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Chapter 12

"You really should just go to Madam Pomfrey, Harry. All these headaches are getting concerning," Hermione insisted. Harry had to admit she was right. He was getting headaches two or three times a day, often when he was eating. Still, he grunted noncommittally as he rubbed his head having just finished his breakfast. This was apparently not good enough for Hermione and she nodded to someone behind Harry. As Harry had seen the nod, he wasn't too surprised when two sets of arms each grabbed one of his and hauled him to his feet. He had Ron on one side of him and Neville on the other. They weren't drawing Harry anywhere, but it was made pretty clear to him that Hermione had decided that Harry was going to see the medi witch whether he wanted to or not.

Harry was walked through the school, his head throbbing so much that even the light was enough to make it worse. When they got to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey had taken one look at him and ordered him into a bed, and when Hermione told the school nurse everything Harry had told her about the headaches she had diagnosed them as migraines. She still needed to find why they were happening, but knowing the type of headache let her do two things that Harry was extremely grateful for. First, with a wave of her wand there was a blackout sleeping mask over Harry's eyes blocking out all the light. The second took a few minutes but she came back with a pain relief potion that was tailored to migraines.

Ron and Neville had to get to class, so made their excuses and left while Hermione sat down in the chair next to the bed Harry now occupied. Harry drank down the potion quickly and made a vague comment about the potion being switched with the water Dobby used to clean everyone's socks. Over the next five minutes, the pain from the migraine faded away. Madam Pomfrey, in an effort to keep Hermione from fretting as she sat there waiting for Harry, explained what she was doing. "The potion only masks the pain from a migraine, it doesn't actually stop them. I have another potion that I will administer in a while. Before then I will try and find out what is causing them."

What followed was a lot of diagnostic charms and questions. Madam Pomfrey apparently had a whole checklist to go through. She checked his brain, how much sleep he was getting, how stressed and anxious he was, how much wine and cheese he was eating, was he taking any potions or muggle medication? That was all before she started looking into magical reasons. Then she found it, it was the Dark magic in his curse scar being agitated. Something was exciting the dark magic, and it was leading to the migraines. Unfortunately dark magic was notoriously difficult to cleanse, so there wasn't anything that Madam Pomfrey could do except tell Harry to be mindful of when he got the headaches and to work out what was triggering them. In the meantime she gave Harry a few vials of the tailored pain relief potions and a list of things to avoid because they were known to make migraines worse. She then left Harry to recover, saying she was going to write a note to Professor Snape explaining their absence from the lesson.

Almost as soon as she was gone Hermione whispered. " Harry, do you think this is like the headache you got when Voldemort was possessing Quirrell?"

As soon as Hermione said that the dots lined up in Harry's head. "Bloody fucking Christ! You're right. You know what that means, right? That means Voldemort is in the castle again. Did he possess a student at the end of last year after I killed him or something?"

"I don't know Harry, but if he is here we need to find him." Hermione insisted.

"How? We can't just walk up to everyone in the school and ask, 'Hi are you yourself or are you Voldemort possessing this person?'"

Hermione just rolled her eyes at him. "Harry, you're acting like a twat," she said, and he instantly felt a little guilty, he was just stressed and being snarky. He apologised and she moved on. "First, we should inform Professor McGonagall and Minister Bones. We should also check the Marauders' Map, Tom Riddle might appear there. The twins never would have taken any notice of that name our first year, so it's worth checking just to illuminate the possibility if nothing else. And if that doesn't work, maybe your headaches will. If we keep track of who is around when you get them then we can narrow it down."

"I mostly get them at meals." Harry said.

"Well that helps, it means we can probably rule out most if not all of Gryffindor, and most people in our year as well. Is there anyone you don't share at least one class with?"

"Probably, it's our N.E.W.T. years. Though I'm taking all the wand classes so if there is anyone then it's only one or two," Harry said

"Maybe we can sit you outside each of the common rooms during our perfect rounds to see if we can narrow down if a House triggers a headache? Or we could walk around the school during our free periods and see if…" Hermione kept on spiralling ideas for the next few minutes, only stopping when she was interrupted by Hedwig flying in through an open window, a letter tied to her leg. When Hermione stopped talking, Harry slipped off his mask and saw his owl just as she was coming in to land on the bottom of Harry's bed. He smiled; this was the reason he had been reluctant to come to the hospital wing, he was waiting on a letter. Harry untied the letter from Her Grand Owlness, and after checking the seal to see if it was from who he thought it was, he opened and read the letter.

The letter was good news for Harry, but only insomuch as he will be given the opportunity to make his case. "Well that's good news, though it means I can't put talking with everyone off any longer."

