It was the day after Halloween, and Harry had a smile on his face. Despite missing Halloween the day before, which considering his history with the holiday he wasn't sure if he should count as a blessing, Harry had received the news that he would be allowed to go back to school today. This may not have gotten most teenagers smiling, but it was Hogwarts and all of the best people in his life were there. It also wasn't the hospital room he was currently stuck in.
So Harry was a little disappointed that all the medi-witches and wizards who popped into his room to check on him were in a rather agitated mood. Harry had asked a few what was wrong, only to have them all give him some variation of the line. 'It's nothing for you to worry over. You should be resting.' Only one of them looked like they actually believed what they were saying, something Harry put down the man being a better liar than his colleagues. It wasn't until his grandfather arrived that Harry got an answer.
"Morning Grandfather," Harry said with a grin as Charlus walked into his room carrying a bag Harry assumed held a change of clothes for him.
Charlus tried to smile at Harry but couldn't quite manage it. "Hey, Harry. I got you a change of robes here. Ron and Hermione are dying to see you."
Harry felt the same. He had asked if they could visit, but his grandfather had informed him the two were in a little trouble with the school because they had broken out of the school a couple of times while he was unconscious. He had gotten a broken pile of half-truths from his grandfather, but he did say that Ron and Hermione had done a lot to discover it was Malfoy who had stabbed him.
However, Harry was more concerned about the dark look on his grandfather's face. "Grandpa Charlus, please tell me what happened, what's going on? You look like someone's just kicked your puppy."
Charlus let out a sigh. " Something happened last night. It's something bad." Charles paused to work out how to phrase what he was going to say.
However, at that point, Harry's mind jumped to the worst possible conclusions. "Hermione, Sirius, Ron? Please tell me they're all safe."
Charlus held up his hand realising were Harry's mind had gone. "They're completely fine Harry, nobody you know was involved." His words had an immediate calming effect on Harry. It would take a few minutes for the adrenaline to dump out of his system and for his heart rate to return to normal, but he was prepared to sit and listen again. "Last night Lord Voldemort attacked Azkaban with a horde of Inferi and freed all the Death Eaters, a bunch of other criminals, some people waiting on their trial, and Draco Malfoy."
That put an end to any thoughts of Harry remaining calm. He let out a particularly vitriolic string of profanity that actually had Charlus impressed by just how colourful some of Harry's suggestions were. One theme that ran through it though was that Harry felt like everything he had suffered at the end of the Triwizard Tournament was now worthless. Neither Charlus nor Harry knew that one of the reasons Harry wasn't a complete emotional wreck after being kidnapped, ridiculed, forced to fight for his life, and both being murdered and committing murder was that he considered what he went through worth it. It was a steep price, but it had gotten the Death Eaters off the streets and made the wizarding world a safer place. It wasn't perfect compensation, but it was enough for him. Now that had all been thrown away, the suffering had been for nothing because they were all free and back on the streets. He wanted to rip his hair out and scream.
Harry was so frustrated he actually started having bouts of accidental magic. Accidental magic is a strange phenomenon, as despite the lack of control it did tend to follow certain patterns. A scared child would have things blowing up around them. A child particularly wanting something would have things flying around the room. You could often tell exactly what a magical child was feeling from the aftermath of their accidental magic. It was rare for a teenager as old as Harry to deal with it, however, and it usually took a massive emotional upheaval for it to happen. But when it did, it was more focused due to the subconscious control of the magic after years of practice being able to guide it better.
So when Harry's magic started flinging the covers off his hospital bed, switching his hospital robes for the clothes Charlus brought, and making Harry's wand fly into his hand from where it was being kept in the bedside table, it told Charlus one thing: Harry was absolutely fucking furious. It was all emotional, showing Charlus that Harry was like his father in a lot of ways. When the chips were down, he was a man of action and every part of him was screaming that he needed to do something. The problem was there was nothing for him to do. He was like a drawn crossbow all tense and ready to fire, but no target to be pointed at.
It was at this point a medi wizard came running in a vial of potion in his hand. "Mr. Potter, Harry please drink this."
Both Harry and Charlus asked what it was in perfect unison that would have left the Weasley twins impressed if they had heard it.
