Animagi and Family Secrets

"Best way is to convince him to leave. I've had the damnedest time tracking him," Headmaster Flamel said. "It's obvious he's hiding from me, taken to living in the sewer pipes rather than listen to sense. I should have seen this stubbornness and wrong-headedness about him when he was alive and young. My fault entirely, I apologize for helping him become what he did."

No one ever apologized to Harry. Rather than shrug this off, Harry said, "You don't need to apologize for him."

After all, it was Dumbledore causing the problems from beyond the grave.

"So what will you do this summer, Mr. Potter?"

More chit-chat. Harry wondered what these Professors Flamel really did want. He appreciated knowing about the basilisk. Perhaps that was what Dobby had been so concerned about?

Best to stop wondering and answer the question. "I discovered where my family estates were, in Wales. Best I can tell I own the land, but there are no intact structures on it. The Daily Prophet reported a fire there before I was born. I was going to camp out and see what was left. Clear it out perhaps, think about if I'd like to rebuild."

"An excellent idea," Perenelle Flamel said. "A home is a fine thing to invest gold and time into..."

"Yes, yes, I agree," the Headmaster said. "Now, one caution. Most wizards, when restoring or rebuilding a structure like I imagine your family had, they will hire people to help them. Goblins to do wards and the like. Wizards to set the structure. Or dwarves. I do not recommend this."

"No?" Harry had had that idea from listening to the conversations among various Slytherins who all seemed to live in manors, detest goblins, and yet still hire them for security work. Goblins did the wards, period.

"If you rebuild, figure out how to do it yourself, all of the critical parts. Raising walls is easy with magic, even stone walls. Use the old stones, if you can, generations of your family being there will make them better than raw stone for holding wards."

"Why?"

"It's deep theory in warding. If you get that far into your studies, you'll know why. It's a classic tenet."

Harry nodded. He hadn't been told he couldn't know. He'd been told to go and find out for himself through diligence. Harry rather liked that answer, actually.

"Raising your wards is the most critical part. Bring up temporary protections on your property, set your wards, build your structure to protect them. That's the classic way. There are other and better ways."

"Yes, sir." Advice partnered with a puzzle. As it always was.

"Once the wards, however you raise them, are complete and set, then you can invite people to visit, not before. Or install the plumbing or the electrics, whatever non-magical elements you prefer."

"Thank you for the idea. That's not commonly done now, is it? Not based on what I've heard here."

"No. It's not common at all. Perenelle and I learned a dear lesson, for we lost one of our homes and three of our children that way. From wards we purchased from a reputable spell-layer. Not so, for our secrets were known to him. Someone else outpaid us for his loyalty, you see. Treachery need only happen once to ruin everything. It is a hard lesson, so I make a point to pass it on when the chance arises."

He hadn't even wondered if these two had children. Of course they had. And a mistake had ruined everything for them, even if it was hundreds of years in the past. They didn't, and wouldn't, forget.

"Yes, sir," Harry said. "Thank you for telling me."

The room was quiet for a while.

The Headmaster caught his wife's eye, then looked to Harry. Here it came. "Now, Mr. Potter, we have been trying to work out a puzzle for much of the year."

A puzzle... This time Harry had nothing to hide. At least he didn't think so. "Yes, sir?"

"We have an animagus on staff."

"Professor McGonagall?"

"Precisely. But the animagus wards have been pinging on other people. We rounded up several others who ventured onto the Hogwarts grounds or into the castle. One was a reporter. I won't tell you what we did with her, let's just say that she will never write a column again accusing me of being a vampire who had evolved to survive the daylight."

Harry laughed. He had read plenty of Daily Prophets, but none more recent than 1981. He supposed he should find out who this columnist was, or had been.

"Some were parents coming in secret to visit their children who are students here, they got stern warnings. The last was a rat living – living, I tell you – in Gryffindor Tower, been there for years it turned out, first with one student then his younger brother..."

"You don't mean Ron Weasley's rat, Scabbers?" Harry asked. He still remember how Ron whinged for days, weeks, about his rat.

Which wasn't actually a rat.

Harry shivered. He lived in the same room with Ron, in the same room as that 'rat.'

"I do. Though he's actually a man called Peter Pettigrew, who was a student alongside your parents, Mr. Potter."

"He was?"

"He was also believed dead. The man who was accused of killing him has been tried, finally, after a decade of his being in prison without a trial. He has been released, since he was innocent of all accusations."

"Good," Harry said. A decade of a man's life lost. Harry almost knew what that felt like. Surrey was something like prison, or at least the corner of it called Privet Drive.

"Now the reason we mention this, is that he swore the oaths to be your godfather..."

.....

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