The Next Lord of Kobol
Even Legends Must Die
By JBern
Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.
Disclaimer – Yeah, not mine, but entertaining nonetheless.
Chapter 3 – Even Legends Must Die
(October 31st, 1996 – approximately ten years before the fall of the twelve colonies)
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“Too bad this won't be as simple as the ring,” Sirius said from the window of a flat overlooking Diagon Alley. The shops were decorated for the all-day Halloween festival. “Old Tommy Boy and all his clever traps didn't count on someone being partnered up with Joe the Rogue Dementor.”
“I don't think it really likes the name, Joe,” Harry said as he winced. The former guardian of Azkaban was nigh invulnerable. It glided through a kaleidoscope of death, including a few things even Dumbledore hadn't seen before and came out the other end with a crude looking ring. Had anyone other than a dementor gone into that storm of magic, Harry would bet that they wouldn’t have come out alive.
“I'm entitled to call him anything I want. Spend a decade or so with them busting your backside before you judge me.”
“Easy there, Sirius. No need to be so touchy. I was just having a go at you. Did you figure out why the headmaster got so excited when Joe...curse it all! Now you've got me doing it too. When it brought the ring to him?”
“He did look ready to pee his pants. He said something about victory being assured now, but wouldn't go further than that. I’m glad he’s so confident.”
They looked across the room, on the other side of the room where the headmaster slept under the comfort of a silencing charm. Both Harry and Sirius were too wired to sleep. It reminded him of the way he'd felt before a Quidditch match - except the stakes were much higher.
“Too bad Bill Weasley resigned and went with Fleur back to France,” Harry said. “He could've tracked down the vault for us ahead of time.”
His godfather shook his head and said, “No, it would've broken something in his employment contract if he aided us in any way. Besides, if that little blonde girl asked me to run off with her, I'd have gone too. Well, probably not, but I'd have given it considerable thought.”
Harry remembered Fleur's “leetle boy” comment and smiled at the irony. “At least you didn't say you'd give it serious consideration.”
Of course, Harry was certain if Fleur had asked him to run off to the continent with her, he’d have gone as well.
“Too right you are, Harry! Just think,” Sirius said with a gleam in his eyes. “In less than twenty-four hours, I'll be the only man who has escaped from Azkaban and robbed Gringott's. I'll be a legend! The greatest marauder of them all!”
“Are you looking to replace me as Undesirable Number Two,” Harry asked.
“Bah, I should be Number One.”
“Don't take it so personally, Sirius. I find you as undesirable as they come.”
“It's not too late to ship you off to school. You're missing out on your sixth year, young man. That's the year you're supposed to go wild and chase skirts!”
“Didn't take my OWLs,” Harry answered. “They'd stick me back in fifth year and considering how little was being taught there, I'll stick to life on the run with two people who've taught me more in eight months than Hogwarts did in most of five years. I'll probably make my first full Animagus transformation by the start of the New Year. I've learned enough Occlumency from Dumbledore to keep him out for over two minutes! We've fought and beaten Death Eaters.”
“Too bad Fudge and his Ministry have become so subverted that they just keep letting them right back out. I told Geoffrey Goyle after the third time that I was going to start taking fingers each time I beat his sorry arse.”
“I wondered why that plonker started coming after me. Honestly, I think his kid could take him.”
Harry took a swig from the bottle his godfather offered as he older wizard mussed with the young man's hair and said, “Still I'm damn proud of you, Harry. You have gotten noticeably more powerful. I'm almost worried that you could beat me...well almost...if you were lucky that is.”
“Funny,” Harry said, passing the bottle back to Sirius. “I do wish I'd taken runes though. Didn't realize how bloody important they'd be when it came to enchanting something.”
“You'll catch up soon enough,” Sirius answered. “Just think, after tomorrow it's just Tom and his snake. I still think we should do a group shot with us and all the horcruxes and send it to him.”
The jury was out on whether or not Nagini was actually a horcrux or not. Having seen it kill muggles before he stopped getting visions, Harry just wanted it dead, before Riddle was fine. In fact, Harry wanted to see the look on his face when the snake died.
“If you sell Dumbledore on it,” Harry said, with a wince and took off his glasses. “I'm in, but you should leave out the locket so he goes and checks on it.”
“Are you still having those headaches and blurred vision?”
Harry nodded and said, “Yes. Dumbledore thinks that the horcrux that used to be in my head was attacking me and my eyes were the closest thing to it. Without it, my vision is actually improving. I may not even actually need glasses.”
“But James did,” Sirius said.
“And my mum didn’t,” Harry finished. “He’s going to arrange for me to get some new ones in a couple of days.”
“You should probably try to get some sleep,” Sirius said pulling a tin of wand polish out and setting it on the table.
“Doubt it's going to happen,” Harry said.
“I've got a surefire answer for you.”
“Really? What?”
Sirius smiled and snapped his wand around at Harry and said, “Stupefy.”
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As a rule, goblins aren't morning types and prefer a nocturnal lifestyle. Their customers do their banking during daylight hours, so like any other cutthroat business operators, they adapt as best they can. Still, when the doors open, they often resemble the school students sitting through another boring goblin rebellion lecture from the ghostly professor a Hogwarts.
