Mist of Shadows
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Harry Potter and the Magic of Books Part 18
🕑 Added 2016-07-12 20:01:57 +0000 UTC Severus Snape was not having a good day, first it was the run in with Sirius then it was Albus wanting information he didn’t have and now it was waking up in an unknown heavily warded room chained to a chair with his wand nowhere in sight and no idea how he’d even been grabbed in the first place. “What is going on?”Lily stepped out of the shadows. “I thought we should have a little chat before you take a trip that you’ll never come back from.”
Severus gulped, he knew that voice and tone quite well. “Lily?”
“It’s been awhile Severus.”
“But you’re dead…” he trailed off.
“I was, you killed me, more or less at least. You arranged for me to die when you tried to kill James.”
“It wasn’t like that, I didn’t know it was your child until after I told him.” Severus tried to explain.
“So, it would have been okay if it was someone else’s child?”
“No. I tried to save you. If you’d just stepped aside he would have spared you. He promised.”
Lily snorted. “Right, because murderous psychopaths are so big on that whole keeping promises thing.”
“How did you survive?”
“What part of I died don’t you understand. You helped kill me. As for how I’m back, let’s just say that I know some people that can bring people back from the dead.”
Severus shook his head, “That’s not possible.”
“Obviously it is. Your leader is a bloody moron Severus.”
“I don’t follow him anymore, I promise.”
“Right, so what, he kills me and now you want revenge?”
“Yes!”
“James was right, you’re obsessed and delusional. What the hell happened? Were the dark arts really worth all of that?”
“What the hell else was I supposed to do, I was in Slytherin and they didn’t take rejection well.”
“You could have talked to Dumbledore before you went completely nuts with the dark arts and needed your so called redemption. Either way, I’m not going to argue with an idiot. Here is the deal, you can keep your mind and memories and be banished to a different land where you’ll never have to see another Potter again or you can let me erase your father from your mind and most of your life and I’ll send you somewhere nice so you can start over, like a tropical island.”
Severus’s eyes widened. “You’re insane. Who the hell are you?”
Lily snapped. “You don’t get to play that card. You tried to kill my son and husband, I’m not amused, I’m not forgiving and I’m a red headed witch. How was your stupid plan ever going to end well? You thought that if you killed James and Harry that I’d just fall for you? Or were you going to drug me with love potion until my eyes bled? I mean seriously, what the fucking hell Severus?”
“I don’t know, he got you and I didn’t. Is that what you want to hear?” Severus snapped.
”You’re bloody damaged in the head Severus, I was your friend, not a romance option. Then you tossed that away for some stupid idiots. So, yeah, I’m going to ask one last time, do you want a clean start or do you want to end up in hell?”
Severus shook his head. “I’d rather be in hell than forget you.”
Lily raised her wand, pointed it at Severus and pictured Tobias Snape. “Obliviate!” She focused on Voldemort. “Obliviate!”
Snape started screaming as he started losing pieces of his mind, “Stop! Please don’t!”
“Obliviate! Obliviate!” Lily reached out and started rifling through Severus’s mind ripping out various chunks of truly dark spells and twisting other memories so that he had a bunch of powerful reasons to hate dark wizards.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Harry grinned as he walked up the cute demon girl that was watching several men fight a practice duel across the street. “Helena.”
Helena turned and smiled at Harry and Sarah. “Ah, if it isn’t my favorite wizard and nymph. Here to make another deal?”
“I have another piece of Tom Riddle’s soul, I was wondering what you’d give me for it.”
“That depends on what you want.”
“Immortality?” Harry asked half seriously.
“That’s a bit too valuable to trade just for a piece of a magic user’s soul.”
“What about a spell or knowledge of a magical tattoo that could protect against the unforgivables from my world.”
“Hmm, I’d have to say no on that deal, sorry love but you’re asking for too much for a mere fragment, pick one of the three.”
“In that case, the killing curse.”
“Now that is something I can work with. I’ll need a drop of your blood as you survived the curse when you were a baby.”
Sarah asked, “What are you going to do with his blood?”
“Run some tests, increase my own power, you know, the usual. Nothing that will harm Harry or anything bad.”
“No using his blood to knock yourself up either,” Sarah replied.
Helena pouted. “Take away all my fun.”
Harry said, “It also has to be a method that isn’t evil, dark or has horrible side effects.”
“Picky, picky.” Helena snickered held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes.” Harry pulled the box with the locket from his back and opened it over Helena’s hand.
Helena grabbed the locket and looked it over. “Okay, since I don’t think your nymph friend would trust any blade I give you, I need a drop of your blood on the locket.”
Sarah pulled out a knife and lightly poked the top of Harry’s arm to get a drop of blood. She held the knife over the locket until a single drop fell on the locket then she cleaned the knife with magic.
Harry rubbed his arm. “Remind me to grab a ring of regeneration from the shop.”
Helena snickered. “Rings of regeneration are nice items to have. Let’s get this show on the road.” She lifted the locket up and licked the drop of blood of it. “You’re very tasty Harry.”
