25

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[Vacation in Sicily, 3rd Person Camera]

"So…that was a thing." Harry says out of the blue.

The Order of the Phoenix (in its entirety, per Sirius's suggestion) was at the vacation house in Sicily. The first few days were muted, owing to half of the party still recovering from the events of the previous chapter.

It weighed heavily enough on their minds that nobody asked Harry to clarify what he meant.

"Yeah." Ron nods. "Are we still his friends?" He asks with a frown.

"Is he going to be ok?" Hermione asks instead. "I mean, killing people is an evil act, right?" She looks at Sirius for reassurance.

"I think he'll be fine." Sirius says. "It wasn't as if he was going into the fight just for the sake of killing."

"I'm more surprised that he did, Sirius." Lupin adds. "When was the last time you saw anybody walk into a…well, whatever it was, with the expectation to get into a life-threatening fight like that?"

Sirius sighs. "Never." He then spreads his arms, as if to show off the view. "But then, when was he just 'anybody'? To your point, Hermione, I think Ash's soul should be fine." He leans in a little. "I did some digging into the Black Library, and…while killing is immoral, the reasoning behind the killing is what drives that damage into the soul."

"So he's not going to, y'know, turn into another You-Know-Who?" Ron makes public the question in everyone's mind. "Because I don't think we can handle Ash if he flips and goes nuts."

"Eh…" Sirius shrugs. "He's not that hard to stop, actually. It's catching him that's the problem."

"Words we can use to refer to Tom, in retrospect." Lupin says with a faint smirk.

"Speaking of that." Hermione looks around. "What were those things he used? The things that tore the ministry."

"He called them 'mines'." Sirius says. "Claymores, or something similar. It's a muggle weapon of some kind."

Ron frowns. "Weren't they dangerous? He didn't look like he expected them to explode."

"Yeah." Harry agrees, remembering. "Do all muggle weapons do that?" He gives Hermione a glance. She shrugs.

"Weapon aside, the better question is: is Ash still on our side?" Ron says with a look at everyone in attendance. "Because I really don't know at this point."

"He's always been a bit of a wildcard." McGonagall agrees. "But I don't think something like that should isolate him from the rest of us."

Lupin nods in agreement. "If anything, we should be taking every measure to make sure he's not ostracized to the point where he does become our enemy."

"He's actually done a lot, hasn't he?" Harry muses. "Ever since he was eleven, I mean."

Lupin chuckles at that. "I don't think we fully appreciate how special he is." He says with a wry grin. "I've done a little research here and there, and…well, he's very likely going to never fear for employment once leaving Hogwarts."

"Is that so?" Hermione perks at that, and Harry locks eyes with Lupin as a warning. "I've been thinking about my future career opportunities, and—"

"—then we can discuss at length later." Lupin says warmly. "Though I fear I'm, perhaps, not the best source of information on this subject."

"Erm, right. Sorry." Hermione stops trying to pull her binder of career choices out of her bookbag. "…what has Ash done over the years, anyways?" She asks slowly. "I mean, I know he's incredibly talented, but…"

"Ash would be the first to tell you that he's not talented, Hermy." Sirius replies with a grin. "But…yes, the list of accomplishments he's managed to rack up is completely absurd for someone who's not even an adult yet." He frowns. "It's quite odd in retrospect."

Lupin begins ticking his fingers. "He's revolutionized the Lumos charm, wrote what is possibly the most detailed paper on Basilisk venom to date with Severus's help, donated a large sum of money to the wizarding community—way more than he reasonably should have. Coordinated the ministry's defensive efforts against You-Know-Who, fought him, and is personally responsible for killing both You-Know-Who and Bellatrix Lestrange, easily the darkest witch and wizard there ever existed."

Ron sulks somewhat. "We helped with a lot of that. Why does he get all the credit?"

Lupin shrugs. "The large donation, mostly."

"Hard to believe he's actually killed people." Hermione mutters. "Still hard to believe even though we were there."

"Good riddance." Neville says firmly, drawing quite a number of surprised stares. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I have no problems with Lestrange being dead."

"We…" Lupin visibly winces at his next sentence. "…don't have a problem with Lestrange being dead. It's just off-putting that a boy like him would be so…committed, to an actual fight to the death."

