Chapter 15
Harry had a girlfriend. It was a first for him, and not just a first because he wasn't good with the fairer sex. As Harry figured it, Luna was probably the first person to see all of their options in the breadth of Hogwarts, and choose him.
Ron he had only known because he met his family early on, and the redhead was blinded by the whole boy-who-lived thing, which Harry suspected is why they had shared a car. Hermione he had saved when she had no friends, he had sort of become one for her by default.
Even Nev and the Twins weren't really like Luna in that respect. Sure, he had been the proverbial port in the storm for her, but she had all of Hogwarts to go to. If she had gone to Flitwick, the half-goblin would have damn near disemboweled whoever was hurting her, even if it was another one of his ravens.
She had chosen him though, and this was only the first real upset of the winter break for him.
Harry had snuck out of the grounds after arranging a distraction with his brothers. All he had to do in payment is pick up a few crates of orders they had waiting at a printer in Diagon. He made his way to the floo in the Three Broomsticks (Harry used a wordless Diffindo to sever a tap, free beer was quite a distraction, he also quietly left enough gold to pay for the keg behind the counter) and from there to Diagon Alley.
Harry was destined for a chair in the shared office of life mates Gemshaper and Ragnok, Mistress of Procurement and Clan chief of the goblins of Gringotts respectively. Until he had met and worked with the elves at Hogwarts, he had always thought of goblins, centaurs, merpeople, and elves as all being the same as humans. It was only in quiet conversations with Nifty and others in the dinner cleanup crew that he found he was wrong in that. They weren't human, and they were proud of it. It meant something different, something unique, to be a house elf. They had their own laws, their own codes of behavior. It was significant to them to be allowed to clean, to be trusted to prepare food and to be honored for their help.
When he slowly reached this conclusion, he had to rethink everything he knew of the 'non-humans' and 'half-breeds'. He hadn't spoken with one directly, but the tone of his exchange with Gemshaper changed when he pieced that conclusion together. The way he saw it, the goblins put stock in efficiency and profit. They were a race that valued their honor, and they were only a few generation from the era when they had still worked out their internal disputes by single combat to the death in an arena. They were a curious mix of warrior and banker, and if Harry understood it correctly, that mix was why his family's wealth had done so well while outside his control. They woke up, put on their suit and tie, and wielding briefcases like they would axes in the days of yore, they went and did financial battle in stock markets and currency exchanges.
It was a little funny, Harry thought, but it was serious all the same. That is what it meant to be a goblin. Honor, profit, glory. Harry met the clan chief and his mate with that idea in mind, and it could not have gone better. Well inter-personally anyway.
Harry claiming rights as his head of house could not be hidden. It was in fact something the goblins were obligated to publish in the wizarding papers. They had held off however, until he could speak with them. He told the two honestly of his suspicions about Dumbledore, how he seemed to be using the Potter name and deliberately not helping Sirius. Ragnok sadly confirmed this. The only bright spot was that he said that with a goblin legal team at his back (Harry had been quick to request one, bringing a terrifying smile to Ragnok's aged face), not even Dumbledore could keep Harry under his influence after this summer.
They met Harry with much more detailed ledgers of his accounts, including inventories of non-gold assets in the family vault. It seemed like Harry had a lot to go through. Ragnok pointed his attention to the hundreds of thousands Dumbledore had been siphoning off of the Potter fortune, earmarked for things like shoring up the Hogwarts budget, and providing tuition for a lot of scholarship students (all of the Weasleys were on the list, Harry sighed).
According to the pattern of withdrawals, there wasn't going to be another until mid-way through the summer, so Harry figured if the cat was already going to leave the bag, at least Harry could keep his gold from leaving with it. They got Harry a new key, and voided the old ones. Harry also asked if anything could be done about his losses. He wasn't overly worried about the effects on his future. The Potters had guarded their wealth somewhat jealously. His father had put a significant amount of money into the war effort during his time, but goblin management had recouped all of their losses.
