Harry Potter - Hellion!

 

"What do you mean?" asked a flustered Sirius Black, looking at the Queen.

"Exactly what We said. The magical foundations of the Realm are inscribed into the Charter of the Round Table, of which you, Sir Black, and you, Sir Longbottom, are two of the pillars. We, as Heir by conquest, represent the mundane side, but without Lord Potter, heir to all these titles, and ten seated of the Round Table, plus the seat of Merlin Ambrosius and his wife Morgana Le Fey, hold the table standing. Imagine a table standing on two legs. Unstable is the least of its problems. If he dies without redistributing the charges, Magical Britain, which includes Scotland and Ireland, and all of our historical colonies, member or not of the commonwealth, fall to our enemies. They may be independent mundane governments, but magically, they were bound to the magical realm by right of magical conquest, and there is no such thing as devolvement in magic. Once it is done, it is done!"

The two lords looked at each other with wide eyes.

"That explains so much!" exclaimed Frank. "Now I know why just about every dark lord since the tenth century BC has tried to conquer us!"

"Oh, do not over-inflate your importance! The real battles began when Arthur betrayed Magic after having bounded his Crown and his Throne to it forevermore. Words in magic have weight. Lots of weight. The lines of monarchs from Scotland, where Camelot is supposed to be, took over the duties abandoned by Arthur, at the cost of his kingdom, and held sway in Scotland until Mary lost her head, twice, and Elizabeth refused to take the burden."

"How can a person lose that appendage twice?"

"Easy: by devolving the act of thinking to others, in this instance, the church, and then physically, by the axe. Note, this seems to be a recurrent event: Arthur lost his twice too, once to the church, and once to the blade of conquest. Elizabeth also lost hers to a church as well. Churches seem to be the bane of magic. They fear what they can not control, and yet they glorify miracles, which are acts of magic. Dim wits."

"How come Elizabeth did not lose her head?"

"She never betrayed a burden she had not accepted from the start. It is the betrayal that shortens a monarch’s life. She was told not to accept the charge by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that saved her life. She knew of it, but refused it from the get go. We found her personal journal and she was deeply influenced in her thinking by people that had no idea of the history of Our kingdom and its intimate link to magic."

"So..."

"If you study the history of the British kingdom, the repeated betrayal of the burden’s primacy has led to a number of monarchs getting killed by various means. If you look at modern Magical History, notice that World War II was driven behind the scenes by a dark lord intent on conquering Britain, a certain Gellert Grindelwald. He failed when he lost control of Adolf Hitler, whom sent his forces east against Russia. What you do not seem to understand, because Dumbledore did not make it a part of his chocolate frog card (Yes, We know of those), is that Gellert was his boyfriend. The old geezer is a double-faced hypocrite. He was with Gellert on the planning of the world conquest, and his ‘for the greater good’ is taken directly from Gellert’s mantra. Why do you think it took the geezer until 1945 to move his ass and capture Grindelwald?"

"Capture? He said he killed him!"

"Nurmengard? Rings a bell?"

"That was Grindelwald’s magical jail, in eastern Germany, on which the builders of our own magical prison, Azkaban, is based... by the suggestion of Dumbledore!"

"Yes, well, Gellert is held there, and Dumbledore visits him regularly. It so happens it is manned by a squad of squibs, and they register each visit. A whole prison for a single prisoner. The only visitor is your esteemed Professor Dumbledore. By the way, on the arch to the entrance, you read, in old German, Grindelwald’s motto: For the Greater Good. Mages need to learn from their own history if they refuse to learn from the mundane’s!"

"Your Majesty, not that I would dare put your words in doubt, but how did you come across those... image-shattering... informations?"

"From Mr. Double-face himself. We need to give you an overview of the past hour and a half. It all begins with the introduction of one Albus too many names Dumbledore in Our presence."

