Chapter 13
Harry woke with a strangled cry the next morning, Tuesday the 29th. Hedwig had been only slightly jealous of Freyr, she knew that her master needed someone to watch him and make sure he didn't get into too much trouble during the day. She knew that owls on their master's shoulders, even with a bond as strong as what she shared with her nestling, weren't allowed in the general hallways. So she had reached a slightly jealous understanding with the creature (she fluffed her feathers in annoyance) that her master had made. None of this stopped her need to make her master feel her displeasure or her need to deliver mail, however.
She took that morning's mail opportunity (why did her master spend so much time corresponding with that dog?) to swoop in and perch herself just above Harry's head. With a wink to the no longer gently snoring niffler on his chest, she began screeching and batting his head with her wings in false anger. She needed to keep up appearances, and having her master think she was okay being merely one of two familiars just wouldn't do.
"Bloody what the — THUNK! — ow-ow-ow-ow-ow, O Thor, deliver me from my suffering," said Harry as he woke to the day. Maybe having a bed underneath his workbench wasn't as good an idea as he thought. He felt his head, there wasn't any blood, just a bump the size of a snitch slowly rising.
Harry got up and got out of bed, only to see his owl and niffler both looking like they would be rolling on the floor laughing if they were human. He threw a massive internal sigh. At least the pair was getting along.
"Really, girl? I know you're still a bit miffed that you weren't there when I made Freyr, but do you have to keep doing stuff like this? I already told you I'm sorry! I made you that nice collar that cuts down on wind resistance, I made you a perch by hand with no transfiguration, what else do I need to do to show you I'm sorry and I love you?"
Hedwig looked down in shame, and Freyr put his massive digging paws over his eyes in what Harry had realized was his own expression of being sorry. Harry couldn't let his second ever friend feel bad like that, or his new friend for that matter. He really wished that Hogwarts regulations let him keep Hedwig around during the day. Only McGonagall's express written permission had let him take Freyr everywhere with him, well, that and the ladies just couldn't seem to keep their hands off of him, to Harry's extreme annoyance.
"Okay, look guys, I'm sorry about this. Freyr you were just helping Hedwig, and Hedwig, you're just a little jealous that I have a new friend. It's okay, both of you. You both know I care about you, even if you weigh as much as a small boulder, and you wake me up with a face full of angry feathers."
This seemed to mollify everyone, so Harry sat down. Freyr took his lap and turned about, exposing his belly for scratching, and Hedwig with a single powerful flap took to his shoulder and presented a leg.
She had a message back from Sirius. Harry had sent off an owl as soon as he could. He just knew the paper would be filed with images of him engulfed in fire and he didn't want Sirius to hijack an airplane or something equally reckless and try to get to his god-son's side. He told Sirius his initial plan to avoid the point of the task entirely, and how badly that had worked out.
Sirius's reply was a little overwhelming. It seemed he had caught a newspaper despite Harry's admonition to not believe a thing he saw, and if the letter was to be believed, he had used some family money and bought a schooner to get him to Scotland. His letter had a few of the charms he had used to increase the power and enchant the hull so it would move faster. Harry almost lost himself in ideas of what he could do with a charm to make something frictionless in water before he refocused and realized the arrival of his infamous and outlawed godfather was imminent.
Harry penned him a note back, asking him to be careful and trust only himself with his safety. Aside from his headmaster's behavior of late, Harry had concerns about why the head of the Wizengamot and Britain's representative to the ICW couldn't get his godfather a simple trial.
"Hedwig, my idiot dogfather has ignored my advice again and is coming here, could you do me a huge favor and wake him up with this," he said, brandishing his letter, "just like you did me?"
She puffed out her chest, and preened near the golden Potter family crest of her collar.
"I knew I could count on you girl. There's an extra owl treat in it for you if you can manage to get him to hit his head like you did me."
She gave a short bark, her way to laugh he figured, and allowed him to tie the note to her leg before taking flight through the open window. One nice thing about not sharing a dorm room with those blockheads up in Gryffindor tower (excluding his family up there, the Twins and Neville) was he could leave his window open all the times and let Hedwig in whenever. No complaints.