The two goblins knew of the tournament, and offered to keep his announcement of assuming the head of house position until the summer as well. Harry asked how, but Ragnok's response was only a wink. If he had to guess, he would assume that their warrior ways had made them adept at the tools of the banking trade, namely the navigation of red tape.
After their business was concluded, they had a wonderful hour together just taking tea. Goblin tea was thick, and Earthy. It looked like they steeped an odd collection of mosses and fungi to make it, but Harry couldn't even begin to argue with the results. Harry got to know the couple a little more closely, and they him in return. The poor boy had no idea that he was passing the time with the ruler over all British goblins, nor indeed how precious Ragnok's time was. The last four ministries combined had spent less time talking with him than Harry had just today.
At the end of their time, Harry asked to go down to his vaults, and he also requested a goblin they trusted to continue being the manager of his accounts. Harry voiced his suspicion that the only reason he was doing so well was how the financial warriors of the goblin nation had done battle on his behalf. Harry felt honored by their work, and he said as much. Gemshaper looked at her husband at that, and Ragnok got a curious gleam in his eye before slowly agreeing. Harry wasn't sure what was happening, but he had a feeling he had done something either very right, or very very wrong. The pair personally led him down to his vault, Harry invited them to enter with him and call out if they saw anything interesting when they attempted to stop at the vault door. Harry figured that if he couldn't trust the Clan Chief of Gringotts, there wasn't a living soul he could.
The vault Harry entered was the family one, his only vault besides his trust vault. It had generations of valued knick-knacks that Harry would have to later look at. It seemed the potters of old were obsessed with enchantment. Harry spied a number of primitive looking time-turners, and more than a few strange carved bowls that Gemshaper identified as pensieves. There was a massive set of goblin made armor in the back, full plate mail like the knights used to wear. There was sadly nothing that had belonged to his parents, it had all burned that night in 1981.
Harry removed only a sack of gold, and a small goblin made dagger that would fit either strapped to his leg or in the small of his back. He was very quiet on the ride back up. The valuables of more than a thousand years of Potters couldn't fail to remind him of what he lost. The two goblins noticed this, and gave him some space for his thoughts.
When they arrived back in the great marble main hall of Gringotts, Harry thanked the two profusely. He tried his best to put his family out of mind. He was going back to school. He needed his mind there. The Potters could wait for the summer, they weren't going anywhere. Ragnok and Gemshaper waved off his thanks, but he smiled and gave it anyway. Making his way under glamors back to the leaky cauldron (with a detour for his brothers), he went back to Hogwarts.
Time passed slowly, but pass it did, and Harry's life quickly developed a routine after the start of the New Year. His time was split pretty evenly between research and development on his bracer (acromantula silk on the inside was a must, his experiment chafed something awful and he had to add it after the fact), time in lessons with Flitwick and McGonagall, and time spent with Luna and his friends.
He never missed a meal now, as they were prime lady-friend time. He also made sure to escort her back to her tower after dinner before he showed up in the kitchens to help/bother the elves. His relationship was moving at a very comfortable pace. Harry wasn't sure what to do with intimacy, and neither was Luna, but they were honest about it and even if the only contact they shared was the odd cuddle and light kiss, they were moving forward.
The bracer project was almost complete. Harry balanced all of the reagents (thanks mostly to Fawkes' gift of tears), and had brought all of them safely into the tanning potion arithmetically. He had everything from the goblins, and Hagrid had been only too happy to help Harry with a project, especially since his giant heritage was a boon to the project.
Hagrid had been having a rough and inebriated time lately. Somehow Skeeter had caught wind of Hagrid's heritage and was dragging him through the press. Harry met with him every class period and spent a bit of time outside class with Luna and Nev comforting him. Harry knew what it was like to be loved one minute and hated the next. A lot of the same people that had turned on him as the heir of Slytherin were turning on Hagrid now. Harry just offered quiet support the whole time. He considered sending a statement of support for the half-giant, but that would only bring more attention to something his first friend wanted to put behind him.