What's going on Harry, what's the letter about?" Hermione asked, confused by Harry perking up so quickly.

Harry shot Hermione a feral grin and said "That, love, is a surprise I have been working on. But I only want to explain it once. Do you think we can get Daphne, Tracey, Sirius, your parents, Fleur, and us together for a conversation tonight if we used the mirrors?"

-ϟϟϟ-

The meeting Harry had called with everyone he considered family went off rather well. He had expected a lot more push back for his plan, as it wasn't like his plan had no danger to it. However, it did have a lot of potential benefits, especially when it was considered in the light of the prophecy. If Harry was successful, this one move would cut away a lot of Voldemort's support and isolate his Death Eaters, making any fight Harry had to have with Voldemort a lot less problematic. His next step was a meeting with the directors of Gringotts. He needed some things for his plan, and he was sure these were best gotten from the bank. The letter he had received was from the bank's board of directors, who had agreed to meet with him this Friday after classes. Harry just hoped the fact that the meeting was set for Friday the 13th wasn't some type of omen.

That was one of the reasons why he and Hermione were currently headed to the headmistress's office. The other was to deliver their suspensions regarding the source of Harry's migraines. The headmistress was currently in her professor office hours, as she was still covering the N.E.W.T. classes. Hermione knocked on the door and they were immediately invited in.

"Miss Granger, Mr. Potter, what can I do for you?" The headmistress asked. "I doubt that either of you are having trouble with the homework I set." That was true, the homework was an essay on a part of Transfiguration they had covered last year, a bit of a recap to refresh their brains before they moved on to new stuff this week.

"It's Headmistress McGonagall we need to see right now, not Professor McGonagall, sorry," Harry said.

McGonagall sat up a little straighter and her already resting serious face grew sterner. She directed the two of them to take a seat.

"Easy part first, I have an appointment with Gringotts this Friday after classes have ended to take care of some House business, so I need permission to leave school that evening. I already have a signed permission letter from my guardians." Harry handed over the letter Dobby had popped to him last night during the meeting where the family had discussed everything.

"Well that seems to be in order. Of course you have permission to visit the bank Friday. So if the easy one is taken care of, what is the 'not easy' one?" the headmistress asked.

The two of them explained about the dark magic in Harry's scar and how it was agitated by Voldemort's presence. Then Harry stated how he had been getting headaches at every meal and that they suspected that Voldemort was in the castle. They didn't mention the map because they had already checked it and there was no Voldemort, Tom Riddle, or any variation of a disembodied malevolent spectre of a Dark Lord on there anywhere. They did say about how last night during the prefect rounds Harry had tried standing outside the entrances to each common room, but he had gotten nothing.

Professor McGonagall was of course shocked by the idea that Voldemort was in the school, either possessing a professor or, worse, a student. The protections on the common rooms were strong enough that having Harry stand outside the common room, while worth a try in case it worked, couldn't rule out anything.

"How do we work out who it is?" The professor asked, more to herself than the two teens.

"Why not just have me interact with increasingly smaller groups?" Asked Harry, picturing having half the school in the main hall and half out on the grounds and then splitting whichever group gave Harry a headache up until it was narrowed down.

"That would be a terrible idea Mr. Potter. You-Know-Who is many things but stupid isn't one of them. When he works out we are searching for him, he will be in a large group of potential hostages. He will have nothing to lose getting into a fight, as we now know killing the body he is inhabiting will only expel his spirit. He would start killing indiscriminately, and we can't risk the students like that." Professor McGonagall told him.

"Then should we close the school?" Harry asked.

"I'm not sure." The professor admitted. "What if that provokes an attack? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named could see it as losing his chance and decide to kill as many students as he can in retaliation. If we do close the school, I think the best chance will be during the Christmas holidays after most students have already gone home. At least then we can split the remaining students up more before sending them home.

"At the very least we should call in the Aurors," Hermione suggested.

"Definitely, but You-Know-Who will have a plan for being here; it may be as simple as killing you Mr. Potter but I doubt it. Whatever plan it is, having Aurors around will make him more cautious. This is going to need to be delicate. However, Mr. Potter, I have a request. I will need to call the staff and inform them of what's happening. I want you in the room disillusioned and for you to tap my arm if it's any of the staff before I tell them ." The headmistress didn't sound particularly confident at the moment.

