Harry Potter - Hellion!

 

June fifteenth, 1991.

A lone Arctic Stern flew along the coast of England, using the updrafts caused by the cliffs of Dover to ease its flight into an elegant S gliding pattern northward. It reached Ramsgate and, following the shoreline, turned west to continue its progress. It looked at the dirty water with disgust. No way was it going to swim in those waters. As it reached the Isle of Sheppey, it slid down to land in a field. Updrafts had gone with the sunset, and Harry was getting hungry. The tall grass supplied an ample provision of field mice to feed on so he took the barn owl form he had learned was common in Europe, especially in the area he was flying over. Capturing and eating a good three dozen mice in over two hours, Harry felt filled and took shelter in a tall, lonely-looking Elm whose thick foliage afforded him protection from the brewing rainstorm coming down from the North Sea. If things went as planned, he would reach the Malfoy Manor a day or two early. But first, a visit to a festering evilness. A call that had been resounding in his mind for somewhere around nine or ten years now.

Well before dawn, the owl ate another two dozen mice, and took off, this time as a storm crow, whose built allowed it to fly within storm clouds and use the thunderstorm’s strong updrafts to maintain altitude with little effort. Harry oriented his flight slightly upwind, climbing to the top of the clouds with the updrafts, to dive north-westward along the Thames. Each time he took a dive, his fast passage through the air ionized it, creating a long lightning bolt that travelled from cloud to cloud.

Six hours later, he reached the megapolis and used his powerful claws to catch a pigeon that had ventured in Hyde park from under its bench to try and eat soggy popcorns. Fed, Harry made his way to an overhang and tried to pinpoint the evil he felt from afar. He found conflicting information. There were three major sources of evil, whose interaction screwed his search, and numerous minor ones. As the storm cleared, Harry took to the air as a sparrow, and began moving in circles around the park, gradually expending the circle’s radius. His first hit was a house hidden from view much like the Malfoy manor was. He flew in, and landed in the back yard, that seemed to have been left to abandon, and looked around. One evil source was definitely in that house. Perching himself in the window sill, he looked inside to find himself facing a rather ugly-looking house-elf. Bingo! That was definitely a magical family.

The house-elf looked at the small bird with distrust, and he opened the window to shush it away. Harry was not going to be discouraged by an ill-mannered house-elf so he flew around the flailing hands and moved inside. Once in, he shifted to his human boy form and with a swift hand movement and a silent spell, immobilized the elf.

"I am sorry, but I need to recover something evil from here. It is so evil it is destroying your mind and the people that live in this house. Who lives here?" Harry then released the elf’s voice box.

"Lord Black, the traitor. He be with queeny, working for ugly muggles."

"I feel you are not alone here. Who else is present?"

Kreacher felt compelled to answer, against his best judgement.

"Mistress Welburga. Lord Regulus died, so blood traitor is now lord of Most Honorable and Noble House Black."

"How did Regulus die?" asked Harry, not much into titles.

"We exchanged tiny object in dirty cave that Dark and Most Evil Lord had stored there. Master Regulus drank poisoned water so Kreacher could take it out of the sink. He died there, telling Kreacher to destroy evil jewel. Kreacher failed, tried many times, but failed!" The elf began crying hysterically at that point. "Kreacher bad elf! Kreacher needs to die! But who would take care of Mistress?"

As Harry watched the strange elf, he felt the evilness coming from him.

"Do you have that piece of jewelry somewhere?"

Kreacher looked down on his pectoral but refused to answer.

"I see. I need to check something, Kreacher. I will not touch it."

Harry moved closer to the elf, and passed his hand over his thoracic cage.

"That is what I thought. This matches the other two I have destroyed. It has the same feeling, the same signature. This is a horcrux, Kreacher. It carries a soul shard, the soul shard of the Dark and Evil Lord. Nothing you could have done would have harmed it, short of a special fire, and basilisk venom."

Looking at the distraught elf, Harry asked the final question: "Do you still want to destroy this soul shard?"

"Oh yes. It would avenge Master Regulus’ horrible death."

"Let us try it the easy way. Try to give me the jewel."

Kreacher tried and tried, but he could not find in himself the energy to even part it from his thorax.

"That is what I thought. Follow me outside, Kreacher. I need to create an altar on which to sacrifice this jewel. And no, I will not kill you, but it will be painful. You will probably ask for death before I am done, and for that, I am deeply sorry. Once the task is over, you will be free of that evil, that has been eating you and your soul. If, at that time, you still want to die, we will go see the Mistress and tell her to find another elf to take care of her."

Kreacher, trembling on his short legs, followed the young human to the yard. For some reason, he felt the young boy knew what he was doing, contrary to what Kreacher did. The gazebo disappeared from the yard as the human boy waved his left hand, wandlessly and silently. That, alone confirmed Kreacher’s feelings. Then a black granitic altar appeared in the place of the gazebo. The boy took a silver knife whose blade was currently slipped in a vial containing a transparent liquid.

