Chapter 11 Almost there

Auror graduation itself was only a minor event to Harry. Over the previous three years the trainees had gradually been given most of the responsibilities of aurors, so graduation only added a few more types of cases that they were being given. The main difference would have been that they went from spending half their time in lessons to half a day per month. However, Harry wanted to finish his mastery within the next year, so had asked to step up his mastery training to three days a week, and would work three days a week in the organised crime unit.

Tonks was among the aurors who were there to welcome the graduates into their ranks. Tonks' father was a muggleborn, and both her parents had left with the first wave of emigration four years ago. Tonks' mother was Sirius' cousin and closest family, so he'd gotten to know the elder Tonkses well, and he recognised Nymphadora on sight.

"When did you get here?" Harry asked her after introducing himself.

"Last month."

"How bad is it in the UK?"

"It's sinking more and more into autocracy. I stayed this long trying to keep some sense of justice amongst the aurors, even if the higher ups were all either Death Eaters or under the Imperius, but the rules kept changing, and those who needed our protection are either staying at home trying to avoid attention or have emigrated themselves, so I decided it was time to leave."

"Could you write a report about the situation in Britain?" Then Harry started to think of the logistics of disseminating such a report, and amended it, "or, better yet, two reports; one for circulation amongst all expats who wonder about the stuff that doesn't make it into the New York Ghost, and a second one with more sensitive intelligence for a more restricted circulation?"

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you."

"Dobby." "Thank you for coming. As you know, on 1 September next year we will start a new school in Britain. And until next June Opal won't been able to visit the site where we want the school. That means that there is going to be a lot left to be done in July and August. More than one or two house-elves would be able to do. But we also want to break away from how things were done before in magical Britain. Which means we only want free house-elves to work for us. Do you know of any free house-elves looking for a job?"

"No, Harry Potter, sir." Dobby looked stressed, the way he used to look when he had been recently freed and was suppressing the need to punish himself.

"It's ok, Dobby, it's not your fault that we're looking for something that may be hard to find." When that didn't calm Dobby at all, he continued, "is there something else wrong?"

After struggling with himself, he said, "it's not Dobby's secret to tell."

"Can you ask whoever's secret it is, to come and tell me, or to give you permission to tell me?"

"They have been ordered not to tell."

"Ordered by who?"

"Albus Dumbledore."

"But Albus Dumbledore is dead. Are they Dumbledore house-elves?"

"No."

"Then why would they obey him even after he has died?"

"Dobby thinks perhaps Albus Dumbledore left instructions, perhaps in Gringott's London or in the Ministry in London."

"But I can't go there."

"Dobby knows, but still they obey Albus Dumbledore."

"Ok," Harry sighed. "I understand that it's not your secret to tell, so we'll have to find a different solution."

"They are the Potter house-elves," Dobby blurted out.

"You mean there are more Potter house-elves than Winky?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Dobby. I think you were right to tell me. I order all Potter house-elves to stop obeying Albus Dumbledore. I want all Potter house-elves except Winky to come here." Three house-elves appeared, and Harry asked them, "why did you continue obeying Albus Dumbledore after I came of age?"

"Albus Dumbledore said Master Harry Potter would fight the Dark Lord, and could not be distracted with Potter matters."

Harry wanted to scream, but recognised he only wanted to scream at the house-elves because Dumbledore wasn't there anymore to be screamed at, so he suppressed the feeling. Instead, he said, "go and ask Winky if she has any work for you. If not, stay in the house until I think of what to do."

Over the coming day, he had discussed the situation with Hermione, written his arguments down, and then asked Dobby to read them over and provide any improvements he could think of, and then called the three elves, Marny, Okri and Cicely. "I am very angry with Albus Dumbledore, because he died before he could tell me his reasoning for keeping us apart, when I'm hoping you will wish to join us. If you had been allowed, even expected, to think for yourselves, I'd like to think the situation would have been better. We have plans to take over magical Britain and make radical changes in the process. One of those changes is to have only free house-elves there. For that reason, I'm setting you free. Not because I'm unhappy with you, but because I'm going to make you choose: you can either join us, or you can go and find new families to bond yourselves to. If you choose to join us, you will be expected to make sure we stay safe and unknown, and to work 40-hours a week for the same salary that the humans who join us will get. In the beginning, the range of jobs that we've decided need doing will be relatively small, but over time that will increase, and you will also be expected to take a growing role in deciding what new jobs need to be created, and who will fill them. If you choose to leave, your last order is to never speak of or otherwise communicate about our plan where anyone who is not a participant in the plan can learn of it." Harry then gave each of the elves a t-shirt that he had bought that day, asking, "which do you choose? You can think about the answer as long as you need."