Professor McGonagall wasted no time calling in the Aurors and having Harry explain his suspicions again. They all took it extremely seriously. Curse scars acting up around the person who cast the magic was not well understood, but it was a well-enough documented phenomenon that it was definitely enough to start an investigation, albeit maybe not enough to execute an arrest warrant. The first priority, though, was student safety. The Aurors didn't want to wait until Christmas to get everyone out of the school, but they didn't yet have any better ideas on how to get everyone safely out when they didn't know exactly who it was they needed to keep people safe from. Harry and Hermione were both told not to tell anyone about this, and both agreed with every intention of disobeying. There was no way they were going to leave their friends in the dark about this. Daphne, Tracey, Susan, Hannah, Ron, and Luna were all going to get told, and in Ron's case a Compulsion Charm to not talk about it.

After the meeting with the Aurors was the one with the staff. Hermione disillusioned herself, but Harry decided to use his cloak; it would allow him more freedom to move around the room if his headaches were triggered. A part of Harry hoped they were, because it was a member of staff then with them all in one room the problem could be dealt with easily. However, the entire staff was themselves. Harry had stayed for the whole meeting just to be sure, and there was nothing.

-ϟϟϟ-

Over the next week, everyone in Hogwarts was aware there was something going on. It wasn't difficult to work out when there was a permanent team of Aurors walking around the castle. Even the prefect rounds had been cancelled with the Aurors taking over that duty.

However, Harry, Hermione, and the Aurors all second-guessed Harry's conclusion that Voldemort was in the school on Thursday, when the Daily Prophet had a story about another possession attack the day before. This time Voldemort possessed a Muggle right outside the Houses of Parliament and had him running around, trying to get into the building, and stabbing people. At the same time, a group of masked Death Eaters were across the country destroying a large block of *flats. Fifteen people had died, and there weren't enough Aurors to respond immediately to both scenes because a lot of them were at Hogwarts. It had created a huge mess for the Obliviators.

The fact that the Prime Minister was in the Parliament building at the time for the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions, a meeting where the P.M. answered the questions of all the Members of Parliament, had mundane Britain up in arms. For Harry and Hermione, however, the problem was that the P.M.'s Questions session was around midday; there wasn't anywhere near enough time for Voldemort to travel from London to Hogwarts for lunch, where Harry had another triggered migraine.

The end result was that most of the people who had been told about Harry's migraines and what they believed was causing them, a group that consisted of all of the professors and all of the Aurors' squad leaders, now thought that Harry's concerns were understandable but in the end unwarranted. The Auror patrols in the school were cut, and evening patrols were passed back to the prefects. Harry couldn't even really disagree with the Auror's position. From their perspective, the hunt of the school had been proven to be a waste of time, and they had more important things to concentrate on like trying to round up the Death Eaters who were still out there.

-ϟϟϟ-

When Friday came, Harry Floo'ed to the Leaky Cauldron and walked to Gringotts for the meeting. Harry still hated Floo'ing, but despite being more brazen than he should be with his Stepping he still needed to hide it when there was no other readily available explanation, such as an of-age friend or an extenuating circumstance he could blame it on. The alley was really quiet. A lot of businesses were only staying afloat because they had an owl order service, and some shops like the ice cream parlour that relied on foot traffic were already boarded up.

The only business that seemed to have people going in and out was the bank, probably because there was stuff you couldn't do by owl and the bank considered having Floo fires to be a security risk. This meant most people were Apparating directly onto the street in front of the bank and walking straight in, and were Disapparating the second they were beyond the Anti-Apparition wards of the bank. Harry could probably Step directly into the bank, but he wasn't going to try that. If he was lucky enough to survive what the guards would see as an attack on the bank, then he would likely spend the next six months in goblin custody while they ran test after test on him until they found a way to block his ability to Step.

Harry walked up the marble steps and into the bank. Inside the atmosphere was a little more relaxed, everyone believed no-one was going to start something in Gringotts. For one, the guards all looked like they only wanted an excuse to behead someone. For two, there were rumours that Gringotts had magic to identify anyone who walked into the bank, and considering things like the Marauders' Map existed Harry could believe it. No Death Eater was dumb enough to do anything that could get them banned for life from the bank and all their money. Or it could be just a rumour the goblins started, after all they never caught Quirrell when he tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone from a vault.

Harry was only a little surprised to see Fleur standing in the bank atrium, obviously waiting on him. When he flashed her a smile she just smiled back at him and said, "Good afternoon Warlock Potter, I am runner Delacour and I will be showing you to your meeting today."

"Well then please runner Delacour, lead the way. I'm sure I will have no trouble following you." He gave her a suggestive wink and she blushed. She led him through the bank and its labyrinth. They talked a little as they walked; despite him and Hermione Stepping home every evening to give Fleur a good night kiss and then spending at least an hour on the mirrors every day, there was something different and nice about being able to walk together. Far too quickly for Harry's liking, they arrived at the door to the conference room, and after letting the goblins inside know he was there and introducing him, she unfortunately had to get back to work.