"Better him than us." Ron shrugs. "He's bonkers enough to want to fight like that."

"That's very impolite, Ron." Mrs. Weasley chides him. "…But if I had it my way, then we'd all be far away from him." She adds in a low voice.

"Don't like him much?" Sirius says with a smirk.

"No, I don't." Mrs. Weasley sighs. "He's like no other child on earth, I imagine."

The Proper Cast of the story continues to discuss, in length, their feelings on Ash's latest achievements. The gist of it:

...

[Survey Question: On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being the least trusting), how much do you trust Ash?]

...

[Those that answered 1]

Molly Weasley, pretty much. Her focus is her family, and Ash has been and continues to be dangerous in all of the worst ways, thus she doesn't trust him.

[The 2's]

The rest of the adults sans Sirius Black, more or less. They understand that Ash was acting with the understanding of the repercussions of his activities, but are otherwise unnerved by the fact that he knows what he's getting himself into in the first place. Also the big arsenal of guns don't help much.

Ron's also in this category, as he and Ash are more friends through Harry than friends with each other.

[The 3's]

Harry, Hermione, Luna. The two main leads of the story aren't sure where Ash is placed. They're basically 2's, but with a little more trust in Ash's good will.

Luna doesn't care.

[4's]

Fred and George. Ash's done them good, and in turn they trust his judgment, more or less.

[5's]

Neville and Sirius. Both believe that Ash has done good regardless of the means.

[And that's where they stand]

…

[Somewhere else, at roughly the same time]

…

Tom Riddle was angry.

He had found out about the death of the other fragment of his soul through Daily Prophet. He had previously assumed that the destruction of a horcrux would be felt by someone as powerful as himself, and was utterly irritated to be proven wrong.

To that end, he had paid a visit to each of his hiding locations not guarded by some other force and had reinforced their securities with alarms. This, of course, meant that he also discovered the fake locket placed by that R.A.B. person.

"I am being insulted." Tom seethed. Without the appearance of the other body, it was difficult for him to retain his supporters, and he even had to live through the indignity of being threatened of being thrown to the Ministry by Goyle!

The man's dead now, an example to the rest of his measly group of men.

"I am being insulted!" Tom shouted, his anger getting to him. His supporters did not flinch, but merely bowed their heads mechanically, an action of practice rather than real fear.

After all, this young teenager of a Dark Lord killed a random muggle and thought it was Goyle Senior, who was currently in attendance at this meeting.

This lack of respect, of course, does not sit well with Tom. "All of you." He growled. "Do you understand why I am the Dark Lord?"

None of them dared (or cared) to reply…not that Tom expected them to. "It is because my reign has run for fifty years. I am the most powerful, most experienced Dark Mage to have ever lived." He thought he caught a few of them smirking underneath their masks. "And I shall remind all of you of that fact." Voldemort gritted his teeth, his eyes showing a red and bloody glare. "You will all remember."

…

[London, One Day Later]

…

A small, nondescript house sits in the middle of a cul-de-sac populated with other houses that look almost exactly like it. Streaks of dirt on the pale white walls tell of the relative wear of the building, though the other residents of the block don't seem to notice.

Most of the time they don't even remember that the building exists.

…currently, however, a team of four muggle policemen were marching towards the building in eerie lock-step with each other, and they approached the building with something that can be roughly described as a feeling of mindless professionalism.

Upon approaching the door to the house, one of the policemen knocks on the door quickly as two others make mechanical ninety degree turns towards the windows flanking the doors.

Shortly, a squad-looking man dressed in mismatched muggle clothing descends the staircase and approaches the door.

"What's going on at this hour?" The man sighs as he opens the door. Fully expecting some other kind of company, the man freezes upon seeing the pair of strangely dressed muggles standing before his door. "Who are you?" The man asks, annoyed.

One of the two police at the door suddenly strikes the man on the chin, sending him sprawling towards the stairs. The other pulls his gun, aims it at the man's head, and pulls the trigger.

As the man bleeds to death on his own staircase, the four policemen all turn as one and head back to their cruiser.

