Chapter -18 : Preperation

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Harry sent off three letters via school owls. One was to the luggage shop, an order for two chests of drawers and a nightstand done in the same style as the rest of his travel furniture. Seeing as how he'd be moving his quarters every night from one place to another, so he could keep up a 'three days for one' schedule, he wanted to complete his bedroom set, so he didn't forget anything. Running into himself looking for a lost toothbrush would be bad.

Well, at least it would upset Hermione.

Second of those letters was to the Safari shop. The stereotypical British explorer of the 19th century that shop seemed set up to outfit a magical counterpart of was a naturalist as much as anything else, so the kit had included tools for taking samples and specimens. However, he'd overtaxed the storage capacity of his instruments in rendering down the dead basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets.

The thing was over sixty feet long. It had more mass than any elephant, and some whales; every part of the beast was useful and valuable, even precious, so it wasn't to be wasted.

Tom had an... interesting collection of spells for preserving or reviving dead tissue from his work with immortality, zombies and creating new bodies for himself in event of his own demise. So between those and the recent and undisturbed condition of the corpse, Harry was able to harvest ingredients at near prime condition. And that basilisk was better than solid gold, being the largest and oldest specimen in recorded history. He simply had to have more tools and containers so he could harvest and store it all!

Not one bit could be wasted, as there wasn't going to be another.

Actually, there was. Harry'd already been down to the Chamber with a freshly caught toad, and a visit to Hagrid's hut had yielded an egg out of his chicken coop. Riddle had known all of the required spells, so, in the proper course of time, a new basilisk was going to hatch down in the Chamber. And Harry had every intention of feeding it and caring for it, training up a useful servant, because a basilisk was just too useful a beast not to have one on tap!

But the new one wasn't going to be a thousand years old for another thousand years or so. So that made it still a priority to carefully harvest the old one.

The third letter was an order for more books.

It really wasn't necessary. Harry had the entire library of Hogwarts at his disposal, even if certain parties were ignorant of just how complete his access to it was. Security charms by a librarian were not about to stop someone the equal of a dark lord of Voldemort's caliber, nor were copyright wards any protection. Nobody lived once Voldemort decided to kill them, and that meant penetrating the deepest, thickest, nastiest sets of wards in the world. No common spell was going to stop him from copying a book he wanted a copy of. And he even had an invisibility cloak to do his browsing under.

Still, as nice as it was to be duplicating the Hogwarts library, it was useful to have an even more complete private collection. There were gaps in what was available at Hogwarts, even in the restricted section. But more important than acquiring books, Dumbledore, who was watching his mail, would be determining what Harry was learning, in part, by what books he was ordering.

And so Harry gave Dumbledore reason to believe that he was studying Light magic like healing and other such things.

It was even true.

In another reality, at another time, Dumbledore would admit that Voldemort had what was probably the most extensive knowledge of magic of any wizard living. Of course, by that point Albus had killed off Nicholas Flamel, who had probably forgotten more than anyone else had ever learned, just from the amount of time he'd had available for study.

But Voldemort had preferred the easy power of darker mysteries, the lure of the forbidden had been a siren song to the young dark lord, and Harry was not as well armed with light side magic as he'd like to be. So he was, at the same time, building up one of his areas of semi-ignorance, as well as making sure the Dark Headmaster would be appeased concerning his perfect Golden Gryffindor. Having displayed disturbing signs of backbone, Albus would be ready to call Harry 'Dark' on that pretext alone, and needed to be reassured the boy was simply polishing up on his hero badge.

That, too, was even to a large extent true.

Harry, having absorbed Voldemort's knowledge, had little reason to study up on the dark arts. What books could teach him anything new on that subject were few and far between, not to mention both rare and expensive. And he suspected that most of them were probably hidden away in the private Black family library anyway, to which no one had access at the moment.

Most Death Eaters joined Tom's cause thinking they would hide something, hold some of their abilities and secrets back in reserve. None of them were aware that part of the Dark Mark's properties was to intentionally strip away any mental protection they might have had from their lord and master, who'd routinely scanned the minds of all who'd joined him, demanding their perfect and utter obedience, or death.

So Tom had known small things, like Pettigrew's animagus form and abilities, to larger secrets like the extent of the Malfoy fortune, and purebloods who had any abilities at all would find them demanded, by name, by their dark lord.

However, poor Regulas had simply been unaware of the extent, true nature, or list of titles on the library his family had been collecting for generations. There were many dark tomes in there, he was sure, but the Black child been an ignorant believer, not a diligent reader.

There were so very few secrets the ancient, pureblooded families had held back from Voldemort successfully, but the nature of that library was one of them. Although there had been tantalizing hints in plenty.

And, while Voldemort would kill to know what few secrets remained hidden to him that lurked in that collection (actually, point of fact, Voldemort would kill for an ice cream cone and then not eat it) Harry had no such inclination. He already knew enough dark magic, thank you very much. It only did a few kinds of things, and those he could already accomplish in any number of ways by drawing on skills he'd already inherited.

Adding a slight refinement to his already well polished Dark magic lore held no interest for the lad. No, he was actually quite happy to study Light. And, if by doing so he could allay some of the old coot's fears concerning him, so much the better.

Actually, Harry had little reason to study for his classes, either.

He did so anyway.

Of course, the actual coursework took no more than minutes to review and confirm that he'd already mastered it all. There were times he ran across tidbits he was previously unaware of, and those times were truly what he did this for. He was reinforcing his knowledge and filling in any gaps. Things were taught differently now than they were fifty years ago, and sometimes more or less material got covered.

Those times it was more, he learned something, those times it was less, he got to teach Hermione something. Both of those were worthy goals.

Still, on the whole, review of his coursework took only a few minutes, and with a set of dictation quills it didn't take him but a few more minutes to have all of his homework done. That left hours and hours for independent study, pushing the boundaries of what he knew.

And, sometimes doing research, pushing the boundaries of what the entire magical world knew by discovering new things by means of experiments.

One had to stay busy somehow, and Hogwarts had so many resources to draw on! Voldemort hadn't made repeated attempts to return there for his health! No, he'd done it because he was not yet done probing the old castle's secrets, research that Harry was only too glad to continue! And that wasn't the only project boiling on his burner.

Harry watched the owls fly off, then returned to his quarters.

Those three letters had been sent off as much because they were expected as from any other reason. Harry had shown an independent streak, and the natural progression of that had to be shown, or else Albus would probe until he found it. So, if the boy was to keep any secrets at all, it would be best to show the Headmaster what he believed ought to be there.

For the time being, anyway.

That would do the best preparatory work for leaving old man out of position when Harry whiplashed around and did something unexpected. The letters of real importance he'd already mailed from a shop outside the Ministry on his trip the previous day.

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Hey guys if you like fanfic or want to Read ahead or just want to support take a visit on my patreon

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