All three elves chose to stay, for which Harry thanked them. He then explained that for the next several months there would be little work, so he asked them to spend the time to get used to freedom, spend time talking to those who would join the school, think what role they could see themselves taking on, and consider whether to use this time to obtain training that would allow them to take on a job that would need doing in the future. A few months before the wards would be ready to be tested, he would ask them to move to Britain to work on some of the Potter owned land and properties.

Harry also talked to Dobby, asking him to consider telling the other elves he had a wand and was learning to use it, and encourage them to do the same.

During the annual runes workshop they found out why pensieves were so expensive and rare. They started out with 20 pairs of participants with a block of marble each, but ended up with only 5 working pensieves, one of which would only project a memory but not allow immersion. It would suffice for the start of the school, so they agreed to leave the production of more pensieves for a time when they expected to need them, and when, hopefully, the initial flurry of activity to set up everything from wards to a shoe shop had progressed further along.

Because of the small size of the magical population, the workload of the organised crime unit varied a lot. It meant that Harry would work full-time as needed and then have time off to make up for it, or do regular auror work during quiet times. Even though June tried to accommodate Harry's variable schedule by being flexible about their mastery training, she had other mastery students, so there were limits to that flexibility. Remus, who had his own mastery in defence, took up the slack. Duelling against Remus, Harry had reached the break-even point, matching slightly more magical power and youthful speed against Remus' werewolf endurance, which meant Harry won if he could end the duel quickly. To keep Harry from starting to rely too much on those advantages, and force Harry into developing different strategies for different situations, Remus would sometimes be aided by Sirius for two against one duels to give Harry a real workout.

Harry had visited the new British muggleborns in June, so he decided to forego his usual trip in August. Instead, he spent more time than usual with Sirius and Remus. He was acutely aware that next summer he was going to be busy preparing for their first school year, so this would be the last time they got to spend weeks together for the foreseeable future. Over the previous years they had visited the holiday destinations that most attracted them in the USA, so they had decided to spend three weeks in South America.

Harry had invited Hermione, but she had declined, because she was in the middle of finishing her mastery project in arithmancy while trying to keep her potions mastery from stalling. Hermione had developed a new revealing spell to diagnose the magic in potions, improving the detection of whether a new potion would do what it was designed to do. She was writing two separate papers, one on the arithmancy that she had used to develop the spell, and another on using arithmancy to interpret the results of the spell. Harry tried to be supportive during times when she was stressing out, but the truth was that the details went over his head, and Hermione was unreceptive to his argument that too much stress would make her lose sleep and use her time ineffectively, and that coming on holidays with them would in the end save time. Therefore, he had resigned himself to trying not to get infected with Hermione's increasingly frantic absorption into her masterworks over the following months, and encouraging her during times when she doubted herself.

Auror Tonks had come through with her report on the situation in magical Britain. Harry was pleased to note that the Ministry had had to make cuts as the emigration of a significant minority of the population had cut into the tax base that paid the government, and that corruption and nepotism was so entrenched that the cuts had resulted in capable people having been fired, while the incompetent with connections had stayed on, ensuring that the downward spiral would continue. When he discussed it with Hermione, she pointed out that Riddle might feel threatened by capable lieutenants, and the Machiavellian trap that said those lieutenants would want to replace him, so the only way for the lieutenants to stay alive was to act incompetent. Another interesting detail was that the pureblood families that supplied a lot of the Death Eaters were often the same families that were part of an international smuggling operation that supplied a lot of the illegal goods that were for sale in Knockturn Alley. Harry saw an opportunity. At the organised crime auror unit, Harry had learned that these international smuggling rings tended to be set up in similar ways. They relied on corruption in their country of origin to be untouchable there, used the vagaries of ICW rules, and their spotty enforcement, to evade most scrutiny abroad, were organised in hierarchies with untouchable management and disposable underlings, and operated on the basis of short-lived contracts that were meant to have ended by the time that law-enforcement took note.

