Here We Go

chapter 10

Chapter 10: Harry Potter and the Placebo Stone

Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale. There will provably be changes in the first hour or so as I find things that didn't come out the way I wanted.
None of the current students in the Corvus Group had ever taken Care of Magical Creatures with Professor Kettleburn as Dora had taken Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as her electives before (while she may have played up too much to get a Prefect's badge, she was a serious student), but it didn't take them long to understand why Charlie had been so dismissive of him, because he was useless! Even Selwyn taught the subject better and the students learned more from Hagrid than they did from the Professor when he was assisting Kettleburn.
This forced them to change their plans for Care of Magical Creatures after Molly's trial. The original idea had been to have Hagrid fill in as Assistant Professor until he'd passed his NEWTs, and maybe gotten his mastery in Magical Creatures, then take over as Care of Magical Creatures Professor like he did in the other timeline (only it wouldn't be a bribe to keep quiet about being to sent to Azkaban just so that the Ministry could be 'seen to be doing something' this time), but Kettleburn was just too pathetic to saddle Hogwarts' students with. Pomona and Minerva were delighted when Harry and Hermione pointed out that Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank had been a good Care of Magical Creatures teacher from what they'd seen of her in the times she'd been been brought in in the other timeline, because Pomona especially had been friends with her when they went through Hogwarts together. This in turn simplified matters quite a bit because Willie accepted without any hesitation when Pomona offered her the position of Care of Magical Creatures Professor at Hogwarts as Hogwarts' Deputy Headmistress. The next time Kettleburn had an accident after that (he had them often enough that they didn't have to wait long), Minerva had little trouble convincing him to accept retirement and Willie took over.
With a competent Care of Magical Creatures Professor and Hagrid assisting her, they dropped Magical Creatures off Selwyn's duties, but had him covering more of Pomona's Herbology classes because he had masteries in both Potions and Herbology. Willie added another Ancient Druid House to the Wizards Council Alliance in the Wizengamot, because she was Head of the Ancient Druid House of Gruffydd and Pomona and Minerva's confidence in her was enough to have her added to the group.
They were halfway through the Halloween Feast and Harry was starting to believe that his Halloween Curse hadn't followed him to this timeline when Arabella suddenly jumped up and hurried to Minerva's side, with Hagrid and Filius following her. Minerva activated her communications mirror so that the rest of them could hear what was said. Arabella had her kneazles patrolling the areas of the castle where they thought the troll may turn up and Mr Tibbles had just let her know that he saw several trolls in the dungeon.
It took a bit to convince Angela, Remus, Dora, Dobby and four of the goblin guards to stay there there to guard the rest of their party and help guard the rest of the students while Harry, Hermione, Sirius, Alastor, Efa, Emyr, Ulfr and Snorri popped out and Hagrid and Filius slipped out in the confusion when Minerva stood to announce that there were trolls in the castle, so all students were to remain in the Great Hall, but they managed. Once they were clear of the Great Hall they joined up with Olag, the five mngwas and the other eight goblin guards as they headed for the dungeon.
With the magical boost she'd received from the bonding ritual with the most powerful wizard alive, the consorts' magic and having the full adult versions of the family magics of four Most Ancient Heads of House, four Most Ancient House Consorts and one Ancient House Heiress being unlocked by the magical coming of age that was part of their magical marriages, Hermione was probably the most magically powerful in the group after Harry, and maybe Hagrid, so the Angela and Remus didn't argue about her going while they stayed to guard the others. Garrick had made her two new wands that worked for her and were capable of handling the power of the family magics of eight of the most Magically powerful Houses of Magical Britain and the House of Moody being added to her own, an ebony wand with three braided dragon heart strings from the same dragon, and an apple wand with seven braided unicorn tail hairs. They had been both amused and intrigued by how well her wands complemented Harry's rowan wand with three braided phoenix feathers and Elder Wand with seven braided thestral tail hairs.
