Ch 29 HO 6

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Carl was enjoying his lunch sitting between Hermione and Luna with Harry, Neville, and Ginny sitting across from them. Seeing the facial expressions and colors on Ginny's face was amusing.

When he and Hermione had entered the hall for lunch, they had seen Harry and Neville waving at them from the Gryffindor table, so they joined the two lads. Once they had been seated, Luna and Ginny had wandered in, so Carl made sure Luna knew she was welcome to join them.

Seeing her friend sitting with the group, Ginny had gathered enough courage to sit next to Harry Potter, her idol. It had taken a supreme effort of will on the star struck girl's part to make that move.

As the group chatted, and Ginny struggled to be included, Carl got Hermione's attention, and briefly nodded in Ginny's direction in question to query if they should make the effort to make the girl more at ease.

Carl had a pretty good idea that Hermione would decide to be helpful, because of her own past history at having a difficult time finding friends. He was happy to see that he was right, and Hermione started working on using conversation and questions to bring the young redhead out of her shell.

Carl switched places with Hermione so she could more easily converse with Luna and Ginny, and Carl could easily chat with Harry and Neville.

After several minutes, Carl noticed that the majority of the people in the hall suddenly went quiet, with a watchful air about them. Looking around to see what had caused the silence, Carl saw everyone watching three adults approaching the head table. The adult in the lead was a stern looking middle aged lady with a monocle, and the two adult males behind her were dressed in Auror robes. Several more Aurors were milling about at the doors.

Carl realized the lady in the lead was Madam Bones. As she started speaking with Dumbledore quietly so her voice didn't carry to Carl, the silence was broken as the students started speculating about just what brought the Aurors to Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's face went through several micro expressions in seconds. Irritation at what he was hearing, annoyance, resignation, and finally his facial expressions calmed down to polite accommodation.

Carl laughed in his head at the thought that the old headmaster was feeling quite put out at the unusual invasion of his demesne. Maybe if he didn't keep hiring incompetent teachers, he wouldn't have to worry about problems like this cropping up.

"Students, the professors will be assisting the DMLE in an investigation, so classes will be canceled for at least this afternoon. Prefects, kindly escort your house to the common rooms and stay there. The aurors and professors will be by momentarily to ask questions. Thank you." Dumbledore announced, before he left the hall with Madam Bones in tow.

Carl turned to his group and grinned. "Free study time."

"More like party time." Harry snarked as he got up. "At least for those of us in the cool Gryffindor house."

Carl's group laughed, enjoying the jokes about stereotypes.

"Everyone sit down and shut up." The stern, almost angry voice of the new defense professor came from the front of the classroom. Carl sat down with his classmates, and looked expectantly at the new professor.

"My name is Stanely McWolf, as you heard the headmaster introduce me earlier. In this classroom you will address me as Professor McWolf. I've been an auror for 12 years, and if it weren't an order of the head of the DMLE, I wouldn't be here teaching you bunch of snot nosed brats. But as long as we're both forced to be here, I'm damn well going to make sure that you learn something."

Carl felt a smile tugging up at the edge of his mouth. He enjoyed the gruff and blunt way the man spoke. It reminded him a bit of Sakaki Sensei back in the HSDK world.

"Now, by raising your hand, who here keeps up a daily regimen of physical exercise?"

Carl raised his hand, and saw that only two other students, who were quidditch nuts, did so as well.

"Damn, it's worse than I thought." Professor McWolf muttered to himself. "Right, put your hands down. Now, with a show of hands, who here spends at least an hour a day practicing your spell casting and making sure you don't forget your spells?"

Carl raised his hand, and was surprised to see only one other student also raised her hand. Professor McWolf sighed in resignation.

"Right, that's going to change. From now, until the end of the year, your daily homework, aside from anything else I assign, is to spend at least half an hour on physical exercise, and an hour on spell casting."

