Hph75-78

Chapter - 75 : Understanding Part - 4

5 days ago

Albus Dumbledore loved information. The more of it he had, the more powerful it made him, and the more easily he could detect other's schemes, plan to take advantage of them or counter with his own, and predict what people would do. It was at the heart and core of his control of the magical world. So he strained even his expanded capacity to absorb information and packed himself to the gills with sources constantly feeding him.

It was unfortunate in one aspect - once he'd fallen behind, like having been taken out by a poisoned chicken bone (mere sleep did not stop him from processing the information flow, but unconsciousness out of severe wounds or poisoning did), it was doubly difficult to catch back up to where he ought to have been without that interruption.

And, to compound that disaster, the first days of school everyone was more talkative than usual, so there was more information to be learned. So he was more behind than usual, at a time of year he regularly lagged behind.

To use a metaphor, his mental inbox was crammed full, and it would be some time after things settled down that he could deal with it all. But to him every scrap was precious, and would be dealt with in good time.

The priority alerts he would listen to first, and one of the abnormal signals he got during the first day after his recovery was to check in on Severus Snape, who'd died unaccountably in his classroom trying to mind rape Harry.

The Headmaster had been dealing with the Potter Problem, and his sudden and entirely unwelcome changes, as well as his newly closer relationship to a potential 'twice golden watcher'. He'd only just called for an elf to take Trelawney down from her quarters for a prediction so he could deal with the problem teenager when the call came in from the castle about Severus.

Trelawney would have to wait in his office until he returned.

Dealing with his Potion Master's sudden execution raised certain questions, none of which Dumbledore had time to properly delve into, as Trelawney became a complete wreck if left alone in his quarters too long. He knew she was unaware of why she reacted so negatively to him, though it did keep her from coming down to take meals in the Great Hall too often; which he found convenient, as it limited her scope of movements rather sharply to stay in her tower virtually all of the time.

But, due to the things he had to do to her mind to keep her unaware of her own predictions, it was unavoidable that she feel unaccountably leery of him and nervous in his presence - or anxious trapped in his office, and if he left her there too long she could grow too distressed to make a prophecy for him despite all of the spells of Delphi in his arsenal.

A terrified mind closes up and shuts down, and if she did succumb to her well earned apprehensions waiting for him there would be nothing he could do to her to make her predict a way to reassert his control over Harry until she had calmed down, which could take days.

So after raising Professor Snape, and being raised in turn, the Headmaster hurried back to his office to get that prediction done so he could set his plans against Harry in motion, before rushing off to investigate what had killed poor Severus.

Egad! Already so far behind, when there was so much to be investigated! And nothing could be put to rest until he had wrung every scrap of detail from it!

Dumbledore entered his office and spied his tea set. Casting a quick warming charm he gratefully drank deeply of his cup, desperately needing the calming potions the elves included for him, as well as other potions for reinforcement to his grandfatherly persona, thus avoiding further upset to Trelawney. He could not afford to shut her down before he got that prophecy he needed!

Hermione/Trelawney secretly twinkled, face down in her book, knowing that the Headmaster had just drunk malaclaw venom released into his tea from when she'd dipped her cloak in it.

If HE was unlucky, she now stood a chance.

Dumbledore drank confidently, knowing that the portraits would've warned him if anyone tried doctoring his food with any potions, pills or powders. Then he got straight to work.

Contrary to her expectations, the Headmaster drew his wand (which, as she had half-expected from what she'd learned earlier, was Elder) and without a word of preamble, cast a spell on her in Greek.

The girl immediately resolved to learn that tongue as her next language lozenge.

Dumbledore followed with more waves of his wand and Greek, then demanded in English, "Speak! Oracle, speak! Harry Potter grows more troublesome by the day. Tell me how I might return him to my control!"

The Headmaster then jabbed his wand at her and spoke more Greek.

A strange lassitude came over the girl. Feeling like she was in a dream, the girl found that she was being pushed to say something, but hadn't the foggiest notion what to say.

Then a bit of whimsy gave her an idea. No sooner had it entered her head than whatever magic force was on her seized upon it, and Hermione threw her head back and declared:

"The webs of an old, white bumblebee

have caught a green-eyed lion.

But a chicken sets it free.

