Harry looked out of his bedroom window onto the quiet street below, the last week of his life he had been exceptionally busy, and tiring, as his plans suddenly jumped into overdrive now that the perfect opportunity had presented itself.
For the last couple of days he and his godfather Sirius had been following Andy's wise advice, and had started the careful courtship of several influential, but politically neutral households, with the assistance of Lord and Lady Greengrass making the formal introductions. How successful these courtships were, only time would tell, but he wasn't too worried about it.
In the last couple days he had also taken the monumental step of taking up his ancestral lordship of the Potter family, almost two and half years sooner than he had originally planned. Thankfully, the public wasn't aware of this fact yet, but it was only a matter of time.
As a result, he was now Lord Potter-Peverell, Head of the Most Ancient and Noble family of Potter, as well as Lord Peverell, Head of the Most Ancient and Noble family of Peverell, and heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, making him arguably the most politically powerful 12 year old in the whole of Britain, maybe even in Europe.
As he absentmindedly admired and played with the sparkling family rings on his fingers he thought about just how common his story was in mainland Europe during the '40s, during the rise and fall of Grindelwald, when so many great and ancient magical families were either wiped out entirely or pared down to only a handful of surviving members.
And soon, he would be made even more powerful and wealthy should Lord Malfoy be found guilty, which seemed increasingly likely as more and more irrefutable evidence was being found at the Malfoy family manor. The magical press was having a field day reporting the scandalous story.
With the promise of this new wealth and revenue to reduce the drain on his finances, he had finally authorized the reconstruction of the Potter dockyards in the north to begin, along with the redevelopment projects in the surrounding areas. Workers had already begun to pour into the area, to conduct the site survey and to map out the most efficient sequence of construction.
All in all, everything was going extremely well; in fact things were proceeding far better and far faster than he had originally planned for, thanks in large part to some rather unexpected, but not unwelcome allies. The Gringotts' goblins were proving their worth with the freezing of the Malfoy family's financial assets, thus preventing them from making outrageously large bribes and hiring the most high priced lawyers to wiggle out of trouble.
This was incredibly useful to him in the short-term, but it was also a cautionary note about the danger of trusting any one party with all of his wealth. Backup plans would need to be put in place should they ever pull this trick with him. The tides of fortune were unpredictable after all.
They had also discreetly backdated the acceptance of his Potter Lordship to before New Year's Eve. Regardless of their actions to his benefit, he wasn't blind or stupid enough to believe that the goblin bankers were aiding him out of the goodness of their hearts; he knew why they were willing to assist him in this cause.
Harry was quite simply a far lesser evil than Lord Malfoy or his family, and was a growing power in magical Britain, unlike the Malfoy family powerbase which was quickly collapsing into ruin now that the extent of their criminal actions had been revealed to the public in such a way. More and more of their long-time allies and most powerful supporters were abandoning them for fear of being tainted with their crimes, like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Frankly, as he turned from the window, he was wondering just how long it would be till the first self-serving, two-faced rat tried to jump onto his merry ship.
Soon enough he would be returning to Hogwarts, which brought about a lot of conflicting emotions in him. The hard truth of the matter was that Hogwarts was slowing him down, in both his academic development as well as in the growth of his family's financial interests and businesses, making the idea of studying from home with the best tutors and masters of magic his money could buy rather appealing.
He would no longer have to wait for his dim-witted and lazy classmates to catch up to where he had been a full year and a half previous anymore. Although, from what he had learned from his friends and allies within Hogwarts, Headmistress McGonagall was desperately trying to change that.
Despite the new headmistress' willingness to reform Hogwarts, and her no nonsense attitude to schooling in general, a still unknown assassin had managed to infiltrate the school's vaunted defenses and actually murder the very auror impersonating him. He had no illusions about his prowess in this matter; it could have easily been him for real. That fact could not be overlooked or minimized so easily.
The school was unsafe for him, unlike his godfather's home which had some of the nastiest wards money could buy and only a few people even knew the existence of or could access. But, at the same time, he did miss his friends and their playful banter, even if they could be annoying and distracting at times. The question was, was it worth his life? He would never be able to accomplish his dream of rebuilding the Potter family's legacy if he was killed long before he even had a chance.
'If I did go back, at least I could finally make contact with the ancient basilisk in the school without the Chief Warlock realizing," he mentally noted, with a small measure of satisfaction at the removal of the headmaster, as his plan started to take shape.
But the key question now was, even if he somehow gained the basilisk's loyalty, how did one move a thousand year old basilisk out of a school without anyone noticing? And assuming he came up with a solution to that particularly large problem, where would he even move it to? After all, he had no intention of keeping the basilisk at school with him, where it could endanger everyone's life.
And as much as he'd like it to be, Dumbledore's absence in the school wasn't likely to be permanent either, so the window of opportunity to act here was likely to be brief. The man was far too powerful and shrewd a political operator to be long out of that seat of power.
He dismissed these problems from his thoughts for now, as they were ultimately meaningless until the basilisk was under his control. 'One problem at a time,' he sagely reminded himself.
'Returning would also mean I could make discreet contact with Hermione and compel a magical vow from her,' he mentally added, as he reflected on the information he had recently discovered about magical vows and oaths, whilst wondering what type of vow would best suit his long-term needs and would best take into account what he knew of Hermione's personality.
'A servant vow,' he concluded, whilst wondering how to keep Penny from finding out about it.
The simple fact was, he now knew that magical vows could transfer magical energy to strengthen him, and he wanted that from as many sources as he could get, especially while his magical core was still developing. Just like Madame Pomphrey had said about his Lordship rings, an external boost to his magical core now, before he was fully mature, could mean a permanent, lifelong increase in magical reserves.
He wanted that power, both for the sake of having more magical power, but also so that he could more properly defend himself against the many dangers he would inevitably face in the years to come. Plus, Hermione could be useful as an agent and spy in the years to come, as she was ideally placed to keep an eye on both Gryffindor house in general and Longbottom specifically.
After all, Andy wanted Sirius and him to do everything we could to foster closer relations with the Longbottom family; Hermione could be used to facilitate those relations. A shark-like smile formed on his face at all these thoughts.
With his mind finally made up, he pushed his many plans to the back of his mind, since there was very little he could do about them for the time being. Just then Serenity flew in through the window, which opened automatically whenever a postal owl was detected, so long as the mail they were carrying was deemed harmless by the house's wards that is.
He took a moment to shower affection on his beautiful owl, whom he had been neglecting lately due to Shadow and his own animagus transformation. She quickly grew annoyed with him and flew over to her perch to take a nap, but not before sending him a rather pointed look, which was further enhanced by her golden eyes.
Taking the hint that his owl wanted to be left alone for now, he redirected his attention and energy to the letter he had just been given.
Surprisingly, the letter was from the retired, long-time Hogwarts potions Professor, Horus Slughorn, who supervised Harry's independent study of potions. In the letter he expressed his joy at Harry being alive and well after reading about it in the Daily Prophet. Taking a moment to compose a quick reply, he thanked the retired professor for his well wishes before placing the sealed letter to one side so that Serenity could deliver it later.
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A/N : if we get 400 power stones by the end of the week, I will release an extra chapter ;)
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if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/loveran
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A/N : if we get 400 power stones by the end of the week, I will release an extra chapter ;)
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/loveran