Chapter 17

Disclaimer:

All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners i.e. J.K. Rawlings, etc. the original characters and plot are the property of their author i.e. J.K. Rawlings, etc. this work is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. Not for sale or profit but at least I can give it away, maybe? With over 784,000 Harry Potter stories out there I have probably stepped on someone's toes, for that I apologize. P.S. this Harry and associated characters can be downright nasty and the story does not follow the original timeline, it tries. Also Character deaths are abundant.

Now I have to admit I am no expert. I had not drawn my wands, yet out of each hand, flew multiple green curses. What surprised me was when the curse is normally cast it's kind of a spray rather than a pencil thin beam. What I sent was a pencil thin beam from two of my fingers on each hand. There was no time to dodge my sending of those curses, all three fell to the floor dead.

I levitated Ava into our quarters and onto the couch. After using the Evenerate spell I laid down the law. "As Lord Potter I'm instructing you not to give out anything that transpired in that corridor this evening. Under the magic of House Potter you are only to state you finish your class return to our quarters and nothing more happened, do you understand Lady Potter?" All she could do was nod her head as house magic insured she had to comply. This is not the way I wanted to show her who was in charge but there was coming a magical storm in just a few minutes. If there was trouble it always found me especially since I had come to Hogwarts. The AK's used in that corridor were going to bring a pot load of troubles from just about everywhere.

Our portrait notified us that there was a Professor Flitwick requesting entrance.

"Harry there is a contingency of Aurors in the Headmistress's office requesting your presence. Someone has murdered four people in the corridor leading to your quarters. They need to know if you have seen anything."

As we walked in silence my brain started grinding out facts that made no sense. I mean the AK coming from my hand was intended as a broad spray down the corridor as I had always seen. Coming out of both hands and from my fingers in a pencil thin curse was confusing. Of course this was the first time I had tried the curse. I could only dodge for so long so it was that curse or die so I had used it. Further not settling my mind was why four curses came out of my hands when there were only three visible attackers? But Flitwick just stated there were four dead individuals... Was there an innocent bystander or was there another attacker under an invisibility cloak?

The minute we walked into Dumbledore's old office what appeared to be the lead Auror surprised me by sending a spell at me. Both my wands flew into the Auror hand. Luckily they thought my raising of my arm and pointing my hand at the Auror was an attempt to grab my wands. He was damn lucky he didn't get the curses I almost sent without a wand.

"Potter don't you know that is illegal to have two wands?"

"First off I am the Lord of the Ancient and Noble house of Potter and Slytherin. You will address me accordingly. Secondly are you accusing me of owning two wands or is your charge that I possess two wands. You are aware of the laws over wand possession, ownership and allegiance? You have no knowledge if either wand is actually mine. I would hate to charge you with violating the law should you depart with either of those two wands."

"Well I'm Auror Jurgosun and I think you should be more worried about what we find on either of those wands. The Avada Kedavra is still an unforgivable curses, boy."

"Headmistress, might I request that you to call the head of the DMLE. I believe she needs to be present for charges that I shall surely bring against the Auror office and this uncouth minion of the Auror Department. He has forcefully taken two wands from my possession before accusing or charging me of a crime."

Headmistress McGonagall complied without comment and Madame Bones did not look overly happy as she stepped out of the Floo. However she was followed by the new Minister of Magic Scrimgeour and his two security Aurors.

Jurgosun did some whispering in Scrimgeour ear and the next thing Scrimgeour wanted was me tried for murder. The charge was for killing the fourth person who was the minister's spy by the name of Donner. The Minister appeared to care less about the three students. Madame Bones again pointed out that my Hogwarts wand showed normal spells and my backup wand shows cooking spells. I of course wasn't going to admit I used wand-less magic to fire off any curses especially the AKs. Madame Bones argued, that as the head of the law enforcement agency, and if any charges were going to be levied, she would be the one to do the charging. Discussion turned into an argument and the argument turned quite vocal. Meanwhile I got to scratch my head as to why the Minister had a spy here at Hogwarts and what the spy was doing with the other three losers and under an invisibility cloak. Had I killed an innocent person just doing his job?

I was just sitting back keeping my trap shut expecting to end up in a cell before it was all over with. But that's when the Floo flared and Evelyn stepped out accompanied by the creature with the long fangs. This time he did not have his fangs extended and looked almost totally human. Suppressing the urge to recognize Evelyn I continue to keep my yap shut. There was no benefit to draw the room's attention back to me.

"My name is Evelyn and this is my assistance Stephan I will be representing Lord Potter as his attorney. My colleague Stephan is an encyclopedia of wizard law. Now might I receive what charges are being levied against my client?"

I can only be marveled at the claims made by the Minister only to have them refuted by Stephan with statements such as, "by the proclamation of the high court and the document of 1836 specifies...

One charge that was refuted-It seemed that by my entry in the Triwiz tournament alone, so I was an adult, no wonder why I had no problems marrying Ava or a number or other transactions I had made.

"As I'm sure that you're aware, once something like this has been signed by the Minister for Magic, the magic of the document seals it, making it irrevocable. Minister for Magic did sign the tornament's rules did he not?"