"That vial is basilisk venom, fresh of today. I extracted it from my own basilisk form by biting in the vial’s neck, sealed by substance muggles call rubber. It is resistant to most things, even acids."

Holding the knife over the still empty altar, Harry told Kreacher: "Brace yourself, I will act as quickly as possible to reduce the duration of the pain." Taking a breath, Harry counted backward: "Three, two, one, zero!" and with a powerful accio spell and a swift movement of the hand he took the locket from the house-elf who stumbled in shock before yelling in excruciating pain. In the blink of an eye, the locket was on the altar top and Harry slammed the venom-imbued blade on it. The venom quickly ate through the magical protections, allowing the blade to split the locket open. Yet, the task was not done. The blade then penetrated at the core of the locket and began to dissolve, disgorging the venom in the process. A horrible cry was heard in the yard, and a black cloud formed over the altar. It tried to attack the weakened elf, only to be met by a shield produced by Harry’s Protego Maxima spell. It then turned to Harry, which simply banished it to outer space.

"Go cool down your temper in the void between stars!"

The cloud, suddenly deprived of confining gravitational field and atmospheric pressure, exploded, destroying the cohesiveness of the soul shard. Harry had kept watch from the earth, and concluded with this simple eulogy: "One done, four to go."

Turning to Kreacher, Harry asked the house-elf how he was feeling.

"Empty, Master of Magic. So very empty."

"That horror had been feeding on your soul for so long, the emptiness you are feeling is the loss of that vital energy. If you wait, you can recover that energy over the next ten years and then pass on to the next cycle rebuilt anew. Let us go see your mistress."

---

Kreacher led the boy to Welburga’s portrait.

"This is Mistress. Her body died, her spirit survives in that portrait."

"Who are you? I told Kreacher not to let dirty mud-bloods in my house!"

Harry looked at Kreacher for an explanation.

"Mistress bond my magic to her spirit before dying. When she died, spirit imbued itself into living portrait, so Kreacher is bond to portrait."

Turning to the portrait, Kreacher answered fearfully to the accusations.

"Kreacher let in great mage, Mistress. He Master of Magic! He completed task Master Regulus gave Kreacher. Now, Kreacher’s essence freed from Evil Dark Lord, and can breath and grow again."

"Master of Magic? What is that pretense?"

"It is not I that say this, it is the house-elves. Kreacher is not the first one to call me that. One calls me High Elf. I do not know if it is true, but every magical life I have met called me Master of Magic, and some called me High Elf. I have no idea what that means."

"You do not look like an high elf to me!"

"Looks can be deceiving," replied Harry, changing to his High Elf form, before continuing in their language, "as you can see!"

Welburga, for the first time in her life, was silenced. She had recognized the intonation of the language, even if she could not speak it. That knowledge passed from one head of house to the next, and she had heard her husband talk in that language in his sleep.

"Kreacher, clean up the house from top to bottom. From now on, his Highness is to be granted full access to the property and its grounds."

"Yes, mistress."

"Will you stay?"

"I will stay for dinner, but I must go later tonight. I have another matter to deal with."

The young boy took a rest in the library, systematically dismantling the evil he found in objects to pass the time. At 18:00, Kreacher took him to the dining room, and served him a huge turkey, which Harry ate to the bone, surprising Kreacher.

"Magic requires a lot of energy, even if I only redirected the ambient magic to do my bidding. And eating mice for the past few weeks as I travelled the skies had left me slightly depleted."

Kreacher nodded in understanding.

"Kreacher, I must now depart, and I may or I may not return later tonight. There are still two major focuses of evil and I must at least try to find them if not destroy them."

Kreacher watched, as the Master of Magic shifted to a fire phoenix. "I met one in a lava flow, I think it is called the Etna. She was a beauty. I am still too young to mate, but I promised her I would be back one day to seed her," heard Kreacher in his mind. "See you another day, Kreacher, and take care of yourself."

With that, Harry ported in the left-over clouds from the previous day’s storm. Then, taking the form of an albatross, he resumed his search pattern. This time, he found the two focal points quite close to each other, and dived in. One was unreachable, being underground, but the other was a string of surface hot-spots. He landed in front of the big, tall building, and read the front: ‘Gringott’s’. It meant nothing to him so he made his way down the alley, producing some outraged calls because he was walking nude in the middle of the dark alley. Some tried to grab him but quickly found themselves flying into walls, or hanging from store signs. One even found himself imprisoned in a tar barrel, in front of a place named Jigger’s Potion Shop. He walked to a corner, and eyed disdainfully at the torch whose light only seemed to increase the darkness around. Below it, he saw ‘Knockturn’ and ‘Diagon’.

---

He entered Knockturn to be assaulted by a hag. She ended up incinerated, lighting up the dark alley for several hundred yards. A werewolf tried to stalk him but found his human shape was no match to the young boy’s magic as he felt his bones melt and liquify, leaving him unable to breath. A vampire, the dimwit of the group, decided to drink the now powerless werewolf’s blood, only to find out it was poisonous to his kind after drinking half, and killing the wolf in the process. Yet, Harry was not done: Borgin and Burke suddenly exploded into flames, as Mister Burke barely made his escape from the rear. I will get you, you greedy bastard, though Harry. Then Harry made his way to the brothel, entered the front office, to be met at the desk by a disgusting old bitch.