They also celebrate Halloween. Among their kind the two days leading up to it and the two days after are their holiest days.
Instead of four heavily armed goblin guards at the door, there was one fairly scrawny warrior supervising a pair of security trolls.
All things considered, they were ill prepared for a trio of determined wizards. A clean shaven Albus Dumbledore went first, without his trademark beard and with a smidge of muggle hair coloring, he appeared to be little more than an aging wizard with a crooked nose and pointy chin. His facial hair sacrificed for the greater good, though Harry knew there was a flask of hair restorative waiting for the Headmaster at their prearranged meeting spot...the penthouse hotel room of one of the most expensive London hotels.
Harry, or rather quidditch player Oliver Wood, went next. Puddlemere United was out of the country and Wood would have an airtight alibi should the authorities come looking for him. It wasn't difficult at all to break in to Wood's flat. The place was a mess and they actually had to stop and look for ways to make it look obvious that intruders had been there.
Also aiding in their endeavors was the fact that the bleary eyed goblins tending the carts do not possess an encyclopedic knowledge of customers and their vault numbers. For someone like Harry, who hadn't been to his vault in years, it was more likely the goblins believed his vault was owned by Molly Weasley.
Harry was still a bit put out by the stunt Sirius pulled last night, but the cart ride on some sleep was far better than experiencing it with no sleep.
As the cart rolled to a stop, Harry stunned the goblin operator and pulled his broom out of his bottomless bag along with the bowl containing Riddle's diary. Sparing a glance at his vault door, Harry thought about his parents. Sirius and Dumbledore had told him that the piles of gold inside were just a portion of his inheritance.
“It's just a pile of cold and uncaring metal,” Harry thought and mounted his professional racing broom.
Roughly thirty seconds into his mad dash through the tunnels, gongs sounded and he was certain that Sirius was starting his “distraction.” He'd promised that it would be grand, intense and, completely over the top.
Harry was looking forward to seeing his godfather's imagination running amuck in Dumbledore's penseive tonight.
In the meantime, he had more important things to focus on. The caverns opened and contracted with alarming frequency. Between that and keeping he detector balanced, he couldn't get his broom up to full speed.
The trio couldn't be certain which vault had Helga's cup inside. Since Malfoy had kept the diary at his home and it didn't seem likely that Riddle would entrust Lucius with two pieces of his soul, he seemed unlikely. It was probably with one of the other members of his inner circle. Sirius guessed Bellatrix or her husband. Dumbledore thought it would be one of the others who had been instructed to keep a low profile live Avery, Nott, or McNair.
Rounding a corner, he saw a cartload of goblins carrying crossbows stationary at a four way junction. There was an awkward moment where all parties locked eyes. It was as if the goblins couldn't believe he was actually there. The moment ended when the first one fired his crossbow.
Harry waved his untraceable wand and vanished the bolt. A follow on banisher slammed the cart into the wall. He did his best to ignore the screams. After all, Harry didn't have a problem with the goblin nation and knew full well what the Ministry of Magic could be like.
Dumbledore's overarching concept of “the Greater Good” came to mind. It left a foul taste in the teenager's mouth. Harry dragged some rocks into the tracks to block off pursuit and hurried onward.
When he reached the open cavern, the detector turned on its end and Harry dived downward. More crossbow bolts arced after him only to be turned aside by blasts of wind from Harry's wand.
Things were looking good for Harry until he saw the first wyvern rider. Grimacing, the wizard used a switching spell to put the detector back into the bag and leaned into his firebolt. The wyvern retracted its wings and plunged after him in a sharp dive with a second one joining the chase.
The winged serpents were only a quarter the size of dragons, but were very maneuverable and quite capable when it came to staying with Harry's erratic flying style. He saw a pair of goblins riding it and hadn't given hem much thought until a bolt clanged off a support.
“This isn't a quidditch match. They're trying to kill me,” Harry reminded himself and took a deep breath and bought a few seconds of respite with a series of over the shoulder impediment jinxes.
Harry had fought. He had even severely injured Death Eaters and probably killed one or two, but this was different. Stunned or bound with ropes at these heights was the same as dead.
When a third wyvern arrived, Harry knew he had no choice. “Confrigo!”
His blasting curse went wide and tore up a section of track. He could tell they were trying to herd him and began firing wildly forcing the pursuers to dodge the falling debris while reversing his course and heading upwards. Harry didn't see what happened to the other two, but one wyvern without riders plummeted past him hopelessly entangled in a twisted mass of rock, wood, and metal.
Nearing the top of the cavern, Harry choked back the feeling revulsion at the destruction he'd caused.
It took a moment for Harry to push that disgust into a corner of his mind. Even with magic, it would take weeks to repair. But he was alive and had emerged unscathed. There would be time to second guess himself later.
As he reached into the bag to get the horcrux detector, he saw repeated flashes of light penetrating the dust storm below. His gut said that was where he'd find Dumbledore.
Casting a bubblehead charm so he could breath, Harry raced in that direction.