…

[1 Month Later, 1st Person Camera]

…

Ok, so…for the last month or so I've been vacationing back in the states, picking up new gear, getting some training hours in, etc etc etc…

…I'm also following British news courtesy of satellite television and what the hell is going on?

London is suddenly seeing a new murder every day. Nobody knows how, nobody knows why, the muggle cops are puzzled because only strangely dressed people are being killed, and they're all being killed by conventional firearms, but nobody sees what's going on, nobody knows why…especially since, as far as I remember, the UK prohibits personal firearms. This is, understandably, causing issues between the people who have guns (the police) and everyone else.

…the problem, of course, is the fact that literally all of the deaths have been mages. All of them. Every single one. Not that the muggles knew that, of course, but…

…actually, that's not the only problem. The second problem is that…well, after the first three wizards died, the magical community began to cue in that something was happening. After three more, it became clear to the ministry's coverup team that there was a lot less that they were doing than expected.

Some of these wizards had pretty sophisticated home defenses, ranging from mundane things like a fence to illusions pretending that the house is a normal suburban one when instead it's, like, actually a castle or a manse or whatever.

…in other words, someone in the magical community with an understanding of guns was running around killing wizards. If I weren't out of the country I imagine I would've been arrested immediately. It probably helps that the murders occur literally at seven minutes past noon every Sunday, and as Fred and George points out, "we all know Ash isn't that punctual."

And how are we learning of this?

Basically Sirius, who can apparate when needed but mostly limits himself to flying the van, because he wants to. He helps me keep in touch with the magic world.

In any event, I need to find out exactly what the fuck's going on, because this feels eerily like Tom taking off the kiddie gloves.

To that end, we arrived back in Britain around a week afterwards.

I flew like a muggle so the ministry wizards posted in the building can see me returning to the country. I don't think anybody believes I'm responsible, but, y'know. Being out of the country and being in hiding are the exact same thing until I'm actually seen, after all.

We spend the next two weeks collecting data.

It is worth noting that the only member of the Order who spends any amount of time with me is Sirius.

Anyhoo…

I have learned pretty much close to jack shit for the past two weeks. I don't have the manpower, influence, or Twitter to do anything like a fast way to detect murder, so I've been just walking around London, sticking to the major roads…no dice.

What about the Ministry?

The Ministry's in much of the same boat: they want to protect people but lack the resources to do so: they can't post bodyguards everywhere, and the ministry-available enchantments for defense tend to be equal or inferior to the ones commercially available. Those enchantments obviously aren't working, so…

…This is frustrating, not gonna lie.

Another week goes by before we see one of these scenes happen in real time. As in: police come looking for the Burrow.

Harry, staying at the Burrow, saw the policemen arriving on foot from a distance and called Sirius through their handmirrorphones. Sirius then popped over to me and apparated both of us over to the Burrow, where we went through a harrowing gunfight against the four policemen with hundreds of casualties on both sides until sunset.

Sirius hit them all with stunners in about fifteen seconds and called it a day.

Or that. After confiscating their guns, we rejuvenated them, did a little bit of asking questions, and then called it a day.

…Or at least, that was the plan. The questions yielded no answers—the police don't remember why they had to come to the burrow, only that they "felt like it was something they should do". They also don't remember if there was anyone strange at their office, which…isn't saying much, since invisibility is a thing that people can do…

But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that, as soon as the guns were returned and one of the policemen put their hands on it, he immediately aimed it at Sirius and fired it. Without releasing the safety, thankfully. Not that Sirius couldn't block it.

"Wow, rude." Was Sirius's disgruntled response as the police's buddies wrestled the gun from his hand. The policeman in question did not understand what made him do it, just that it, again, "felt like something he should do."

We tried this again a few more times, but each time one of the police got a gun in their hands they would try and shoot someone, usually Sirius, since he was the closest. It got to the point where we just put a wad of paper behind the trigger so it doesn't pull and unnecessarily damage the gun's internals.

On the plus side, the police now knows that something is up with the police force, so if they do something with that information, good for them.

…

But at the end of the day, the question remains. The ever-present question of: why the fuck?

The police went home after they were 0/200 on attempted murder.

After about an hour they abruptly stopped, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Still, I think we can safely say that this has something to do with ol' Tommy. Be nice if I knew what it is, though.