"Coming to sell those cute balls?" she slurred.

"No, to remove your trade."

"Ah, competition. You better try and get up early, kid, if you think you can beat Bethesda at her trade."

"I have no issue with adults selling themselves, whore, but I do when kids are sold on the meat market. That business is closed."

"Try it. There is always a high demand for hairless dicks and holes. You will find it hard to stop my customers from coming back."

"Not if they are dead!" Harry silently vanished the thick wooden door that kept the children prisoner and the customers safe from the roaming Aurors and their allies, the Metropolitan police. She had a key that would redirect the door’s entrance to a legitimate bed and breakfast. This time, the boy acted too quickly for her to activate the portal, and the door vanished before she could even blink.

Harry looked at her, smirking. "Stay put, bitch!" he said, waving his hand. He then walked up the stairs, and made his way from the front to the back, dissolving doors, vanishing chains, and gutting clients left and right. Floor after floor was cleansed. He then made his way to the basement, to find a dungeon with children being tortured. He cleared the floor of its customers by gutting them, released the tortured souls and healed them.

Making his way to the office, he looked at Bethesda with unmitigated disgust. He then ported the children to the front hall, snapped a finger to clean them, and another snap had them clothed from head to foot.

"Wait here. I got a bitch to incinerate, and a rather impressive collection of bodies to port in front of that big white building in Diagon alley."

"That is the bank", said an eight-year old boy.

Harry began snapping his fingers repeatedly, cording the cooling corpses like firewood. "They will be as stiff as boards in a couple of hours, just in time to be collected for the bonfire."

Fifteen minutes later, Gringott’s front steps were filled by the ex-customers.

"Time to leave. I will bring you to a place where you can sleep safely for tonight."

"How about the Leaky Cauldron? Tom is nice, but his business is poor, most of his rooms never get customers."

"Okay. Off we go." Harry led the rather ragtag group of children out of Knockturn alley and down to the wall that led into the Leaky Chauldron, guided by some of the older children.

"I wonder how to open the gate. The bitch broke my wand when her alley skimmers brought me to her," said one of the boys. "I hope mom is still alive. It is been five years."

"No problem." Harry touched the bricks, dissolving them to dust. "No more need for wands!"

He led the group into the rather dark bar, and walked to the bartender.

"Tom?"

"Yes?" asked a shocked barkeep.

"I need rooms and food for these kids until the authorities show up. How much?"

"It is free. For kids, it is free."

"Hogwash! Here, get these, I think they are the legal tenders of this world," replied Harry, materializing five hundred galleons on the bar top, who groaned under the weight.

Tom lifted one coin and noticed it matched the weight of a true gold coin, and even had Gringott’s authentication sigil on it only visible under black light. Not even the Goblins would be able to declare them fakes!

"Okay. Who am I serving?"

"I have no name. Serve me well by serving these children well, and we might do more business."

"Do not worry lad, they will be cared like royalty!"

Harry changed into his ice phoenix, his preferred form, and left the bar to go rest for the night, leaving a shocked Tom behind.

---

The next morning, the wizardry world was woken to a shocking headline in the Daily Prophet.

What Magic hit the magical world’s prime marketing district?

Late last night, a nude child caused a huge disturbance in Diagon Alley. Well-intended witches and wizards tried to stop the boy from creating a scandal by walking along the length of the alley, totally nude! The boy sent them flying into walls, barrels, and through front windows. Quite a few found themselves hanging upside down on store signs, their robes dropping over their head and revealing their privates. A witness, that had the good sense not to intervene, told this reporter that the boy never uttered a word or used a wand. He only waved his hand dismissively!

Another witness saw him enter Knockturn Alley. There, a hag was incinerated by the same boy, according to the witness. Before he could even pull his wand out, a werewolf was killed as well as a vampire. I have no issue at disposing of dark creatures, but that boy did it with such ease it is troubling.

Then, another witness saw him enter Bethesda's establishment, to later come out with a group of children, before that building went up in flames. Five other major businesses went up by the work of that pyromaniac, including Borgin and Burke, a bookstore, a wand-maker, and a potion maker. They were all known as source for dark objects, but there is a limit to self-justice!

This reporter met a witness of another event, that occurred just before Bethesda's went up in flames. Some two hundred and fifty bodies appeared on the doorstep of Gringott’s all marked by a hot iron on the forehead: child molester. Some of those were of high reputation, but apparently someone caught them in compromising positions with children. We, at the Daily Prophet, are astounded and deeply worried at the power that child seems to show, assuming he is the one that did the cleanup in Knockturn alley, and there is no indication otherwise.

This reporter intends to dig into this matter to the best of his ability, and to keep the public informed.