"Snake and bumblebee both stung lion

but their venom loses potency.

"Bumblebee revealed as spider, and snake to be a worm.

Chicken hunts spider, preys upon both bug and worm."

Albus scowled, for many reasons. For one, it had been a long time since his oracle had been so clear, there was virtually no room for interpretation in that prophecy at all. His own name, Albus Dumbledore, when Albus was Latin for white, and Dumbledore in 18th Century English meant bumblebee, made that portion far too clear for his peace of mind. But far more troublesome was that she had used that clarity to declare bad news!

It had been ages since she'd had anything so bad to say!

Inwardly, Hermione was astonished, although she'd wisely kept all but her confusion off the face she was wearing. What she'd wanted to do was tell the old man that he was being exposed and going to die. But the words for that had come from... somewhere else.

She'd honestly expected to have to scramble for them, and they would have come out vintage Hermione, which someone who knew her surely would have recognized. But before she could think much further on that subject, the Headmaster had jabbed his wand at her and spoke more Greek, before telling her in English, "Tell me, how might the chicken be destroyed?"

Already her head was back, and she rather vindictively told him, "Neither spider nor worm have that power! Both are prey to the chicken."

Dumbledore's face paled, and he made the mistake of pondering aloud, "Not spider, nor worm... but what about the lion?" Another jab of his wand and more Greek followed. "How might the lion be induced to destroy the chicken in time to save the spider?"

One of her father's cruder statements jumped to mind and Hermione wanted to tell the old bag of bones to go piss up a rope, but somehow, she'd guess because of the magic he'd used, that came out differently.

"The lion hunts not whilst bound by webs, and the webs shall survive the spider."

Dumbledore pondered for a moment, before again casting his spell and asking, "How might the spider regain his sting and become the bumblebee once more? A creature that can evade the chicken?"

"The care of the bumblebee is not for flowers but for webs. It shall remain a spider evermore." Hermione stated strongly.

At this Dumbledore smiled to himself. "But the bumblebee has another name: Wulfric, an Anglo-Saxon term for 'wolf power', and chickens are prey to wolves. But I've pressed this enough, already going beyond the recommended three questions. My dear Sybil, we shall continue this another time, when you will tell me how to prosper as the wolf. For now... Obliviate!"

Hermione was left blinking, wondering why she recalled everything clearly just after a memory spell she was sure was meant to erase this little interview and the questions he'd asked (but more particularly, her responses to them).

She was just wondering what to do, and if the Queen's 'absolute defense against Legilimency' had anything to do with her remembering everything up to and including the Headmaster casting an Obliviate spell at her, when Albus got a message from Snape, and left the room in a rush muttering about an intrusion and coleslaw.

Chapter - 76 : Escape

3 days ago

Hermione/Trelawney stared at the Headmaster's retreating back long after it had vanished, then returned her gaze to the office. 'He doesn't know!' she thought to herself, getting a bit giddy and elated. 'He just wanted Trelawney in here to make a prediction for him! He DOESN'T KNOW I replaced her!'

Somehow that made the nigh-invulnerable seeming Headmaster just a bit more human and defeatable.

Something firmed up within the girl, and her eyes narrowed as her thought processes kicked into gear and went online, having previously been almost shut down for fear of the man.

'First order of business,' she thought to herself, 'is to secure a route of escape.'

With that thought in mind, the young lady picked herself up and went over to the large window Dumbledore had behind his desk. It let in light that didn't flicker, and cast it over the shoulders of whoever was sitting at the desk. This put it on the documents that person would be reading, and also gave him a distinct psychological advantage in interviews, to have the light behind him.

To Hermione at the moment, it was nothing more than an exit. She hadn't forgotten the shrunken broom in her pocket, nor Harry's idea of jumping out a window to fly away to safety.

Unlatching the window and swinging open both panes was not hard. However, just before she got the gumption to climb up on the sill, preparatory to jumping out, the young girl looked back at the book she'd been reading.

It was excellent.

However, the idea of keeping it and bringing it with her so she could continue reading and possibly finish it, soon exploded as she had a related thought. The Queen said that Hogwarts gave Dumbledore a unique and irreplaceable advantage, one that he couldn't get any other way. His office had to play a part in that somehow, and she would likely never be in this room again.