"It's a calming draft. We had been waiting for something like this since we saw the news in the paper this morning." He held out the potion to Harry.
Harry warred within himself. The one part of him that was keyed up and ready to fight wanted to grab the vial and throw it against the wall. He was too angry to deal with this crap right now. The quieter, and at the moment more rational, part of his brain said that he should take the potion.
Charlus made the decision before Harry could. He took the potion and held it out to Harry with the stopper pulled out. "Drink it." Harry glared at the two men and then grabbed the vial and downed the potion like it was a cheap shot that he didn't want to taste.
The potion was like a cooling balm applied to Harry's burning rage, and he could actually feel the tension leaving his muscles. Suddenly, he could also feel pain. While he was being let out of the hospital today, it didn't mean he was fully healed like it normally would with magical healing. There was enough dark magic in his shoulder that it meant at least some of the healing would need to finish the muggle way. But it was stable, which was why he could leave. There was no point in Harry taking up a hospital bed when he didn't need it and someone else could come in at any time who did. It did, however, mean he was supposed to take it easy on his shoulder and not do anything with it too quickly.
The medi wizard saw Harry wince, and after a quick wave of his wand over Harry's shoulder, took some pity on him. "You pulled too hard on the muscles in your shoulder. I'll go get you a sling and a pain relief potion, and then we can start processing your release."
He disappeared for a few minutes, leaving Harry and Charlus alone in the room. Even with a calming potion in his system, Harry had questions. "How did Voldemort manage to break anyone out of Azkaban? I thought he would need a lot of support to do that and most of his people were in prison."
Charlus directed Harry to sit on the bed while he took the chair. "That's what we thought as well. But apparently Voldemort found a weakness. He had prepared a very large number of Inferi and completely overwhelmed the prison's defences. It looks like his attack on Hermione at the start of summer was a practice run, and he has been building a force since then. It explains why he has been so quiet all this time."
"But where did he get enough bodies? You can't just dig up a few dozen graveyards without anyone noticing," Harry asked, the potion keeping him calm but not slowing his questions.
"From what I have learnt, the bodies recovered were all dressed in muggle clothes like they would be if they were already dead. My guess is that Voldemort or one of his few supporters Imperiused the staff at a crematorium. And instead of burning the bodies, they were delivered to Voldemort. As long as the muggles received ashes at the end, something that can easily be duplicated with magic, nobody would have spotted anything." Even under the influence of the calming potion, Harry felt a twisting in his gut. That was just wrong; to desecrate people's funerals like that was sick.
The medi wizard came back and handed Harry a pain relief potion before helping him fit his arm into the new sling. After that, it was some paperwork for Charlus, because as Harry was a minor that was his grandfather's responsibility, not his. The part that did concern Harry was the aftercare of his shoulder. He was given a prescription for both an ointment and pain relief potions and told he would need to check in with Madam Pomfrey every week until she was happy with his shoulder.
Luckily, Harry didn't have to bother with a visit to the apothecary after this, because Grandfather Charles was an accredited Potions Master and could make both the ointment and pain relief potions. Also, if Harry's suspicions were right, it was going to become a lesson for him in brewing.
-ϟϟϟ-
It was a Wednesday, so when Harry arrived back at Hogwarts everyone was in class. Harry and Grandfather Charlus walked through the halls of the school, occasionally catching glimpses of students in classrooms as they walked past. They weren't walking as fast as Harry would like, but apparently spending a week or more in bed was a good way for the muscles in your leg to think you no longer need them and to start to go away. It really didn't help that their first stop was the headmaster's office, which was at the top of a tower. Headmaster Greengrass was happy to see Harry back, and even happier to have his Potions professor back. Apparently Slughorn was a good professor, but the headmaster didn't particularly like that the temporary professor had tried to collect his daughter for something called the Slug Club.
Neither Harry nor Professor Potter were expected in a class today but Harry was encouraged to go around to his professors and find out what work he had missed. It seemed a little unfair to Harry that he was the one who had to do more work because he got stabbed, but he had to get ready for his O.W.L.s and the only way to do that was to put the work in. After that was a visit to Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing to drop off Harry's care notes from the healers. That quick visit turned into a doctor's visit, as Madam Pomfrey insisted on doing her own scans of his shoulder to corroborate the documents from the healers.