Harry showered, dressed, and started his day.
He was early for breakfast, the food wasn't out on the tables yet, but one of the elves (Sooty, first daughter of the couple that managed the greenhouses) from downstairs popped up and asked after his needs. Harry soon had a nice cup of tea in front of him and simply bided his time until his friends arrived.
Freyr parked himself on the bench next to Harry, and after a moment Sooty brought him a small bowl of grubs. Harry reproached his new familiar as he went to dig in, "Hey stinker, you know Luna doesn't like it when you eat without her checking your bowl for aquavirius maggots."
Freyr gave him a snort in response, crunching a small beetle between his wide molars, Harry turned back to his tea, "Your funeral, little buddy. You know how she can get, and I may not know what a wrackspurt is, but if she says it'd be bad for you I believe her."
The niffler wisely chose to leave off his munching, and the pair patiently waited for the half hour or so it took the majority of the students to filter down to the Great Hall. Today was a care of magical creatures day, so Harry planned on following Neville around to the class, then begging off to the library for more research. He knew he was coming close to solving his problem with the reagent compatibility in his tanning potions, but after the task he realized that he had missed spending time with his giant of a first friend.
Neville arrived first, and took the seat across from Harry. They were staples of the Ravenclaw table at this point, so no one batted an eye. Shortly after he took his seated a bedraggled and grumpy Luna took a seat on the other side of Freyr, the young niffler quickly moving to her lap. They had breakfast (Luna's taking the form of alternating layers of waffle, beans, bacon, and porridge) and headed on their ways.
Before Harry and Luna parted, he turned to her and gave her a lingering hug. Their relationship had changed tone in the past week. They both felt slightly awkward now for some reason that they had a hard time describing to themselves and couldn't quite bring themselves to talk about with each other. For Harry, it had been in large part how worried she had been for him after the first task. Having his old friends barge into the medical tent and try to apologize, only to come outside and see her looking like his health was the only concern in the world had added some depth to the feelings that he already couldn't understand. The Lady Hogwarts was whispering comfort to both of them about this change, Harry just hoped whatever it was would resolve itself.
After an enjoyable morning watching Slytherins try to walk skrewts, Harry retired to the library and his calculations. The goblins had delivered his reagents, and they had seen fit to include two samples of each object he had asked after as an apology for their tardiness. Harry was actually a little worried he had brought them some kind of shame for asking after things from the wife of the Chief and not saying explicitly that there was no rush. He even sent a letter to that effect to Gemshaper, but he received a polite brush-off in response. His family had always dealt respectfully with the goblins, her response said, and this was the quality of service they received in response to their respect and trust.
That brought Harry to his next concern of note; namely paying them for their work. Their estimates had been at roughly half the value of his trust vault. For the ability to actually focus his magic, he would have paid much more, but for their extra service he wasn't sure anymore if he could pay. The day before, he sent off a school owl with a missive detailing his concerns, and his determination to add a twenty percent bonus to whatever they charged. He didn't know a lot about tipping or about finances, but his own sense of honor demanded that he meet their generosity with his own, even at the cost of bankrupting himself.
He knew that kind of attitude was how he got drafted into fighting basilisks, but the letters he had sent back and forth between both Gemshaper and Chief Ragnok had become increasingly personal. He felt like he understood the pair. Harry felt a little foolish for feeling this having never met them, but he liked them. They deserved real compensation for their efforts on his behalf.
When he got to his warded table in the library and pulled out his ingredient reaction charts and potions references, he called out to Nothe for any mail. The quiet (Harry would have called him surly, if that word could actually be applied to any of the normally excitable elven race) elf gave him a single heavy envelope marked with the Gringotts crest, then popped away.
The weight of the envelope gave him some pause, but he opened it without much trepidation and began reading the small but tidy scrawl he had come to associate with Gemshaper.
"WHAT!"