The gruff and goateed face of the professor scanned the classroom. "I'm not joking or blowing hot air here. If you don't keep up the program, I will fail you and you'll have to repeat the year. The reasons are simple. Our magic is like a muscle. You need to exercise it regularly to make it the strongest it can be. And our magic health and physical health are intricately connected. If you're physically sick, your magic can't express itself strongly. If you're magically weak or sick your body will suffer too."

"I'll give you an example of how our magic and physical condition maximize our ability. Your headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is old. He's like a hundred and twenty years or so. And over a dozen years ago, when he was still over 100, I saw him take on a group of Death Eaters that thought they could attack Hogwarts with impunity because they thought he was too old to put up too much of a fight."

"He single handedly defeated 10 death eaters. They couldn't land a spell on him because he moved too quick, dodging or blocking everything they threw at him. Another example is the professional duelists. You won't find a single one of them who aren't incredibly fit, magically and physically."

"So, I expect for my students of defense to put in the effort to get fit so you can defend yourself. You can't very well defend yourself even from a Crup if you're not fit, let alone a werewolf."

"Now, as to what we're learning this year, it's a mix of low level curses and jinxes, and XX level beasts, so get out your quills and start taking notes." Professor McWolf waited until everyone was prepared. "The Chupacabra, or goat eater, is mostly seen in the new world, but occasionally, due to muggle shipping, one will slip across the ocean and find its way to our shores…"

Carl enjoyed the rest of the class and the blunt way the information was passed with no nonsense and no frills. Sometimes academics got so caught up in their cleverness and ability to turn a phrase that they forgot their sole purpose was to educate, not entertain.

He was pretty glad he'd gotten rid of The Ponce. Now that they had a proper teacher, he was content to settle into the routine of classes, homework, training, and the occasional relaxation.

"I still don't see how Harry getting an invitation to a Death Day party translated into all of us joining him." Carl muttered to Hermione and Luna as the three made their way to join the three Gryffindors for Nearly Headless Nick's party.

"Ohh, someone is a grumpy goose today!" Luna sing songed, which caused Hermione to break out in giggles.

"Come on, you've got to admit you're just as curious as we are about what a Death Day Party is like." Hermione remonstrated Carl.

"Fine, it will probably be interesting." Carl finally admitted, giving up his fake reluctance. He didn't expect it to be that interesting based on what the Harry Potter books had described it as. But he couldn't deny he was a little bit interested.

The three Ravenclaws soon joined Harry, Neville, and Ginny outside the room where the party for the dead was to be held. The moment Carl arrived outside the door his very sharp senses picked up the smell of rotted food.

Carl quickly cast a spell on his nose so he didn't need to smell the disgusting smells. Prior to getting his highly tuned senses, Carl had wondered about how he would react to enhanced senses.

In his original world he'd had a couple dogs, and he'd of course noticed how dogs reacted to scents. They found even some disgusting things fascinating. So Carl had wondered if, when he got highly advanced senses, he too would be interested in disgusting scents. If they would smell different and more interesting to him.

But he'd soon realized that it must have been due to the chemistry and brain structure that dogs find those scents fascinating. He was still human, so he still found many of those smells disgusting, only dialed up to 11. So he was immensely glad that he had found some good spells in the Harry Potter world that he could use to regulate what smells got to his nose.

After greeting Nick, who was the host of the party, Carl began circulating amongst the ghostly guests. Carl soon found that on average, the older the ghost, or rather the longer the person had been a ghost, the less likely they were to open up and talk to the living. They seemed to mire themselves in their dead culture, and ignore the living.

Carl realized that a large part of that may be that since they seemed to be a kind of spiritual snapshot of a person at their moment of death, they weren't as adaptable as living people. Seeing the immense changes in landscape, culture, and the people just drove the older ghosts into retreating from the ever evolving society of the living.

Carl actually found a couple of wizard ghosts that had been killed by Voldemort, and engaged them in talk about what the last war had been like for them.

The two men had been shopping in Hogsmeade when a Death Eater ambush had happened, catching them unawares and ending their life. They weren't part of the government so they could only really tell Carl the commonly known gossip and what the news papers reported. But what they told Carl about the miasma of fear and uncertainty that had enveloped the nation as Voldemort waged his guerilla war insurrection made Carl happy he had ended Voldemort when he had. No need to let the second blood war happen and ruin so many people's lives.

