Chapter 22:

Top of the "DNFW" List

Every sense he had was screaming at him to run. But sense was in short supply for him in the heat of a real fight. His expanding magical field could feel every sharp edge of the kappa beneath the water. Tooth, claw and spine alike. That was despite the horrible stench or rot and sewage and adrenaline high breaking his concentration. Which didn't even get into the blinding rage slowly creeping through his veins.

That grenade had really pissed him off. Even more than the ruination of his brand new robes.

"Professor Morrigan." Said the brick house Indian guy. "We have orders to take you in alive or dead. We would prefer to avoid bloodshe..."

Harry interrupted his peace offering with a barrage of wandlessly, and motionlessly, transfigured blades of ice from the rancid pool between him and his foes. While they were distracted by the ice blades Harry reached into the water and grasped the first brave kappa to try and take a bite out of him. Holding it by the neck, he raised it up to serve as a body shield as he backed away into a side tunnel, ignoring the attempts it made to maul him. The return fire of 5.56 rounds were more than up to the task of shredding the struggling reptile, but not enough to penetrate and continue into Harry himself.

He threw the dead kappa back into the water where the rest of his school bared down upon him like a swarm of piranhas. It didn't need to be human blood to excite them into a swarm.

"Hollow points? Really? Did the discount munitions store sell you a box of Kolibri cartridge condoms to go with those?!" Harry taunted as he turned the corner, coating the entire tunnel with a flammable glisseo charm as he did so.

He heard the telltale sound of a magazine ejection and replacement and knew he could expect armor piercing rounds to come his way in the not-too-distant future. Good boy.

Harry slid down the suddenly slick tunnel floor, making sure to transfigure the ground behind him needle like blades behind him at an angle as he went.

As he turned yet another corner he felt, too late, the flapping of wings and the sharp pain of talons digging into his shoulder as a fresh barrage of bullets, and a killing curse, passed through the air he had just occupied. So one of them was holding back the kappa while the others focused on killing/capturing him. Unfortunately for Harry the eagle animagi transformed back into human form and went from ten pounds of feather and hollow bones to two hundred and fifty pounds of raw muscle. Which was a bit beyond the bench-press limit of a scrawny Quidditch player who hadn't trained in weeks.

Yeah, Harry lost that ten picosecond judo match and he lost it decisively. He also decided he didn't like the taste of the rot-crusted floor and so he summoned the recently reclaimed Elder wand to his hand and started with the cheating. He was a wizard after all. Why fight with fists and body weight when you can transfigure and animate stone into a much more efficient fist?

Even without a full charge the gamblers wand overpowered the rocky fist he carved out of the ceiling by quite a lot and the crunch of shattering bone made him regret not sticking to wandless magic. That was a bit too much force, and he hadn't wanted to kill anyone today. But with the transfiguration slot down he threw an animation charm at the inanimate fist while wandlessly reshaping it into a large anaconda of stone using his off hand.

"Guard." Harry ordered in parseltongue, not caring if his would-be assassins heard him and reported it to their master.

Speaking of, in slid the blonde American man. He must have lost his Ak-47 in his struggle with the kappa swarm, judging by the third of a kappa still latched onto his back. He took a second to regain his feet, having clearly not expected the hallway to be slicker than a particularly lustful mermaid at a Muggle body builder pageant, nor to be lined with thousands of sharp, thin needles. Jesus, was he messed up or what?

Harry had to give it to the man. He was a trooper. Or more accurately, a ranger, for he drew from his inner jacket a revolver with a barrel easily as long as Harry's forearm.

Compensating for something there cowboy?

Turns out, yes, he was compensating for something. And that something was the extreme recoil of firing a .600 Pfeifer-Zeliska round with enough force to penetrate both the stone serpent barrier as if it were butter and nearly take Harry's arm off at the bicep.

Oh, you better believe it hurt. And the pain wasn't helped at all by Harry's ability to feel every torn muscle fiber and sinew through his expanded senses.

Being left with his left hand Harry switched over the elder wand and with a single swish and sent toward his foe a single spark. Not a torrent of flame, not even an ember. No. Just a spark, for that was enough to ignite the entire hallway of flammable conjured grease and set the bloodied man aflame. The bright yellow heat and deafening sound made as it ignited caused the entire ceiling to cave in. The fact that Harry had taken so much material from it for his transfigurations probably had something to do with that.

Speaking of, that single bullet had done as much damage to the stone serpent as it had to Harry's arm, and so he wandlessly finished the job and transfigured it into two serpent's before turning the gamblers wand onto himself.