Harry's shout filled the quiet library (if his table hadn't been warded against being found, he would have been eviscerated before being thrown out by Madam Pince) and spilled out into the hallway beyond, echoing slightly among the staircases as they moved. Freyr, laying with his wide body flat on Harry's head, gave an indignant squawk at the sudden noise which woke him from his pleasant post-breakfast nap. At his table the boy was reading furiously, his notes forgotten as he moved from the pages of the heavy letter to the ledger that had fallen from the space expanded envelope.
He was a millionaire. Maybe a billionaire. Harry would have to spend some time adding the values from the prop... properties he owned to find out.
"What the bloody hell..."
Gemshaper, it seemed, didn't understand why he wasn't sure if he could pay, and had looked into his accounts briefly to see why. Her news stung, for a number of reasons. It seemed that despite all his fantasies of being rescued by long lost family members during his 'childhood', Gringotts' magically updating records recorded him as the very last living Potter. Every other had died either during or shortly before the last war. He knew it intellectually, but to have it confirmed still hurt a bit. The real pain came from what Gemshaper said that meant. He was now Lord Harry James Potter, head of the Noble and Ancient house of Potter. His family had been granted an Earldom in the lands of Scotland by the Pictish king Bruide Mac Bili for their efforts saving, and then healing his army during the Battle of Dun Nechtain which had cemented Pictish rule over what would much later become Scotland. Harry, fourteen year old orphan, was heir to that Earldom and heir to the family line that had held it for more than a thousand years.
Harry was floored. How could no one have told him any of this? How could he be left so ignorant of his heritage?
After letting his mind race to and fro over this incredible revelation, he turned back to the letter. Part of the reason, according to Gemshaper, was that his Earldom didn't exist anymore. Cultural changes in the few hundred years after his family's ascension to nobility, followed by the ending of the line of Scottish kings and eventual integration into England saw his family's lands be dissolved and absorbed into the common land of the kingdoms. Harry wasn't an earl in the magical or mundane worlds. His family line, by magical tradition, would forever still be noble and ancient for their accomplishments though. He had a seat on the Wizengamot, and a number of votes it seemed, but he wasn't by any means true nobility. Harry felt he could understand that.
The goblin's final note though, was of particular interest. It seemed that Harry should have been confirmed as head of his house and given all rights and responsibilities thereof the day he was informed of the existence of magic, on his eleventh birthday. His listed magical guardian was none other than Albus Dumbledore, and the same had closed and sealed his parent's will, the public reading of which should also have ensured Harry's becoming head of the Potter line.
It looked like Dumbledore had a lot to answer for.
As a postscript on the letter, Gemshaper apologized for having to be the one to tell him about this, and implored him to come visit Gringotts when he next had the chance. She wanted to speak to him face to face, it seemed. Under her words was a curious seal which her writing equally implored him to place a single drop of his blood on. He did so, and the paper crumpled and burned slowly as a small plain wooden box emerged from the seal. Harry felt a compulsion sweep across his shields, it came from within the box and wanted him to put something on, he couldn't identify what. Slowly he opened it, only to reveal a solid platinum ring with the stamp of the Potter Crest on its face. The compulsion magic got stronger, and Harry took a second to identify it. It came from the ring, but the magic itself felt like his magic did. It was familiar and it resonated in him. He decided to throw caution to the wind, and just put the ring on.
Instantly he felt the ward schemes of a dozen buildings key into him. He suddenly KNEW the locations of Potter properties from a manor house on a beach in the British Virgin Islands to the castle his family had owned and maintained for generations, in what felt to him like
Scotland. He also felt something shockingly familiar to the connection he had to the elves. It was the same kind of buzzing in the back of his head, but significantly stronger. The more he thought about it the more the connection reminded him of the manic energy of... Dobby. That cheeky little guy bound himself to house Potter when Harry tricked Malfoy into freeing him! No wonder he had started showing up when Harry had found out about the elves at Hogwarts and started asking for their help.
Outside his own deep ruby shields another formed, this one looked less like the translucent one he created and more like a solid metal construction. This shield looked like it might even keep him safe from some direct attacks on his person. Putting on the ring signaled his taking the position of head of house. He was now the last Potter, sole holder of all that entailed.