After a couple of hours, the group of living students seemed to have their fill of the Death Day Party. The group trooped on to the fifth floor where the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room was.

Carl had arranged for the House Elves to deliver food for the group, since they wouldn't be able to eat anything at the party for the dead. Carl enjoyed spending a couple more hours just relaxing and joking around with his group of friends. He made sure that none of his friends worried or cared about the ineffectual glares they got from silly Ravenclaws that felt their territory was breached by having Gryffindors there.

Professor Flitwick had firmly put his foot down the first time someone complained to him about Gryffindors in their house. There were absolutely no rules against friends showing up in the common rooms of other houses, and it used to be common practice when Flitwick had gone to school, so he was actually happy to see the practice returning.

'Now how should I go about stealing some Hufflepuffs from their collective, and intrigue some Slytherins into our group so we can hang out in all four common rooms?' Carl thought before going to sleep that night.

"What are you doing?" The frosty voice asked Carl as he was formally seating Hermione, Luna, and Ginny at the table across from the owner of the voice.

Carl looked into the ice blue eyes of Daphne Greengrass, noting the frown on her face and totally ignoring the displeasure displayed. Tracy Davis, seated next to Daphne, was smirking in a knowing manner. Blaise Zabini, on the other side of Daphne, just blankly stared, not giving anything away in his facial expression. Unless one had Sherlock like observation skills and could see how interesting he found the situation.

"Why my dear Miss Greengrass, I thought it would be obvious, we're joining you for breakfast." Carl answered just as Harry and Neville arrived with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott in tow. "We decided-"

"You decided." Neville interrupted.

"That's what I said." Carl deadpanned without missing a beat. "We decided we were being too exclusive, only having two of the Hogwarts house in our super secret club that is plotting world domination." Carl almost laughed when he saw Dumbledore flinch out of the corner of his eye. So, the old coot was eavesdropping. "So, we graciously voted on new members-"

"Again, Carl decided." Harry snarked this time after having sat down with the two Hufflepuffs on one side of the Slytherins.

"Quite right, old bean. We voted and you five were the lucky winners of a one time, no entrance fee required, invitation to The Club." Carl indicated the three Slytherins and two Hufflepuffs.

"We reject your invitation. Now remove yourselves from our table." Daphne ordered flatly.

"Too late, you missed the window to reject the invitation. I'm afraid you're stuck with it now." Carl airily asserted.

"Just when was this time that we could have rejected the invitation?" Susan asked, amused at the byplay.

"Oh, about a week ago. Sorry, you'll have another window open sometime next year. I'll let you know when." Carl stated with a straight face.

After a couple laughs from several of the girls and guys that noticeably didn't include Daphne, the group settled down into getting to know each other. Only Daphne refrained from joining in the chatting.

Carl was amused at the standoffish attitude of the girl. It only took a week of never going away when she demanded it before she finally resigned herself to the fact that they weren't going away, and that she was now part of a larger group.

From then on, the group would spend at least one night a week hanging out in each of the common rooms. There was naturally a little bit of blowback when a few Slytherins showed up in the Gryffindor common room, most notably from Ron Weasley, but most of the other students couldn't really care. And after the detention Ron got for running his mouth, he simmered down and accepted it, ungracefully.

Carl was sure if the "innocent" Death Eaters still had their magic and weren't in comas, then the Slytherins would have protested their group's activities more. But without Snape inflaming their stupidity and protecting them, even Draco had learned how to keep his head down and not be such a public bigot, in order to not make himself a target anymore.

So the World Domination Society continued their meetings, study sessions, and just generally hung out. It was a good year.

§Speak to me, Slytherin, the greatest of the Hogwarts four.§

The basilisk slowly woke up after hearing the phrase the hatchling Tom Riddle had set up years ago to wake her up. Sighing at having to respond to the summons of the twisted one, she slowly began slithering out the exit.

