Mist of Shadows
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🕑 Added 2016-09-27 00:22:09 +0000 UTC
Sirius grinned as Harry guessed the correct face of the coin for the twentieth time in a row including the time he’d swapped the coin out for a double sided coin without telling him and the time he’d swapped the coin for a different coin in case Harry had somehow charmed it. “We’re going to a casino at some point.”
Harry glanced over at the tent where one of his mothers was napping. “I’m game if you can get me some polyjuice and figure out a way to do it that doesn’t have my mums breathing fire.”
Sirius frowned as he pictured Lily’s reaction to taking Harry to a casino. “Point, maybe later. Do you have a plan for getting into Bella’s vault?”
“I’ve got a couple of ideas but they’re not exactly what most people would call sane.”
Sirius laughed. “Sanity is overrated. Let’s hear your ideas.”
“I have three invisibility potions, I’m not opposed to using one of them to get past the goblins so I can fly down to Bellatrix’s vault.”
Sirius shook his head. “Let’s ignore the fact that you have three potions that shouldn’t exist for a minute, you’d still need a goblin to open her vault.”
Harry smirked. “Hopefully the wards can’t tell the difference between a conscious goblin and an unconscious goblin.”
“We can hope. Where did you get the invisibility potions?”
“Would you believe me if I said I found them in Mum’s potion lab during the tutorial?” Harry asked hopefully.
Sirius snorted. “Maybe if you weren’t smirking, spill.”
“I’ll tell you the rest of the story once I get back from robbing Bellatrix’s vault.” Harry wanted Voldemort dead and gone before he told Sirius about the vault, his extra cousins and Diggle Hell.
“Lily is going to blow her top when she realizes I let you run off to rob Gringotts.”
Harry smirked. “That’s half the fun. Don’t worry, I’ll have a time loop running, if I have to reset it, I can.”
“In that case what do you need help with?”
“I’m not terribly sure how goblins or wizards solve crimes other than not well in the case of wizards.”
“The goblins aren’t much better than wizards. As long as you don’t leave hairs behind, walk in there with a registered wand or get seen, you should be okay.”
“In other words, I should grab a hooded sweatshirt and a mask?” Harry asked curiously.
“That would certainly help,” Sirius admitted.
Harry opened his inventory and looked through the clothes tab until he found an ugly green hooded sweatshirt that he could do without and a pair of faded ‘red’ pajama bottoms that also covered his feet. He pulled them out of his inventory and tossed them to Sirius. “Here.”
Sirius smirked as he caught the clothes. “Pink?”
Harry glared at Sirius as he stated firmly, “They are red.”
“If you say so,” Sirius replied with good natured mocking.
“Can you charm them so that I’ll be invisible while wearing them?” Harry asked hopefully.
Sirius shrugged. “It won’t last more than a couple of days and it won’t be perfect invisibility but if you stick to the shadows, you should be able to make it work.”
“That’s fine, I shouldn’t need it more than a couple of hours.”
“Or we could just wait until we capture Bellatrix and use polyjuice.”
Harry shook his head. “I also want to try and steal any goblin spell books that I can get my hands on.”
Sirius winced. “That could start a war.”
Harry smirked. “Only if they remember it. Griphook tried to kill Hermione, Ron and I by trapping us in a vault the last time around after we made a deal to get access so that we could destroy Voldemort’s horcrux. I don’t have any loyalty to the nasty little bastards.”
“This is going to end in blood and tears,” Sirius muttered.
Harry shrugged. “Hopefully for the Death Eaters when they realize they can’t buy their way out of their crimes.”
Sirius pulled his wand out of his holster and charmed the pajama bottoms and the hooded sweatshirt to disillusion Harry while he was wearing them. He doubted they’d last more than a couple of days but that should be enough time for Harry to test the bank’s defenses. “I guess it won’t hurt to start a time loop and test their defenses once I get these charmed.”
Harry equipped the invisibility clothes then grabbed a pair of gloves and a cloth mask out of his inventory and handed them to Sirius. “Here.”
