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Chapter 16

The next two days for Harry were both harassing and depressing. He received dozens of letters from people all over Wizarding Britain. Ten of them were official notices from the Ministry telling him that more people had pledged to support him, joining Harry's feud on his side. Mostly it was first generation witches and wizards who didn't have a magical family to pull into this mess and who wanted the legal power to preemptively defend themselves. The other seventy or so letters he got were basically fan mail cheering him on and telling him to go kill the blood purist bastards. The disheartening part was that he didn't get even one notification that someone had gone to the Ministry to prove they were innocent of what Harry had accused them of doing. While he had relied on names that the Weasley twins and Ron had pilfered from the Order of the Phoenix, a group that apparently had a spy in the Death Eaters, Harry had hoped that at least a few of the names had been mistakes that he wouldn't have to deal with.

The mood in the castle was also incredibly tense. Everyone now knew who the baby Death Eaters were, and even if you didn't know them by name, there was a group of mostly Slytherins who kept glaring at Harry every chance they got. Their first dinner in the Great Hall on the Sunday after the day he spent in the Ministry was enough to tell everyone that they wanted Harry dead. He was just glad Professor McGonagall had talked to them all and warned them enough that they at least wouldn't try anything in the Great Hall with so many witnesses. Harry was sure if he happened to run into them alone in the corridors one evening, it would be an entirely different story. After all, it wouldn't matter if one of them killed him illegally if no one could prove who did it.

For the most part, Harry and his friends spent their free time training because they were all sure they would be pulled into this feud at some point, with Harry also working on the first of a few new runic inventions he had thought of. The first one was actually quite simple to do, as the things he needed to happen were already well documented things you could do with runes. Expanded space, no different than the headband and tail sock he made for Hermione; a short range switching spell, not one he had ever used before but the example was right in his text book; a hovering charm, he had found an old one that used to be used on brooms a few hundred years ago in a copy of Quidditch through the ages. It needed a little modification but not much of one.

The only tricky part was getting everything to work in sequence the way he wanted, and then working in leather, a medium he was unused to. In the end, it only took Harry two days to knock up a working prototype. It was a… well, he supposed the term was vambrace, as it was a large leather cuff he wore on his left forearm. There was a pocket built into the cuff and inside were seven flat round disks of steel with a few hover and guiding runes carved into them. Getting the steel had been annoying, but Dan had come through for him. He had gone straight to the DIY store and gotten Harry a number of sheets of cheap corrugated steel. All the wrong shape, but Harry was able to easily transfigure it into exactly what he wanted: flat ovals that were three feet wide and four feet tall. Because it was only a shape change and not a change of the material, the Transfiguration was permanent. And finally, there was the ring Harry wore on his left hand.

All together, when Harry fed a little magic into the ring on his left hand, one of the metal disks would be switched with the air right next to the cuff and would remain hoving three inches in front of the cuff. Basically, it was a shield that he didn't need to use his wand for. Sure, each shield could only take one hit before it broke, but the big advantage was it almost didn't matter what that spell was. Because the shield was a physical object, it didn't matter if the spell was a Stunner or killing curse, it was burnt out on the shield all the same before it could even touch the one being shielded.

It wasn't any good a dealing with area of effect spells like a Bombarda, but even then Harry would rather the blast start on a shield and him have the force of the explosion spread out over the whole shield hitting him than for the spell to hit him directly, though he supposed it was like preferring to hit with a car instead of a bus. Was it perfect? No, but nothing was, and this had the advantage of working on Unforgivable curses. That was something Harry, and probably quite a few others, were going to need very soon.

How soon was not a surprise to Harry. About ten minutes before sunrise on the third day after the declaration, Harry was being shaken awake by Dobby. "Boss man is needing to get up, he was right about what nasty old master and his friends would do."

Harry fought to wake up and quickly started pulling on his robes. "What exactly are they doing, Dobby?" Harry asked.

"They is gathering outside the house. It looks like they intend to destroy it as soon as the sun rises. Here, Dobby has the potion you need," and Harry could have kissed the little guy as he handed Harry a Wit-Sharpening Potion.

"Is Fleur safe?" Harry asked.

"Miss Fleur is refusing to leave and is planning on fighting," Dobby told him.

Harry wanted to curse at that but should have known even before she had pledged herself to join the fight that the strong and independent woman that he loved wouldn't be content to wait someplace safe while he did the fighting. Hermione was the same and would probably call him a chauvinist if he told her he wanted her to stay safe. Harry disagreed; it had nothing to do with them being women, they were the family he had finally built for himself. The thought of losing any of them terrified him.

