This chapter replaces/expands on Fridays chapter (Birthday Party), as such if you have already read this weeks chapter you can skip ahead to the second line break for the new content.
After Dumbledore's lecture, he led Harry and Tonks down through the school. Eventually they reached the entrance hall but rather than leave they went even deeper, after a few floors they reached a large iron door that spanned the entire corridor.
Dumbledore waved his wand in a complicated pattern and chanted under his breath, when Dumbledore thrust his wand towards the door Harry expected it to just move out of the way, instead the door seemed to just fade into nothingness.
"This area of the university is where they experiment with potentially dangerous projects, visitors aren't normally allowed past the iron door. I strongly suggest you don't go wandering off as each door requires a password."
Several floors and doors later they stopped in front of a huge wooden door, even from a distance Harry felt the magic protecting it. When he got close he saw that the entire surface was covered in runes, this indicated the door wasn't meant to stop wizards breaking in.
Harry expected Dumbledore to use some form of advanced magic to open this door, but disappointingly he just walked up to the door and knocked briskly. Somebody, presumably a professor, opened to reveal a huge warehouse.
What caught Harry's attention was a couple of dry docks at the far end of the building, only one of the docks was occupied, it looked like the university was either in the process of creating or breaking apart a yacht. Where a muggle dry dock would have blocks or scaffolding to keep the ship off the ground, this yacht was held up by some sort of levitation charm.
Despite how far down they had gone Harry could clearly see the doors at the end of the docks were level with the water outside, Harry assumed the dry dock had been part of the original fort when magical battles had been fought at sea. Wizards only used ships for leisure or to show off, yet despite this Harry decided he wanted to build a ship in the future, just to prove he could.
Slughorn had visited Dumbledore twice while Harry was staying there, he got the impression Slughorn was trying to subtly convince people Voldemort was back. Harry had wondered if he should be more involved but to his mild shock he had discovered he didn't have a desire to find or fight Voldemort.
So far Harry's goal had only been to discover as much about magic as he could, then after Hermione had died to find a way to bring back the dead. But as the sorting hat had said he had no desire to prove himself to anybody or risk his life fighting someone that had only been a hindrance.
He had confided his thoughts with Dumbledore who had sat Harry down and explained the situation to him "I will not lie to you and say nobody expects you to fight Voldemort because we both know those people are out there, but you should only fight him because you want to do it. I fight Tom because I know it was my mistakes that allowed him to rise to power, I certainly won't make you fight him and I will make sure nobody else does either."
Those words brought a sense of relief and hope to Harry, something he hadn't realised he was missing. For his birthday Tonks, Luna and her father had been invited over, Harry and Tonks would then leave with them to stay at the Rookery before going on their trip.
Xeno and Luna had been fine with allowing Tonks to join them as additional security, although Xeno had started talking about how a metamorphmagus would help attract a creature Harry had never heard of.
Tonks' present had been a Black family book on metamorphmagi and a box of sweets, Xeno had given Harry a rather rare, signed book called 'Mediterranean water creatures and where to find them.' by Newt Scamander, it turned out Xeno had been friends with Newt's son at Hogwarts.
Luna had struggled to find something for Harry and had settled on painting a picture, it showed Harry with magic flowing around him. As it was a magical painting the magic kept moving and every so often lightning would flash in the background. The painted Harry looked strong and powerful, like a warlock from old.
Finally Dumbledore presented his gift, it wasn't a book like he had expected, instead Dumbledore handed him a muggle ship kit. "I saw how you looked at that yacht at the University and thought you'd like to have a chance to build and enchant a ship of your own." Other 12 year olds may have been disappointed at such a simple present, however Harry saw it for what it was.
Harry thought this was Dumbledore's way giving Harry a challenge and a hint, obviously Dumbledore thought it would be important for Harry to learn enchanting. It was just like the book on conditional magic Dumbledore had given him for Christmas, so far he had only cracked two of the enchantments and it had taken him most of the year to get that far.
The next morning Harry awoke in the Rookery's spare bedroom, he quickly dressed and went downstairs. Xenophilius was already up and reading the Daily Prophet, despite it being a rival paper Xeno had said he liked to know what people were reading.
Before he had left Dumbledore had privately told Harry that during the last war Xeno used to hide hidden codes in his paper that the resistance could use to keep up with current events. For instance Uga-Boga 'sightings' occurred in the same place a Death Eater attack had happened, after the war was over there was no reason to use secret codes.
But to maintain his cover he kept the paper as it was, the Death Eaters never figured out how the resistance got information and the Lovegood's were left alone as a crazy newspaper editor. Then several years later he had gotten in an accident and struggled to tell the difference between truth and fiction.
Harry looked over at the newspaper and was shocked to see the headline "Albus Dumbledore tells Wizengamot you-know-who has returned!" It seemed Dumbledore had decided to release the information after all, Harry hoped he knew what he was doing. At the same time he was glad he would be leaving England later that day as he knew the wizards wouldn't react kindly to the news.
Eventually after Luna had come downstairs and Tonks had apperated over with their portkey they locked up the house and activated the portkey, leaving England for the Caribbean. After Harry recovered from the rough travel he looked around curiously, while Harry didn't know much about the muggle Caribbean he had studied up on the magical side.
During the reign of piracy wizards had been in high demand before the statute of secrecy. The British had used wizards to track down pirates, in turn the pirates had used wizards to hide their ships. Several entrepreneurial wizards had set up what they called the 'Republic of Caribbean Wizardry' and had then laid claim to almost every island and trade route within the area.
