
"Sir, how much of this will be reported back to the Headmaster?" Harry asked.
"Very little, unless it pertains to the school's safety, then I must tell him everything I know. Does it pertain to He Who Must Not Be Named?"
"In a way sir," Harry said, looking around the office. "I found out that my dad, James Potter, was the direct descendent of Ignotus Peverell. And did you know that Ignotus was the son of the Greek God Hades?"
"No," Flitwick's eyes went wide, "but I know that the gods exist, Mr. Potter. All goblins do," the professor said. "Go on."
Harry shifted uncomfortably. This was much harder than he would have thought. "I found out that James Potter was hit by an infertility hex and couldn't father a child. So he and my mother petitioned the gods for a child. One god responded.. . ." Harry stopped and raised a hand. "I can't say which. He doesn't want anyone to know, but given what you know of James' and Sirius' personalities and my looks, you can imagine which one. Well, my sire and Hades got together after the Third Task and took me in hand. That was where I was over the summer."
"By Merlin's balls!" Professor Flitwick gasped. "Very well Mr. Potter! I will not inform the headmaster. It really isn't any of his business anyway. I take it there is more?"
Harry continued on, explaining that Lord Hades told him that Riddle had split his soul and created Horcruxes. These soul leeches were scattered throughout England and Harry was charged with finding them and taking care of the problem.
"How did you, 'take care of them', Mr. Potter?"
"By offering them to Lord Hades in sacrifice and then He returned the original items back to me," Harry said.
"And what does this have to do with me?" A flummoxed Flitwick gasped.
Harry pulled out the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw and placed it on his desk. "Riddle used this as a horcrux."
Filius Flitwick jumped back in surprise. He had thought Mr. Potter wanted to ask about his grades and how to improve them! This was totally unexpected, and it did explain the Grey Lady's odd behavior the last few days.
"Is this.. . of course it is. . . I. . .I take it, it it isn't. . . " The diminutive professor stuttered as he peered at the diadem.
"There are only two left and Riddle will be taken down," Harry informed him in a clipped voice. "And the great part is I know how and it won't be the grand battle that the Headmaster was setting me up for," Harry spoke, scorn dripping from every word.
"Mr. Potter! The Headmaster wouldn't do that! He cares for you," Flitwick chided.
"Sure he does," Harry snarked sarcastically, "but that doesn't stop him from playing his games and spouting his 'Greater Good philosophy.' Both my sire and Grandfather have plans for the manipulative old fool."
Flitwick shuddered at Harry's last words as cold chills shook him. "Be that as it may, Mr. Potter. Just how do you want me to announce the return of the lost diadem?" He squeaked out.
Harry grinned.
0o0o0o0o0o0
This story is about over. 2 maybe 3 chapters are left. There are no pairings for this story as some have asked about it. Sorry guys.
Until next time. -GF and The Frau