Steeling herself to walk casually, the young lady moved over to Dumbledore's desk and picked up a letter opener, then went back to the window, noting that if she leaned out none of the portraits could see what she was doing, and used the flat blade of the letter opener to pry out the pins on the hinges holding the panes of glass in place.

She watched both panes fall away with considerable satisfaction. She didn't doubt the window could close on the Headmaster's command, or even that the glass was unbreakable and immune to most spells. But no way was that window being closed now, so she had an avenue of escape, even if he was to come back to his office right then.

She maneuvered two chairs in front of the door that led from the stairs up from the gargoyle at the entrance, hoping he would trip on them if he came up in a rush trying to catch her. Then she went to work.

Numerous people in her small group had mentioned by now that all paintings in the castle reported to the Headmaster. So Hermione started by taking all the ones in his office down, dragging around a chair so she could reach the ones higher up, and putting them all in a wooden shipping crate transfigured out of a drink cup left over from their visit to the KFC.

Paintings couldn't report on anything they couldn't see. That much had been made clear to her by Harry's trick, treating one like a security camera. And wand use was more suspicious than any other activity, that's why she did all the removal by hand. Well, except the transfiguring.

Once she was finished packing those portraits away, the girl checked around the rest of the room and got working on those bookshelves next, doing much the same thing, packing away shelf after shelf of books in some degree of haste, rushing as there were ever so many of them around the room! And she had no idea what was going to set off his alerts and bring him back. Each one could be the last, so she constantly hurried.

Then she eyed the Headmaster's desk. She didn't dare open any of the drawers, sure that would trigger a much stronger alarm. But stacked over its top, and a great number of flat surfaces nearby as well, was a glittering assortment of delicate silver instruments.

She didn't know what they monitored, and frankly she didn't care. That they were present was enough reason to remove them. There were any number of uses for space directly around where you are working, and a mind as brilliant as Dumbledore's wouldn't put anything in the 'glance at it to check it' range if he didn't care about what information that glance gave him. The closest stuff would be the most important, but he'd want constant updates on it all.

So they had to go.

Packing all of those silver gadgets and whirling gizmos into another box was easy if you didn't care about damaging them. In fact, she'd been rather careless about all of her packing, more concerned about haste than security for the items she was moving - It was only her life on the line, after all, and he could still return at any second, prompted by alerts already given.

Nerves fraying, and her daring coming to an end, Hermione spared the room one last glance before intending to dart to the window and safety, when her eyes lit on the Sorting Hat, and a sudden smirk graced her lips.

Dumbledore had been briefly removed by the Board of Governors last year for letting a monster in to terrorize the students. So he COULD be removed if the cause was bad enough! And what could be worse than losing a relic of the Founders, and an integral part of running the school?

Grabbing the Hat, she wadded it up to shove in her pocket, performed a switching spell to trade Trelawney's clothes for her own fairy garments so she could go invisible (and wished she'd thought of that earlier, as she kept imagining the Headmaster rushing up here at a run, sure she'd set off a terrible number of alarms), checked to make sure she had all the right things in her pockets still, tossed her teacher's empty clothes and glasses on the desk, shrank all of the boxes she'd packed things into, transfigured them into hard candies in the hopes of throwing off any tracking charms on them, climbed up on the sill and unshrunk her broom.

Gazing back into the office, Hermione then cast her strongest wandless fire spell back into the room, leaping off into the sky as the furniture went ablaze behind her.

The silver gadgets would not shrink or transfigure, so she sped on her school broom around to the back of Hagrid's cabin, where she dumped them all in a pen he had full of nifflers, magical creatures who had a predilection for anything glittery and liked to chew on precious metals to supplement their diets. They fell on them like a pack of savage hounds. Now the Headmaster could trace those devices all he wanted, and he'd be welcome to dig through niffler droppings for the torn up scraps of them.

She did not know that among those silver devices were Dumbledore's own special edition, custom time turner, and his spare. But that was just his bad luck they got destroyed along with so much else of his equipment.

Hermione herself disappeared off into the forest, dropping the Trelawney disguise once she was well off under the trees. Behind her, in the burning office of the Headmaster, written on the wall in coleslaw stuck there with a permanent sticking charm, were the words, "The Fingerlickers were here!"