We spend the rest of our time near the Burrow, where we set up our AeroVan and AeroTrain into something akin to a makeshift camp.

So I've had time to prepare.

First off, I've overhauled my entire Prismatic Beam setup. Back in the states I saw a documentary about a mountain climbing team doing training, and one of the things they mentioned was the need to save space. More specifically, the need to bring calories with their climbs while not being burdened with additional weight.

Even more specifically: butter. So I figured, why not look into food?

After experimentation.

Now, strictly speaking, in terms of physics, a car battery carries more energy than an equivalent weight of butter, or other food items. However, there is a significant barrier with regards to the human body and its ability to convert the energy of a car battery into usable magic power, and food into usable magic power. We're innately built to do one of those things, and it's not the battery.

…Also my batteries are getting old and I'm kinda leery of carrying them around. One of them is leaking and it's kind of a health hazard. They're not really built for the kind of rough treatment I'm putting them through, so…

Either way, a weight equivalent of butter as compared to a fully charged battery provides more Actionable Magic Energy (AME), and the access to AME is what I need to either increase the beam's strength, or else be able to spam it at will.

To that end, and because I…don't really want to work too hard on it, I looked around for other foods. I haven't looked around a lot, but butter does have the highest AME of everything I experimented with. Thus, I cleaned out my old batteries and replaced it with a spell that squishes things so it's small, along with a second spell that dehydrates the material placed within.

So, now, instead of having to plug myself into a transformer for a quick charge–which, by the way, I do not recommend–I now scour landfills for food-based scraps so I can compact it into fuel. In a worst case scenario, I can just pull all carbon-based objects around me and compact it into power.

In other words?

Pound for pound the beam's strength has not increased by much, but the switch over to a more AME-friendly loadout means I can spam beams, birds, defense, offense, and still have plenty of mana left over. Like, at this point, my drain is at the point where even a strong wizard will have problems handling the loadout.

Incidentally, my long term goal is to be able to turn plastics into AME, because, hey, good deeds.

Next!

I've finally had the time to convince Olivander to experiment with unleashing magic in different ways. He's finally felt like agreeing, owing to a combination of my prestige and the danger presented by Tom. Mostly the danger presented by Tom.

In a nutshell, the core of the wand (say, Phoenix Feather) is an absolute necessity. It may not necessarily always be inserted into the wand in its default form, but it will always be there. By this I mean: if you look at the insides of a wand built around a feather, you will still find a long, silvery string instead of an actual feather.

The thinness of a refined 'core', in that sense, reflects the skill of the wandmaker. Olivander is capable of making cores that are virtually indistinguishable from unicorn hair in thickness, which means that he is, quite literally, the best fucking wandmaker in the entire world.

So, a wand has two components: the wood, and the core. The core's job is to be the conduit between the mage and the world at large, and the job of the wood is to make sure that nothing goes wrong between the core and the wand tip. The tip of every wand is hollow and allows the concentrated magical power to actually discharge. (The hollow point is very small).

A component of wandless magic, therefore, is the creation of an ad-hoc channel point by the caster, whether they knew it or not (I didn't).

Anyways, the point is: I had my wand stripped down, with the core transferred into a bracer I wear around my right arm. The discharging foci is built into a ring on my right middle finger, illusioned to be invisible and engineered to be pretty much super smooth. The bracer's near-invisible too.

All my spells, therefore, are technically wandless spells now. To keep up appearances, I use a piece of steel illusioned to look like my old wand. It's steel so I can beat some heads with it if need be.

Overall, Olivander's pretty happy with the end result, so long as I don't tell another soul what happened. I have zero problems with that.

Next…

I've been fiddling with electrical discharges along with the dimensional spike delivery system. I've been testing it on mice (sorry mice) and I'm reasonably certain I can now fuck up my target forever now.

One: I can send a jolt of electricity into my target's heart, screwing with its beating and basically (over time) cause a heart attack.

Two: I can use that jolt of electricity to mark my target and cause the prismatic beam to home in on that mark. I can throw a stick of butter at my target and it will home as well, but that's just inconvenient rather than dangerous.

This is about it for my preparations.

