For disclaimer and author notes please see chapter 1.
1986-01-09 09:30 UTC, 12, Grimmauld Place
Once again having completed the morning's labours, Hobby found himself able to get away for an hour or two, before Malfoy would come back for lunch. So he went to see Nick and Penny, and arranged for them to meet him in one of their open fields for the next phase of his operation.
He then jumped to Grimmauld place, wondering what state it was in. Old Walburga had died less than a year ago, so it shouldn't be too bad - this was almost nine years before Sirius went to it in his past life, so it had to be in better condition.
He transformed himself into the likeness of an adult Harry Potter, and walked up to the door of #12. It was not under the Fidelius, and perhaps the other protections did not apply to him, but he was able to approach as well as knock on the door.
Kreacher opened the door, looking suspiciously at him. Hobby was dressed in proper pureblood fashion, and had managed to plaster a sneer on his face that would have made Malfoy proud.
Kreacher was in reasonable shape, he noted, although he was already crazy anyway. Hobby knew what buttons to push, though. He looked at Kreacher, and said "I am Harry Potter, and I have come to help you fulfill Master Regulus' last instructions to you".
That stopped Kreacher cold, and Hobby took advantage of his shock to walk in. He stood in the entry way, and yelled "Accio Slytherin's Locket!"
With a rushing sound, the locket appeared and flew into his hands. He then beckoned to Kreacher to come closer. He said, "A friend of mine shall destroy this with fiendfyre, and you shall observe. I want you to see with your own eyes that Master Regulus' last wish was properly carried out. Will you come with me?"
"Yes Master Harry", said Kreacher. None of his attitude was visible; Hobby had effectively cut it off with his first few words.
Hobby and Kreacher popped, with the locket, to an open field. Nick was waiting there. Unbeknownst to Hobby, Penny was also waiting, under a powerful disillusionment spell, a few dozen feet away from the center of the field. Just in case.
Hobby (as Harry), took the locket from Kreacher, and hissed "Open" to it in parseltongue. He had already told Nick what to expect, that it would play on the fears of whoever was standing before it. He stepped away immediately after opening it, so Nick was in front.
Nick took his wand out slowly and with great deliberation, and aimed at the Horcrux. He was almost making a production out of it, taking more than enough time for the horcrux to latch on to his fears and do its thing.
But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Either the horcrux was a fake (it wasn't, Harry was sure of it), or Nick's occlumency was phenomenal!
After that somewhat anti-climactic opening, Nick - again, calmly and deliberately - hit the horcrux with the fiendfyre spell and they all watched it burn to ashes. Once that was done, he pulled a silk bag out of his pocket, fished the diary from within, put it on the rock next to the burnt locket, and finished it off the same way.
"Thank you Harry; let me know when you get the next batch and we will do this again. Goodbye, young Harry, and goodbye to you too, young Kreacher. Harry and I thank you for your help in ridding the world of this evil". With that, Nick bowed to Kreacher, and apparated away.
Hobby had seen Nick fall on his arse when he first met him, now he had the pleasure of seeing Kreacher fall over in shock.
"Master Harry, that was- that was- that was Nicholas Flamel?" Evidently he was well known even to house-elves.
"Yes Kreacher, that was Nick". He couldn't figure out where Kreacher was coming from on this, or where this conversation was going. I thought Kreacher hated all 'light' wizards, he thought.
"Let's go back to Grimmauld, Kreacher; we need to talk".
"Yes Master Harry".
Hobby, as Harry, sat on one of the armchairs in the parlour. Memories of times spent here, and sadness about Sirius filled him, but quickly vanished on realising he was still alive and only needed to be got out of Azkaban.
"Kreacher, how did you recognise me as your master?"
"Master Harry, Kreacher does not know. Kreacher only knew you were his master, and the master of this house".
Hobby was not sure what to tell Kreacher about himself, but decided for now to not reveal anything. There was no telling how the unstable elf would take to being owned by another elf; after all, if the concept was unknown and unheard of to Nick and Penny, for someone like Kreacher the cognitive dissonance may even kill him!