Sirius charmed the mask and gloves then handed it to Harry. “I’ll also hit you with a disillusionment charm before I drop you off just to make sure you’re covered.”
“Thanks.” Harry put the mask and gloves on then touched his nose. “Save game.”
“Game saved.”
“The time loop is set.”
Sirius pulled his hood up. “Let’s head to Diagon alley before I change my mind.”
Harry held out his hand. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Sirius tapped Harry on the head with his wand and disillusioned him then side along apparated to Diagon Alley with him. He glanced around to make sure no one was paying all that much attention then whispered when he didn’t notice anyone paying them any attention, “Have fun, I’m going to check on a couple of things, you’re resetting this try anyways, right?”
“Yep, why?”
“I wanted to pay Borgin a visit. He has a couple of books that I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that I’d rather no one actually remember me buying.”
“You do know that you’ll forget everything, right?” Harry asked in a whisper.
Sirius smirked. “Of course but you won’t. If we find something useful you can memorize the page and we’ll pick it up later while in disguise or copy the spell down with a pensieve.”
“Worth a shot,” Harry admitted in whisper.
“Best of luck.” Sirius turned and headed for Knockturn alley.
Harry flew down the street toward Gringotts. He hovered a couple of feet off the ground as he watched people enter and exit the bank for a minute or two then flew into the bank when a witch opened the door to leave. He quickly flew over to the counter and around the back to make sure that he wasn’t seen. He was actually a bit surprised when he didn’t hear any shouts or sirens. He waited twenty seconds then flew behind the various goblins and into the passage that led to the tunnels. ‘That went better than I was expecting.’
Despite or maybe because of what happened the last time he’d snuck into Gringotts he was half expecting to have things jump out and try to eat him as he flew toward where he remembered Bellatrix’s vault was located. Thankfully sneaking past the dragon only required flying fast enough that the dragon couldn’t track him by scent quickly enough to roast him with his fire breath. He grinned as he spotted a goblin opening a vault while a grumpy looking wizard waited impatiently.
The wizard grumbled, “Out of the way.”
The goblin resisted the urge to snarl or stab the stupid wizard as he stepped back so the wizard could get into his vault.
Harry blinked as he caught sight of the dark mark on the man’s arm when he reached out to grab the side of the vault and his robe bunched up. ‘You’d think the idiots would do a better job hiding those.’ He hit the wizard with a silent and wandless stunner then did the same with the shocked goblin when he spun around to look at what had sent the spell at the wizard. ‘Almost too easy.’
Harry walked into the vault and glanced around at the stacks of gold and silver coins then looked over at a shelf that held various items including several books. He opened his inventory then worked on looting the various treasures in the vault leaving the stacks of gold and silver alone. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the gold, it was just that he didn’t see a point in taking the gold when he was going to load his save game anyways.
Harry grinned as he stole the man’s wand and vault key then levitated him the rest of the way into the vault. He walked out of the vault and levitated the goblin up and over to the door. He sighed in relief as he was able to close the vault door by using the goblin’s hand on the door. ‘And this is supposed to be the most secure place on Earth to store your gold? Bullshit.’ He scowled as he levitated the goblin in front of him as he flew toward Bellatrix’s vault. ‘Smoke and mirrors and more lies, what the hell stops a group of wizards from coming down here with brooms?’ He smiled slightly as he remembered one of Hermione’s rants about how wizards were idiots. Sure, that particular rant had actually been about Ron but the same applied to wizards in general at least in his experience.
Harry wasn’t surprised when he managed to open Bellatrix’s vault with the goblin though he was a bit disappointed in their security. ‘Seriously imperio is a thing, confusion charms are a thing… maybe I should kidnap Hermione and head to America, they can’t be this stupid over there.’
He floated the goblin inside the vault then flew in to take a look around. He smiled as he saw the cup on the pedestal where he’d found it the last time around. He carefully flew up next to the cup and picked it up then stuffed it in his inventory. ‘Yep, creepy dark nasty feeling, one down, several to go.’ He glanced around the rest of the vault. ‘Hmm, no books, just a bunch of gold and goblin silver art objects.’ He reached out and picked one of the chalices up and was rather surprised then it didn’t start replicating like mad. ‘Huh, she must have upgraded her security system after Voldemort took over the ministry.’