Scrimgeour looked like Vernon Dursley about to bust blood vessels and was just as loud. He continued and it wasn't long before the Minister dispatched one of his Aurors and a dozen ministry legal representatives tromped through the Floo. It wasn't two more documents mentioned by Stephan before Stephan had them on the run back to the ministry archives to check laws and documents. I kind of chuckled to myself over the fact that if you live for thousands of years you're bound to pick up bits and pieces along the way. Part of my chuckling was the thought that Granger would've been in heaven to be part of this academic discussion. No, maybe she would be mad over disrespecting the Minister or flaunting the law.

Madame Pomfrey arrived amidst the turmoil to provide her professional diagnosis of the four deaths. Donner's and the three students postmortem also included the Dark Mark on their arms which kind of ended all the arguments. The Minister did not appear happy that he could not take me with him as everyone departed the Headmistress's office, I did get my two wands back.

/Scene Break/

Since Daphne had now warned me thrice I figured it was about time that she and I had a little chat. Ava had insisted on being present. Ava also insisted...

"I agree with you Harry but I will bring her to meet with you. It's obvious she doesn't want to be seen associated with you, at least publicly."

"Okay but, my office as soon as you can arrange it with Daphne."

About an hour later the two girls entered my office...

"Harry, Daphne is under the assumption you didn't want to make contacts until after you had both graduated. Something about different houses and Daphne being in Slytherin and of course her safety."

"Ava, what the hell are you mumbling about?"

Somewhere else when:

"So," Evelyn said, "you couldn't help but fiddle around with his life a bit more?"

"Isn't it just cool how happy I'm going to make him? Fate laughed.

"That is yet to be seen. You're putting more pressure on the boy and don't forget who went comatose when he reached his limit."

"Evelyn, the boss has no problems with this but he is interested if Harry will decide to use the Elder Wand to help himself."

Evelyn said, "Even I don't know if it will help him. Obtaining his destiny is the easy part while living with it can be hell."

Harry's here and now continued:

"The Betrothal contract of course."

"Now you have me totally confused, what Betrothal contract?"

Seems the two girls had been chatting for the last hour and leave it to me not to know about wizard law for line continuation, i.e. the need to have an heir for each house that you headed as Lord, Ava was Lady Potter while Daphne was interested in becoming Lady Slytherin and because of the Betrothal contracts I had no choice.

"Harry I am not going to have children like Molly Weasley does. Besides if you look you will see that most wizard families only have one child."

"Ava, are you all right with this idea?"

"Harry, Daphne has a Betrothal contract that was written three generations ago between house Greengrass and house Potter. Your father would had to have fulfilled the contract had Daphne been born before he was murdered. Neither of us are happy with this but we both knew that this could have happened and it has."

"Ava, is there any way out of this?"

"Going to have to take that up at the goblins and see if there are any loopholes."

In the meantime this had put a damper on most of my activity, as I researched into the marriage laws of the magical world. I had spent a great amount of time in the library discovering the law, and was surprised to learn that I was not only able to have another wife (or more), but that as the last of my house line law, it was almost a mandatory law. Also I had not forgotten about magical binding contracts like I got hit with during the tri-wizard tournament. When I did take this up with the goblins I would be interested in why they did not bring this to my attention, I had to find out about the Weasley contract from Ginny Weasley. Even after canceling the contract they have not told me about any other contracts. Apparently they had not informed Molly Weasley of the cancellation. Yes, I think I will just check with the goblins to see what else is running around that they haven't told me."

This new news started secret meetings between Daphne, Ava and me because we needed to get acquainted. The betrothal contract made me just as married to Daphne as I was to Ava. Daphne got a pleasant shock when Ava and I dropped our glamour charms. I'm sure she was happy that she wasn't going to be stuck with a skinny bespeckled runt. However, this did not make the three of us one big happy family. Plus with Daphne in Slytherin house our relationship would put her into danger. It seemed that I always found smooth calm waters as I transversed in life.

I'm sitting there and I can't believe that that the two of them are agreeing on sharing me. They decided that summer vacation would be started with a visit to Daphne's parents to become acquainted. Ava and I had planned to quietly slip off to the islands for some sun and suntans but now things were again becoming complicated. The formal announcements and Daphne's wedding would be taking place after graduation from Hogwarts. Until Daphne got out of Slytherin house she would not be safe for her to be associated with me in any manner or form.

/Scene Break

"KnifeSlasher I have to ask you why I was not notified about marriage contract and why the Weasleys were not notified of the cancellation of that marriage contract?" I could still here that Howler ringing in my ears that Molly Weasley sent to me in the Great Hall.

"Harry give me a second and let me pull paperwork." KnifeSlasher pulled out a filing cabinet drawer and extracted several pieces of parchment. "Harry it appears that notification was sent out. Your notification was sent to your magical Guardian Dumbledore. With Muggle relatives that is proper but why he was the only one notified about the cancellation of the Weasley contract, I don't know. I'm afraid I'll have to do some research in regards to that contract."

"It appears the old manipulator had his fingers in a lot more areas than just my education. If the old fart wasn't dead I could just strangle him right about now. Thank you for your time KnifeSlasher."

"But Harry are you not interested in buying our newest spell? You know the one we talked about earlier."

"Might I ask what you are referring to?"

Do you remember our discussion? The one where we felt that he is only a construct held together by feeding off of the Dark Mark of his followers?

"Merlin's beard, you're not telling me you've found something?"

"Yes Harry we have indeed. This spell/ritual would take a bit of doing for you to memorize and to be able to properly perform but yes we have a spell that you can purchase. I might also add that it has additional benefits."

"You're enjoying this aren't you? Quit making me drag out the information, how much, and what are the additional benefits?"