A quick emergency medical charm, one that filled wounds with a thick foam to stem bleeding, was all he had time to perform before the previously forgotten animagi put him in a chokehold from behind. It was a good chokehold too, one that didn't construct airflow but was most certainly cutting circulation. He had seconds to get out of it at most.

"Rip!" Harry ordered in parseltongue, not needing to work nearly as hard to enunciate in the language of snakes as in English. "Tear!"

The twin snakes obliged, and the next thing Harry knew the Indian man was torn in twain, his spine like putty to the might of his animated constructs. It wasn't as bloody of a sight as one would imagine. Injuries like that were more... meaty, than bloody. And organ-y.

Harry shook his disturbed state off and took the moment of respite to finish casting the three most important medical charms, a disinfectant and numbing spell complimenting the foam muscle charm. But before he had time to bandage it and conjure a sling a fist made full on contact with his good shoulder, the knuckle of his assailants thumb digging right into the brachial plexus and making his entire arm go numb and limp. An advanced a very deliberate martial arts technique.

Harry wasn't thoroughly educated on martial arts terminology, but he believed the word for somebody who had both arms disabled and bereft of weapons was "fucked."

Mouth, hip, mouth again, solar plexus and cheek bone. On and on came the punches, compliments of the angriest-looking Filipino man Harry ever did saw. And he just didn't stop. For nearly half a minute this man used Harry, or more accurate his jaw and chest, as a punching bag to practice his Jeet Kune Do as if he were hitting a speed bag. Short, circular movements, never bringing his fists back behind his elbows. Suffice to say, he was kicking Harry's ass.

Then came the tunnel vision. The edge of his peripherals went dark, and all that was left was deep crimson. Anger. Retribution. A deep, insatiable need for satisfaction.

He spat in the mans face. A thick mixture of blood, gums and broken teeth. He followed it up by bringing their foreheads together with enough force to nearly break Harry out of his rage. Nearly.

The air. It was full of magic. And magic was his. He was magic's master, it obeyed his will, but his will was no longer his to control for rage had taken him. He compressed it. Forced it upon his enemy. Suffocated him with it. Crushed him with it. And as it tightened, coiled, choked and oppressed Harry grabbed the man by the throat with his still numb hand and, aided by the aerosolized magic, slammed him into the ground. Then he slammed him into the wall. Then he slammed him into the wall again. And again. And again. And again.

He smashed the man's face into the wall so many times that he soon no longer had a face left to smash. And very little skull.

Throwing him aside he stretched his senses to find the Hispanic slag that had dared to throw that grenade at him and felt her approaching around a corner.

Reaching out his good arm he focused on where she would soon be and cast... not a spell. Not even magic, as such. What came from his fist was like a condensed, tangible incarnation of his current frame of mind. It was not a pretty thing, all coils and thorns. It shaped all it touched in the same way his episode in that forest had effected the rocks, trees and unfortunate animals caught in it.

Ghillie Dhu screeched down the hallway out and away from Harry, and when his final living assailant turned out just like the other living things in the forest of Dean those two nights ago. The gruesome display of flesh, bone and organs becoming one with the stone and filth around her was enough to bring an end to Harry's state of madness, only to enter a state of proper shock.

And that was when the Aurors finally showed up. Useful as always.

"And finally, incisor number two." The Auror field medic said as she set the seventh tooth back into Harry's jaw.

He was thankful for the painkillers inuring him to what would otherwise be the most painful dental procedure of Hary's life, but not so much for the sensation of the gums repairing and being molded that somehow got past the potion. It was... yeah, shudder-worthy is a good word to describe it.

"Broken nose and jaw. Shattered cheekbone. Five cracked ribs. A caved in sternum. Eight missing teeth and your tricep is minced meat. How in the world are you still conscious?!" The middle-aged woman demanded.

A few minutes ago Harry might have cried at the question, but now? Opium-based potions do wonders for emotional distress.

"If I had a knut for every time somebody asked me that I... well I wouldn't be a particularly rich man, but I sure would have a few more sickles to my name." He joked with a chuckle.

It hurt to laugh. Even with her excellent work on numbing the pain of his shredded and bruised torso. At least everything now was back in its places. And wrapped up. But even magic had its limit and it was going to be a loooong recovery. Especially so for the arm when she was done with it.

Very tricky healing magic there. Reconnecting muscles one fiber at a time. Or ten at a time. Or a hundred at a time depending on the type of damage and skill of the healer. Doubly impressive to have done it without Harry feeling a thing. Not even the process itself. Although that may have been due to the freezing charm she threw at the shredded mass before getting started.

"There. I've reconnected all of the tissue in your arm." She said. "With proper protein intake and regenerative potions you'll have use of your arm again within a week."