<< FLASHBACK>>

Dumbledore walked into the Throne Room as if he was God himself. He looked with disdain at the collection of shields identifying the Peers of the Empire. For him, they meant nothing. Had he given thought to what he saw, and turned on his brain rather then his ego, he would have noticed the heraldry marks of quite a few magical families considered extinct, and quite a few still roaming the world.

At the top left of the Throne was Camelot’s and King Arthur’s Crests, and, just below it, a cascade of crests marking the passage of power from one person to the next. On the right side, another cascade marked the passage of time and family kings of England from the foundation until the Unification with Scotland. It was an open book, a book on the mundane side of the divide. Yet, right in the middle, was the path that led from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, marking the Union.

Further off, yet quite visible, but generally ignored, were the crests of magical families, from Ambrosius’ to those survivors of modern time. In these crests, their position, their current disposition, could be read the entire history of Great-Britain and its colonies. No one had bothered to link those changes since the Wizardry Secrecy Act, as they had, for the most part, lost significance in the muggle world. Where resided Ambrosius' Crest, magic resided and guided the move and changes to the crest’s relative position.

For Dumbledore, these meant nothing. Had he looked closely, he would have found his own crest under the shield of Gryffindor, marking him as a vassal of that line. Maybe he should have gotten a new pair of glasses.

He was dragged in front of the Queen, and kicked in the back of his knees so he found himself on the floor, knees on the alter. He tried to get up but was held by a strong hand that pinched his shoulder nerve, making him flinch and his arm insensitive and unresponsive.

"Look at the Queen when she asks a question and answer clearly, so all can hear," said his cerberus, in a voice reminiscent of a wolf-dog looking for a bone to pick.

"Name?"

"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore."

"We have the right record, then. I will not ask you to repeat the answers given to the detective in Scotland Yard. They have been verified. What I need to know is what were you doing at four Privet Drive?"

"Looking for someone..."

"Whom?"

" "

"Keeping silent is not an option. Habeas Corpus never was part of Camelot’s corpus of laws. So?"

"..."

"I see. Break his small finger."

Dumbledore yelled, but did not answer.

"Stubborn geezer. Break the other one."

After another yell, Dumbledore answered: "Harry!"

"Harry whom?"

"..."

"Stubborn, very stubborn. Left thumb."

After a yell due to excruciating pain came "Potter..."

"You are looking for Harry Potter. From the information gathered after interrogating the members of the flaming chicken we captured, it is Harry James Potter whom you were looking for. That is also confirmed by the interrogations done in Scotland Yard last night. There is one thing in all the reports I have read concerning you and others. I admit the Royal armed Forces, Scotland Yard, MI5, and MI6 came through superbly. It seems your world never learned that the most beautiful flowers grow in shit. We have literally thousands of your rejects within our forces, rejects you so obligingly trained for us. And that is only the cream, the milk was all those children you threw out on the street because they were squibs! They took a malicious pleasure at telling us where they used to live and how to get there. The dark, disquieting, and disgusting history of Magical Britain came out in full bloody color, once they learned we were not after them but after those that had considered them less than dirt. Most mages in the United Kingdom are now held in custody, Dumbledore. The Death-eaters are being exterminated like the varmint they are, and you are very close to joining them, unless you show more proactive cooperation. As for the Ministry, it has been dissolved, by Our Order. Examination of its members has revealed an astounding 10% are marked. Veritaserum has revealed another 15% as unmarked sympathizers, most just sitting on the fence and waiting for the occasion to prove their worth to Voldemort. Amongst the members of thee now defunct Wizengamot, a third were marked or sympathizers, a third fence-sitters, and another third supposedly on the side of the Light. Now then, Dumbledore, why did you leave a magical baby in the hands of these disgusting mundane?"

"..."

"You have two hundred and six bones. The not so gentle man behind you can break each and everyone of them, and bring you back to consciousness. After that, we have the equivalent of the Cruciatus, and it can be held indefinitely to each individual nerve ending, as if you were a living pin cushion. Minerva never thought her lessons on converting something to such a tool could be applied to body parts and then reversed after electrodes were tied to the pins. Yes, we know about that too. Some of the little ones remember their own parents applying some of these spells to them because they could not do magic on command. You see us as barbarians, but you conveniently forget that your great power has made you into even greater barbarians, towards not only strangers, but also toward your own family members that you perceived as worthless. Now, my question’s answer?"