This was a lot for him to take in. Freyr seemed to sense his whirlwind of emotions, and had climbed down to his lap during his reading. He nibbled on one of Harry's hands for attention, and Harry picked the niffler (now the rough size and weight of a pair of cinder blocks) up, hugging him to his chest.
He had money, the ledger said he had houses. He had an incredible and rich history, going back to the founding of the land he was in. What was he supposed to feel about all of it? He was fourteen, barely a teenager, and here he was, last of an ancient and noble line, engaged in a death-struggle against three others for the amusement of a bunch of old wizards like his Loki-blessed headmaster.
Harry packed up his books and his things. Today he suddenly had a lot of business to do before he went to lunch and later his lessons with Minerva and Fillius. He also mentally doubled the fee he was going to pay to Gringotts. Not only could he afford to multiply their fee a thousand fold, but it was a beyond a damned shame that he needed someone from outside his species to tell him about his own heritage.
Several hours work saw him a little better emotionally. He couldn't leave the castle grounds until the winter hols started, so he made a number of appointments for that time in both Gringotts and the Ministry. He was only fourteen, but he had an awful lot of power as the last of his line. He had assumed the role of head of his house, which granted him immediate emancipation, but Harry thought about the extent to which he had been kept uninformed. The headmaster had taken all correspondence relating to the Potter properties and had it routed from Gringotts to himself, and had appointed his own person to the Potter seat in the wizengamot. It was no wonder that the man held him at arm's length, any closer and Harry may have caught wind of the extent to which he ran his life.
If Harry wanted to be completely free, he needed to play his cards close to his chest for a while. This was exactly the same as this summer. He had to lie and threaten to get free of the beatings and starvation, he would lie and threaten now to get out from under the bastard's thumb. He needed to be untouchable legally, because while the old man had shown no inclination to help Sirius with his positions, Harry felt certain that his power wouldn't be held back trying to get him under control. Harry didn't get the Daily Prophet, he had no idea what was going on in the wider wizarding world. He certainly had no idea what the name Potter meant outside the walls of the school.
Harry's time in the wizard world hadn't taught him a lot about the world, but it had slowly and violently taught him the age old lesson of not playing around with things he didn't understand. Harry felt uniquely qualified to state that the unknown danger was the one that got you. He had a not-quite-dead dark lord, an acromantula colony, and a sixty foot basilisk body to prove his claims. So with all of the information he had, he decided to, for the moment, do nothing. He needed goblin legal teams, and if he could find it, protection from within the ministry.
The information he had gotten just since this morning had turned his world over. Like all of the other things thrown on him though, he had no choice but to deal with it. Harry just added another line to his mental to do list.
With no other world shaking events happening, Harry's days evened out. He spent his time during the lead up to the Christmas hols figuring out the various parts of the process he would need for his bracer, and learning from McGonagall and Flitwick. He relegated all of the work securing his future to the hols, there wasn't a thing he could do for now.
For Fillius, it was lessons as usual (though the list of things Harry had left to do was shrinking quickly), but Minerva didn't have anything left to teach him in terms of transfiguration. He had mastered the spells and had the intent necessary to complete nearly anything she had ever heard of in regards to that branch of magic.
What she had taken to teaching him were various tricky applications of his knowledge. He may be a prodigy, but Minerva had a lifetime of shortcuts and personal ideas to share with her now favorite student. The fact that she was learning nearly as much as he was through all of the time he spent breaking accepted rules of transfiguration was just icing on the cake.
It seemed that Harry was limited only by what he understood, so if he didn't know what he was attempting was 'impossible' he, more often than not, could do it. Minerva laughed to herself, half the lessons were her setting him up with an 'impossible' problem to see the result. She had been going through the laws of transfiguration as she knew them, coming up with assignments and tests as she went along for each. She didn't dare go through them as they were listed in any reference, Harry was too bright to not catch on to that, and she didn't want her fun ruined! She had been running him through human transfiguration and the similarities to the animagus process in the last few days to see if he would just grab onto animal transformations and become whatever he wanted. It was supposed to be impossible, everyone was supposed to only have one animal inside of them, but if anyone could just become any animal they pleased, it would be Harry!