"And your happy me time need not know the interruption." Came a familiar growl.(AN-1)

In his doped up state Harry couldn't help but give the old grizzled Auror a goofy smile. God, but was it good to see him in the flesh again.

"I meet the younger Alastor at last." Harry said. "Chalk today up as failure to keep constant vigilance on my part."

That small moment of joy left him drained and he collapsed back into the stretcher he'd been placed in.

"Younger Alastor?" Moody asked.

"Alastor Marchbanks?" Harry offered.

"Ah. Him I know." Moody grumbled, before turning to the mediwizard. "Is he in good enough condition to be brought in?"

"Brought in?!" The mediwizard said, aghast on Harry's behalf. "This is the most clear-cut case of self-defense I've ever seen in my life!"

"Oh I have no doubt about that, but he still killed three of his assailants and needs to at least be debriefed and held overnight." Moody countered. "We need to at least finish the preliminary investigation to find out if his choice of force was justified. I have no doubts it will come back in his favor and we won't have to charge him."

The mediwizard grumbled and Harry felt gratitude towards the stranger. It was weird how people Harry barely knew tended to argue on his behalf just as vociferously as his age-old allies. He had that kind of effect on people.

"But yes." The mediwizard confirmed. "He's safe to transport."

And so that's how Harry wound up spending his Saturday night in the ministry holding cells. It wasn't so bad. Sure, his arm was in a sling and half his torso was bandaged up, but he was high as a kite on pain killers and had rather talkative company.

"Why did you go so easy on us at first?" Asked the mummy in the cell next to him.

Harry looked at Mr BigIron, as he'd taken to calling the one surviving would-be assassin, and realized the needles combined with the fiery grease spell might have been a little overboard.

"For the same reason I don't use blasting curses or fiendfyre on rowdy teenagers." Harry explained. "Without a hint of hubris I can honestly say that I am that much stronger and more experienced of a fighter than all four of you combined."

Mr BigIron turned his head, which must have taken no small amount of effort, and seemed to consider the boast. He eventually nodded.

"I believe it. If you hadn't lost your cool, and taken us a bit more seriously from the start, I'm sure we would have all made it out of there alive." He said.

That stung. But it was true. If he had taken off the kid gloves at the start he would have been better able to escalate the fight more appropriately. Incapacitated them with a more even hand.

"I'm sorry your friends died today." Harry sighed, sobering at an uncomfortable pace.

"Colleagues." The man corrected. "In our line of work we are very careful not to get too attached to one another. We go so far as to avoid even lunch or drinks during or after work."

Smart.

"And what exactly is your line of work?" Harry asked.

"We're everything." He admitted. "Mercenaries, assassin's, grave robbers. If you pay us, we're your bitch. And your Dark Lord paid us."

Harry nodded. The answer only confirmed the obvious suspicions.

"So were we a test?" Mr BigIron asked. "Are you, like, his prospective successor or something?"

Harry looked at him with confusion.

"You fight a lot like him. And you're a parseltongue, you even talk like him a little." He explained. "And we clearly weren't enough to take you out, but enough to push you."

An odd line of reasoning. It was plausible. But Voldemort would have had no way of knowing his status as a parseltongue, or his power as a wizard. Until now he would have merely expected him to be at or near the level of a Bellatrix Black, or Arianna Figg. Formidable. Worth recruiting. But not a threat. That just changed. They had both submitted memories of their battle to Alastor. Soon, his status as a parseltongue and one of the deadliest fighters in the country would reach everyone.

"No I think he expected you to take me out." Harry answered honestly. "I must have unwittingly stepped on his toes harder than I intended."

Mr BigIron snorted.

"Clearly he, and we, didn't do our diligent research on you." He said. "My solicitor has already sent a letter off to the league to update your status and put you at the top of the DNFW list."

"DNFW list?" Harry had to ask.

"Do Not Fuck With."

That got a laugh out of him. Harry quite liked that.

"Oh by the way, since you're going away for a long time can I have that revolver of yours?" Harry asked.

Mr BigIron raised a non-existent eyebrow at him.

"Do you have twenty grand USD laying around?" He asked.

Harry did the math of calculating that in British pounds and converted it into galleons in his head and balked.

"I do, but it's proprietary money." Harry admitted. "And I don't think I can justify it as a business expenditure. Looks like you'll need to fund your legal defense by some other means."

A moment of silence followed his pronouncement.

"Drat." Said the American.

Dumbledore wished he could say this was the first time he'd ever wasted a Sunday morning getting one of his professors out of jail. Hell, it wasn't even the first time he spent a Sunday getting one of his professors out of jail who didn't deserve to be there. But he was happy to do it, particularly for this one.

"You're free to go Professor Morrigan." The guard leading him to Hadrian's cell said through the bars.