…No, not quite. Switch makes a comeback!

Since my Prismatic Beam now draws power from food, I also as a result needed to learn to convert food into Magic. This means that I'm now pretty good at extracting energy from objects, which, if you remember, was a big limitation on how I could use Switch to do unfair things.

The limitation's gone now~

I carry around a roll of pennies (of whichever currency) and can now, with relatively high success (around 60% or so) shoot them out at extremely high velocities. The pennies, it should note, have a maximum range of roughly a mile because they overheat and turn to gas at that point.

I'm not sure what the results would be if liquid hot metal enters a human body, but I think I'm reasonably secure in assuming that it would not be pretty. Each shot costs roughly 1/6 Butter.

I've named it the BB Gun because I like to pretend I'm funny.

Point of note: the magic of converting food into AME independent of eating is can also be used for car batteries, the total yield with the battery is higher, but the delta yield, the amount accessed at any given time, is higher with food.

That's it for my preparations.

…

[We go to school]

…

Huh. I don't know who's sitting at the teacher's table, but given the fact that he looks like one, I'm going to assume that the man is Horace Slughorn. He also just winked at me so I'm now very certain he's Slughorn.

After a fashion, Dumbledore does indeed introduce Slughorn as the Potions teacher of the year, with Professor Snape taking over as DA.

Hope Severus comes out ok after this. It really sucks that the position has apparently been cursed…by…

The other shoe drops, after a month and a half.

…oh my god.

If…if Tom Riddle can curse a job position…

…does that mean that he also cursed the position of the muggle policeman? I mean, it's a thing that he can do, right? It's a thing that he SUPPOSEDLY can do, right? What would happen if that is a thing that he actually did?

We sit in panic for a few seconds.

…ok, shit. In the absence of any concrete information, let's operate on the assumption that this is a thing that has happened. Given that the news reports we've seen basically said that only London cops are going insane, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that—if this is true—then Tom's influence is only in London.

…how many cops are in London?

Christ, if I'm right about this, then we're not facing Tom and His Friends, but a literal army that's keeping the city under actual threat. Moreover, if this is true, then it brings up the question of what other position has Tom cursed in some way, shape, or form?

I have the sinking feeling I've awoken a sleeping dragon, and I don't like it one bit.

So what do we do? As we sit here, drawing worried glances as our eyes get wider and wider.

…we go all out. Simple as that.

If Tom has really cursed the position of a police officer, then his reach is way deeper than I had originally anticipated. If he's mobilized that reach, then it's probably fair to assume that he's learned about his horcruxes and ah shit RAB. I forgot about that. He'll know that RAB pilfered his locket, which…might be why he's going nuts, actually.

Double fuck.

Ok, yeah, we need to ramp up to endgame operations, otherwise we'll be leaving the final battle to luck, which means that, at this juncture, the good guys have a very real chance of straight up losing this one.

.

.

Next morning.

"Come in."

Professor McGonagall looks up from her desk after I give the door to her office a gentle tap.

"Yo." I greet her, waving the paper in my hand around. "I feel like I should give this to you."

"Do you really?" She says casually as I approach her table. "What do you have there?"

"Something that I think you'll be interested in reading." I say and hand the note over.

McGonagall scoffs slightly, takes the note, and scans it roughly. She then blinks and reads it again. "Are you sure about this, Ash?" She asks after reading it three times.

I nod. "Yeah. Something wrong's going on out there, so I need to go take care of it."

"You don't need to 'take care' of anything." McGonagall says severely. "You are, after all, just a student."

I realize that, buut..."Ok, sure. I don't need to take care of anything...but I do want to." I give her a salute. "Good day, Professor."

"And of course you're not going to listen to what anyone else has to say." She sighs. "Just keep yourself safe, understood? Heavens forbid we have to rescue you in the not too distant future."

Heh. "Yes ma'am." I turn and leave.

So...

I have now officially dropped out of Hogwarts.

What if you're wrong? About this whole 'Tom is going insane' thing?

I mean...yeah, not graduating from school is bad and all that...but...I have literally over a billion US dollars in my hidden but otherwise very legal bank accounts. I'm pretty set in terms of future livelihood.

...Provided that I win this fight.

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