Chapter - 77 : Escape Part - 2

3 days ago

As he was walking down to answer Snape's call Albus felt annoyed at himself for having left Trelawney in his office. She'd obviously reached her limits as to how much of it she could stand and gone into fits, to judge by the number of abnormal alarms he was getting from her. But no dangerous spells had been cast, nor anything broken, and he simply did not have the time to deal with her right then, not even to check those alarms in detail.

Whatever she was doing, it would have to wait. Nor was this the first time she had gotten anxious to the point of insanity in his office and moved a bunch of things about, leaving a clutter as bad as her own room.

She wasn't breaking anything, and that sufficed for now. It couldn't be bad, as she was hardly using her wand at all.

The House Elves could fix it all up in moments, he was sure. So whatever nonsense had gotten in to her otherwise empty skull was of no concern to him while dealing with the present emergency.

Priorities were the only way to live under the information load he had himself under. Otherwise everything would get interrupted and nothing would ever be done. His castle would just fill with half-completed projects.

Correctly determining those priorities, which emergency to deal with first, took a great deal of luck, or, as Dumbledore flattered himself, a perceptive mind. But he trusted his own judgment, as it had never failed him before.

Why would it have the bad luck to do so now, of all times?

Dumbledore's face smoothed as the warnings from the paintings grew fewer and fewer. Perhaps she was calming down. That was excellent, as it gave him fewer distraction for dealing with the serious matters to hand.

Severus had reported a break-in to Hogwarts - one that Albus had not planned!

Arriving with haste in his Potion Master's office, Dumbledore saw Severus standing near his cabinet of saleable wares and performing tests on some substance he'd removed from out of one of those bottles.

"I came directly on receipt of your message, Severus. What has happened?"

Professor Snape turned around to greet him, his face a mask of upset and confusion. But they trusted each other, and Snape spoke quickly. "I came in late this morning. As you know, I've been using all my spare time in attempts to identify the poison used on you. Between that and my normal classes, I've not had time for my side business. However, as I came in after the... incident in my first year class this afternoon, I noticed something odd."

He held out a small vial to the Headmaster. "Do you recognize this?"

Dumbledore peered over his glasses at the substance. "It appears to be some sort of crude, vegetable slurry."

Severus nodded. "It is. So far I've identified it as a mixture of shredded raw cabbage, shredded carrots, some oils, and a few other ingredients I could not imagine the purpose of. It all seems rather senseless, but I find that half a dozen of my potions are missing - replaced by this substance, as well as other saleable wares."

Albus took the vial and inspected it more closely. But as Severus had said, it appeared to be primarily shredded cabbage and oils. Looking over his glasses at his friend, he asked, "Have you identified any of its properties?"

Snape scowled, moving over to his desk. "I did the usual test, of course, snagging some third year muggleborn, a Hufflepuff this time, and forcing a dose down her. All she said was that it reminded her of visiting her cousin's home in the Colonies."

Neither party had to state that she'd been Obliviated afterwards, or that should some disaster have happened, she would've been handed off to Madam Pomfrey with some made-up story about how she'd been experimenting with potions unsupervised and it had gone wrong.

They had several such 'cases' a year, more when they needed a greater number of test subjects. Muggleborn testing was a priceless tool in their research, after all.

A bit messy when they exploded, but it was all for the Greater Good.

The best part was that it created an anti-muggleborn prejudice among the school officers and board, as they kept seeing so many results of careless activities no pureblood would do. And, since it was the student being blamed for what was supposedly their own fault, it caused next to no ruckus for the school in general when a few muggleborns died that way.

It was the unexplained deaths that caused so many problems, when ancient monsters roamed the halls and future dark lords painted threats on walls. When Albus was the cause, or Snape was, they always had a ready excuse to blame on the student, sealing the case with no fuss and no hassle.

No, the practice held immeasurable benefits, not the least of which was a few less muggleborns polluting the magical world. But also there were the potential research benefits. Dumbledore could not have discovered twelve uses of dragon's blood without it!

Although more than a few muggleborns had dissolved during testing, as far as he was concerned, that was just another benefit. Making McGonagall tell the parents their kids had been careless and it was all their own fault for dying still caused him to cackle into his pillow some nights.