She sometimes wondered just why her original master had given her the command to listen to anyone of his lineage. As evidenced by the activities and attitudes of Riddle, not everyone descended from her master could be as noble as her master.

Resigned to her likely fate to do distasteful tasks for Riddle, she was surprised to see the back of a small human when she slithered out. Tasting the air, she confirmed he wasn't Riddle.

Before she could decide what to do, the small figure threw a small red, white and blue ball over his shoulder at her. Rearing back so it didn't hit her, she warily eyed the innocuous looking ball as it sat right in front of her.

Suddenly a light shone from the ball, and she felt a sucking motion. Despite trying to escape, she was sucked into the little ball and consciousness faded away.

Carl sighed in relief when he no longer sensed the Basilisk behind him. Patting his sheathed Katana shaped goblin made sword where it rested on his back, Carl turned to look at the empty chamber.

"Looks like I won't need to use my new sword after all." Carl mused as he moved to pick up the Masterball from the Pokemon World that he'd used to capture the basilisk. He had commissioned the goblins to make the sword for him, and it had taken nearly two years to make.

He had briefly considered simply trying to get his hands on the Gryffindor sword so he could own a goblin made blade, but decided against it for a number of reasons. It wasn't the shape he wanted from a sword, it was too ornate, and it should remain with Hogwarts.

He was happy with the sword he'd had made, it was similar to the style he'd practiced with from the HSDK world. It was a Katana shaped sword with a blade that was 38" long. The wrappings for the hilt were a deep blue color that matched the color of the scabbard.

After questioning the Goblins, who were very straight forward, Carl had learned that the Goblins didn't automatically believe that anything made by Goblins were owned by them. Most of the wizards who commissioned the creation of an artifact only paid the renters fee, not the ownership fee. The ownership fee was a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than renting. And the cost to rent an artifact was expensive. So when wizards left their rented items to their heirs instead of returning them to the Goblins, as per the contract, they were cheating on the contract they themselves signed.

Even though it was incredibly expensive, Carl had set up a payment plan so by the end of ten years he would own the sword he commissioned. He only kept a small amount of his revenue back to pay for school supplies and living expenses.

Carl still felt it was completely worth the cost. The ability of Goblin swords to assimilate anything that would make it stronger included magic itself. That's why the Gryffindor Sword, that had sat in one of the most magical places in Britain for 1000 years passively soaking up magic, was able to allow a 12 year old Harry Potter in another version of the world to kill a 1000 year old basilisk.

Most ordinary swords, even if thrust into the brains of the basilisk, wouldn't have killed the snake quick enough for the 12 year old to survive from being crushed or chomped to death. But with the Gryffindor sword, not only had the sword killed the basilisk immediately, it stopped the giant snake in its tracks so Harry could survive. That was an impressive killing tool.

And while Carl was impressed with the Gryffindor sword, he better liked the idea of getting his own sword, built to his specifications and for his adult frame, made from scratch that would grow with him as he imbued his magic into it. That plus his forearm guards would continue to grow as he did, and remain powerful tools for his use.

Carl bent down and picked up the master pokeball from where it landed after capturing the basilisk.

"I knew keeping these things around would be useful at some point." Carl laughed. Putting the master ball into his pack, Carl started exploring the Chamber of Secrets for Slytherin's hidden library or treasure room or whatever.

A half hour later, Carl stood in front of a vault door on the wall inside where the Basilisk had rested in its hibernation slumber.

"Well, I'm guessing Slytherin left his snake here more to protect whatever is behind this door than the school." Carl mused as he looked at the heavily built vault door that had locks and wards that prevented him from getting inside for the moment. "It would make sense, really. A basilisk is a bloody dangerous creature that could do as much damage to your own side as the enemy from a stray glance. And what crazy person would use a basilisk to protect a school, especially when he didn't give the headmaster or anyone else a way to access said weapon? No, I think the basilisk was left here solely to guard his treasure." Carl concluded.

