Chapter 353: Plain Sight
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I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.
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2 April 1995, Ministry of Magic
Harry's meeting with Arcturus was as fruitful as he had hoped. The man was quick to provide the general whereabouts of his great-granddaughter when Harry assured him that he had no intention of harming her. Apart from Voldemort's brief interruption, everything had gone relatively smoothly. By the time Harry explained the situation, the Black Patriarch was laughing strangely. He already knew about the Horcruxes and understood why Harry needed Regulus' locket, but the thought of Voldemort being threatened by his own soul amused him greatly.
It might have seemed like a reckless gamble on Harry's part, at least from an outsider's perspective. However, he knew Voldemort quite well, all things considered. After all, Voldemort was fundamentally no different from Tom Riddle, sharing the exact same fear: death. Voldemort feared dying so much that he tore his soul apart seven times. And even after all that, the fear remained.
Harry hadn't thought he would ever be grateful for his confrontations with Tom Riddle, but without them, he wouldn't have been able to mimic him so convincingly. Voldemort was afraid because he remembered being Tom Riddle and knew, deep down, that if he could, he would have subsumed Voldemort.
Harry had taken Riddle's form to frighten Voldemort, to make him hesitate. Initially, it was a tactical move to conceal Harry's survival. The rest of the plan formed in seconds, and while there was a degree of madness to it, it fit perfectly within Voldemort's worldview. It was a risk, but Voldemort was remarkably predictable when one knew his triggers, and Harry knew more about the self-proclaimed Dark Lord than he would have liked.
In the end, Voldemort would be preparing for a confrontation against himself, searching for assassins at every corner. He knew what Tom Riddle was capable of, after all. Distracted and isolated, Voldemort would have no choice but to hide, wary of everyone around him. He wouldn't even try to recruit followers, suspecting they could be Riddle's agents.
It was similar, in a way, to Lily's issue. Harry was almost certain she feared he would cut off her connection to her dimension on a whim. She likely wouldn't leave her fortified position until she had a countermeasure or a plan in place, meaning she would stay away from him for the time being.
It was ironic. Harry had no desire to be involved in the conflict between Lily and Voldemort, yet in two days, he managed to distract both parties into an unofficial ceasefire. The dementors were back in Tartarus, and the Lycans were left without direction.
And it showed. There hadn't been any significant attacks for days; the few incidents involved rogue Lycans targeting Ministry officials who discriminated against werewolves. An uneasy peace settled over Britain, but most people viewed it as the calm before the storm.
The dementors, however, posed a lingering issue—not the creatures themselves but the entity behind them. It was likely an ancient and powerful force that either craved the energy dementors generated or sought to use them as anchors for some kind of invasion. Harry suspected the former, based on his hypothesis about Mordred's barrier. If he guessed correctly, a connection between an external dimension and the material plane required an anchor, likely another person. The dementors were probably designed as a workaround to this limitation, but they were still physical beings, bound by the same restrictions as any other material entity.
Whatever this entity was, it was clearly patient. Rather than consuming souls indiscriminately, it had opted to harvest energy passively in wizarding prisons for centuries, avoiding the risk of having its servants bound. That patience, Harry hoped, meant that as long as he posed no immediate threat and kept his word, the entity would wait for him to die.
He hoped things wouldn't escalate beyond that. But if they did—and it was becoming a trend—Harry would need to be prepared.
Now, back to the issue at hand: Nymphadora Tonks. Arcturus had given him a surprising amount of information about her, including her favourite places. Apparently, she liked to have lunch alone in one of the training areas. She hadn't made many friends at her rank due to her ambitious nature, though she was clearly favoured by her superiors. Her unofficial apprenticeship under Alastor Moody hadn't endeared her to her colleagues, but she was learning well.
Using his cloak, Harry snuck past dozens of Aurors, bypassing all wards, and waited in her training room. He cast a discreet ward at the entrance that would mark anyone who entered with a spell he could activate if necessary. It was a precaution, just in case.
This trick wouldn't have worked on Moody because of his eye, but Harry had chosen a day when Moody was on patrol for his 'heist.'
Minutes later, Tonks entered and sat down, unaware of the mark. It was a lapse in situational awareness, particularly for an Auror. Harry considered activating the spell to analyze her transformation at his leisure, but something made him hesitate. She shook her head and changed her hair colour. To the casual observer, it was nothing unusual; altering one's appearance was common enough in the magical world, even if it was frowned upon to do so for extended periods.
But when he analyzed the transformation with his Arcane Hearing, he was caught off guard. He detected a slight shift during the transformation, but beyond that, nothing indicated it wasn't her true appearance.
In truth, Harry needed to understand this skill precisely because of how undetectable it was. Metamorphmagi appeared sporadically in certain bloodlines, but their abilities weren't particularly special. Despite being impressive, everything they could do could be replicated by a semi-trained wizard with knowledge of human transfiguration.
What made Black Metamorphmagi so valuable was their ability to remain undetected even when shifting forms. It was likely the result of an interaction between a magical bloodline and the Black family, and that was what Harry sought: a combination of flexibility and subtlety.
He'd read about the skill in Black Manor years ago but hadn't expected it to fool even his Arcane Hearing. Knocking her out wasn't an option. He needed more data, and for a precise experiment, he'd have to interact with the subject.
He cast an illusion over himself, appearing as a short man in his thirties. He phased out of the room and knocked on the door. A rude voice responded, "Piss off!"
Harry kept knocking until Tonks angrily opened the door. "I thought I told you arses—" She stopped when she saw him. "—I don't know who you are."