She couldn't use those words, of course. But that was the definite spirit conveyed, "Your child screwed up doing something dangerous and killed him or herself," when the only dangerous thing they'd done was trust the Headmaster and go to Hogwarts.

No, it still had him giggling sometimes.

"So this points to the Americas, then?" Dumbledore thought of a good half dozen reasons why that might be, involving plots so esoteric that no one outside of he even knew they were going on.

"There's more," Snape hesitated, then gathered himself and plunged on. "I found slight smears, traces only you understand, of another substance on the bottles and tools involved in the theft, and the cabinet door handles."

Dumbledore looked at him curiously, waiting for him to explain, and Snape did not disappoint, hesitating only a bit before answering, "It was chicken grease, Headmaster. Someone handled my tools who had been handling fried chicken before - and more, I've identified the same eleven herbs and spices in it as was used in your wound to poison you."

The Headmaster paled. "Severus, are you sure?" On receiving a nod he sat down to steady himself. "The Dark Colonel. This is grave news."

"Why?" Snape raised an eyebrow. "You've dealt with upstarts before."

Dumbledore nodded, but considering the latest prophecies... he could not keep this information from his most trusted assistant. "Severus, I have reason to believe that neither myself, nor Voldemort, could defeat this Colonel Sanders. You can be sure I am looking into options."

Snape considered that silently for a while. "What of the Potter brat?"

Chapter - 78 : Escape Part - 3

3 days ago

Albus shook his head. "Alas, he may not be relied upon either. The necessary treatments of him may have rendered him unable. This, also, I will look into further, as I feel there may be some way around our present restrictions."

He raised a stricken face to his old friend. "What was taken?"

The Potions Master answered in a businesslike tone. "Four doses of polyjuice, my entire collection of hairs, but strangely no Aging Potion. Then also a dose of Unctuous Unction and a bottle of Shocktox."

Albus was nodding. Aging Potion was taken along with polyjuice by the less deplorable of Snape's 'special customers' wanting a liaison with a publicly known figure to make the resulting subject of legal age - as the hairs were all gathered during school years, the resultant form was always underage, and Aging Potion was a solution to that, for those who cared about such things.

Granger was one of those gathered, as they could say with a certain amount of confidence that with her drive and abilities she would be famous someday and now, in school, was the only opportunity to gather hairs. Most Slytherins had enough ambition to obtain some office. But Harry Potter was already Snape's best seller. Only witches generally wanted to age him a bit.

Albus himself couldn't see what the problem was, and preferred his little boys little, before they got unpleasantly hairy. That was back in the day when such things mattered, of course. He no longer had such appetites.

"That would point to someone who wanted to subdue a person, make them their friend, and then possibly impersonate them, or have them impersonate someone else out of your collection of hairs. Interesting." Albus rubbed his beard in thought.

"But Albus, why wasn't I notified? The customer alarm did nothing."

Dumbledore was nodding, having already reviewed that information. "The portraits I had along that access route saw nothing, so our intruders must have been invisible. Fear not, however, as I have a rare and difficult to obtain device covering this area that is able to detect and record even that. Sadly, this type does not interface well with others, so I could not have it alert me to this intrusion in real time. However, we may check the recordings."

The pair of men moved out into the corridor, out along the route set up so customers could gain access to Snape's services. There, in a dingy part of the castle that was heavily shadowed, Albus stopped.

Conjuring a stepladder, Dumbledore scaled high up an otherwise dank and narrow wall, reached into a secret cubby, and climbed down, holding a bare skull like it was some form of treasure.

Snape raised an eyebrow but said nothing

Both men knew what it was. A skull of a wizard who died with his eyes open could be enchanted to serve as a guardian of sorts - a Watch Skull. However doing that was supremely illegal in spite of its effectiveness, as using a man's mortal remains in a necromantic ritual of that sort always caused his spirit to rest uneasy.

That didn't stop Dumbledore from doing it. In fact, he was responsible for the ghost population being so high in recent years, as uneasy spirits often rose as ghosts, and most of them came to Hogwarts where he found use for them as additional eyes and ears.

