26

Chapter 26: Memories and Manipulations

'Harry,

Norberta is settling in nicely here at the reserve. She now has five brothers and sisters three female and two male.

Everyone here is ecstatic about the outcome and Strom seems to be happy as well even if she's still refusing to let anyone else too close which is to be expected all things considered.

Sef has recently begun to 'hint' that he would like for me to write up some research papers on everything that I have been able to learn recently from my close proximity to Strom and I will admit that I am tempted. This could be an amazing opportunity for us, not only could this impact the voting on dragons rights but could possibly help peoples views! If these papers could make even a few more stop looking at dragons in fear then it could be worth it.

What do you think? If I go through with this then I may be called away to do a seminar or two out of the country. If it happens it would be while you were still at Hogwarts so we wouldn't lose any time together, though I wouldn't be too thrilled about the distance regardless.

Now, onto other topics then, hmm?

How is Hagrid holding up? Has anyone found out about what happened? If so the rumor mill must be amazing. I'm not sure but I believe that I heard the Twins talking about spreading around that they had seen a dragon in the lake wrestling with the giant squid? Please tell me that they did! I have five galleons resting on it against Darius, he seems to think that they would tell everyone they had seen the house elves skinny dipping and offering themselves up to their Dragon Lord the Mighty Squid Tickler!

Quite honestly I'm not sure which I would prefer though Mary probably has the more likely bet of both.

Oh! I have news on the family front though! I'm not sure if Mum and Dad have owled you all yet or not so I'll just let you know here. Apparently the Weasley Wealth (that's what the Goblins have been referring to it at least) was taken a long time ago by some family called Gaunt who turned around and lost it themselves.

It seems like finding out where our wealth went is helping to solve several of the Goblins' own mysteries. You see around a century ago there was a streak of Goblin suicides followed by the loss of several families' wealth or the end of several lines. At the time it had been attributed to some odd form of guilt on their parts for losing this business needlessly and 'bringing shame' to their families.

Turns out that these goblins had been being controlled by the imperious and wound up killing themselves in an effort to stop.

Apparently the Gaunts were descendants of Slytherin that had been cast out of the family (hence Gaunt and not Slytherin), they figured that if they had managed to obtain a high enough status they could be accepted back in the family but the head of the house took to celebrating each successful gain by getting drunk and gambling and lost everything right after they had managed to gain it.

Oh well, the goblins are working on it but at least now we know what happened!

I have to go now, time to get back to work.

Take care Little Dragon,

Love Charlie'

"Are you sure about this Harry?" Hermione asked in concern as she watched Harry put his supplies back into his messenger bag. They had been in the library all morning as it was a rather dizzily Sunday and Harry had finished his homework ahead of time and, being anxious to tell Hagrid the latest news about Norberta, Harry had decided to head down and see Hagrid himself. "I mean, it's still not safe for you to go around alone is it?"

"I know 'Mione," Harry said with a smile as he stood up, "The Twins are going to be walking me down to Hagrid's on their way to serve detention with Professor Sprout in Greenhouse six and Hagrid has already told me that he's going to be walking me back."

"Well alright, I would go with you but these two," She said with a roll of her eyes as she pointed her quill at Neville and Ron who were both busy looking through her potion notes with their heads bent together and looks of utter despair etched onto their faces, "Have somehow managed to leave their potions essay untouched until now."

"How on earth did they manage that?" Harry asked incredulously. "Isn't that due tomorrow?"

"Precisely. You would think that for being in the library every day they would have managed to at least make a dent in it," Hermione huffed in exasperation.

"Well good luck Mia dearest," Harry said with a laugh as he saw Fred and George enter the library under the watchful gaze of Madam Pince. "My escorts are here it seems, I'll see you later!" Harry called over his shoulder as he began to make his way to the desk.

"Ah 'Arry, there ya are! Come on in then, what was it that ya were so keen ta be tellin' me?" Hagrid asked with a grin as he ushered Harry to take a seat at his table where a large plate of freshly made treckle fudge was placed in front of him much to Harry's relief. The fudge was delicious if only while warm, it was when the fudge was cool that it could break the eaters teeth.

"I got a letter from the dragon reserve," Harry said with a grin as he took a small bite of fudge. Charlie had sent a few letters since that very first one detailing what Norberta and her siblings had been up to and Harry had made sure to keep Hagrid firmly in the loop.