The only strange thing of note was the fact that Moody had taken to following him around in the halls and talking loudly about the benefits and weaknesses of giant squid, as well as the tactical disposition of your average mermish village. Harry was guessing this was like his reaction to the first task, and perhaps Dumbledore had set the man to watch over and subtly (or not so subtly) ensure Harry either survived or completed it in a certain way. No matter why, Harry just tuned the man out. He was confident in his abilities, and actively didn't care either way.
The morning of the second task began misty, and cold as a witch's teat in an iron bra (Harry had asked Luna about the phrase, but she had only looked mysterious and refused to respond). Harry woke with the sun and felt the deep buzzing in his stomach and muscles like he used to get before a quidditch match.
He decided to just cut the middle man from the morning, and head directly down to the lake. Dobby could bring him a bit of toast and bacon. Harry wrote Luna a quick note, and enchanted it to fold itself into a crane and fly to her in the tower. She might come down to meet him or she might not, anything involving morning Luna was a crap shoot.
Harry dressed for the cold, but not for water. From the hints Moody had been dropping with increasing regularity over the last few days, Harry was sure there would be some kind of underwater component to the task and that it was down at the lake. Harry may be a lot of things, but he wasn't crazy, entering any body of water during a Scottish February was not on his to do list.
As he walked through the empty Great Hall to the Black Lake, the Lady Hogwarts was sending him calming feelings, and just a hint of confidence. Just like last time, it seemed she agreed with his friends. If Harry said he could do it, he could do it.
When Harry arrived at the lake, it seemed that he had made a good bet. The boats that took the first years to their sorting were arrayed along the dock, and a number of structures had been built in the middle of the lake. The structures looked like combination platform/stands, and Harry really hoped they had had the living daylights enchanted out of them, because in this weather and at this time of the year, anyone falling off had a solid chance of getting frostbite at a minimum before even Poppy could get to them.
When he arrived at the lake he removed his wand from his shield bracer and gave it a swish as he wandlessly conjured himself a chair. He decided that the old goat that ran the school may be a terrible person, but he had the right idea for summoned chairs. If you could have comfort, why not have it? He loved Minerva, he really did, but she took her stern facade too far in some ways.
Before long Ludo Bagman had walked up and made himself another chair next to Harry. The usually over excited man was solemn today for some reason. Harry had a suspicion from some comments Ragnok made that Bagman had bet a lot more than he could cover on Harry, so he figured the retired beater might be in mourning over his finances. Sucks to be him, Harry thought, don't bet on a horse that doesn't want to win. All of the judges had been both impressed and worried for him after the first task, but when he never made a single move to get the egg they had ended up scoring him one apiece, even Flitwick. Harry was comfortable in last place with six points. He would have been happier with zero, but he'd take what he could get.
The mist that had been covering the ground cleared out once the sun was properly in the sky. At around 7 am students from Durmstrang appeared and claimed the farthest platform out as their own. They looked toasty in their furs, and as Harry was contemplating the virtues of conjuring up some for himself, the Beauxbatons contingent made their appearance. The group of mostly female French witches opened the floodgates, and by 8:30 everyone was in place and ready.
Harry hadn't moved from his place by the shore, now buried in a veritable mountain of incredibly cozy furs. Harry had almost convinced Freyr to stay in the lab today, but the cheeky little guy was insistent, so only Harry's eyes really showed from beneath the mountain and the niffler riding his head.
Bagman had left his seat next to the youngest champion when the other judges arrived, and Harry had laughed as he marked the appearance of his former friends and their confusion at the pile of furs he represented. When the clock struck 8:30, bagman stood from behind the judging table, and cast a Sonorus on himself.