§Open. Open sesame. Give me the cash. Slytherin says open. Pureblood. Down with Muggles.§ Carl spent another five minutes trying to guess the password before giving up. All the other passwords around the castle were pretty simple, but Carl guessed that the key to opening the vault was not so simple. Otherwise he was sure Riddle would have gotten his grubby hands on whatever was inside years ago.

"Well, add curse breaking to the list of things I need to learn." Carl sighed as he stared at the vault door. He was much more wary of trying to bypass the protections on the vault via Phoenix travel than he had been to steal the Philospher's stone from Dumbledore's traps. These were protections set up a thousand years ago by a paranoid and, reportedly dark, wizard that were still strong and viable. The man had put a freaking basilisk there to guard it. Carl would be crazy to take those protections lightly, or assume Slytherin didn't account for Phoenix travel when setting up his defenses.

His portal magic might bypass all the traps that Slytherin setup, or it might not. It wouldn't really hurt Carl any to be cautious and wait until he'd studied wards and ward breaking before testing it. At the moment he had nothing but time available to study and prepare. It was something he wanted to learn anyway, and using the vault as a standard for his accomplishment appealed to him.

And he was wary of using the spells he'd learned in the BtVS world to directly read the defenses. That would basically be the same as casting spells with his wand, and he didn't want to chance that the defenses would sense the intrusion and lash out at him through his magic.

Carl opened a portal to leave the Chamber of Secrets. He had waited until the end of the year when all the students were away for the summer to sneak in and take care of the basilisk, just in case something drastic went wrong his friends wouldn't be around to be casualties. No one else knew about the chamber, and Harry, the only other parseltongue around, had no reason to seek it out. So he could afford to take his time with it.

The rest of the summer passed by quickly for Carl, since he kept himself busy. Anytime he wasn't hanging out with his friends, he was either training or studying while copying out the immense library in the Room of Requirement.

His friends had long gotten used to Carl gifting copies of rare tomes lost for ages on their birthdays and Christmas time. It just made it easier and cheaper for him to make a few more copies of each book he was gifting away than to go spend money that he didn't have buying a gift. And since he was technically an orphan in this world, they didn't really expect him to have a lot of money at the moment.

By the end of the summer, Carl had finally finished making copies of every book in the library. As he'd gotten more skilled with the auto scribing spell, he'd been able to copy multiple books at once, which sped up his efficiency.

By the time Carl's third year began, he had studied and practiced far enough ahead in the main subjects of Transfiguration, Charms, DADA, and Potions that he felt he could shift his focus for the next year to learning as much about Runes and Arithmancy as he could, now that he was taking those two classes along with Care of Magical Creatures.

At the opening feast, Carl learned that the DADA post this year would be shared between Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. As they went through the school year, Carl soon discovered that Professor Lupin would do the majority of the teaching and grading, while Sirius, or Professor Black, would mostly use the position as an excuse to come and hang out with his godson and Harry's friends, flirt with the younger female professors, and occasionally fill in for Professor Lupin (during the full moon). Carl assumed that some of Professor Black's time was spent filling his role as Lord Black and the proxy of the young Potter heir.

The Potions Professor for the year remained Professor Slughorn. Ever since Snape was incapacitated Professor Slughorn had apparently decided he would come out of retirement for a few more years and network a bit more, especially with making a contact with Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.

During the past two summers Carl had already met Professors Black and Lupin quite a bit, as they had become Harry's guardians. They were entertaining to hang around, and always willing to teach a bit extra to Harry's friends about stuff they learned from their time as pranksters.

The addition of Professor Lupin as the DADA professor their third year, after Lockhart had initially been their teacher second year, was solidifying Carl's assumption that the world liked to follow its plot script, even if the whole thing had already gone off the rails.

When Carl saw Hermione's heavy schedule that she could only attend with the help of a time turner, he figured the world was stretching things to cover the plot holes he left by butterflying them away.

Carl frowned as he watched Hermione scurry away from the group after their first class of the morning to find a private place to turn back time so she could attend one of her electives class. When they walked into the next class and Carl saw Hermione already sitting inside, looking like she'd already had a long day, Carl decided he needed to do something about the situation before it became a problem.