He picked up a couple more items at random and stuffed them in his inventory then stopped as he felt dark magic as he reached for a dagger. ‘I should grab some dragonhide gloves for the real attempt.’ He left the dagger where it was then cast a silence spell on the vault. He cast a binding spell on the goblin then pulled one of the truth potions he’d looted from his mother’s potion lab out of his inventory and dosed the goblin. He wasn’t sure why his mother had truth potion, maybe because of her father’s job as an auror or maybe it was because of the tutorial but either way he wasn’t going to complain. He hit the goblin with a wandless enervate. “Wake up.”
The goblin looked around warily when he found that he was tied up and in a different vault than the one he’d opened. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what the bank does with vaults that don’t have owners.”
The goblin snorted then replied in a daze. “If we can’t find any family we confiscate everything as per our agreement with the ministry.”
Harry pulled a notebook and pen out of his inventory. “If you were going to loot the most valuable possession the goblins have or are guarding, what would you loot and where would I find it?”
“A head sized ruby, in the director’s personal vault,” replied the goblin woodenly as the truth potion forced the truth from him.
Harry wrote the information down as he asked his next question. “Where would I find goblin books on goblin magic?” He only felt slightly guilty as he pumped the goblin for information about magic, ancient goblin treasures, the location of the bank records for the owners of each vault, the contents of various death eater vaults and the art of creating goblin silver of which the goblin knew very little of other than a couple of names of previous long dead goblin smiths which would be helpful as soon as he got the resurrection stone back.
Harry spent over an hour wringing information out of the goblin before he heard an alarm coming from outside despite the muffling charms. “Looks like they finally got curious.”
The goblin glared in Harry’s general direction. “You’ll never get away with this!”
“Oh? Why not?”
The goblin said, “Because they’ll capture you!”
“How, I’m invisible and you’ve never seen my face.”
“We record the wand signature of everyone that comes into the bank. We’ll find you.”
“And the fact that I didn’t bring a wand?” Harry asked curiously hoping the goblin gave something away in his rage at being captured.
“You had to have left something behind.” The goblin shouted, “Once we find out who you are we’ll kill you and your entire family for discovering what you have!”
“Have the goblins arranged any deaths so they can confiscate a vault?”
“That would be illegal and violate several magical contracts,” the goblin snarled as the potion forced him to continue, “a word here or there about another family’s vast wealth on the other hand are perfectly acceptable and often accomplishes the same thing.”
“Anything else I should know?” Harry smiled as the goblin continued spilling secrets for another twenty minutes until a group of goblin security guards showed up to investigate the open vault.
One of the guards demanded, “What is the meaning of this?”
The truth potion laced goblin shouted, “She’s invisible!”
Harry used a pedestal as cover as he blasted the goblins guards until they were little more than smears of blood. “That was messy...” He reached down and picked up the goblin he’d been interrogating and stuffed him in his inventory. ‘Thank the gods for giant strength.’ He smirked as he walked over and grabbed a goblin hand in both hands which was just about the only thing left of that particular goblin. He flew over to the next vault and used the goblin hand on the vault’s door. He stared in shock when the vault door actually opened. ‘Seriously? I trusted these morons with my gold...’
Harry shook his head then put the bloody severed hand in his inventory knowing that his inventory would keep it fresh. He pointed his hand at the vault and wandlessly conjured light. His slight frown turned into a smile when he saw the shelf filled with old books. ‘I wish Hermione was here.’ His smile slid off his face as he remembered that his best friends were gone. ‘New life, new friends and I have my parents back… screw it, I’ll just have to find her early.’
He had a feeling that Hermione would still end up a bookworm no matter what which was thankfully one of her more adorable traits, he was just hoping that he could grind off some of her rougher edges before she got to Hogwarts. He wasn’t sure what to do about Ron as he wasn’t even sure that Ron would want to be his friend this time around considering he wasn’t the Boy That Lived, same thing with Ginny really. ‘Nothing I can do about it right now.’