"Welcome one and all to the second task of the Triwizard Tournament! Our four intrepid champions today have to brave the waters of this icy lake to find and retrieve something, or should I say someone, very precious to them!"
Harry finally put together why he hadn't seen Luna in that moment, and he was annoyed that they would use her like this. If she was hurt, he planned to tear the Goblet apart piece by piece, and to severely beat anyone involved in her capture for the event.
"Our champions will have one hour to find and rescue their captives, starting in 3… 2… 1… GO!"
Fleur and Diggory both cast bubblehead charms on themselves and just jumped in. As amusing as watching a veela in a two piece jump into freezing water was, Harry found himself critiquing her charm work and finding it wanting. She would be lucky to last half an hour with it in place, but Diggory had done well enough. Krum tried for some kind of human-to-shark transfiguration, but botched it halfway through. He looked terrifying, but as he jumped in his work seemed effective.
By now most in the stands had used the process of elimination to put together that he was the massive pile of furs on the comfy looking brown velvet chair. After a straight minute of inactivity to make them sweat, he decided that Luna was worth saving and that as much as he didn't want to, he should make a token effort. Besides, he had been looking forward to finding an excuse to try out Sirius' frictionless charms.
Harry dispelled his mountain, and stood, banishing the chair behind him. With a show, he brandished his wand from his bracer, and conjured a platoon of golems. They stood two feet tall and looked like a crude human form made only of rectangular blocks. He enchanted them each with the frictionless movement in water that Sirius had mentioned, and animated them to head to the mermish village and bring him Luna.
In his lessons with Flitwick he had toyed with the use of open ended intentions like that for use in animation. Traditionally one had to have a specific idea in mind for an animation. It was actually part of the grading criteria in an OWL test. You had to mentally specify a direction, a speed, and a distance. A lack of any one of these would often find your pineapple tap dancing out the door, or so fast as to make its own door. Open ended intentions were possible, but required significantly greater concentration, focus, and power. Luckily Harry had most of that in spades.
Playing to the crowd a bit, Harry bowed to the golem crowd he made, and they in turn bowed back before running into the water, none making so much as a ripple as they all moved into the water.
Now Harry had to play the waiting game, and he hated that. There was no such thing as being bored. He had a tanning potion to brew, charms to research, and more laws of transfiguration to break and re-define. There were better uses for his time than this. He sighed.
Protego Maxima! Harry cried, and with a second breath, Fianto Duri! A golden translucent shield surrounded him in a sphere. Harry willed it break at the top, and form under his feet as he slowly walked on to the lake. He closed his eyes in concentration once he had made it five feet out into the water. He had cast the strongest shield he knew, and counting on it to act as a physical barrier as well as a magic one. As his brow furrowed in concentration, he formed the golden shield into a well-appointed 5 by 5 foot barge, the translucence extending back upward forming rails and a roof, griffins in flight depicted at each corner formed by the union of a supporting rod and the covering.
With a thought, he sent his barge adrift on the lake and formed himself a couch. If they made him waste an hour, at least he'd get a nap out of it.
Twenty or so minutes passed, and Harry had worked himself into a nice doze. Whether it was his intention or not, the shield was a very comfortable temperature and it lulled him into just under a lucid state. Harry cast a modified Silencio around him that just dampened sound, but didn't cancel it entirely. He wanted to know when the others surfaced, and if his golem squad even worked. He thought they had pretty even odds of getting there, depending on whether or not magic interpreted his will as find Luna or search for Luna.
He was shaken from his doze as the noise outside increased exponentially. Harry reluctantly opened his eyes, and looked at the shore. Freyr gave a snore from his chest where he was laying, and Harry found the source of the noise.
A very bleeding and if anything more scantily clad veela was being half pulled from the lake by a very worried half-giant. She had long scratches running along her legs, and parts of her sports bra looking top were missing. The water wasn't helping her appearance, it spread the blood further out and made her look like she had seen the business end of a mincing spell.