He nodded. "I'd be surprised if you did. My name is Harold Smith, from the Transfiguration Guild. I'm conducting research on Metamorphmagi and was directed to you. Could I have a few minutes of your time?"
"What the hell? I thought Madam Bones assured me the Unspeakables would stop bothering me when I joined the force."
"I'm unaware of any previous agreement. I'm just here for an interview. I won't cast any spells or take samples. Many have tried to understand your skill over the centuries, and I'm not arrogant enough to think I'd succeed where they failed. If it helps, I can offer compensation. The guild has allocated me up to two hundred Galleons, and I'm willing to give you half for just ten minutes."
She stiffened. "A hundred Galleons for a ten-minute interview without magic? What's your angle?"
"As I said, I'm simply a researcher. My methods aren't popular with my superiors, who prefer more... hands-on experiments. I find that barbaric, especially when it involves live mages or magical creatures. Anyway, do you agree?"
"Fine. But no funny business. I'll arrest you if you try anything!"
Harry placed the gold on the table. "Shall we begin?"
She nodded and Harry asked, "So, describe it to me, what's it like being a Metamorphmagus?"
"The magic itself is pretty cool. According to my mum, my hair was shifting even when I was born. It was a bit boring before Hogwarts since I wasn't allowed to go to Muggle school. My parents tried to dye my hair, or even charm it since it was the most obvious part of my skill, but it would overwhelm it immediately."
"A few Metamorphmagi that I spoke to say that they have a certain core self that exists at their centre, a base form of some sort, others say that it's just a fancy form of preference. Which group do you agree with?"
She shook her head wildly, "I'd say the second one. Like I said, I was born shifting, and even when I'm unconscious, my body stays in the last form I took. Unless it was a form of animal features. That always gets dispelled somehow."
The more she spoke, the more he could understand how her magic worked. What he could analyse with his Arcane Hearing was just nothing more than a standard human transfiguration spell. The interesting part was how the change didn't leave a magical trace. There was something there, a second spell right after the transfiguration itself that washed away the remnant of any magic, erasing a magical trace of the change. It was just too quick for him to perceive, but he needed a sample to study properly.
Now, he was glad that he didn't just knock her out. He needed something to analyse the spell she unknowingly cast completely and utterly and thankfully, he had exactly what he needed for the task. Harry wandlessly got one of the training dummies to fall down, and Tonks immediately turned towards it, her hair shifting in the meantime. Harry used this to slow down his perception of time, take out the Elder Wand and get it to absorb the magic she used in the meantime.
He discreetly took a small alchemically altered ruby that he made to hone his Alchemy from Flamel's book and stored the entire magical event inside it. He'd always kept one on him since what happened in Durmstrang. Things would have been a lot easier if he had one to absorb even fragments of the event. It would have made his calculations far easier, instead of relying on trial and error with what he could faintly remember with his Arcane Hearing. Well, at least he learned his lesson with that one; that instinct was paying off already.
He couldn't really replicate it with his Arcane Hearing because it was just too quick, but having a sample of the change would allow him to take his time to analyse the spell properly.
He put both the charged jewel and the wand away before the embarrassed Auror turned back at him and grumbled, "Bloody useless things. Now where was I?"
"You were talking about your balance issues," he continued.
The conversation continued for a few minutes, where the woman was pretty observant of the pros and cons of being a Metamorphmagus. To be honest, he was even surprised that the balance issues didn't come from constant internal changes, but actually a lack of control of the height. The body was built on muscle memory and her muscles just always assumed a certain form. Constantly changing it, especially quickly would cause her body to adapt badly, hence her clumsiness.
This little issue would have probably been solved easily if her mother allowed her to activate the Black crest. With hundreds of Metamorphmagi having been in the family before her having put spells that helped them in the crest, she would have found something to help her adjust.
All in all, talking to Tonks was strangely nice after she had gotten a bit comfortable and realized that he wasn't planning on kidnapping her to become some kind of lab rat. They left cordially, with the Auror saying that her break was almost over, and Harry walked out of the department having gotten what he needed to get his plan rolling.
He only needed to properly analyse the spell and get someone to impersonate for the tournament. It needed to be someone in the delegation, someone who hadn't gone back to Hogwarts since McGonagall wouldn't let anyone in or out until the final task. It had to be someone who people in the delegation weren't exactly close with, at least not enough to realize that Harry was an impostor.
It was a bit of a conundrum since no one fit the description well enough. The only other option would have been to take two different forms, one before the task, coming as a visitor or something, and then knocking out one of the competitors. The issue was that it limited his time with Daphne, who would be there as a competitor, and whoever he knocked out would be a clear point of failure. He needed something better, something a bit more foolproof.
Harry suddenly heard a familiar voice shouting from the other side of the corridor, revealing a young man being kicked out of the Auror's office. It took Harry embarrassingly long to remember who this was, Eddie Carmichael. He was a Ravenclaw around a year older than Harry, and who also happened to be in the Hogwarts delegation as well but hadn't competed. Although, he did remember him getting beaten by Daphne in the duelling tournament around a year prior. Had it really been so long?
Anyway, his presence in the ministry was curious since he should have been safely in Hogwarts with his yearmates. Unable to restrain his curiosity, Harry used one of the basic clairvoyance spells he learned from the alternate Grindelwald's diary and realized what he was dealing with.
A smile formed on Harry's face. Yes, he would do. He would do very well.
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AN: Another slow chapter this time as well. I thought about making this some kind of elaborate heist or something, but I just couldn't get it to make sense. I'm really excited about the Greece arc. I have something special planned on that front. Anyway, I'm not sure that this chapter came out like I wanted it to, so as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I really don't mind rewriting it.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.