Harry's thoughts caught up to him as he was pulling on and lacing up his boots. "I suppose Hermione has asked Sassy to get her up like I asked you?" Harry asked.

"Boss man is knowing Miss Hermione well," Dobby confirmed. "She was expecting today's attack as well."

Harry was just finishing tying up his boots when a tabby cat came running into the dorm room. It was Hermione in her Animagus form. She had obviously decided it was faster to run down the girls stairs and up the boys in her cat form. She turned back into the woman he loved, a stern and determined look on her face and a bag slung over her shoulder. One look was enough to tell Harry that she wasn't going to accept being left behind. So he just reached out his hand for hers and said, "Come on then." When she took his hand, he Stepped the few miles to their home.

"Morning Harry." Fleur's voice called out the second he landed in the living room, and a half second later she added, "Morning Hermione. You didn't have to sneak out yourself then?"

"Morning Fleur, Harry knows what's good for him," Hermione joked, a defence mechanism against the reality they were facing that she was picking up from Harry. "What's the situation?"

"Six of them. I don't know if they know I'm in here. They could just be looking to send a message. Blow up your house with no one inside, show you who's boss, then sue for peace," Fleur siad.

"I'm gonna get my cloak and go and see what I can do. Can you two stay inside and keep them from destroying the house while I see how many I can catch?"

Neither of them looked like they liked that plan. Even Fleur's cat Poe was looking at him like he was an idiot. "You don't expect us to just sit here and do nothing, do you?" Hermione asked.

"No, I need them paying attention to you so they don't see me thinning their numbers. And I need someone to save my ass if I get in trouble. Just be careful you don't hit me." Harry didn't wait for them to agree or disagree; he bolted off up the stairs to a trunk he kept in the bedroom that had his family's invisibility cloak, it was safer there that in the school and as he could have Dobby bring it or step home himself it was no inconvenience, and pulled it on around his shoulders. He Stepped back to the living room and, struck by a sudden idea, asked the two to watch him as he tried something.

He pulled the cloak fully around himself, making himself invisible, and shifted to his falcon form. He was hoping that the cloak would merge with him like his clothes do and leave him invisible, but it didn't work. The cloak merged with him like any other clothes, but he was still fully visible. It was a pity, but Harry remained in his falcon form and Stepped into the sky.

This let him have a very different view of what was happening. He could see the six people standing outside his home, but his falcon eyes could also easily make out the distortion of another seven individuals who were Disillusioned. This wasn't a message, this was a trap. They expected him to come running when his house was under attack, and the seven Disillusioned people would take him by surprise. They had not only set a trap, they had come in force.

Of course setting a trap like this required for the Death Eaters to severely underestimate Harry. He was expecting an attack, and this was right out of the Death Eaters' known playbook. He had a response plan of his own. Knowing where the Disillusioned people were, he now flew down to the street just around the corner of his house and transformed back into an invisible teenager. He cast a few spells to dampen the sound of his breathing and footsteps and then peeked around the corner. The first Disillusioned man was standing in a closed doorway, rudely using someone's house to shelter from the chilly morning wind.

Harry checked his watch. The official time for sunrise was in two minutes and twenty-four seconds, according to his fairly accurate pocket watch. He then fiddled in his pocket for something he had Tracey whip up in the Potions lab for him. She hadn't been able to do exactly what Harry wanted, as he had wanted something he could use like a smoke grenade that produced a knockout gas. She hadn't been able to work that out precisely, but she had come up with a skin contact liquid. Hermione had added that to a mundane water spray bottle and a pair of washing gloves, and he now had a stealthy way to knock people out that didn't require shouting an incantation or a bright red light. It did require you to get extremely close to your target, so its usefulness was limited, but with Harry's cloak and guessing the Death Eaters would try something today, that let him be prepared.

He pulled on the rubber glove that would keep him from being knocked out by any stray drips and waited for the timer to tick down.

Twenty seconds

Ten seconds

Five

Four

Three

Two

One

He sprayed the potion right in the man's face and heard him slump down to the floor, unconscious but still disillusioned. Then Harry heard a yell, not from the Death Eaters but from the top of the house as Hermione shouted, "Flashbang!" Harry grinned as he turned his head away. It was something Hermione had worked out over the week leading up to Harry's trip to the Wizengamot. It was similar to his plan the first year for dealing with a troll when he had tried to use a Lumos in its eyes. Hermione had combined it with a loud noise to copy a mundane flashbang grenade and made a Runic array to do the whole thing. Well, array may be a strong word for it; she used the Runes for the Lumos spell seven times and another seven noisemakers, carving them into a glass ball she had transfigured out of some old glass bottles.