<<End flashback>>

"That Dumbledore was one tough nut to crack. It took fifteen bone breaks for him to come out with the importance of Harry Potter in the scheme of things, and another twelve for all the words of the prophesy to be uttered. And even then, he tried to lie. However, once we learned of the prophesy, a group of our own mages made it into the Hall of Prophesies, located the proper sphere, and smashed it with a sling-shot. They recorded the prophesy on tape and brought it to Us."

"I thought muggle electrical things did not work around magic?" asked Sirius.

"That, We do not know, but hardened military electrical and electronics work quite nicely."

"You said there is a prophecy concerning my godson. Can we hear it?"

"We should have said was. It has been fulfilled already, notwithstanding what that old geezer thinks. Harry Potter has killed Voldemort. He might have to kill him again if what that old fool says is true, but he has done his duty to the Magical Realm. Look at the chair: It records all changes, and clearly shows that Lord Harry James Potter has won the seat of Gaunt and Slytherin already. That means he has done his duty. Also note that he is currently collecting the dark lines as each head of their family is being executed by Our axe. That is because each of these idiots gave their line by magical will to Voldemort, or to his victor. At the rate things are going, this baby will own two-third of the magical world, as some of the Light side have willed their line to Dumbledore, whose life is on a razor’s edge. And We noticed some of the neutrals, the fence-sitters, have also willed their lines directly to Harry Potter. The roaming death-eaters that still ravage your world are pushing more and more power in his tiny hands. Our troops are hard at work removing the threat of the Death-eaters, but they move quickly, never stay long in the same place, and seem to be having a nervous breakdown. We would be at less, after losing their minds to that sore ass."

"What do you mean, he is gaining more power?" asked Frank.

"Each time a magical line is destroyed to the last member and the cross-line inheritance clause is activated, the one that inherits not only gains all Earthly goods and assets, but also the Head of Line Magics and Powers. It is so stated in the Journal of Merlin Ambrosius. It was also the reason so many magical wars were fought: the search for ultimate power. But power gained in that fashion also corrupts. Harry James Potter is not gaining power by a war of his doing but by sheer inheritance so the magic stay pure. I wonder where he stands on the Merlin scale now."

"The Merlin scale is only used at age seven to assess the potential of a child, your Majesty," said Frank.

"Maybe that is what you were taught, Sir Longbottom, but quite a few pure-bloods have used it well before that to determine if their child was a squib. And it brought a lot of misery to children whose magical channels showed some slow development. Luckily, the house elves did not mention enuresis to the adults, or else we would have a trainload of chastised boys! Our son Charles peed in bed until six!"

"You seem to know a lot about the inner workings of magic, your Majesty," asked Alice.

"Way more than what We feel comfortable with, Alice. Ambrosius was a thorough magical researcher and wrote down everything he observed, tested, and experimented on. A true scientist of the time. He never took things at face value."

After a break to finish the main course, the Queen resumed her exposé of the interrogation of one Albus too many initials Dumbledore.

"After being faced with his lies, he tried to persuade Us to back away from his ‘grand plan’ for the ‘greater good’ and to save the magical world from the return of one Moldywarts. As you can surmise, this was met with a stern rebuke. After all, it is Our Throne that is at stake here, and from the information I had gathered so far at that time about the actions of the individual, he did not have the best interest of Our people, be they magical or mundane, in his bag of tricks. He tried to influence Us with a strange voice, but We got suspicious and slammed Our staff of Power in his face, breaking a dozen teeth in the process. After that he had problems talking and was bleeding enough to smell like a rusty ship. Interrogated on the reason he believed that Voldemort would return, he mentioned that Mr Potter carried a cursed scar in the shape of a horizontal Z on his forehead. He tried to refuse information about the scar, but a couple more bones, in the legs, brought him back to more conversational attitudes. Do you know what a horcrux is?"