She also told Harry during their lessons about the Yule ball coming up, and of his need for a date. She also consented to use some of their lesson time to show him how to dance. That was all she allowed herself to do, however. She had a bet running with her favorite half-goblin on who would be the one to secure the position of young Harry's date. Fillius had his ear to the rumor mill, and he believed that the seeker from his quidditch team, one Cho Chang, would be the lucky lady. Minerva had to do her best not to laugh in his face when he had made his bet on that mark.
She may be a tad obsessed with her lions, but that didn't mean she was blind to the other houses. The Badgers were as clean of internal strife as any group she had ever seen, their culture in house was incredibly open, and Pomona's personality only helped with that. The snakes were an unruly bunch. Their house was rife with anger and tension, but Snape (even she didn't bother append his title to his name) refused anyone else's help or opinions in the matter. More often than not with Albus's blessing.
The ravens were more interesting. Their house politics were based on knowledge, or more often, the perception of knowledge. Fillius may regard every one of the students as his children, but while he was an excellent teacher, he was something of an inattentive father. She had seen after a few short months how Lovegood had been treated when she arrived. The stolen items, and the bullying. Minerva knew Xenophilius from his time with the aurors during the last war, and without her mother to moderate him, Minerva had the feeling that the poor man had, in raising his daughter, done her a disservice. It had all changed this year when Harry had come into her life. Many people were wary of him, and no one messed with his friends.
Minerva put all of her money on those two finding their feelings for one another, and she wished them well in it. They would be good for each other, she thought.
As Sirius came closer and closer to the school, the time it took Hedwig to get a letter sent between him and his godson got much lower. She was out winging her way from one to the other sometimes several times a day as the guys became more acquainted and discussed plans.
Padfoot had grabbed the last few week's worth of Prophets, and sent Harry a number of swear words the boy had never seen before in relation to the Skeeter woman, her parentage, and her prospects for a date. Harry had been impressed by both the sentiment and the breadth of swears he learned from the letters. In the old dog's estimation, by not saying a word to her one way or the other, Harry had handled it right.
Harry felt fortunate to have Sirius' advice at this time too, because ever since Minerva had told him about the Yule Ball, he knew exactly who he wanted to ask but had no idea how. Ever since they had met, Padfoot had made more jokes about his prowess with the ladies than anything else. This was incredibly important to Harry, and he knew he needed to ask his intended sooner rather than later, third years weren't welcome to the ball after all.
The old dog himself was in an amazingly beautiful bed and breakfast in Brora, about twenty kilometers south-southeast of Hogwarts. Lilly had demanded that the marauders all be familiar with the mundane world, and since he was on the run he blessed her name every day for it. Hiding outside the wizarding world was what had saved him.
He had never been happier to be able to give advice to his god-son. Interacting with women was one area where he felt he had genuine talent and skill, and while it would never get him a profitable job (he had to be restrained and later stunned the day Lilly explained to them that male prostitutes were a real thing in some places, and they were called gigolos), he was still proud to be able to share his joy. He was even going to forsake the pranking opportunities that giving Harry relationship advice offered, which he felt was rather big of him.
Sirius thought he had a good feel for Luna from all of his god-son's letters. He was sure it was Luna because of the ease of his mentioning her in the first few months of the year, and how her name had absolutely disappeared in the last week or so. Sirius knew Xenophilius and his wife to be, Io, during their time at Hogwarts, but he wasn't sure if any of his experience with them would be useful. The couple he remembered were youthful, vibrant, and stable. From what he had read in the Quibbler and in the Prophets he had stolen since his escape that had all changed when Io died.
He knew how to approach Luna if you didn't care about her and were just looking for a roll in the hay, but if he had the slightest idea of the kind of person his beloved godson was, that wasn't the plan. To his shame he had done a lot of loving and leaving when he was young, and it meant that while he languished in prison, the only people who would have missed him were dead or marginalized. He had no one to miss him or care for him except his brothers and Prongs had died, Wormtail had betrayed him, and Moony thought it was Padfoot's own fault.