The conference room was split in two, with one half of the floor about two feet higher. The conference table straddled the height difference so that the legs on one half were shorter. The goblins who were all sitting at the table waiting for him were seated at a desk of the perfect height for them, while the chair that was on Harry's side was equally well placed.

"May your vaults grow at your enemies expense." Harry offered them as a way of greeting. This seemed to surprise two of the eight goblins, but the rest seemed to expect it. Harry guessed it was the ones who knew he was betrothed to Fleur who were expecting him to observe goblin etiquette. After all, not doing so would reflect badly on her, and that was one of the reasons Harry had taken the time to learn. Now that he was here to practically beg the goblins to back a plan of his, that information was going to be vital.

"And may your enemies lay bleeding at your feet, warrior. Come and be seated." The title of warrior was a surprise. It didn't mean much in goblin culture, it was an honour title given as a sign of respect rather than any type of official title. Most of the bank's guards would also be addressed as such by other goblins. It basically meant you had seen real battle. But it was a title that the goblins respected more than Warlock. Warlock was an accident of birth, warrior was earned.

Harry took his seat, and the goblin directly opposite him opened the meeting. "So Warrior Potter, you wanted this meeting, what is it you want from Gringotts?"

Harry checked the name plate in front of the goblin who was obviously in charge, seeing it said Ragnok. "Well Director Ragnok, what I have for you is an opportunity to reclaim a lot of treasures that are rightfully yours, for a few goblin warriors to do something they will enjoy immensely, and for all the fallout from the Ministry and the Wizengamot coming solely on me." The goblins were masters at playing it cool, but Harry noticed in their eyes that he had their complete attention. The meeting may not go his way, that would be decided by the details, but they were interested. Giving goblins an opportunity to reclaim what they saw as stolen goblin-made artefacts was always going to do that

"And how do you intend for us to get our treasurers back?" one of the other goblins, Ballrod, asked.

"By signing a contract like this one," Harry slid a contract he had written over the table, "then getting certain warlocks to sign one of these." This time Harry slid over another contract, a standard one that hadn't been used for a few generations.

The goblins early picked up the contracts and quickly read them over. "Okay, let's talk about the details," said Ragnok.

-ϟϟϟ-

It was four hours later that Harry walked out of that meeting. He wasn't going to get the goblins' final answer until at least Monday. They needed time to go over the proposal and see if there were any legal problems Harry had missed in his research. Still, Harry was confident the directors had all been getting into the idea by the end. There was some concern over whether Harry would actually uphold his end of the deal, but that was squashed when Harry pointed out that the contract he would sign would mean the goblins would be able to legally take the items from the vaults without him giving permission again.

Harry was led back down to the atrium by a goblin this time. He had asked about Fleur, but she had understandably gone home when her shift ended. The goblin had actually tried to warn Harry off Fleur, saying that the woman didn't need any more attention from the bank's clients. Harry had laughed and explained to the goblin that he was actually one of Fleur's betrotheds. The goblin was worried he had caused offence, but Harry was just glad Fleur had someone prepared to look out for her at work. The goblin introduced himself as George, and Harry recognised the name of one of the goblins who had started the same day as Fleur.

The Leaky Cauldron was practically empty when Harry walked through it, and he noticed that the fee for using the Floo fire had tripled from what it was before, probably in an effort to keep the business afloat with the reduced number of customers. Harry considered stopping for a meal as he had already missed dinner at Hogwarts, with the meeting having run longer than Harry expected, but Mrs. Weasley was glaring at Harry from behind the bar. It was obvious that, as far as she was concerned, Harry wasn't welcome here, so he Floo'ed back to Hogwarts.

He was spat out of the fire in the headmistress's office, no better at landing on his feet but at least had learned to roll when he hit the floor. The headmistress wasn't in her office when he arrived, and the door wouldn't open to let him out of the office into the school. Harry could have just Stepped, but he figured that stopping anyone from leaving was a security measure and that the headmistress would be there shortly. He was right, as the professor arrived not even five minutes later and gave him an earful for being longer than he said he would be. Harry explained that his meeting had taken longer than expected and he had asked to be allowed to send her a Patronus message, but had been denied the request to use his wand in the bank. Harry was allowed to leave, and as he walked back to the common room he called Sassy and asked his elf to fix him a plate of sandwiches he could eat there.

A/N

*flats - British name for apartments

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