Most mages looked dumfounded, but Sirius became as white as a ghost.

"I see Lord Black seems to know. Care to tell Us what you do know and where you got that information?"

"I got the information while studying family archives dating back to the first Black of name, even before the Round Table was called into creation by Merlin. In these old tomes, written on leather so fragile they threatened to turn to dust at each pull of the roll to display the next line, dating four thousand five hundred years BC, and in a writing we now call cuneiform B, there is the description of a ritual called the Hormicrux, or, in the latin of the day, horcrux. That we know how to read Cuneiform B is due to the fact our family has been magical since the time of the Akkadians, before writing was invented by the Sumerians. A head of house need not study the writing, the knowledge is transferred from head of house to head of house by magic on the death of the previous one. That I could read these scripts a few years after I left Hogwarts was the sign the old head of house had died and I had been recognized as Lord Black."

"I must confirm Lord Black’s statement. I, too, inherited knowledge that way at the death of my own father. In my case, it was old Norse. It does not mean my line is younger, but only that Norse appeared later, your Majesty. I have knowledge that never was put in written form, at my fingertips. I need only close my eyes and think to find the path travelled by my family from North Africa, across the Gibraltar Bridge, Spain, France, Germany, and finally the Russian plains to reach what is now Oslo. Then we came to these Islands with the Vikings and landed in what is now Ireland, before making our way through Scotland and be harnessed by Merlin."

"Why did you not write these things down?"

"We never thought they could have value, your Majesty."

"Knowledge, however trivial, always has value."

"Given what you said, your Majesty," said Alice, "Harry must have a full head. Each time a line is inherited, the knowledge transfers. I know that from experience, as I inherited from one such line that got killed by Voldemort during the war."

"He has the power, the knowledge, but does he have the sagacity to use it with moderation? That is what has Us worried. So, horcruxes?"

"They are soul pieces," resumed Black. "A soul is particularly vulnerable to splitting after a cold-blooded murder of an innocent victim. The thing is, splitting a soul requires a vessel that must be carefully prepared before the ritual murder. That is why I said cold-blooded when I talked about murder. You can not make one by mistake. It has to be planned and done under controlled conditions."

"Can a soul be split several times?"

"Yes. Each split cuts the soul in half. First cut: 50-50, second cut 25-25, third cut 12.5-12.5, fourth cut, 6.25-6.25, fifth cut, 3.125-3.125, and you can not cut more, as 1% of a soul is very unstable. By then the body has changed so much it has regressed to the reptilian brain stem. Even physical appearance has changed, regressing to that of a snake face tied to a human body. The description is from a Sumerian mage that observed the change in one of theirs. They disposed of it, by banishing it into a volcano. However it took several hundred years to dispose of the entire collection. Each anchors the spirit to this realm, and each anchor gets more desperate to survive as the others vanish and it feels their destruction. A comment made from one of the shard-hunters haunts me: To reduce the problem they should have hunted down the first shard and destroyed it first, rather than go backward in time. That would have weakened the others by that amount, making the hunt all the more easy."

"What happens at 1%?"

"No trace of humanity is left, only the animal and the urge for immortality and power. The body has no emotion left, nothing but fear of death and the will to survive at any costs. The only redeeming thing about seven pieces is the powerful magical effect of that number. It anchors the last ‘living’ piece to this plane as if it was tied to the existence of reality itself. You end up with an animal that is highly magical, with no morals whatsoever, and the intellect and knowledge of the original mage. A very scary perspective."

Her Majesty looked at Lord Black, with wide eyes, and a very uneasy feeling in her guts.

"Is it possible to anchor that horror to a living thing? Such as a human?"

"No. To a lower animal, probably, but not to a human. The soul shard is, by definition, weaker than a whole soul. And if you think that this could have been done to Harry, that is most definitely not the case. A shard would have been expelled without a by your leave. And Voldemort would have had to try and prepare Harry, a ritual of several days, which he did not have the time for, and I bring your attention to the word ‘try’, as he would not have succeeded. And a walking dead, an Inferi, would not have been able to harbor a soul, so killing Harry and inserting a soul shard would have failed."