Harry pulled his attention back to the vault then summoned the books and stuffed them into his inventory after writing the vault number of the spines of the books. He smiled absently as he pictured Hermione screaming at him for defacing old books, ‘At least this way I can keep track of where I found them.’
He turned and flew to the next vault. He pulled the bloody hand out and used it on the vault door then looked inside. ‘Gold and silver, nothing special.’ He flew to the next door and touched the bloody goblin hand to the door. His first indication that something was wrong was the bloody hand sinking into the door, the next was the wailing siren of doom. He flew backwards as the hand was sucked into the vault. ‘Maybe the goblins aren’t quite as stupid as I thought. The life must have faded from the hand which set off the alarm. I guess that means I need to find the records department and get the hell out of here.’
He smiled as he headed deeper into the cave to where the dragon was chained up. It wasn’t where he needed to be for the records but letting a dragon rampage through Gringotts would certainly give the goblins something else to focus on while he robbed the records room. He blasted the chains on the dragon then zapped it with a stinging hex to get it moving then flew as fast as he could away from the dragon. He wanted to laugh as the dragon charged then roasted a group of goblins that thought they were out of range. ‘Best of luck.’
Harry carefully snuck past a goblin guard while floating along the ceiling of a tunnel as he followed the directions he’d been given. He took a couple of lefts then a few rights as he made his way through the maze until he got to the door to the records room. He flew back down the hallway and flew into the lounge where several goblins were scrambling thanks to the various alarms going off. He quickly blasted them with stunners from both hands then levitated one of the goblins and hauled it back toward the door to the records room. He grinned as he floated down to the ground, lined up his shot and banished the goblin into the door as hard as he could.
The door made a nice clanging sound as the goblin’s skull slammed into it.
‘That will leave a mark.’ Harry summoned the goblin back about five feet then banished the goblin at the door again which broke the goblin’s neck with a sickening snap.
A burly looking goblin opened the door holding a sword and shouted something in gobbledygook.
Harry raised his hand and wandlessly summoned the goblin out of the doorway. He jumped the screaming goblin then twisted and banished him at a group of goblins that had poured into the hallway behind him. He dove for the door that was already closing and tumbled through it. ‘That could have been worse.’ He focused on the surprised goblin clerk standing in the middle of the room and hit him with a stunner then turned around and used a couple of sticking charms to make sure the goblins wouldn’t be opening the door any time soon. He frowned as he looked around the room filled with dozens of old fashioned filing cabinets. ‘I’ll just have to take them with me.’
He walked over and pushed the goblin clerk into his inventory then hit one of the filing cabinets with a shrinking spell. ‘Sweat, they didn’t charm it against shrinking it, then again with the curse on the files, it’s hardly needed.’ He wasn’t actually sure what the curse did as the other goblin wasn’t aware of the curse’s exact nature just that there was one. Still, he wasn’t all that worried about it as he planned to interrogate the goblin clerk before he took the shrunken filing cabinets out of his inventory.
He ignored the banging on the door as he went to work shrinking and stealing the filing cabinets so that he could match vaults to his list of death eaters.
A goblin shouted from outside the room, “There is no way out of there!”
Harry finished stashing the last shrunken cabinet in his inventory then glanced up at the vent with a smirk. “You’ll never take be alive!” He grinned as he blasted the grate on the vent. It was far to small for most people to navigate but he was a toddler and he could fly. “First goblin that comes in here dies!”
Harry flew up and into the ventilation system. ‘Not my best idea but I should be able to get outside this way.’ He was rather surprised with how easy it was to get close to the entrance using the ventilation system. He knew there were charms in place to keep critters out of the air vents near the surface from talking to the goblin but he didn’t need to get out that way, just get close enough to the entrance that he could exit the vents into the main chamber. He had to resist the urge to giggle as he flew out of the vents and found that the dragon had already escaped, taking out the section of glass floor in the lobby of the bank and the roof of the bank. He flew up and out of the bank then scanned the crowd looking for Sirius.