Watch skulls were prized by dark wizards as guardians, being able to sense the invisible, as well as spirits. But using them was supremely illegal, as well as risky. Ghosts could scent them, and would seek them out to expose them so they could be destroyed and the spirits tied to them put to rest. So Albus could not fill the castle with them. In fact he must have warded this section of corridor against any ghosts entering - not something he was willing to do for large areas of Hogwarts.

But, for the occasional watch post, useful all the same.

Albus stroked the skull and whispered a few spells, then the empty sockets glowed and projected a scene that both wizards watched in silence, seeing two invisible and anonymous people enter, then pass.

The two thought nothing of the clothes the images were wearing. Invisibility-anything was rare. Cloaks were the most common garments that offered it, but people would take it in whatever form they could obtain regardless of shape, style or fashion.

Besides, to them, the clothes could even be trendy. They were certainly nice looking enough, and wizards didn't care about dated styles.

"I don't recognize them," Snape declared once the image was over. "Were they before my time? Or did they not go to school here?" He was expecting to hear the intruders names, along with detailed histories.

He got disappointed.

Albus was slowly shaking his head. "No Severus, I do not know them. It is even possible they may have been muggles."

"Muggles?" the Head of Slytherin scoffed. "Impossible!"

"Ah! But see. This stone here, Severus, is the alarm stone. It registers the magical strength of any witch or wizard passing over it, and sounds an alert for you to be ready to receive customers, and yet looking here at what it has recorded, it shows nothing, not even at the exact time the skull shows our intruders passed. No one with a human magical core in their bodies entered despite what our bony friend has shown us."

"Then how did that cabbage mess get into my potion cabinet?"

"Ah, Severus," Albus breathed with a twinkle in his eye at the sleuthing he loved so much. "I believe we may have been invaded by a pair of muggles, which should be impossible. But it is clear they have no human magical core in their bodies. So either they are muggles, or some form of magical beast that had taken the form of humans. Both are tremendously implausible, yet one or the other seems to have occurred. Yet the skull does not show them leaving, which I find odd. Come, let us check the skull in your office."

Snape had long since given up on achieving any degree of privacy in this castle run by a man obsessed with spying on everything, but even he found it slightly off-putting to know that the Headmaster checked his moves that closely.

After replacing that skull, they went back into the office where Dumbledore retrieved another, similarly hidden. Through its projected ghostly images they saw the pair of presumed muggles enter, inspect the cabinet, steal polyjuice and hairs, drink it to become two students, then enter the castle proper.

Albus, noticing what Snape did not, and possessing a keen eye for detail, had seen a face of a white bearded muggle, along with the letters 'KFC' on the package they'd used to transport that cabbage mess.

"Don't tell me that was Potter and Granger?" Snape snarled.

Albus shook his head, grinning in full grandfather mode even as he suppressed awareness of a damage alarm occurring in his office. "No. That's just what they want us to think. Did you not see them drink your polyjuice, Severus? Do you not have hairs collected from Harry and Miss Granger? No, they needed access to our school, and chose two students to get it. Two students, I might add, that I have been having unusual difficulties tracking of late. They could have gone almost anywhere, and I not been aware of it."

Anywhere, that is, except certain sensitive places. But Snape did not need to be aware of that.

His eyes twinkled as he further inspected his wards. He had another alarm stone, set to keep Snape's customers from entering the school proper, and it registered the familiar magical cores of two of his students. Amazing. He had not previously experimented with the use of polyjuice on muggles. Perhaps it was now time to start?

The duplication was flawless on the surface of it. Quite remarkable.

Suddenly the accounts of damage to his office became too great to ignore. Albus sent an elf to go send Trelawney back to her tower, but the creature popped back in moments, burned and cringing, weeping as it informed him that it could not find her there, or anywhere.

Shocked, Dumbledore had to excuse himself to go check on this himself and discover what was up with so many alarms going off in an office no one had been permitted to enter but his oracle.

What he found when he got there was an office ablaze, and words written on the wall in charred cabbage slurry spelling out an obscure yet threatening message, that his enemies (for what else could they be?) had penetrated even to this very sanctuary!

Dumbledore'd had no need to fear the fire, standing unharmed amidst the blaze, as he'd made himself immune to that long ago using a ritual starring a certain forgotten goblet in the basement.

Fawkes flamed in and caught him, getting the old man out of there before the burning timbers of his office roof came down and crushed him.