Sirius was coming to the realization that he needed to be present with a much stronger presence for the people he had left, namely Moony and Harry, but he also needed to find someone to help him. He knew his time in prison hadn't left him well in the head. He was staving off the worst of it by focusing on his god-son, which brought him full circle to the advice he needed to impart.
He started on a letter. Harry had the worst part done for him, finding something to do was the hardest part of asking a dame out, in his experience. With the ball all set, Harry just needed a gift to give as he asked her out. From there it was easy. Taking a lady on a date was simple, keep it light, remember to have fun, and make it about her. Sirius didn't know a guy who wouldn't love to just spend time on a couch in their pyjamas with a girl, more often than not the date was about going out for her . Sirius took most of the afternoon to get all his wisdom down on paper. He was going to meet Harry's wonderful bird (the one that could fly, anyway) out at the edge of the village later that day.
While his elders were planning his future love life, his own work pending advice from his dogfather, Harry had gone on working on his bracer.
His plan was to embed a magically reactive sample of either metal, wood, fire, water, or earth at the relevant point in the pentagram. He'd seal the leather up over the sample and draw the pentagram between the samples using either thestral hair, or follicles from the phoenix and abraxan feathers he had. His study of arithmetic figures had found (even with input from the restricted section) that his plan of three overlaid pentagrams was his best bet. The power of five would bring significant stability to the channeling of power, and three overlaid would increase its ease in channeling. A stable flow of power, and a wide conduit to do it, basically as good as he could hope to get it.
The crate with his samples had arrived the day before his unsettling revelations from the goblins. Harry immediately tanned one sample of the Tebo hide with the method prescribed by Ollivander's notebook. He had the potions done, keyed to his own blood, and waiting, so it was the work of a mere hour to have the leather completely prepared. Harry re-measured his left arm, and in a trice had the bracer completely formed. It was simple, the leather being a rich brown and covering from his wrist to three centimeters from his elbow. The goblins had done him the favor of making the magically reactive material samples small in size already, so the process of embedding them was also relatively easy.
For the element of fire, the goblins had found Harry a flawless ruby, a small amount of ashes from the first burning day of a phoenix, and scales shed by a new born ashwinder. The element of metal was represented by the living gold of a graphorn's horn, the living silver of the eggshell of an occamy, and a tiny ingot of goblin mithril. Earth was tied into his focus by a flawless emerald, a small sample of skin from a moke, and a tiny, obscenely expensive sample of living clay taken from the sea-floor ruins of Atlantis. Harry tied water into his focus by having a flawless sapphire, a chunk of bone from a grindylow, and a scale from a mer-chieftain, willingly donated to him. Wood was represented by sample of wood willingly given from a whomping willow, a chunk off of a snargaluff, and a small chunk of petrified wood taken from near the blast site of the Tunguska event (no wizard to this day had ever again attempted to summon anything in from the outer dark, let alone the Lurker at the Threshold).
Harry had three samples of each element, a different sample for each point of the three pentagrams he would make. And he had three different representatives of air.
It took Harry the entire day, even using magic for the entire construction process, but at the end, he had a focus. From the top, it looked like any other piece of leather, everything that made it special was embedded below view. Towards his wrist, Harry made a circular divot and inscribed a small pentagram. Harry made the incantation to the normal space expansion in Greek while pushing his magic into the carving, and bob's your uncle, he had a hole in his bracer space expanded to hold his wand.
It wasn't perfect, really it was only suitable for defensive magic, but it was an amazing test run for his finished project. Truth be told, he may keep it even after he finished his final project. It couldn't hurt to have an extra and strengthened shield on his off hand.
The first Protego he channeled through it was a hundred-twenty degree arc shield, looking like glowing golden glass five inches thick. In his admittedly limited experience, it was the strongest charm he had ever cast in his life, and ever seen cast period. He gave a run at the Fortis charm he had read about in an old auror handbook he found stuffed between the pages of a potions manual in the restricted section. It came out of his hand as a massive silver shield, a meter and a half across and two high, covering a hundred twenty degree arc in front of him roughly a meter out. He had never cast so much power in such a focused way. By the time he had a significant enough tie into magic, his wand was near useless to him. This, he thought with relish, was power.