0o0o0
Sirius’s grin slipped off his face when he walked back into the tent with Harry on his shoulders and saw both Lilys standing there with their wands out and pointed at them. “Something the matter?”
Lily glared at Sirius. “You mean beyond you apparating somewhere with Harry leaving us to wonder what the hell was going on for the last couple of hours?”
“I blame Harry,” Sirius replied quickly.
Harry pouted. “Hey.”
The other Lily said, “You’re not helping your case.” She looked at Harry, who was only barely invisible and covered with dust. “Maybe you should explain Harry.”
“I set up a time loop then we went and robbed Gringotts so that we could figure out what vaults belong to the Death Eaters so that we can rob them blind later without anyone being the wiser, well that and they have books…”
Lily glanced back and forth between Harry and Sirius a couple of times as she tried to figure out if this was one of Sirius’s idiotic pranks. “Let me get this straight, Sirius talked you into setting up a time loop and robbing Gringotts?”
Sirius pouted. “Hey, none of that. It was Harry’s idea.”
The other Lily rubbed her face in frustration. “You’re supposed to be the adult Sirius.”
Sirius reached up and lifted Harry up then set him on the couch. “I know that but despite the fact that he’s physically fifteen months old, he’s an adult mentally. Besides, he can apparate, it’s not like I could stop him anyways.”
“Fine, just so this isn’t a total waste, how can we help?”
Harry asked, “Does that mean you’re not mad?”
Lily snorted. “I’m rather annoyed that you didn’t bring us in on the plan to start with.”
The other Lily said, “If by plan you mean insanity then sure, that works.”
“That said, how can we help?”
Harry said, “I managed to grab the Horcrux that Bellatrix had hidden as well as a shelf of books and several filing cabinets of records that I’m hoping will tell us the vault numbers of various death eaters.”
Lily said, “They’re going to come looking for the filing cabinets, tracking charms, the whole works most likely.”
Harry nodded. “Most likely, that’s why I kidnapped the clerk I found in the records room. If we pump him full of truth potion we can probably figure out how to open the filing cabinets without them exploding. Sirius is an auror or at least was, he should have some experience questioning people under a truth potion.”
Sirius nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Lily asked, “You’re going to reset the time loop aren’t you?”
“We sort of have to,” Sirius admitted.
The other Lily asked suspiciously, “Why?”
Sirius smirked. “I sort of killed Borgin with a cursed necklace he had.”
Lily blinked in surprise. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I disillusioned it, then tossed it at him with a pair of gloves while he was busy with another customer. The customer was a suspected death eater. After that I picked up several dozen books as well as magical items that I wouldn’t mind taking apart to see if we can learn anything.”
“Sirius!”
“What? Harry is going to reset the time loop and no one will remember it because it won’t have happened,” Sirius replied.
The other Lily said, “That means you could have just bought the books.”
Sirius shook his head. “I would have felt dirty buying stuff from him.”
“And killing him was better?” Lily asked incredulously.
“Yep, I figure I’ll share the memory with Harry then he can share it with me when he gets back.”
Harry said, “Sure, he helped Draco Malfoy sneak a bunch of Death Eaters into the school the last time around. I’m not really a fan of his shop.”
Lily looked down her nose at Harry. “Don’t encourage him.”
Harry reached into his inventory and pulled the goblin clerk out of it. “He’s the clerk, he should know how to get into the filing cabinet without setting off the various curses. I’m going to grab a sandwich, I’ve been flying around for the last couple of hours.”
Lily looked at her alternate. “Do you want to get Harry a sandwich while Sirius and I question the goblin or do you want me to?”
“I’ll make our little thief a sandwich.” The other Lily smiled at Harry to take the sting out of it. She knew she should be pissed but honestly she could understand why they’d want to do a test run before telling them, she would have worried herself to death if she’d thought Harry was robbing Gringotts rather than just taking a walk in the alley with Sirius or wandering around somewhere ‘safe’. Besides, playing it cool now meant that Harry would probably explain the time loops the next time around and she had a decent number of potions experiments that could really benefit from time loops.