The people who were attacking their family home, however, had no concept of what a flashbang was, so when the crystal ball came flying out of a window to land among them, they all used a Shielding charm, assuming from the word 'bang' being shouted it was going to act like a firework or a Bombarda curse. Of course, shield spells are extremely useful against a lot of attacks, but they do nothing against light and sound. The extremely bright light and loud bang was enough to have them seeing spots and have a massive ringing in their ears, disorienting everyone who hadn't braced for it by turning away and covering their ears. None of the trio had any experience with real flashbang grenades, so none of them knew how effective they were, but they assumed that they would be lucky to get ten to fifteen seconds to act.

Immediately, Fleur and Hermione started to rain stunning spells down on the visible attackers, and Harry started to send spells at the places he had seen the Disillusioned shimmers. In total, Harry would have guessed that they had almost twenty seconds before the Death Eaters started fighting back. By then they had dropped about half of them. Hermione tried a second flashbang, but unfortunately the attackers weren't quite as dumb as people would assume, as this time one of them vanished the new crystal ball as soon as it landed before it could go off.

Seeing how it was going the Disillusioned attackers dropped their invisibility and started shooting what Harry guessed were ward-breaking spells at the house, although three of them were already unconscious thanks to Harry. He thought he had hit four of them, but apparently he must have missed one, because from a spot where Harry had shot a Stunner moments ago came a jet of green magic shooting towards his general direction. It wasn't close enough to hit Harry, but it was enough to know that Harry had been spotted and that now there were two invisible people trying to kill each other.

Harry quickly Stepped to another location, as no good would be served by him being anywhere near where someone thought he was and was sending Killing curses at him. He chose the roof of his house so that he could shift to his falcon form and try and see where the Disillusioned attacker was. Like Harry, the man had moved from his previous known location and seemed to just be watching the fight. If he had to guess, the man was watching for an invisible attacker so he could try and kill him off.

Then suddenly the unconscious bodies started to disappear one after another. Harry cursed, they must have had portkeys on them. Seeing that the unconscious ones were disappearing, the ones who were still fighting called a retreat and Disapparated out. Harry let out a sigh as he saw the disillusioned shimmer also disappear from the street. He beat his wings and flew back into the house through the owlery before transforming back into a human and walking down the stairs to the living room, where he saw Hermione and Fleur still looking out the windows for more attackers.

"I think they are all gone," Harry said and saw the two women relax a little. "Pity they all got away."

At that Dobby popped in. "They is not all getting away. Dobby is using the portkey coins boss man was given by the goblins, three of them is in the goblin dungeons now."

"Dobby, what portkey coins?" Harry asked, confused.

Dobby started to grab at his ears and ring them out before Harry told him to stop. "Dobby is forgetting to tell boss man. The goblins is sending them last night to be ready for the fighting today, but everyone was already asleep when they is arriving and Dobby forgot to tell you this morning. But the goblins is sending coins that is portkeys. Each one drops a nasty Death Eater in one of the cold dark goblin dungeon cells. Dobby is using some when he sees that bad mens be unconscious. Dobby is sorry."

Harry couldn't help the massive grin that split over his face. "Dobby, that's brilliant!" He picked up the little elf in his joy and hugged him. "Oh that's bloody brilliant, Dobby. Three, we got three of them? Do you know if any of them were warlocks in their houses?"

"We is capturing Warlock Carrow and his sister wife," Dobby confirmed with a big smile on his face when Harry had set him back down.

"Sister wife?" Hermione asked, sounding nauseous.

"It's a practice that some British purebloods do, but even most of them think it's insane," Fleur told them.

"Kinda hard to ignore the effects of inbreeding when your family tree is a piece of bloody bamboo," Hermione snarked, still a little green in the face at the thought.

"What time do you have to be at work?" Harry asked Fleur as he looked at the clock and saw that it was already twenty to eight. This also interrupted Hermione's thought process before she could start a rant that would eat into the little time they had, as their classes started at eight.

"I have to be there at nine, Goldtooth expected there may be a delay today," Fleur told them.

Harry thought about things that all needed to happen quickly and came to a decision. "Sassy, how quickly can you have breakfast ready for us?" He asked knowing the little elf would hear him no matter where she was.

There was a little pop and the elf was suddenly right in front of him. "Breakfast is already on the table downstairs, master. I thought you would be needing it this morning," The little elf said.

Breakfast was good but rushed. Harry and Hermione only had twenty minutes to eat, get back to Gryffindor Tower, get changed for class, grab their books, and then actually get to class. So after a very quick meal, Harry Stepped Hermione directly into her dorm, with her covering his eyes just in case one of her dormmates was indecent in the room, then Stepped straight into his dorm and started getting changed.