"Kreacher, I am glad to see that the house is clean, and you are taking care of it properly as a good elf should. Please also make sure that Madam Black's portrait is kept in good shape, but silenced. Her views on the pureblood issue are what ended up killing Master Regulus, and for that I will never forgive her. Do you understand, Kreacher?"
Kreacher looked shocked and angry at first, but as soon as Hobby said the magic words ("Master Regulus") his expression changed. "Mistress Walburga caused the death of Master Regulus? Kreacher is not understanding, master Harry".
So Hobby gave Kreacher a condensed version of the story. "She wanted him to join Lord Voldemort, thinking he would do good to wizarding society. But Voldemort killed many people - purebloods, half-bloods, and muggle-borns alike. One day he gave Master Regulus a mission, but by then Master Regulus had figured out that Voldemort and his ideas were really bad for the wizarding world, and decided to secretly oppose him. You know what happened after that, probably even better than I do".
"Kreacher did not know this master Harry. But Mistress Walburga is..."
"You can still take care of the portrait, Kreacher, just don't let her speak, and make sure you do not listen to her. I do not want to lose you the way we lost Master Regulus".
"Master Harry is too kind to compare Kreacher with Master Regulus", muttered Kreacher.
"Kreacher, I will need you to make six to eight bedrooms ready for visitors. These visitors will be patients who have been hurt by bad wizards who follow Voldemort. Some of them are muggles, some are muggle-born witches, in many cases they may be very young girls, children too young to understand why they are being punished. You will need to take care of them while I am not available. Are you willing to do that?"
Kreacher looked very uncomfortable at the thought of muggles in the house of Black. But what he had seen and heard today, and especially receiving a bow in thanks from Nicholas Flamel himself, seemed to have turned him around quite a bit.
"Yes master Harry, Kreacher will take care of them".
And that was that.
1986-01-10 03:00 UTC, Yaxley and other dungeons
This time, Hobby did not waste time kidnapping someone else, transforming them into the prisoners he had rescued, imperiusing them, etc.
He popped into Yaxley's kitchen, and quietly called the Yaxley elves, Tosky and Lassy, to him. As soon as both were in front of him, he petrified them using wizard magic. Then he took the prisoners from the dungeons and put them in Grimmauld's bedrooms. Then he went back to the house, cancelled the elves' petrifaction, wiped their minds, and left them with the notion that the prisoners had been rescued by someone who called himself "the Phantom".
(What a name!, he thought. Oh well that is what happens when you try to come up with a name while at the same time trying to hold your laughter in!)
He did the same thing in all the other dungeons. In addition, in the Notts' house, he petrified Theo Nott, and left a note stuck to his forehead which said "See how easy it is to do to yours, what you do to others, if I wished? Behave yourself, and young Theo will not be harmed!"
1986-01-11 03:00 UTC, various locations
Hobby popped into Hermione's backyard quietly. It seems most of his best work was being done at 3am, he mused to himself. Well, no matter - a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, as the saying goes. Even if he was in an elf's body.
He spent a good fifty minutes layering a series of wards of increasing complexity over the house. He snuck into Hermione's bedroom and put a monitoring spell on her as well, just in case. The wards would ensure that benign visits by wizarding folk would not be hindered, but hostiles would be neutralised with extreme prejudice - they would land up in Grimmauld's dungeons. The wards would tell him if that happened, and he would then have to go to Grimmauld to deal with the would-be attackers.
By 4am, he had finished his work here, so he popped to Corston and warded the MacEgan's house the same way, and similarly added a monitoring spell on Emily. This girl was special, and he intended to make pretty damn sure none of the death-eaters ever got anywhere near her again.
That left only one place to be warded, but that was dangerous. It risked bringing him to the attention of Dumbledore, and he was not sure if this was the time. He knew he could get to the Dursleys any time he wanted, since Dobby was able to, after all, but warding the place? I need to think about this. Ideally, I'd like to get Harry out of there, but where would he go? The only way out is to get Sirius out first.
So he bent his mind to that problem.