These factors together meant that it was fiscally impossible to allocate a lot of auror time to take out these organisations at the root, and that taking out a few minor branches of the organisation from time to time left the core organisation unaffected. However, Harry had a temporary advantage. Tonks had been able to bring with her information that would have been too difficult to obtain for MACUSA, and that she wouldn't have been allowed to act on while still in Britain. In addition, taking down as much of the British smuggling ring as he could expose would be an acceptable mastery project, reducing the need to justify a hefty bill of hours spent finding lots of minor crooks who made up the underlings. And Harry also had a lot of friends among the British diaspora in different countries, many of whom would jump at the chance to expose the pureblood criminals who ran them out of their home country. It would still only be able to attack the non-British branches of the smuggling operation, but it could at least hope to do a more thorough job than had been attempted before.

Now that Harry led his own investigation he didn't have time for regular auror work anymore, which suited Harry fine; although dealing with unruly citizens and petty crime was less stressful, it was also repetitive, and organised crime investigations meshed better with the advanced spells and strategies he was studying for his mastery. He still had a variable schedule. Some weeks several leads in his own investigation would coincide with another team needing him to assist in raids or taking his turn in tracking people or goods, while other weeks he would fill with catching up with his theory studies and paperwork, alternating with endless rounds of target practice to give his brain a rest and train his reflexes.

When Hermione had finished her arithmancy mastery, Harry had offered the services of two elves to take her parents from Canada to Japan and back. Hermione said getting permission from the Japanse ministry of magic had been much more complicated than arranging a portkey trip, but muggles couldn't take portkeys and she hadn't wanted to put her parents through the long flights by muggle airplane when an easier option was available. Harry himself had travelled by portkey. One of Hermione's friends looked at Harry strangely. This was nothing new to Harry, so he tried to act like he hadn't noticed, but Emma showed up once Harry had moved on and told him quietly, "you have competition."

Harry misunderstood, and asked, "there's another seeker here?"

Fortunately, Emma was sufficiently familiar with quidditch jargon that she didn't add to the confusion, but clarified, "for Hermione's affection." Harry's head swivelled straight to the man who he had just spoken to. Even though Harry had a girlfriend himself, it took a moment for him to wrestle his face back into a neutral expression. Emma had obviously also seen his lapse, because she continued, "I think you're safe."

"You do know that Hermione and I split up, don't you?"

"Yes, I do know. I'm sorry for teasing you. Although rationally I accept that it would have been difficult for you to stay together while you were living in different countries with very busy lives, emotionally I was upset that you hurt my little girl's feelings. I don't blame you. If my teasing sounded like I was accusing you of something, then I apologise."

Emma had always encouraged Harry to speak plainly, so he asked her, "but which is it? Surely, I can't be both safe and have competition?"

"You can. You have competition because Djimbo would like to date Hermione, but you're safe because Hermione has decided she wants to spend all her time studying potions and not worry about whether she's neglecting her boyfriend while she's doing that."

"I did tell her that it would be fine if she took another year to finish her potions mastery."

"Please don't insist," Emma pleaded, "I think she'd try to do her runes mastery and burn herself out."

Harry nodded. Based on Hermione's third year at Hogwarts it was a valid concern. Given the help that Hermione had provided in the arithmancy of the wards they'd been testing over the previous year, Harry had no doubt that she could do it, but it was not unthinkable that she'd sacrifice her health while achieving it.

Christmas with the Grangers was great. However, when the time was approaching to return to the USA, Harry turned melancholic. He tried to hide it, not wanting to put a damper on the festivities, but Emma noticed anyway, which didn't surprise Harry. "You'll be fine," she tried to encourage him. "If it becomes too difficult for you to leave Britain, then we'll come and visit you. And we can still talk with those wonderful mirrors." Hermione's parents couldn't turn their mirror off and on, so the pair that they shared with Hermione was always open, and Hermione used a silencing charm on her end between conversations. It was just another way that Hermione managed to look past extraneous details that would have had someone else conclude that sharing magical mirrors with muggles was impossible.