"Yet, Dumbledore insists Harry survived the killing curse, and carried a shard of Voldemort in him."

"That know-it-all never considers the more simple approach to things, does he? Occam’s razor is something to shave his hairy balls, not his reasonings to the simplest, direct route. If Harry ‘harbors’ a soul shard, it is because his body contains a piece of dead material that contains said shard, or part of it. The best possible source is Voldemort’s wand," said Sirius.

"An interesting proposition," Alice said. "Can you elaborate?"

"Simply, I was the first on site after the attack, and all I found was Voldemort’s cloak, not his wand. It may have been damaged and taken away by a death-eater as a memento. I did not examine Harry’s scar at the time using magic, or I might have found a piece of wood. I thought Dumbledore would have the scar examined by the school nurse before bringing him to you, Alice, as was stated in the will, witnessed by Dumbledore."

"So, the ass-bugger began implementing his plan the moment he got his hands on Lord Potter. We have a number of additional bones to get broken."

"Why not use veritaserum on the old pedophile?" asked Frank.

"He claims he is immune to it, having gradually desensitized his body through progressively increased dosage. This is commonly used to remove allergies or sensitivity to snake bites in the mundane world so We have no reason to put his assertion in doubt."

"He is more arrogant than I thought. I would have kept that tidbit secret and lied through my teeth," replied Frank.

"Arrogance will be his downfall," added Sirius.

"So, one of the horcruxes is probably Voldemort’s wand, which makes sense, and the so-called cursed scar can be cleansed by a simple surgical procedure to remove the piece of wood in said scar."

"Exactly, your Majesty," Alice said. "Any competent healer could do it. I would not put it beyond that double-faced dirt bag to have kept Harry away from any healer, just closing the wound with a spell to stop the bleeding."

"Or a muggle child, Alice. We get wood shards all the time when we play as kids, and we learn quickly how to remove it from either ourselves or from each other."

"And magic itself will remove said shard within a few days, unless the wound is repeatedly closed by magic itself over the next few weeks."

"He said he could track Harry Potter. Is that possible?"

"If he has placed a tracking spell on him, yes. The easiest would be on an inert part tied to his body, such as a wood shard. He again underestimated his opponents, your Majesty. He has just revealed knowing of the shard."

"He will not be tracking anybody anytime soon. The Tower of London has deep dungeons, and a very ancient and still in perfect working condition IT chamber. He is currently tied up to a rock wall, in the company of rats."

"Beware of rats. We have one that is a traitor," Sirius said. "Anyway, a tracking spell must be renewed weekly. After that..."

"We know. Our rats have been painted blue by a generous spraying of blue paint on every square inch of the dungeon. Any brown rat gets euthanized. I hope the double-door egomaniac has toes left tomorrow. That also means We have a week to find Harry Potter."

"Six days, your Majesty. He had to put it on the night of the thirty-first, and we are already November second, slightly past 13:00," said Sirius. "We lost a day and a half already."

"Let us get moving then."

"Frank, Alice, Remus, you all know Dumbledore’s magical signature. The tracking spell must ‘smell’ of him like a skunk in a perfume shop. Spread out and track Harry from the last known location..."

"Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, near London, the residence of one Vernon Dursley."

"He what? You mean to say he had Harry put there, against his parents’ wishes?" exploded Frank. "I will feed him to the worms with a rusty spoon!"

"Get in line, Frank. I call dibs to dispose of the old bugger!", said Sirius.

"I confirm Sirius’ precedence. He blew up before you did," added Lupin.

"Sorry, Sirs, We doubt there shall be much left of him when We are done. Now, you are invited to scrape him off the walls of the dungeons and rebuild him to take your turn. We call right of peerage."

"You do not play fair!"

"Who said life was fair, Sir Black?"