It was halfway through the third double period of the day when Harry was finally released, only forty-five minutes until the start of lunch. Hermione and Ron would both be in Transfiguration at this point, so Harry decided to take his time walking there from the hospital wing. He stopped by the Defence Against the Dark Arts class and the Charms class on the way to ask the professors to prepare him something on the work he had missed.
He knocked on the door to Professor Lupin's room and found him teaching a class of what looked to be first years. Remus was happy to see him back at the school and agreed that he would put together something to cover the work he missed, before rushing Harry out after only a few minutes so he could get back to teaching his class. Professor Flitwick was pretty much the same, however the excitable little man was teaching a class of sixth years and he already had a packet of work for Harry.
Professor McGonagall actually smiled when Harry stepped into the room. "Mr. Potter, it's good to see you back. How are you feeling?"
At the back of the classroom, Harry could see Ron and Hermione. Ron was grinning ear to ear at the sight of Harry while Hermione was practically vibrating on the edge of her seat, overjoyed to see him.
"A little sore but alright, professor. I just got back and was hoping you could arrange some make-up homework for me," he said.
Like Professor Flitwick, she had a packet of work ready for Harry. "This should catch you up. And Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley can also do all your make-up homework as well. They haven't exactly been focused on their studies recently either."
From the back of the class, Ron let out a groan at the idea that after skipping all his classes to help research how to save Harry he would now have to catch up on his school work.
The professor checked a clock in the classroom and, seeing that it was still a good fifteen minutes before lunch, directed Harry to take a seat in one of the empty desks in the front corner and start reading through the packet she had just given him. Considering Harry's legs were screaming at him that they had done more walking in the least hour than they had done in the last week, Harry gratefully did as he was told and started going through the homework. It was pretty much the same homework the professor would have given him anyway, but it also came with a list of books and chapters that covered the material she had covered in class. Still, Harry had been there for the fundamentals of the topic and was able to start mentally plotting out his essays.
When the bell rang signifying the end of the lesson and the start of lunch, it was not even three seconds later that Harry was practically tackled by a Hermione-shaped missile that was squeezing him so hard that he was glad she had tackled him from the right and his injury was on his left shoulder. He wiggled his arm out from between them and wrapped it around her, revelling in the close contact. Despite having spent most of the last week in a coma, it still felt like it had been more than a week since he had seen her. "Hey, love. It's okay, I'm back now."
Hermione immediately got a little weepy. Harry understood, this was the second time in four months he had come far too close to dying, and it was taking a toll on Hermione emotionally. The classroom around them quickly emptied out. The Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs all knew better than Harry what Hermione had been going through, having seen her frantic studying in the library. The only three who stayed were Professor McGonagall, Ron and then Susan, who was sticking around to support Ron and not to gawk at Harry and Hermione.
Harry shifted his chair a little, then with a wince at the pain in his shoulder, he picked up Hermione in a bridal carry for a few seconds before sitting her on his lap. He encircled her with his arms, holding her to him as she silently hugged him, her tears dampening the shoulder of his robes.
"It's okay love," Harry tried to reassure her.
"No. No, it's not. Harry, you were stabbed. Stabbed. I didn't know if you were going to live or die. Now Malfoy has escaped from prison along with his father. Voldemort has all his people again and I don't know if we can survive this!" She sounded desperate.
"Hey, it's okay," Harry said, just trying to be reassuring. There would need to be a deeper conversation later but for now, Hermione just needed to cry it out.
Neither Harry nor Hermione noticed Susan having a quick word with Professor McGonagall and pointing out that it was probably a bit much for them to go to the Great Hall so keyed up and emotional. Certain elements of the student population were bound to see it as a vulnerability and try something, and even Susan could see such a thing would be lucky if it ended only with people in the hospital wing. McGonagall agreed and called in a house elf, and pretty soon the little guy was back with a very large platter of sandwiches and fruits and a large pitcher of pumpkin juice.
