44 Chapter 44: The calm before the storm

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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K Rowling.

I own nothing but the original characters I make.

"Dialogue"

'Thoughts'

$Parseltongue$

Chapter 44: The calm before the storm

Another month passed and we were getting close to March. 

Neville came back to school after two weeks away and Harry could finally find out what happened that day.

After his argument with Ron, he was asked to stay behind by Profeslr Nayar.

According to Neville, the professor claimed to be worried about him and his poor performance in class.

He offered Neville to stay for some extra practice and the boy accepted. 

Late that afternoon, Neville left the classroom and was on his way to the Great Hall when he was ambushed by the spiders.

Aurors were called but no arrests were made. It is unclear to Harry if they suspected anyone. That is not information they would share with him, even if he was the son of one of the Head Aurors.

Harry had been a bit worried about Hagrid when the Ministry got involved. But apparently, his connection with the acromantula nest inside the Dark Forest was not something many were aware of.

As for Professor Nayar himself. He has been very careful since the last attempt and has not made any suspicious moves.

Daphne had become increasingly frustrated by his lack of action and he had the feeling that she was close to doing something stupid. Even for an eleven-year-old kid standard.

What she didn't know was that Harry had several trackers on Neville and the Professor.

He had placed ten trackers on the professor to be more specific. Of those ten, Nayar found and disabled nine. But one was better than none.

As for Neville, he didn't need to place any tracking charm. Every student of Hogwarts was being monitored since the first time they entered the castle. 

The secondary function of the sorting hat was to place a tracking mark on top of the student's head. Invisible to the naked eye.

This mark will be able to track the position of the student inside the castle. Or even former students if they never found out about it and removed it.

His father and his friends had taken advantage of this to create their Marauders map. 

Since Harry had full access to the wards, it was very easy for him to put together a simpler version of that map to track only Neville and Professor Nayar.

This way, he could always keep an eye on those two and intervene if it looked like Neville was in danger. He could then be able to catch the professor in the act. Having him arrested after that should be easy.

It was a dangerous plan…for Neville that is.

But he could not think of a better way to gain the evidence he needed to get the aurors involved in this matter. Any muggle surveillance device he could think of, would not work at Hogwarts.

'If the old Luna was here, she could probably come up with some runic array device to record video data into a crystal or something.'

When it came to ancient runes, even Hermione could not compare to the odd blonde.

"This would be so much easier if were at war…" Harry said while reminiscing about his past.

Life was hard, yes. But things were simpler back then.

If you came across a dark wizard…you killed him.

If you came across a demon…you killed it.

Now he had to take into account, laws, human rights, politics…

It would be so much easier to just go and kill the man.

'Then again…I'm not even sure the professor is truly a hired assassin sent to kill the boy who lived. I mean, whatever Lord Greengrass heard, must have been just rumors. Yes, the whole thing with Neville being attacked by acromantulas after leaving his office is suspicious but…'

He sighed.

"Who am I trying to convince?...there is no one else who fits the bill."

He knew the other professors extremely well. Nayar was the only unknown factor, it had to be him.

The head of a training dummy exploded.

"Tsk!. It's always the good defense teachers. It is like the position is cursed or something…wait, it probably is now that I think about it." 

Another dummy exploded.

"Uff…I think I have enough for today. Let's go check on that thing."

He still had plenty of time before dinner so Harry made his way to the castle foundation.

He opened the painting, went downstairs, and walked for several minutes at a brisk pace until he reached the furthest corner of the room where he had set up his little workshop.

Even if Dumbledore were to come down here for some cosmic causality, there was little chance of him walking up to this distant corner of there where there is absolutely nothing of interest.

So this was the place where he decided to set up his station.

Everything worked automatically and he only needs to check on it once a week or so.

It was a very simple setup. Just a table with a cauldron and several other small tools.

The cauldron was used to create the metal alloy called 'magicite' . It was a combination of gold, silver, dragon blood, and several other alchemical ingredients.

The mixture had to be melted and combined very slowly to prevent it from being separated. 

The cauldron was enchanted for automatic heating and stirring of the ingredients. All that was left was waiting now.

"Its looking good!". This is going faster than I had originally predicted. It should be ready in a bit over a month.

The last time he created this alloy it took him six months. It could be because he is using brand new high-quality tools or maybe the conditions of this chamber made the mixture combine faster. 

But no matter the case, it was good news. He may be able to assemble some of his old tools before the end of this year.

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