Harry swore and tried to think of a suitable way to make Albus Jones pay for this when they saw the trolls, because Mr Tibbles' 'several trolls' turned out to be seven fully grown mountain trolls, and they were hungry! The trolls' hunger overrode their predilection to obey Karls like Olag and made them much more aggressive, so they were going to have to fight them, but while they certainly had the power to blast the trolls to pieces, they didn't want to risk damaging Hogwarts, so Harry put his right hand up, calling the Sword of Gryffindor to him. (The sword had been better known as Beowulf's magical sword Nægling before it was remade into the Sword of Gryffindor. Its brother sword, Hrunting, had been remade into the Sword of Slytherin at the same time, the only significant differences between them being the fact that the Slytherin Sword's hilt had emeralds set in silver instead of rubies set in gold, the carvings on the hilts and the names engraved on the goblin silver blades). Olag unslung a pair of giant goblin forged battle axes from his back, tossing one to Hagrid, and Ulfr, Snorri, Filius and the other goblins readied their swords and axes when the Sword of Gryffindor blazed into existence in Harry's hand, while the others drew their wands to do what they could.
The magical sword's properties outweighed Ulfr, Snorri and even Hagrid and Olag's greater strength and Harry was trying to kill the troll in front of him as quickly and humanely as he could when Hermione warned him through their link that another troll was about to grab him from behind, even Crookshanks in his mngwa form clawing at its back wasn't enough to stop it from going after its intended prey. Harry threw out his left hand (as Salazar was left handed) and called the Sword of Slytherin to him, making the troll draw back briefly from the sting of the magical blade biting into its forearm. That gave him enough of an opening to plunge the Sword of Gryffindor through the first troll's heart, twisting it before he turned back to use the Sword of Slytherin two handed, cutting off the massive paws that were reaching for him again first, and then the troll's head.
Harry fell to his knees as the adrenalin rush left him so Hermione rushed to his side with Crookshanks, anxiously demanding to know whether he was hurt. He looked around as he reassured her and thanked Crookshanks for his help, seeing that all the trolls were finished and the others had started vanishing their hacked up bodies. Hagrid hobbled over to check that Harry was alright, stopping to retrieve the Sword of Gryffindor from the first troll's corpse on the way. It turned out that 'his' and Filius' troll had managed to hit him in the leg with its club before they finished it off, but luckily nothing was broken. Olag had put down his troll without much trouble and the other goblins and mngwas had handled the last three. Harry made quite a sight, standing there covered in troll blood, holding the two swords in one hand as he had one arm around Hermione. Three of the goblins and Bastet had also been injured in the fighting, but none of them were hurt beyond a few broken bones which were quickly healed, so all in all it had been a successful battle
As soon as the trolls' body parts and most of the blood had been vanished, they popped back to Corvus Tower to get cleaned up and put on clean clothes, because most of them were covered in troll blood. Hagrid limped straight to Minerva with Filius to tell her the trolls had been dealt with as soon as they returned to the Great Hall (though Arabella had already passed on the news from Mr Tibbles) and she stood to announce that the danger had passed and the students could now leave the Great Hall if they wished. Harry, Hermione, Sirius, Alastor, Efa, Emyr, Ulfr and Snorri popped back into the Great Hall in a disillusioned state and Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Alastor removed their disillusionments once they'd returned to their seats at the table.
They noted the fact that Jones was missing and Hogwarts advised through their link to Merlin that he'd gone after the stone. He was reportedly quite surprised and worried when he tried to blast Fluffy to pieces and discovered that it was just a simulacrum rather than the real cerebus, but had been relieved to see that the other 'defences' were still in place. He'd apparently gotten to the stone and was now exalting about it in his quarters.
Neville and the girls shuddered at the evil laugh Harry gave at that news, so he had to explain that the 'Elixir of Life' that that stone could produce would do nothing more than give whoever drank it a sense of well being for a day or so. The Flamels hadn't tested it enough to determine whether it would be addictive, or whether there were any other harmful side effects associated with it, because they'd tossed the stone in with the other failures and moved on as soon as they confirmed that it was just another failed attempt. He admitted that he was actually hoping that there would be harmful side effects, because Jones would be sure to use it to try and regain the vitality and wealth he'd lost with much of his magic, added to the fact that he'd been behind seven hungry Mountain Trolls being released into a school full of children with almost certain serious loss of life, him dying a slow and painful death as a result of his own avarice seemed to be a fitting end. "So I'm rather hoping that he just puts the continued fading of the effects down to the fact that his life force will need to be rebuilt over time and keeps using it."