Sarah said, “Don’t get any ideas.”
“A girl can dream, right?” Helena kissed the locket and ate the fragmented soul which caused it to scream in agony. She lowered the locket then waved her free hand over it. “All sparkly clean, free of charge.” She tossed the locket back to Harry then focused on the soul and the blood and worked her magic. “Okay, that has some possibilities for later.” She blew Harry a kiss.
Harry covered his ears as diagrams and knowledge burned their way into his awareness and seemed to echo in his ears. “Fuck!”
Sarah glared at the demon girl who had raised her hands. “He better not be harmed.”
“Sorry, it was the best way to transfer the knowledge so that he wouldn’t forget anything.”
Harry rubbed his temples. “That hurt.”
“I’d kiss it better but I don’t think Sarah would be amused.”
“Nope.” Sarah looked at Harry. “Are you okay?”
“Getting there,” Harry replied.
“Let me offer you a piece of advice so there are no hard feelings. Anyone that goes after the soul anchor in the shack is going to want to wear cursed gloves so they can’t put the cursed ring on. It has a particularly nasty curse on it.”
Harry said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Come back when you have the other soul fragments.”
“I’m planning on collecting them in the next couple of days. Anything else you can tell me about them?”
Helena said, “That depends, can I get a promise to bring the rest of the cursed and possessed items to me so I can eat the rest of his soul?”
“Hmm, I’ll offer a gentleman’s agreement to bring them to you first and see what you’re offering. I like you, you’re honest so yeah, chances are that I’ll let you eat the soul fragments as long as you don’t try to screw me over.”
“That works, I lifted some information from the soul when I ate it. The Diary was intrusted to Lucius Malfoy, the Cup to Bellatrix Black to put it in her vault and Ravenclaw’s Diadem was placed in the Room of Lost things at Hogwarts by Riddle. I’m not sure if it’s still in the castle but it seems likely. You obviously found Slytherin’s Locket which was in the cave with the zombies...” She trailed off as Harry shook his head. “No? Where did you find it?”
“One of his ex-followers stole it with the intention of destroying it, they just didn’t make it out alive.”
“Ah. That’s probably for the best, the army of zombies he had guarding the cave looked nasty. Good luck and hurry back love.”
Sarah muttered, “I hate zombies.”
Harry smiled as he bowed. “Thank you for the information.”
Helena said, “You’re welcome and stay safe.”
Harry gave the demon a smile then turned and headed back to the temple to pick up Sirius and Arcturus.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Arcturus Black looked at the reflection of his teenage face in wonder. He hadn’t expected to live out the year so the extra time was a wondrous gift that he knew he didn’t deserve. Then again that was something he knew quite well, life wasn’t fair. He’d had one daughter that was a decent human being and one son that had picked up some really stupid beliefs at Hogwarts. It wasn’t so much the dislike of muggles that annoyed him as it was the ignorance of just how large the rest of the world was. Even if having magic was better than not having magic as far as he was concerned, the sheer number of muggles meant that if the wizarding world stepped too far out of line, the muggles would bomb them until their society fell apart. “I almost wish I could record the look on Malfoy’s face when the explosives go off.”
Harry asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Arcturus scowled as he glanced around the Black house. “I hated coming to this damned house to see family I could barely stand. Having to listen to Orion and Walburga spout their pureblood crap didn’t help.”
Harry asked, “Are you saying that you don’t hate muggles?”
Arcturus bit back his automatic response and considered the question for a couple of seconds. “I’m not overly fond of having to hide our magic. I’m not saying we should be in charge, magic doesn’t make us fit to rule, it just makes us powerful.”
Sirius said, “Most wizards are lazy and rely on their magic to solve problems that would be better solved by reason and logic or the careful application of science.”
“So you’re saying that hiding the magical world was the wrong choice?” Harry asked.
Arcturus said, “It was the coward’s choice. There were other options than confronting the muggles and just running and hiding.”
“Like?”
“Picture what would have happened if a group of wizards had claimed a tropical island and warded it against anyone else finding it or if they had created a moving island. It would have been a place where they could have practiced magic openly without fear. Maybe it ends badly or maybe it doesn’t. Now say the council for lack of a better term hired twenty rather charming wizards to go forth and father as many children with wealthy muggles as they could.”
Harry said, “At least some of the children would have been magical.”
“A little less than half depending on families and the muggle in question. Let’s say the twenty men each create twenty future witches or wizards a year. That might be a low number with fertility potions and such but just go with it for a minute. Now that’s four hundred new students a year spread over several countries or locations. Hogwarts has maybe six hundred students total any given year.”
“Okay, that’s a lot of new students.”
Sirius said, “They’d have to hire at least double the staff.”
Arcturus snorted. “They’d have more staff if the Hogwarts governors weren’t pocketing so much gold.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m on the board and no I’m not stealing money from the school. Everything I’m ‘paid’ goes back to the school. That’s one of the other reasons I dislike Malfoy so much. Anyways, that’s just one year. Next year, let’s say they only get ten people each because they’re running around checking on things. That’s still another two hundred more wizards or witches in the world. Now the twenty drop back to the various families and check in. Though mostly they’ve been doing that anyways to keep tabs on them. Let’s say a fourth of them want the strange children taken away for various reasons. The island now has a hundred or so magical babies that they wouldn’t have had before.”