It took ten minutes for Hermione to pull herself together enough for her and Harry to notice the platter of food, which luckily kept refilling itself as Ron had already eaten enough sandwiches himself that the platter would be half empty by now if it didn't.
"So Harry, you all better now?" Ron asked once Harry and Hermione were filling a couple of plates that Hermione had transfigured out of wooden blocks that were in McGonagall's classroom to practise Transfiguration on.
"Nope," Harry said, surprising everyone there as they were used to people being back at 100% once the healers and medi witches and wizards were done with you. "The dagger left enough dark magic in my shoulder that the real healing needs to be done the slow way. But they have stuck me back together; I have some potions for the pain and some creams to speed up the healing, but it's going to be at least Christmas before my shoulder is anywhere close to being back to normal."
"Alicia is going to be pissed. Though Ginny is gonna be happy I suppose," Ron said, turning the conversation to Quidditch because it was a safe topic.
"How did Ginny do? I guess as we had a reserve, Madam Hooch wouldn't have let us postpone the match," Harry asked.
"Well, considering you were due to play Slytherin and Malfoy was arrested a few days before the match, it was swapped for the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw game. The Gryffindor-Slytherin game is scheduled for the last Saturday of the month, but if you're injured Ginny will have to play." Ron delivered the bad news.
Harry wanted to scream and shout his frustrations, as the universe seemed to be conspiring to steal Quidditch from him. As unimportant as the actual Quidditch was on the grand scale of things, it was Harry's outlet. When Harry played Quidditch, he wasn't 'The Boy-Who-Lived', he wasn't number one on Voldemort's hit list, he wasn't even the next Warlock of the House of Potter. He was just Harry, flying free, and that time was important to him.
They talked about everything that didn't matter as they ate, and once they were all full it was actually Susan who broached the topic. "How are you holding up Harry? You know, after what happened last night," she said, indicating the breakout.
"The medi wizard had to give me a calming draft when I found out this morning. Now I'm just anxious. With so many of his people free he could attack any time."
"Nah mate, it's gonna be a few months before they can attack anything," Ron said, and went on to explain after getting some questioning looks. "They have had weeks of Dementor exposure, and that is the recent ones. Most of them have been there for fourteen years. That's not something you can just shrug off. Not to mention they don't have wands right now, they will need new ones before they can do anything. Olivander won't sell them any, and while some of the others will, they will probably need to go abroad if they want wands they can use in a fight. Some back-alley wand dealer isn't going to have a good match for any of them, and if you're fighting you want the best connection to your wand you can get."
"What about their original wands?" asked Hermione. "If they can break people out of Azkaban, they can steal back their original wands."
Susan shook her head. "No, once you are sentenced to life in Azkaban your wand is snapped. My auntie came home gloating when she got to destroy the wands of Malfoy and others."
"So we have a few months to find them while they are practically helpless?" asked Harry.
Hermione squeezed his leg in annoyance before saying. "You don't have two months to do anything. The Aurors have two months to find them. You have homework to catch up on, and so do Ron and I. We were too busy going through the library looking for a way to remove that dagger from your shoulder without killing you."
Harry nodded, accepting Hermione's admonishment for his choice of words. "Still as I was saying, two months to find them before they can really do anything. How difficult would that be?"
"That depends on their preparation. Voldemort could have put up a Fidelius, making wherever he is keeping them impossible to find," said Ron. "The best way to find them is probably the apothecaries. They will need a lot of potions to heal all those escaped prisoners. That means a lot of ingredients. Unfortunately, there are plenty of less reputable sources, plus they can easily go abroad to, say, France if things become too difficult to buy here. A lot of what they will need is so common that without the ministry actually saying 'Be on the lookout for people buying large quantities of these ingredients', no one would bat an eye. It's not like the British Ministry can make a worldwide declaration, and meanwhile illegal unregistered portkeys are way too easy to make, even international ones."
"So basically we are fucked," said Susan, surprising both Harry and Hermione who hadn't heard the girl swear before.