The two of them just made it to class after the bell rang. Luckily their lesson was Charms, and Flitwick wasn't one to say anything about a few minutes unless it was a recurring problem for a student. But as Harry and Hermione weren't really late, he just waved them to their seats and started his lessons on Preserving and Stasis Charms.

"Hey," Ron asked as they took their seats. "What happened, where did you two disappear to this morning?" A quick glare from Flitwick, though, was enough to get them to keep quiet and get on with their work, which was (unfortunately for Ron's curiosity) a theoretical lesson today.

After the lesson they would have had fifteen minutes to relax and Ron could ask his questions, however the three of them were stopped by Headmistress McGonagall who insisted on speaking with Harry and Hermione immediately. She pulled the two of them into a currently empty classroom and sent Ron on his way. "Care to explain what happened this morning? Why did I get an alert from the wards that the two of you left the school, and then when you arrived back Professor Babbling got an alert of a boy in the girls' dormitories?" The Scotswoman sounded on the verge of shouting at them.

Hermione took the lead. "Professor, we were going to come and tell you about everything during break ourselves, Professor Flitwick will tell you we were technically late for class though he hadn't actually started teaching yet. As for why we left the castle, Harry's elves came and warned the two of us that his house was under attack. I'm sure you remember that today is the first official day of the blood feud. There were a bunch of them waiting to attack the house as soon as the sun came up.

"Harry and I had to go deal with that. No one died or needed medical attention, and the house is fine. We rushed back to the school as soon as we could, but given how short our time was Harry Stepped me back to my dorm so I could change and grab my books before he immediately Stepped over to the boys dorm so he could do the same. I covered Harry's eyes while he Stepped me so that if one of my dormmates had been in the room changing Harry wouldn't have seen anything."

"And just how could you Step to the girls' dorms? I was under the impression that you could only Step to places you had been?"

"No, I can blind Step. I once Stepped into Hermione's dining room at her home, despite having never seen her home once. But as for the dorms, they have windows and I can fly. I'm not exactly looking. but as you fly around you do see glimpses through the windows. Not enough to know anything, but enough to know how to aim," Harry admitted, not going to lie to the professor.

The headmistress looked annoyed at Harry's explanation but only said, "In the future, I would prefer that you be late and drop Miss Granger off in the common room. I will take your word for it that you were going to come and explain your leaving the school without notice at your first opportunity, but I will still be docking you ten points each. Next time send your elf to explain things to me." Here she softened her expression a little. "And I'm glad nobody was hurt." With that, the headmistress let them leave and enjoy the few minutes they had left of their break. They found Ron and a few other members of Harry's little combat training club, and they explained what had happened this morning.

Susan was shocked that Harry had captured so many death eaters so soon. "The D.M.L.E. is constantly trying to catch even one, but you caught three in one day?"

"Well, we don't have to follow the same rules that the D.M.L.E. do. They weren't wearing masks and hadn't actually done anything illegal yet, and wouldn't have done anything illegal by attacking the house. We, however, only had to wait for sunrise to start attacking them," Harry explained. "Well, that and the D.M.L.E. doesn't have a slightly mad house elf who will take it upon himself to drop goblin portkeys on unconscious attackers."

Their next lessons went as normal, and honestly Harry and Hermione preferred that as it helped them set aside what had happened this morning. It was at lunch that things got interesting again. Both Harry and Hermione were on edge, but what they received they weren't expecting: Professor Babbling interrupting them in the middle of their meal, telling them they were required to go to the headmistress office immediately.

They were surprised to learn who the man was that was waiting for them when the headmistress introduced them to the new Head of the Aurors. The previous Head of the Aurors, Rufus Scrimgeour, had been promoted to the Head of the D.M.L.E when Amelia Bones had been elected Minister of Magic. That had left an Auror named Williamson to lead the department. He was rather different from what the two would have expected. Instead of imposing, the man was small and wiry and seemed to have a personable personality.

"Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, I was wondering if you could help me with something. An Auror went missing this morning, and I was hoping you would know something about it."

They were both confused, but it was Harry who asked. "Why would Hermione and I know anything about a missing Auror?"

"Ah, well, we sent someone to monitor the incident at your home this morning. We can't interfere if they stick to the rules, but we wanted to monitor if they stepped outside of the rules at all. However, the man we sent never came back."

It was at this point that an eagle owl came swooping into the office through a post window and dropped a letter bearing the seal of Gringotts into Harry's hands.

A/N

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