Chapter 148: Thickening Mist
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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.
I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.
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5 September 1993, Hogwarts
It had been a few days since the disturbing defence lesson with Lupin and people were already giving him a wide berth. Harry assumed that with the insanity that had been happening in magical Britain, people started to forget about him a bit. After all, the past school year and the summer were filled with one scandal after another. Longbottom 'went insane', Azkaban was destroyed with a few of Voldemort's top lieutenants missing, the Dementors were slowly getting out of control, and finally, there were rumours that Dumbledore may or may not have killed his own sister.
What was a third-year Slytherin compared to all of that? He never attacked anyone, and rarely ever got into fights. Outside of a few forgettable incidents and being good in class, Harry could easily be forgotten in a crowd, at least by students. The professors were as vigilant as ever when it came to him and paid attention to his slight experimentation during classes, but his classmates just forgot about him.
Well, 'slaying a vampire' was enough for them to remember that, yes, Harry was a fucking badass. Yes, he could hurt anyone if they picked a fight with him, and he was very good a dueling. He kinda regretted never taking Flitwick on his offer to enter tournaments, but it wasn't really something he liked. He was always an introvert and putting more attention on him just made him uncomfortable. He liked duelling for the art. It was fun seeing how people would counter certain spells in ways that would be more advantageous to them.
Plus, he kinda needed a guardian's permission to enter, something that was never possible before the previous summer, and he was too busy with Arcturus to entertain the possibility.
As he sat in the great hall for his breakfast, he noticed something in his orange juice. Ah, a prank potion of some kind, to turn anyone who drunk it into some kind of fake vampire. Sort of basic, but the only notable part was the modification in case someone tried using the general dispelling charm on anyone under its influence, which would reveal a derogatory message or some other glowing over his head. It wasn't hard to brew. There were ways to treat ingredients that saturate it by casting the spell repeatedly at it. A neutral material with a high magical absorbance rate would be ideal and use it as a foundation to add properties to stop such spells from doing anything, or even trigger a secondary use. It was a modern method that was barely a few decades old, but it was inventive.
Still, whoever had done it hadn't bothered protecting their magical signature. Which wasn't really a big deal if it was anyone else; it wasn't something outside of criminals or paranoid people did. But it was a shame that it took him exactly twelve seconds to pinpoint the perpetrators, who should have been very obvious: the Weasley twins.
They never really tried to target him before, but in most houses, there was the implied rule that they should leave the first years and second years alone. So, this must have been their first attempt at it, but why him? They probably heard about the vampire scenario and wanted to take advantage of it.
Now, what was he supposed to do? He wouldn't ignore it since the twins would assume that there was a mistake in their potion and try again later. He also didn't want to be obvious about it. Perhaps a switching charm would work?
No, switching any magical item was in general a bad idea. It was a transfiguration spell, in its base, and it involved simultaneously transforming two items into each other. It was temporary, of course, and it did remove a lot of mental strain in normal transfiguration spells since it analyzes the desired material and shape automatically without input from the caster. The only difference was that it was a spell that needed to be cast at two objects at once, and that wasn't something easy to get used to. The entire spell was technically an introduction to multiple casting, which was essentially multitasking using magic.
Alas, transfiguring potions was a bad idea since the interaction between the magics can have unpredictable outcomes. It was one of the first rules that Snape told them about.
Ah, the answer was very simple, "Hello, could a house elf please empty to contents of my glass to the ones belonging to the Weasley twins?"
It was a bit of a longshot, but the house elves, that the twins probably asked to add the potion to his drink, listened to him, since his cup emptied itself. They must have liked the idea of getting back at the Weasleys for the constant antics over the years. His cup was immediately refilled with some new juice that wasn't spelt, he checked.
Daphne must have heard him, "What are you doing?"
"The Weasley terrors tried to potion me," he simply replied, "I got the elves to put whatever potion they tried to use into their goblets."
She snorted slightly, "I'm looking forward to seeing that. Do you want to go to the library after breakfast?"
"I'm sorry," he answered while shaking his head, "I know that you're free, but I have my first divination class that day."
"I can't believe you're taking that class. You're either a seer, and it comes naturally, or not and then it's useless."
Harry took a sip of his orange juice and shrugged, "You know that divination is more than seeing the future, and it's one of the disciplines that has very few informative books on the subject. Trust me, I looked. There are books with certain spells that use it, but not any real theory about it, or how they were made. I guess I'm just curious. If Trelawney is bad, I'll just leave. I'm already taking too many classes and it's taking up a lot of my free time."
He tried to suppress the grin at the wide eyes that the twins had when they saw him drink and not transform. Daphne wasn't as successful when she noticed. However, she quickly steeled her expression and asked, "But we're still up tonight, right? After our Care of Magical Creatures lesson."
Harry nodded; he had promised her that they would resume their training sessions after the class. He was coming very close to mastering his ice elemental magic, and he wanted to study spacial magic even further. There weren't any books on it, but he was essentially creating an entire type of magic from scratch by analyzing how various spatial expansion charms worked. It was slow going, but it showed signs of being very promising. Oddly enough, Blaise and Tracy didn't want to join, saying that they shouldn't intrude, whatever that meant.