Harry followed Lily hoping that he could figure out a way to spin things so that his mums wouldn’t be too unhappy in the timeline that he was going to keep.
0o0o0
Harry couldn’t help his smile as he glanced around the tent where his family was looking over the stolen books and various magical items trying to find any last crumbs of useful information in the stacks of stolen books before he loaded his saved game for his second attempt. He’d gotten to know his parents and Sirius a bit more over the last two weeks they’d spent pouring over the stolen books and records.
His father had a warped and mostly amusing sense of humor as did his mother though hers was a bit more refined and less geared toward pranks. “Has anyone found anything Earth shattering?”
James looked up from the book he was reading. “Does a new charm for mind controlling slugs count?”
Harry snorted. “Let’s go with no. We can always catch it the next time around if we have to.”
Lily looked at Harry sadly. “In that case, you should probably reset things before something goes wrong with your time loop and we’re stuck with the statute of secrecy being ripped apart.”
Harry blushed in embarrassment. “It’s not like I knew there was a television crew filming a live story at the time…”
Sirius laughed. “It was rather amusing watching Fudge running around with his head cut off.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll share the memories you shared after I reset the loop. I’ll even share some of the crap he did in my world so you can understand why I hate him.”
Lily sighed. “You might as well reset things…”
Harry reached up, touched his nose, said, “Load game.” and found himself outside of their tent where he’d saved the game.
Sirius pulled his hood up. “Let’s head to Diagon alley before I change my mind.”
Harry shook his head. “Give me a second, I just loaded the save game.”
Sirius blinked. “Save game?”
“It’s what I call my time loops,” Harry admitted.
“What happened?” Sirius asked curiously.
“I might have shattered the statute of secrecy by unleashing a dragon on London,” Harry admitted.
Sirius stared at Harry’s green eyes which was really the only part of Harry that he could see because of his invisibility suit. “Where did you find a dragon?”
“Chained up under Gringotts,” Harry admitted.
“Did you manage to steal anything useful?”
Harry reached up and took his mask off and stuck it in his inventory so that Sirius could see his face. “Various old family books and magical items that we spent the last two weeks combing through for interesting spells that weren’t horribly dark.”
“Did you find the cup?” Sirius asked hopefully.
“Right where it should be in Bellatrix’s vault.”
“Fantastic, let’s go explain things to Lily then we can review what you found out and figure out how to get the cup without unleashing a dragon on London.” Sirius wasn’t really a fan of the statute of secrecy as he didn’t think wizards had the right to modify memories because of lazy wizards but he wanted a bit more information on the fallout before he suggested that they do something as potentially world changing as shatter the statute of secrecy.
“Sounds good. I’ve got some memories to share from the time loop.” Harry turned and headed back into the tent to face what he was sure was going to be a rather loud conversation.
Lily looked up from her book as a mostly invisible Harry and Sirius walked back into the tent. “Is there a reason you’re wearing disillusioned clothes Harry?”
Harry nodded his head. “Yep, Sirius said we should rob Gringotts.”
Sirius sputtered, “Harry!”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “Even he isn’t that crazy, what’s going on?”
Harry snickered at the look on Sirius’s face. “I have the ability to set up time loops, basically I can start a time loop then reset it to the instant I created the time loop.”
“Let’s assume for a second that you’re not playing a practical joke, do you have any proof?”
“I called a coin toss twenty times for Sirius the first time around using my time loops.” Harry opened his inventory and pulled out his pensieve. “I can show you a bunch of memories from the two weeks I spent in the loop. We worked on learning spells and stealing goblin secrets.”
Lily frowned as she considered Harry’s statement for a couple of seconds then sighed as she realized that this was a bit too much trouble for James to go to for a prank, probably. “Let’s start with a couple of memories and we’ll go from there once I’m sure this isn’t one of James’ stupid pranks.”
Harry laughed as he walked over to the table and set the large bowl down then pulled his wand out of his inventory. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a prank. I’m not much of a prankster, I grew up with the Dursleys.”