In March, Harry asked the four free house-elves to go to Britain and thin out a wood that had been owned by the Potters for centuries and to dry the trees, so they could in due course use the trunks to make furniture, and to collect branches suitable for making wands. He also asked them to plant top fruit and nut trees in their stead, because it would be some time yet before these could be grown in the school site. He also asked the elves to dig out a series of caves under the land, so they would have somewhere to escape to, should the site next to Hogwarts be discovered, or possibly have an alternative site if the magic hiding ward didn't work. Although, if the latter were the case, they might decide to delay starting the school and test other wards.

By April, Harry had enough on the British smuggling operation to roll up a major part of it, enough to satisfy the requirements for his mastery to lead a major auror operation, but Harry told June and MACUSA that he wanted to try and take out more of the organisation, and that it would be easier to do that all at once. Harry was sure that the British were aware that they were under investigation, but that was true most of the time, so he was hopeful they didn't realise how big and coordinated the present law enforcement effort was. What he didn't tell them was that he had an additional reason to delay. After the attacks on Hermione, he expected retaliation, and, because he was using the operation as a mastery project, it would be public knowledge that he had organised it. Therefore, he wanted to disappear into the new school as soon after taking out the smuggling ring as possible.

He also wanted to take alternate retaliation targets with him. That would mean more delays, because Hermione was expecting a slight delay in her second mastery, so, while she had finished her arithmancy mastery in November, her potions mastery wouldn't be done until July. That would mean that Neville Longbottom, Andromeda and Ted Tonks would be the ones to test the unplottable ward. Harry didn't like it, but Lilian pointed out that it wasn't a big deal, because shortly before that she would test the same ward that they had set up in the USA. Lilian had been unimpressed by Harry's argument that going back to Britain had been Hermione and his idea, so Harry should be the one to test the new ward. As their runes expert, Lilian said, she was responsible for making sure the ward was formulated in such a way that its energy would go into its task, without any leakage/ambiguity that would lead to magical backlash.

Harry would have also liked to take Sirius and Remus with him, but they pointed out that Sirius had a pivotal role to smooth over any immigration issues with British fugitives into the USA. Reluctantly, Harry had to concede that keeping emigration from Britain exceeding immigration was a core task in their strategy of getting rid of the old ministry, which had only become worse after the takeover by Voldemort, but not fundamentally different from before, and to do so without pitched battles. And if Sirius was going to stay, then Remus and Winky could help protect him. The only concession Harry got out of them was that they would only go out in public in disguise, and apply anti-scrying charms.

Everybody who was in on the plan to start a school in Britain gave a collective sigh of relief when, 365 days after setting up the ward, progressively more demanding tests, that started with portkeying in a magical rat, and ended with Lilian taking a floo ride, an illegal floo that copied the setup in Britain, that showed that the new ward hid magic done there from MACUSA's detection. They hadn't been able to come up with a satisfactory alternative, so a lot had been riding on its success. The same day, Neville booked a portkey from Brazil to Stockholm, from where he would floo to Malmo, and then make an illegal border crossing to Copenhagen by broom, while the elder Tonkses booked a portkey from the USA to Copenhagen, where they would let Neville hide in a trunk, floo to The Hague, and instruct their owl to take them to Britain. They had gotten residency permits from the Ministries of Magic of Sweden and Denmark (ministries that exerted authority over areas that were closer to the borders as they had been at the end of the 17th century, when the Statute of Secrecy had been instated, than contemporary borders), because officially they wouldn't leave their respective countries (The Netherlands fell under the Danish Ministry, much like Ireland fell under the British Ministry, because it was impractical to have a ministry for a country with only about 1000 witches and wizards). They had decided that they would all move to different countries in Northern Europe, both to avoid attracting attention to a particular country becoming a hotspot for reclusive British expats, and since one of their contingencies was inviting muggleborns in the catchment area of Durmstrang to their school.

Harry mirror called the British elves, who all moved to the school site and would continue the work that Opal had started, digging out classrooms, living quarters and growing areas. Even Kreacher joined them, though Harry got the impression from Opal that that was more about making sure Kreacher didn't die alone than having him do much work. Neville would start filling the growing areas with environmental controls, such as light emitting enchantments, and with food and healing plants, while the Tonkses would prepare the living quarters. Harry was relieved when they mirror called that their method of flying into Britain undetected still worked, and that they had reached the school without mishap. They had successfully taken the first small step towards taking back magical Britain.