"Aright. I'll see you in a couple of hours for our Care class. If I leave any later, I'll be late."
He gave her a smile, got up and made his way to add a small compulsion charm to drink on a couple of pieces of parchment that he animated to act like mice to run towards the legs of the Weasley twins, before turning back into normal pieces of parchment once more.
The last Potter dropped them and let them find their targets while whistling innocently as he walked towards the Great Hall's exit. The moment he left, he felt the magic on the parchment dispel, and by the loud exclamation of surprise and laughter, his little prank must have worked without a hitch.
Divination class was at the top of the North Tower, which was very impractical for students. It really made no sense to choose this place, if it wasn't necessary in some magical way. The walk would be at least ten minutes and that's after a few shortcuts. It wasn't ideal, but it gave him time to think about what happened in his defence lesson.
He really shouldn't have freaked out like this. It was obviously a lesson to how unprepared they all were to deal with any dark creature, but it could be easily excused in the mayhem. It wasn't even a bad idea to start things up. The man had even shown them a few of his other constructs to mimic various dark creatures with certain wards and charms. They weren't perfect, but it was better than theory when it came to dangerous dark creatures that no sane wizard would let minors near. Ron Weasley nearly fainted at the animated Acromantula when it came out. Fighting against animated constructs was an easy way to teach students without endangering them, as long as they were under his control.
And wasn't that interesting? He only noticed it while looking back at the situation, but the construct had come very close to a few students, and even dodged a lot of spells in unnatural ways. That kind of reflexes must translate to the man's own, which was odd. Werewolves weren't supposed to have reflexes on par with vampires outside the full moon, yet Lupin obviously had them. And that opened a lot of doors. Did he also have enhanced strength, enhanced speed, or enhanced senses?
Lupin definitely wasn't a traditional werewolf and there were too many unpredictable variables to make any deductions. Harry really didn't like unknowns and it was extremely frustrating. The entire situation was just suspicious.
Remus Lupin's application to the job didn't make sense. He was obviously not on the same page as Dumbledore, so the old man wouldn't have gone out of his way to hire him. He was also apparently successful enough to not need the gold. He still didn't know enough about how the man was making his money, and he didn't want to get Arcturus involved with his affairs too much, so he was leaving that as a last resort. But he wasn't lying about his wealth, not that he ever mentioned it, because his robes were worth more than a few people's homes. Acromantula silk was very hard to come by and thus, very expensive.
Honestly, everyone else was more than happy with the new professor. Sure, they didn't know that he was a werewolf, but the man was charismatic, obviously magically talented, had very extensive knowledge of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and his classes wouldn't be boring. That was enough for all of them. Then again, they were also happy with Lockhart and the standards of his class fell drastically in the last few months before his scandal, specifically in his post-OWL classes.
The whole thing bothered him for some reason like his gut was telling him that this man represented a danger to everyone. He just couldn't ignore it. He would need to investigate Lupin further somehow.
Before he could make up a plan, he noticed that he had arrived at the North tower, where a small crowd had assembled underneath a trap door with the words 'Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher' on a plaque beneath it.
He could see where this was going, even if his classmates couldn't, which was evident by the confused murmuring going around. Harry suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at the teacher's probable penchant for the dramatic.
As he expected, exactly five minutes before the start of the class, the trapdoor opened and a silver ladder materialized out of nowhere in the middle of the crowd. It was such an impractical way to enter the classroom since only one person could enter at a time.
The Potter scion waited until he was last because he couldn't bother fighting for a spot. He climbed up and had his first look at the divination classroom.
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In the middle of nowhere, a man opened his eyes for the first time in months. It took a few seconds to register that something was different. There was something missing. Ah, yes, his most painful memories weren't pushed into the front of his mind anymore. It's been so long since his mind felt so free. He had missed it. His mind was his greatest treasure after all.
Blinking in the dim light, Augustus Rookwood gradually became aware of his surroundings. The room he found himself in was far from the cold, damp, and wretched confines of Azkaban. It wasn't anything luxurious – it even looked like some disgusting muggle home – but it wasn't his grimy cell nor the chilling dementor-guarded halls that had been his miserable home for what felt like an eternity. He tried to move but he could feel that he was chained to the bed. The chains were obviously enchanted, considering that faint runes were glowing on the damn things.
His head ached, and his body felt weak, but the absence of the dementor-induced despair he had become accustomed to was profoundly liberating. For a moment, he thought that his Lord might have returned and broken his most loyal out of Azkaban.
That was before that thing came into the room. Augustus had seen magic warp people to terrible degrees and his Unspeakable training necessitated a certain proficiency in sensing magic. He had already known that his Lord had undergone countless rituals to reach his power and that it had warped him into something inhuman. But he had never sensed anything like what was in front of him.
It looked like a man, and moved like a man. But it definitely wasn't natural by any means. The death eater couldn't help but feel terrified with its every move. It was wearing a mask of a smiling face, but Rookwood couldn't help but imagine the horrors that must have been underneath.
Then the thing spoke up, "Oh, you're finally up, Rookie. You've been having such a long nap… Don't worry, I'm going to take such good care of you. I have so many things in mind…."
He really didn't like the sound of that.
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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.