Sirius said, “A hundred babies to care for, a hundred mouths to feed.”
“If you’re a moving island then summoning edible fish to eat is rather easy. Transfiguring fish into other types of food is also easy. Combine that with various plants and feeding people isn’t a problem. Now the next year, you do it again and so on, swapping out the twenty people you have spreading magic. This leaves you with a lot of ‘muggleborn’ students to recruit that didn’t end up on your island.”
Harry said, “And in fifteen to twenty years after you’ve expanded things and created more floating islands you increase the number of people you’re sending out. Send out a hundred people and you’re creating thousands of new magic users a year.”
Sirius said, ”I can’t see most purebloods agreeing to such a scheme. They’d see it as diluting magical bloodlines. Mum would have had a screaming fit over the whole idea.”
Arcturus snorted as he turned and looked at Sirius. “That’s because most of them are stupid, your mother was particularly stupid about blood. I’m all for having children with magic users to keep magic around but this project is about increasing the number of magic users in the world not diluting so called pureblood lines. I know of at least one example where mixing in some new blood helped. Nymphadora Tonks is a metamorphmagus, something that hasn’t been seen in the Black family in seventy years.”
Sirius smiled as he thought about playing with Nymphadora when she was little. “Andromeda was always my favorite cousin.”
“I wish Walburga hadn’t blasted her off the family tree. At least it gives me a reason not to invite her for the reading of my will.”
“There is that,” Sirius replied with a chuckle.
Harry asked, “How much of this stuff do you want to save?”
Arcturus frowned slightly as he glanced around the house. “Other than the family tapestry, I’d say burn it all but anything made out of goblin silver can be sold for a decent amount of gold or melted and reforged with the proper knowledge. I also want the library saved and decursed. While a lot of it is borderline dark or worse, there might be something worth salvaging in it.”
Harry grinned as he remembered a children’s wizarding book about a goblin smith that would forge things for a price, it was supposed to be a morality book about dealing with the sneaky goblins but it should serve his needs quite well as long as he was careful. “Actually, anything made out of goblins silver that you don’t want, I have a use for.”
“Oh?”
“I might know someone that can reforge it.”
Arcturus frowned slightly as he tried to figure out where Harry had met a goblin smith that was willing to destroy someone else’s work for anything that could be considered a reasonable price. “Just be careful of the goblins, they believe that anything they make is theirs and you’re merely renting it.”
“I’ll be careful,” Harry replied.
Arcturus said, “We should probably ask Andromeda if she wants anything before we burn the place to the ground at the will reading.”
“Is your insurance paid up?”
“I wouldn’t be considering this if it wasn’t.” Arcturus smirked as he pictured the look on Lucius Malfoy’s face when the trap closed up around him.
“Good, I’ll leave you to sorting, I need to go pick up Lily.”
0o0o0o0o0o0o0 999
Harry glanced at the unconscious man with greasy black hair that was sprawled on the ground then back over at Lily. “What happened?”
Lily took a breath then let it out slowly as she tried to calm down. “I might have gotten carried away with obliviate.”
“Did you turn him into a vegetable?”
Lily shook her. “Severus should still have most of his skills but I wiped out most of the personal details of his life. I left him with some of the better moments at home and Hogwarts but not much else.”
Harry made a mental note to trade part of Riddle’s soul for something that could keep him from being obliviated. “Remind me not to make you angry Mum.”
“Maybe if I’d tried harder back in school he wouldn’t have went quite so crazy.”
“He tried to do the right thing eventually even if for the wrong reasons. Maybe that counts for something in the grand scheme of things.” Harry pulled the Loliblade out of his pocket then walked over and slipped it on Severus’s wrist.
Lily watched as Severus changed into a decently cute naked thirteen year old albeit one with a large nose and greasy hair. “Where are you going to send her?” Lily gestured and wandlessly summoned the Loliblade to her hand.
Harry considered his options. “How much is left?”
“Most of his early memories of me, a few scattered memories of his mother and memories of his first time seeing Hogwarts and of various good things from his life.”
“In that case, I have just the thing.” Harry pulled a book out of his backpack. “The Hobbit.”
“You’re sending him to Middle Earth?”
“I have a feeling that they’re going to need a hero and his magic is rather powerful compared to most of the tricks people can pull off there.”
Lily asked, “What happens if he goes evil?”
Harry said, “Then Gandalf will likely deal with her. Where’s his wand?”
Lily pulled Severus’s wand out of her back pocket and handed it to Harry. “Here,”
Harry pulled several clothing, cooking and sporting goods magazines out of his backpack then started pulling clothes and supplies out of them for Severus. “Hopefully he’ll end up a hero.”
“We can hope.” Lily wasn’t sure how to feel about her ex-friend or about wiping out most of his bad memories and tossing him into a book to sink or swim.
