The Shadows Solace Book I: The Growing Years Prequel

Chapter XIV: A Minor Set-Back

It was as Victor led Petunia back to the lobby that the group halted and were stunned into stopping. Ragnok stood there in the foyer with two of his guards and he held a grim countenance. All as the other staff, visitors, and more stared to figure out what was going on. Petunia then approached as others seemed to figure out it had to do with Harry Potter.

Harry's stay in the hospital hadn't gone unnoticed; not with how he had ended up needing immediate medical care and was placed in intensive care with heavy wards, guards, and isolation from most others. Too many of the guests from the gala had waited it out to see if anything needed done or if Petunia needed help; trying to pave a way for friendship and alliance.

Petunia inclined as she greeted him, "Ragnok, this is rather unusual and such? Why are you here? Your expression tells me that what you learned is not good. What has happened?"

The elderly goblin looked to her and then eyed the room and she nodded in silent understanding. She turned to Victor again and asked if they might impose and borrow an unused office for now. Victor inclined and led them back upstairs, but to his own office. Where he secured it and they all turned to Ragnok.

His guards standing like sentinel on either side of the door.

"We have a minor problem." He said slower, "But is the healer now in on the alliance; I do not wish to speak more yet unless he has chosen?"

Petunia then smiled, "He has agreed to fully join us and has promised more help to us from those he trusts. Provided they take well to the information I am granting him to give. If they do not; Victor knows and understands he will have to modify their memories."

Ragnok eyed him a moment then inclined and turned himself to Petunia again as he ignored Sirius and Remus for the moment, "The night Bellatrix attacked the mansion; everyone was too focused on the children and their safety to notice other problems. Which should be a good thing; the children are what should matter the most. Harry himself; he was too strained to hold her back without aid from Tom; which I am glad he didn't reveal himself like he was supposed to, despite what has happened."

Ragnok pursed his lips together with a snarl, "Albus followed you and the others to the nursery that night while hidden underneath disillusionment charms, notice-me-not charms and an odd mix of invisibility spells. He didn't learn of Tom's existence there in the nursery, but he likely knows something is now amiss that he has no ideas of."

Petunia tensed as the others did, "What does that mean exactly?"

Ragnok looked to them, "Albus saw that night exactly how powerful Harry is and could be on his own without the bond he has to Tom; he knows now that the child has more power in his small finger than he does in his whole body, and that this power will only grow as he does. It will be tripled or even quadrupled once he is older and Tom can actually begin to really work on the bonding process with Harry.

Albus is aware of Harry's eidetic memory; he knew of that long before Halloween as Lily and James has had him visit multiple times, and now he knows that the child will remember all the conversations he sat in on as an infant with the adults. He will be able to take the fragments of old discussions and to reassimilate them in newer, more accurate pictures of the discussions in his mind. To reveal their meanings to what was talked of to him or about him without having been a part of it. Albus knows how much...pardon, a threat Harry is to all he has built."

The room stilted to an uneasy silence as Ragnok paused here.

"He also had agents infiltrate the mansion under the guise as guests with invitations; several of them who know what Tom's magic should feel like. Due to past battles and instances of close contact; like brief passings in other places or ghosting across the other as their magic sensed the other. They noticed it in and about the mansion; though they have no idea why."