Hermione gave an evil grin as she thought about the old bastard getting his comeuppance for what he'd done to so many people, especially Harry, but that grin faded as she stopped and asked. "What about gold though, he can't create gold with that stone can he?"
Harry laughed again. "No Mione, you can't even create gold with the real Philosopher's Stone, everyone just heard what they wanted to hear when Nicolas was saying that what the Philosopher's Stone created would make them a lot of gold, which it most certainly has. That stone that Jones has can't create anything properly….." He stopped and grinned. "He thinks he's managed to outsmart the Flamels and everyone else to get control of the Philosopher's Stone, but all he has is the Placebo Stone!"
They all burst out laughing at that, and Alastor went up to let Minerva and the others in on the joke when they looked at them in confusion, and their laughter was at least as loud. Selwyn had learned by painful example not to try and get close enough to listen in on what the core group (or The Coven as he'd labelled them, because Filius and Hagrid were the only men in that group and he was enough of a Pureblood bigot to regard Half-Breeds like them as nothing but creatures who didn't deserve to be called men) was discussing, so he was as much in the dark as Albus was.
As they were heading back to Corvus Tower after the feast, most of the others were shocked when Harry said that compared to most of his Halloweens, this one hadn't been too bad. "How can you say that? You had to fight Mountain Trolls!"
Hermione laughed at that. "Didn't you know? That was how we became friends in the..." she stopped when she realised that it wasn't safe to talk where they were. "I'll tell you in the Tower."
That made everyone hurry up and once Efa and Emyr had brought in Minerva, Filius, Pomona, Poppy, Hagrid, Gringott, Amelia and Saul and they were all settled, with a goblin pensieve ready for visual aids, they showed the others the memories of that night's battle with the trolls in the dungeon, then Hermione took up the story again. "In the last timeline, Harry had come into this world straight from that disgusting family so he was seduced by the idea of making a friend for the very first time in his life, and he had been set up to believe that that git was his best mate. I ran off crying when Ronald said some horrible things about me after our Charms class on Halloween, and I was still crying in a girls' bathroom when the others were at their Halloween Feast…."
Harry took up the tale there. "I asked where Hermione was when I couldn't see her at the feast and Nev told me that one of the girls had said she was crying in the girls' bathroom on the second floor. A bit later Quirrell burst into the Great Hall, crying out 'Troll! In the dungeon! Just thought you'd like to know.' and then did a very bad acting job when he supposedly fainted. Dumbledore ordered the prefects to take all the students back to their common rooms, which was a very irresponsible thing to do, seeing as the Hufflepuff and Slytherin common rooms were in the dungeons where the troll supposedly was…." he shook his head as he remembered that. "But for some reason no-one questioned it, they just did as they were told. As we were heading back to the Gryffindor tower I suddenly remembered about Hermione and realised that she didn't know about the troll, so I went to get her. I forced the git to come with me, seeing as he was the reason she was in danger in the first place."
"Anyway, we got there just in time to see the troll going into a bathroom and I was hoping against hope that Hermione was in a different bathroom when she screamed. I had to physically drag the git in there with me and when we got inside, the troll had Hermione trapped up the other end of the bathroom, it was smashing up all the sinks and stalls that were in the way when it tried to hit her with its club and it was getting closer and closer to her so I started throwing things at it and shouting to try and get its attention away from Hermione and told the git to do the same. That wasn't working so I jumped on its back…."
He was cut off by just about everyone screaming "You WHAT?"
Hermione nodded grimly. "You heard him! This magnificent and utterly crazy idiot jumped onto the back of a Mountain Troll that I'm sure was even bigger than the ones we faced tonight and started hitting it around the head! And don't forget that he was much smaller then than he is this time around!"