"Not yet we aren't. Though I think I'm going to ask the headmaster if it's okay for me to start practising deadly spells somewhere," said Harry, causing the other three to look at him in shock. "What? We know Voldemort is probably going to come after me again, or his Death Eaters will. The man hates me. And when they do, it's not like I will be dodging Leg-lockers or Jelly-leg Jinxes. I'm not going to hold back either. But if I'm going to be forced into that type of situation, then I'm going to make sure that when they come it will be with me at my best." Harry finished with determination.
"What are you thinking, practice like you did for the Triwizard last year?" asked Ron.
"Yeah, but dialled up to eleven," answered Harry.
That had both Ron and Susan confused. "Dial?" "Eleven?" They asked.
Hermione shook her head. "Muggle expression. Think a hundred and ten percent." The two still didn't get what dials and the number 11 had to do with it, but they did understand a hundred and ten percent.
-ϟϟϟ-
While Harry and Hermione were talking to their friends and munching on sandwiches, Charlus was in Headmaster Greengrasses's office dealing with some paperwork. Taking a sudden and unexpected emergency leave of absence tended to create a little bit of a bureaucratic mess that needed clearing up when he got back. They were just finishing when the headmaster's Floo fire flashed green, and out of it stepped one Albus Dumbledore, dragging a trunk behind him and looking like he was about to move in.
"Hello gentleman, how are you this afternoon?" he asked like it was nothing.
Greengrass was far more straight to the point. "What the hell are you doing in my school?" he demanded.
"Your school? My good fellow, Hogwarts could never belong to but one man, it belongs to us all. As to why I am here, I have a letter for you from the minister. It seems that in light of recent events, the Ministry has decided that it would like the presence of someone like myself on the grounds that house the future of our society." Dumbledore smiled as though he didn't have a care in the world.
The headmaster took the letter and read it. "What's all this dragon dung about a high protector?" he demanded.
"Ah that was Cornelius's idea. He just signed into law an education decree number something or other, I can't remember. Anyway, it allows the Ministry to appoint a High Protector to Hogwarts in troubled times. And considering you had a student almost die from being stabbed, and a whole band of escaped terrorists running around, I would dare to say that Hogwarts is indeed facing troubled times. The Ministry Aurors are of course far too busy to take on such a role, as they are currently searching for all the escaped Death Eaters. So I volunteered my services as the defeater of Grindelwald and the only person Voldemort was ever afraid of. My role is to be at the castle and to intervene in matters of security," Dumbledore said.
"And if I kick you out of the school?" Greengrass asked, sounding like he was contemplating doing just that.
"Well Headmaster, you would find yourself in trouble with the Ministry, and while your family business can afford you to split with the school, you know how disruptive legal investigations can be," Dumbledore said.
Both Charlus and Greengrass caught the meaning behind that statement immediately, and while Greengrass grew pale at the threat Charlus turned on Dumbledore. " You would actually threaten the health of his youngest daughter by risking the gold they need to pay for her treatments, just so you can get your crooked nose back in this castle. Are you fucking insane?"
Dumbledore held his hands up. "I didn't write the decree, Fudge did that, he was the one who added the legal sanctions, not me. I am merely being honest as to the consequences of a headmaster refusing access to the newly created High Protector. I think Fudge is feeling the pressure and is hoping that this move to protect the students will let him keep his job as minister past the end of next week," Dumbledore said.
Neither Charlus nor Greengrass knew what to make of that statement. It was probable that Fudge had been the one to write it, but also Fudge was rather easy to manipulate and Dumbledore could do so easily. However, it could also quite easily be Fudge on his own. It was impossible to tell who to blame. The one silver lining was that High Protectors had little to nothing to do with the students, so Headmaster Greengrass immediately banned Dumbledore from speaking with the students without either himself, the students' Head of the House, or their parent/guardian present. Unless, of course, the students were in immediate danger, then his role as High Protector would come into play.
Charlus excused himself when the two men began to talk about where Dumbledore would stay. He couldn't blame Greengrass for not kicking up more of a fuss. He may be the headmaster first on paper, but like any man worthy of the title in his heart, his first priority was his family. He could no more risk his daughter's access to healers than he could abandon Harry, Sirius, or even young Miss Granger. As he walked down the spiral stairs that led to the headmaster's office Charles knew one thing. Things were about to get interesting.