He spent a few hours that afternoon working with a couple House Elves in an empty classroom before he was satisfied he had things prepared properly. House Elves were truly efficient beings when it came to work. If Carl wasn't so poor at the moment, he would probably bring a few into his "family". He would definitely have to swing back to this world later and pick up a few if he had the chance to add them as companions.

That evening, he had Hermione follow him to the classroom he had prepared. He ignored all her questions, with a standard reply. "When we get to a secure place, I'll tell you. Until then, I'm not answering anything."

They arrived outside the door to the classroom. Hermione was looking around in puzzlement. She didn't see anything they should have stopped for.

"What are we doing here, there's nothing here?" Hermione asked Carl.

Carl smiled at the young girl enigmatically. Good to see that his preparations worked like a charm. "Here is your key." Carl handed one of two keys on a chain to his friend. "Now, look at the wall behind me while holding the key."

Looking over at the blank wall, Hermione gasped to see a door appear. Or rather, it became visible to her perception, since it was simply hidden to all who didn't have a key.

"That's your copy of the key. Let's get inside, and we can talk more." Carl kept his own copy of the key on a chain around his neck.

He opened the door and the two entered. The inside of the classroom had been remodeled. When they first entered, there was a small sitting room with a table and two chairs set up in the middle. Directly across from the door to the exit, there were three doors on the wall.

"Go ahead and look around first." Carl said as he sat down at the table.

Hermione looked around the room. On the wall next to the door leading outside was a large whiteboard with a monthly calendar already drawn on it. Opening each of the three doors she saw identical rooms. Each room had two twin beds across from each other, and two desks and chairs. There was also a door in each room that led to a bathroom.

After seeing the three rooms, Hermione returned to the main room and sat down across from Carl. "Okay, I'm confused. What is this?"

Carl smirked at Hermione. "This, my dear Hermione, is our Time Room." At her gasp and guilty expression, Carl laughed out loud. "Yes, I know about the Time Turner. Don't worry, I haven't told anyone else. I'm pretty sly and can figure these kinds of things out." Carl placed his finger alongside his nose in a joking manner while Hermione snorted in amusement.

"I don't know why you decided you needed all the extra study – wait a second, let me finish." Carl said when it looked like Hermione was going to interrupt him with a rant. "I don't even need you to justify it to me. You made the decision to do it, and that's fine with me. This is my efforts to help back you up in your decision. You can't be the only one turning back time, you'll go crazy trying to keep it a secret from everyone. So I'm joining you. Not negotiable."

"With the number of classes you've taken on, and the amount of time turned back we'll do, we'll need plenty of rest and study time in a secure area where you won't fret about being caught. So I set this room up for us so we could spend the extra hours in here, studying or napping to keep our health up. That way you won't be burning both sides of the candle and burn out before we even get to the Christmas break."

"There's a whiteboard on the wall to keep track of our weekly schedule for time turnings, classes, solo study times, our group study and relaxation times, nap times, etc. Can't forget social down time, after all. The three rooms will have a light above the door that lights up when they are occupied so we will not chance running into our past or future selves, but still have a place to spend the extra time relaxing or studying without the chance of destroying the fabric of time. And only the two of us who have keys can get in here, or even see the door." Carl finished off proudly.

"So, what do you think?" Carl asked with a smile. He was a bit unprepared to have Hermione lunge out of her seat to tackle him with a massive bear hug. Seriously, that girl could hug.

"Thank you, Carl. This is great."Hermione mumbled into his chest as she hugged the stuffing out of him.

Carl could tell that she was as touched by the fact that he didn't try to argue with her decisions and just acted to back her up as she was by his preparations of the room. Carl beamed down at the girl, feeling a sense of accomplishment.

"Well, should we get our schedules and start planning?" Carl asked with a smile when Hermione finally released him from a hug.

"Yes, let's!" Hermione responded with enthusiasm as she started to plan how to use the room he'd built.