The sorry state of the man who stepped out surprised Albus. From the sling to the singed and filthy robes to the exhausted and defeated face. The appearance was unbecoming of him.

"Thank you Albus. Do I have any pressing Hogwarts related tasks to deal with or can I go be with those most worried about me?" Hadrian asked pitifully.

The usual cheer and mischievousness gone from his voice.

"You are free to go Professor Morrigan." Albus said. "I hope you manage to return to your usual self by your class tomorrow. Fortunately its a late one. Three pm."

Hadrian smiled through his bandages and limped past him to the door, led by the guards. He made to follow but was stopped by Alastor.

"We need to talk." He said, before leading him out of the holding cells area.

The tone he used told Albus that his old friend was not happy with him and that this would be a purely professional meeting. Down a hallway and into an evidence room they went. There, sat upon a desk between a host of magical measurement instruments, was the elder wand.

He felt a slight panic before realizing the same wand was still in his pocket.

"Chief Warlock." Greeted the forensic specialist behind the desk. "A suspect in an altercation earlier today submitted to authorities a wand registered in your name. As such, we have questions."

Albus retrieved his own wand from within his robes and cast a Lumos with it to confirm - more to himself than the Aurors itching to arrest and question him - that it was real.

"Not as many question as I have, I assure you." Albus countered.

"Would you be willing to bet on that?" Alastor Moody countered as he pulled out two vials filled with the telltale silver of memories.

Albus followed him to a pensive where the mystery of Hadrian Morrigan expanded to the size of Jupiter. He lost an entire galleon to the grizzled Auror that day. He really needed to crack down on the gambling problem amongst himself and his staff. It was getting expensive.

Bellatrix and her sisters, both of them, were there to greet him at the atrium and kept him company for the two hours of stalling the guard put him through before giving him back his personal items.

It was nice seeing the three black sisters together for the first time, and to meet Narcissa in person. Even if he couldn't shake her broken hand. She was rather obstinate about not telling them how she broke it. But he liked the self-satisfied look on her face.

But between yelling at the guard and doting on him Harry felt rather loved in that time as he sat at a branch between Bella and Dromeda, dozing off and on.

Soon enough Narcissa was excusing herself and her sisters were tentatively guiding him back to the Tonks household where Teddy was waiting with a full spread of food. He barely managed to eat anything at all, what with it being well past midday and the pain potions fast wearing off.

And so, he ended the bizarre rollercoaster of a weekend by eating his fill and going to sleep on Bella's lap. Spending a third night in a row on a couch instead of a bed.

"This way." Commanded the goblin liaison.

Albus followed him to the room of tranquility. A no man's land where enemies could meet on neutral ground.

Severus and Alastor walked on either side of him for protection. Soon they came upon a door in front of which stood two fully-cloaked and masked Death Eaters. Albus would have to ask Severus which they were based on the ornamentation later.

"Wand please." Commanded the goblin.

"I did not bring it." Albus told the goblin. "I brought them along for that."

"They may not enter with you." The goblin said.

"I am aware. Severus, Alastor, keep these two company." Albus instructed. "And please, be civil."

With his order given he was allowed into the room of tranquility where a table framed by two dozen fully armed goblin knights seated him. At the opposite end of the comically long table sat Tom Riddle himself.

He stood in greeting and gave the customary bow, which Albus returned.

"Albus. We have much to discuss." Voldemort greeted.

"Indeed." Albus confirmed, before taking in his foe's appearance. Was that a glamour over the left side of his face?

"Are you trying to hide a shiner there?" Albus asked with a chuckle, not able to help himself.

Tom let out a long-suffering sigh.

"You didn't seem to notice my attempts at covering up such markings when I was a student, hopefully you've learned to better spot abuse and bullying in your students since then." Tom said.

It was a fairly long-winded way of saying "fuck you", but Albus got the message.

They took their seats and were served spinach fettuccine and sparkling wine to start their first course.

"So, Albus. Who is this Morrigan fellow?" Voldemort started as he coiled his first bite around a fork using a spoon.

Albus took a sip of the sparkling wine before answering.

"I was hoping you could tell me." Albus retorted before starting on the food himself.

Tom finished chewing his bite before responding with yet another question.

"Why would I know anything at all about him? I only just returned to England and you've employed him." Tom said. "All I know of him is secondhand, and I sent that quartet to determine if he was a threat. Clearly he is."

Albus couldn't quite tell if the other man was being intentionally officious or was as confused as him. Perhaps it was best to not tiptoe around one another with the usual metaphorical dick-measuring contest? Cards on the table it was.

"Is he not your time-traveling son from the future?" Albus finally asked.

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