Harry was amused to note that she had no one with her, so she had not made it to the goal. And assuming the ritual had gone off without a hitch earlier that year, she seemed to be ranting about tiny stone men who had saved her from certain death as they marched past. She was wildly casting around for any rocks she could reach and was kissing them as she loudly praised Ymir for the use of his bones. Harry collapsed back onto his couch, laughing. Of course he had unintentionally saved that stupid spoiled French bint.
Harry decided it wasn't worth trying to go back to sleep, and instead decided to check out the crowd. Harry couldn't see into the water for anything, but the stands seemed to be enchanted for a clear view because the eyes of the crowd were following the progress of a three different objects. If he had to guess, one of the three things was nearing the center of the lake. If he had to further guess he would say it was his golem crew, because the Gryffindors were shouting the loudest and most of the viewers were glancing at him between looks at the water. Well that wouldn't do, the Gryffs should be ashamed, not happy. Harry's face twisted into a frown.
This is going too well, he thought, how can I change the terms of this? What would disrupt the event…? He grinned.
Harry closed his eyes, and moved his awareness with his magic down to his feet resting on the Protego beneath him. He sent both questing out of his body downward (so he could do that! He had been wanting to try it but hadn't found the time), as his awareness extended out of him he felt a much wider slice of the world. His sense of self and of the world moved downward through the dense medium of the lake. He felt a few small schools of fish flit from here to there across the edges of his senses. A massive tentacle from the squid moved completely across him, and Harry felt an understanding of the squid pass through him as he moved past it and further down.
Finally he reached the lake bed, and its hundreds of dark and slimy denizens. An awareness of each of them moved through his sight as he searched outward for his men. After a moment of questing in the direction he had seen the crowd looking, he could feel his stone men running and jumping along the bottom of the lake towards their prize. It seemed like they had gone on a straight line path to the mer-village he could identify at the edges of his awareness. He re-wrote a small part of their mission, then opened his eyes and wrapped his arms behind his head, closing his eyes again on his couch.
His shield platform idly made its way to the shore, and after another twenty minutes went by, Harry felt his troops nearing the shore again. The barge was back on land at this point, so harry dispelled it, and conjured a bench and table like you might find in the great hall. He called out to dobby, and had a full English breakfast put onto the table, as well as three mugs of steaming coffee lined up next to a padded section of the bench.
The golems broke the surface, three each underneath every one of the captives. Harry had stolen all of them. The golem crew was looking a little worse for the wear. The mermen were not happy to have all of their charges stolen at once, and the group bore a large number of deep scratches as evidence. The final golem to leave the water actually had a struggling grindylow attached to its torso, still attempting to strangle the stone man and drag it back under water. One of his golems actually had a trident fully piercing it. Harry laughed out loud, some merman must have stabbed his golem, and his golem just walked away with it!
Cho, Hermione, and a small clone of Fleur were all dumped unceremoniously on the ground in front of the medical tent. Fleur cried out and tried to grab the nearest golem to give it a kiss, but before she could reach any of them, they simply melted into the ground. It seemed like the golems wanted Fleur's affections as much as Harry did.
Luna was carried over to the table Harry had made and Dobby had stocked. All of the captives had regained consciousness as they crested the surface of the lake. Cho and Hermione had struggled, resulting in mild bruising, but the tiny veela and Luna had simply taken it in stride.
Luna was gently placed into Harry's arms, where with three flicks of his wand she was dried, warmed, and had a blanket put on her. Harry moved her gently to the table and placed the mug labeled '#1' in front of her, letting her get a strong whiff of it to encourage her to actually open her eyes.
She of course refused to, but she took the cup from his hand and sight unseen drained it in a single move.
"Mmmmm… You know me so well, Mr. Potter."
Harry smiled and stood. He made another pretend wand flick at his throat, "I dedicate this victory to my girlfriend Luna Lovegood and my godfather Sirius Black. Thank you."
That ought to stir the pot a bit.