"You did!? That's wonderful! Wha' did it say? Wha' have they all been up to now?"

"Well, it looks like the reserve is going to have to add on to it's wards," Harry said excitedly before launching into an explanation of all that he knew on the subject. "Since the amount of Hatchlings have always been so low they've never been a problem especially since they tend to shy away from humans but it looks like Norberta grew very fond of Charlie and decided to show up at his house in the middle of the night and nearly gave them all a heart attack because they thought their wards had somehow fallen."

"They didn' did they?" Hagrid asked worriedly as he poured them both some tea.

"Oh no," Harry said with a laugh, "Because they never have hatchlings who were willing to go near the tamers the wards surrounding their settlement didn't work on them because they're all keyed into dragons who are old enough to want to. So basically teenagers and adults but they didn't know that. It looks like Norberta and her siblings are quite the troublemakers."

"Oh? What 'ave her siblings done?" Hagrid asked curiously as he shooed Fang away from the plate of fudge.

"Well, the other two sisters like to get into the recreational equipment and the three brothers have taken to sneaking into the mess hall after hours," Harry said with a grin and was rewarded with Hagrids booming laughter filling the small hut.

"Oh, tha' takes me back to when yer Dad was un school! He and Sirius were always sneaking into the kitchens! They even managed to convince the elves to help them with some of their pranks, it drove Professor McGonagall mad!"

"I didn't know they did that," Harry said with a small smile as he added the information to what he already knew of his parents.

"Ah, I always forget how little you know abou' them," Hagrid said with a sad smile before his eyes lit up with a mischievous grin. "I know, how 'bout you stay here over lunch and I'll tell you some stories about them, how does that sound?"

"That would be amazing Hagrid!" Harry cried out happily as he got up and flung his arms around the large man. "I only have onecondition," He said seriously as he stood back and rested his hands on his hips in an imitation of Molly's normal posture for when she wanted something.

"An' wha's tha'?" Hagrid asked as he wiped a small tear from his eye and grinned down at the small boy.

"I cook," Harry said simply only to beam as Hagrid let out another booming laugh.

"I can' believe I kept you out so late! I'm so sorry 'Arry!" Hagrid continued to apologize as the pair made their way up the lawn and back to the castle as dusk settled over them.

"I'm not," Harry said simply as he continued to grin the same wide grin that had been plastered on his face the whole afternoon. "I wouldn't really mind it if I got a detention either! I've learned more about my parents than I knew before today. I'm happy that we lost track of time."

"As happy as I am for you mister Potter," A voice called out from beside the entrance to the castle where Professor McGonagall now stood, "I am afraid that it is a detention you will be recieving. I believe that two hours with me should be sufficient. I'll be having you do lines. I believe that ten will be sefficient for the message to sink in," She said with a small smile and a mischievious twinkle in her eyes which immediately set Harry at ease. "If, however, you manage to finish your task early I may just tell you some stories of my own for the remainder of the time. Do you understand mister Potter?"

"Yes ma'am," Harry said with barely contained glee. "I look forward to it."

"Good, now I will escort mister Potter back to his common room Hagrid, this way he does not receive another detention," Professor McGonagall said as she rested her hand lightly on Harry's frail shoulder.

"Well, alrigh' I suppose. I'll just be headin' out to the Forest and look into tha' problem we've been havin'." Hagrid said with an amused smile before he went to walk away from the pair and back to his hut.

"Come along then mister Potter," McGonagall said as she lead Harry back into the entrance hall and towards the Hufflepuff common rooms.

Albus Dumbledore was frustrated and angry beyond all reasoning. The year was going by far too quickly and still he hadn't made any progress! How in Merlin's name a scrawny eleven year old could manage to elude him so completely he didn't know and quite honestly it was pissing him off!

Everything he did, no matter what he tried, somehow continued to blow up in his face and the boy didn't even seem to notice!

With a strangled yell Albus finally stopped pacing and instead fell into the large large plush chair which sat behind his desk in his office.

Agonizing over this wouldn't help him. He had to think. The brat wasn't perfect and he was bound to make a mistake at some point! Perhaps there would be something useful in his file... Yes, that was what he would do. He would look over the file and hopefully there would be something there, some way to force a confrontation.

There had to be, it was for the Greater Good.