Lily scowled as she thought about her sister and her sister’s husband. “That should have never happened.”
Sirius shook his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t kill them the last time around.”
“I’m fairly sure you weren’t thinking straight after over a decade in prison with the dementors.” Harry pulled out the memory that the Lily from the loop had left the current Lily. “The other Lily left a memory for you.”
“If this is a prank, you’re grounded until you graduate,” Lily stated firmly.
Harry shook his head. “Don’t worry, if I prank you, it will be something fun and harmless not something crazy.”
“Just as long as you realize that I’ll prank you back,” Lily replied then walked over and looked at the memory in the bowl.
Sirius looked at Harry. “Did my future self leave me with any messages?”
“Just a couple of memories of various people running around like headless chickens after the dragon was recorded on live television and rebroadcast to the world.”
Sirius shook his head. “I still can’t believe it was that easy to bring everything crashing down.”
Harry smirked. “The prime minister was rather angry about the war against Voldemort putting his citizens at risk and the Ministry’s inability or unwillingness to deal with the problem. Without the dragon getting loose he probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it, I know he didn’t the last time around.”
Sirius could see how having a dragon flying over London in the middle of the day would cause a lot of problems for the ministry. “Still, the obliviators should have been able to explain it away as a mass hallucination.”
“They probably would have if the prime minister hadn’t had a dozen muggle born witches and wizards in his cabinet that worked for him keep the ministry from forcing the issue. Tens of thousands of people had seen the dragon with their own eyes and hundreds of thousands had seen it on live television then millions as it was rebroadcast to the world. Not to mention the obliviators were already massively overworked with the sheer number of parties when people found out Voldemort was missing. The ministry probably could have still spun it as a hocus except that the prime minister shared the whole ugly truth about the wizarding world on live television in a press conference with a couple of masked wizards to help put the nail in the coffin.”
“And with the dragon… that was enough.”
“Not to mention a bunch of unhappy muggleborn witches and wizards came out of the woodwork in masks and started tossing up semi permanent glowing lights and various other spells around the world to prove the existence of magic.”
Sirius shook his head. “How bad was the backlash against the magical world?”
Harry shrugged. “The prime minister did a decent job painting the average magical citizens as normal people with magic dealing with a corrupt government but there are enough idiots in the world that a backlash was pretty much assured.”
“I’d rather avoid revealing the wizarding world at least until we’ve had a chance to clean up the ministry.”
“Cleaning up the ministry is on my to do the list.”
Lily pulled her head away from the pensieve. “I can’t believe you actually broke into the bank.”
Harry scowled as he thought about the goblins. “I needed to make sure the cup was in Bellatrix’s vault. Besides, Griphook tried to kill me the last time around and the goblins tried to rob me blind after I defeated Voldemort because I had to break into a vault to kill Voldemort.”
“Wizards haven’t treated the goblins all that well either.”
Harry snorted. “I don’t care, I made a deal in good faith with Griphook to get the cup. While I will admit that I missed the detail about getting out of the bank in the actual deal, we’d talked about how to get out of the bank so I assumed it was included. The moment I had the cup he grabbed the sword and left my friends and I to die in the vault even knowing that I hadn’t destroyed the cup yet nor the rest of Voldemort’s horcruxes. So, yeah no, I don’t have a problem with stealing everything I can from the greedy little monsters including secrets on how to make goblin silver and galleons.”
Sirius spoke up, “You do realize most of them are taller than you are, right?”
“Currently.”
Lily asked, “What else did you learn?”
“I’ll start making a list.” Harry figured writing it down would be easier in the long run.
0o0o0.
Comments
Chichi son
The ministry probably could have still spun it as a hocus except that the prime minister shared the whole ugly truth about the wizarding world on live television in a press conference with a couple of masked wizards to help put the nail in the coffin. hoax?
Mist of Shadows
I'm glad that you're enjoying it.
Marcel
Ok, so far I'm loving this. I prefer Gamer!Harry to the original by far.