Their idea was to enforce their law upon the area, they decreed that any ship that wanted a 'Ships wizard' needed to pay a tax to their new republic, in return for that tax they would provide competent wizards, however ships with a 'license for wizardry' were forbidden from interfering with the affairs of wizards.
For the wizards this brought a degree of safety from both sides of the conflict as any ship which mistreated their wizard would swiftly lose the right to employ any future magic user as well as providing a stable income.
Because of this many of the wizards gladly joined the republic and the British navy quickly took advantage by legitimizing them and providing a bulk tax to equip all their ships with their own wizard. Before the republic the quality of a ship's wizard was based solely on the wizard's own claims, but now there was an official body to ensure the navy was equipped with only the best.
The pirates and rogue wizards were less willing to follow the new law, the pirates soon found the few wizards they could privately hire were rarely good enough to hide them from the navy's official wizard. The rogue wizards were treated less kindly and republican wizards were encouraged to look down on rogues, the republic lacked the power to actually enforce their laws across their entire territory but they could provide enough incentive to make people follow them willingly.
What few wizarding colonies that had already been set up within the new republic had disagreed with the republic's claims, those that became too vocal often found an army of angry 'ship wizards' at their gates. When the International Confederation of Wizards started talking about hiding from muggles the Republic was one of the first to argue, with the potential loss of their main source of income the republic had turned violent. It was only the intervention of several major ICW members that ended the conflict and forced the republic to sign the statute.
The Magical Congress of the United States liked to believe the Republic was under their control, despite the fact the ICW treated them as two separate ministries. As such there was some confusion over who visitors should report to, it seemed the British ministry had decided to send them to the Republic judging by the imposing flag filling the entire wall.
While Xeno and Tonks dealt with customs Harry tried to wrap his mind around how they had left England at 10am and had arrived in the Caribbean at 5am almost immediately, the sun hadn't even risen yet. Going on autopilot Harry followed the instructions given to him, such as registering his wand and documenting any illegal items he had.
He had talked to Dumbledore over this and while any goblin owned item was banned it never said the actual mithril was illegal, despite this he had left most of his mithril at Dumbledore's. He only had his gauntlet and the ring which summoned his flask and saber, he was unwilling to try and remove the liquid mithril, which he had called mithrilium.
They hoped the notice-not would stop anyone noticing either ring, so far people only noticed his ring when he drew their attention to it. Even Dumbledore hadn't been able to see through its protections, but if he activated it the notice-not either failed or was too weak to properly conceal it. Hopefully he wouldn't need to activate the gauntlet but if he did the notice-not should at least stop people looking at what it was made of too closely.
In order to distract himself from the fear from the wild notion he would somehow have his mithril stolen, Harry focused on the guards, each one carried a pale blue staff between 4 to 5 feet tall. Each staff had a smoky quartz crystal at the top, the crystals glowed faintly and Harry could just make out the runes which had been carefully scored into them.
Staffs were generally seen as siege weapons as they could channel magic more efficiently than a wand, this meant a spell cast through a staff would not only be stronger than a wand but would also be able to go further before the spell dissipated. However the increase in power also meant a decrease in precision and control.
Very few cultures bothered to teach their children how to use a staff as wands were cheaper to make and more useful, a staff was useless for transfiguration and ward making and lacked the finesse in charms. But for a ship's wizard most of the magic they needed to cast required range and power over precision, the cost of the staff was paid for by the taxes collected from the muggles.
Caribbean wizards were considered unique in that their children still trained with staffs but also learned how to use a wand when at school, which specialised in defense against the dark arts and battle magic with only a few students specialising in charms and enchanting.
Harry decided he wanted to have a staff of his own, whether that meant learning to make one or getting one made for him he wanted the spectacle of a staff. He could see himself, staff in one hand and wand in the other, performing great feats of magic and astonishing the people around him.
Eventually they were led outside to a dock area where Xenophilius picked up the 'key' for their boat, unlike a muggle key this key was a simple flat stone, it had the identification code of their boat and a rune sequence that would activate the engine.
Xeno stepped onto the boat easily and Luna jumped in after him, Harry assumed they had both sailed before as they hardly noticed the rocking of the boat. Harry wasn't so lucky as Xeno had to help him down and Harry spent several moments stumbling around. Tonks had completely ran out of luck as the moment she tried to stand upright the boat moved and she fell over.
Harry wondered where they would all sleep as the boat seemed to only have one room, but when Harry ducked into the room he realised expansion charms had been used as there were four bedrooms, living area and kitchen. The rooms themselves were fairly cramped and didn't leave much room but it would do, even the rocking of the ship felt muted.
As I don't know much about the Caribbean other than Pirates of the Caribbean I don't feel comfortable to write about 'muggle Caribbean' as such my magical Caribbean may be extremely different.
One of the reasons it sometimes takes a long time to write these chapters is because I do a lot of research, mostly on Wikipedia, for instance for this I first looked at a mythical creature and found most of its myths came from the Caribbean.
Next I looked at what timezone it was in and found it was 5-6 hours behind London, then I looked up when the sun would rise 1st August 1992 (5:43) then for the history when Piracy began in the Caribbean area (early 1500s to 1830s) then when the Statute of secrecy was passed (1692)
Now I could forgo all this research and just say any irregularities are just because it's a different universe, but 1. I quite like doing the research and 2. When I read other people's stories it often bugs me if there are unexplained differences and my main aim for this story is that when it's finished it will be a story I would be happy to read.
The name Mithrilium is only a placeholder, unless people like it in which case I'll keep it. The 'challenge' to come up with a name for liquid mithril and collective name for all states of mithril, also possibly the crystalline mithril used in Godric Gryffindor's sword. Currently favour Mitharite as suggested by Jedi Master Albus as the name for the collective term.