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The former headmaster of Hogwarts was unleashing his full fury against a pair of security dragons when Harry arrived. The smaller, a Common Welsh Green was pinned to the ground by a series of giant stone hands jutting from the earth. The largest of the hands wrapped painfully around the beast's snout and kept it shut.
The other dragon, an Ironbelly, refused to be handled like its cousin. Drawing a page from Viktor Krum's playbook, Harry aimed at the eyes and snapped off a series of conjunctivus curses.
It howled and screamed as one eye turned pale. Jets of flame erupted from the dragon's mouth like miniature geysers. Harry targeted the remaining eye while Dumbledore used Fawkes to immediately travel to the creature's blinded side and unleashed a torrent of magic like Harry had never witnessed.
The ground between the headmaster and the beast seemingly liquefied and rose up like a wall of water. Dumbledore pushed his power through the dirt tsunami and sent it crashing over the back of the dragon. It solidified and hardened, reminding Harry of that chocolate coating people dipped ice cream into. The effort visibly winded the elder wizard and Harry rushed to his side and supported him as Fawkes hovered nearby and trilled encouragement.
“As much as I would like to rest Harry, we must press on. I fear even that effort will not hold a creature of that magnitude for long.”
The phoenix snatched both of them by their shoulders and flew them through the narrow pass to a series of very large vault doors. Quickly summoning the detector from his bag, Harry saw the top edge twitch and vibrate wildly before it froze and pointed at an imposing door.
Dumbledore, who could both speak and read the goblin language, translated. The Black family motto was prominently displayed and the other was, “Might Justifies Those Who Use It.”
Clearing his throat, he continued, “I believe that is the Lestrange family motto and that means I owe Mr. Black a galleon. Now, just as we practiced.”
Harry did as he was instructed and pulled a dozen chisels and a three brass hammers from his bag. Using an animation charm and then and engorgement charm, he had the group of angry metal assailants converging on the door hinges. The magic protecting the door immediately began to counteract the threat, but that left it vulnerable to the water and earth elementals Dumbledore summoned.
While the stone construct pulled on the door, the water swirled along the edges searching for creases and gaps to wiggle in through to the inside of Bellatrix Lestrange's vault. Harry increased the speed of his chanting and worked the chisels in a xylophone fashion.
The door's defensive enchantments flared and attempted to beat back the determined assault as a warbling noise sounded to summon guards. The tide turned, literally, once the water elemental slither through a gap created by the earth spirit's attack.
Once inside, it started forcing the door open and the three pronged attack broke the vault seal at the upper hinge. The warbling alarm was replaced by the protests of the screeching metal and stone and it gave way with a sudden snap.
Harry stepped forward only to be restrained by Dumbledore's arm.
“Wait until the door is completely off,” he cautioned. “Never trust that a goblin's wards are broken until they are completely undone.”
His words were proven true moments later. As the door fell off the bottom hinge and slammed to the ground, a score of conjured arrows attempted to kill them. Harry's wind charm dashed the majority away while his professor's vanishing destroyed the rest.
“Stay here and cover this area,” Dumbledore ordered. “I'll retrieve the horcrux.”
The impetuous side of Harry, quite possibly nurtured by all this time with his godfather, said he should go instead, but Harry beat back that impulse with the knowledge that the arrows might not be the final defense of the warders employed by Gringott's.
From the roars behind him, at least one of the dragons had broken free. Fortunately, Harry didn't have to worry about going back that way. After a few nerve wracking minutes, Dumbledore and Fawkes exited the damaged vault. Hufflepuff's cup was on display in his hand.
“You performed admirably today, Harry. Fawkes will take us to the rendezvous and celebrate another step on the path to victory.”
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They waited in a rental flat belonging to Amelia Bones. She was being pressured to resign as the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but had resisted thus far. Unfortunately, today’s necessary events might lead to her sacking. Still, Harry enjoyed the irony of her housing them. Madame Bones was cut from the same cloth as Professor McGonagall, who also enjoyed frustrating the Fudge administration to no end.
Lucius Malfoy was minister in all but name and the pureblood agenda would follow soon, but hopefully it wouldn’t last long.
Harry was conversing with a portrait of Edgar Bones when he heard the whoosh announcing the arrival of Dumbledore’s phoenix. Not even bothering to finish his sentence, he ran into the next room.
“Alright Padfoot,” he said. “Let’s hear all about how you ran circles around the …”
His words trailed off when he saw the body on the ground beneath the hovering bird. At first, he thought his godfather had been hit by a body bind, but he didn’t respond when Harry cast a finite incanteum. Even though the man’s eyes were open and there was a smile frozen on his face, Harry tried enverating him.
That was how the exhausted Dumbledore found Harry Potter minutes later - still trying to wake his godfather up through screams and tears.
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I didn't want to kill off Sirius here, but the story needs to move on. I'm done with chapter 6 of this, which finishes up the HP universe arc and begins Harry's time in the Battlestar Galactica universe.
If you're looking for a good Christmas present, I'm sure one of my original works would make a lovely gift for the science fiction or fantasy buff out there. If you're looking to give me a present and have already bought one, you could always swing over to where you purchased it and leave a few kind words. They'd be greatly appreciated.