Harry gave her a hug because the memory of that sight was making her cry and took up the story again. "Hitting it wasn't doing any good so I grabbed my wand, but I suddenly realised that I didn't know any spells that could stop it because we'd only gotten as far as Wingardium Leviosa. Anyway, while I was being thrown around on its back my wand somehow got stuck up its nose. I seem to remember shouting something like 'Die damn you!', and then the top of its head suddenly exploded so I was covered in troll blood and brains! Uncle Fili said that the only thing he could think of was that my desperation to stop it must have caused a powerful non-verbal reducto charm to be cast, which blew the troll's brains out…."
Hermione took over again. "All I could see from where I was on the floor behind him was blood and brains being sprayed across the ceiling and blood dripping off Harry's hair before they came crashing down hard enough to shake the castle. I was sure that one of the professors must have fired a curse of some kind at the troll and it had killed Harry as well because neither of them were moving, then Harry got up and I ran up to hug him, asking him if he was OK... I was doing that an awful lot over the next seven years! Auntie Minnie, Uncle Fili and Quirrell turned up after that and for some reason I told them that I'd come after the troll and Harry and the git had followed me.… That didn't make any sense so I'd say that Quirrell, or rather Qirrellmort, must have compelled me to take the blame to ensure that if anyone was expelled for being stupid it would be me! Of course Ronald tried to say what a hero he'd been, killing the troll and saving us pretty much single handedly while Harry and I cowered in the corner…."
They stopped then to show the others their memories of what happened in the bathroom, Harry's was only from when he ran into the bathroom to where he blew the troll's brains out, while Hermione's went from where she came out of the stall to find out where that awful smell was coming from, finishing when they were sent back to Gryffindor tower.
The others were staring at Harry when they came out of the pensieve, because while this Harry was obviously capable of taking on a Mountain Troll, that Harry was a tiny little waif of a boy who didn't really know any magic and didn't know that he could call a magical sword to help him. Astoria was by far the smallest of the current group because she was only ten and being the Heiress to the House of Yowann and betrothed of the Heir to the House of Black wasn't enough to push her apparent age to any more than eleven, but even she was still notably bigger and more robust looking than the figure they saw in that memory. Seeing that tiny figure jumping onto the back of a fully grown Mountain Troll (and Hermione was right, it was bigger than the ones they'd faced that night) to save a girl he'd hardly even spoken to was mind boggling, the fact that they'd come through it largely unhurt and he'd defeated the troll against all odds even more so. They also paid close attention to Quirrell at the end and he'd definitely used eye contact with Hermione to compel her to say that it was her who'd gone after the troll, but Minerva was ashamed of herself for how she'd behaved towards three of her charges, one of whom had just been almost killed by a Mountain Troll and another who had somehow managed to kill that troll single handedly through an incredible display of bravery and magic.
Harry cut in then, because he could see what was going though Minerva's head. "I'm pretty sure that Dumbledore altered all of our memories after that because as far as I know no-one ever looked into how a Mountain Troll had gotten into the castle and how we acted then and afterwards doesn't make any sense in view of our characters and the facts of the matter. I'd say that it's a sure bet that the compulsion, confundus, loyalty and memory charms that Dumbledore has been using on all of us….. shit, probably half of the people in the castle, not to mention anyone else who got in his way, has been going on for at least two generations now, why else would my parents leave the safety of the Potter estate to go live in Godrick's Hollow, why would the Marauders act like such mindless bullies right through school and why would you allow some of your favourite students behave like that without doing anything to correct them Auntie Minnie? Why would you ever agree to let Dumbledore keep something like the Philosopher's Stone in a place where the students could get to it, not to mention the danger that just having something like that in the castle brought to the students, and how could you have missed identifying Riddle's presence when you were around Quirrellmort for nine months, or let Dumbledore send students to the dungeons with nothing but prefects to protect them when there was supposed to be a troll down there?"
The adults all looked at each other and nodded grimly, because this was the only thing that made any sense, but Minerva asked. "After watching that, how could you ever have been sorted anywhere but Gryffindor Harry?"
He smirked at her. "Oh I don't know Auntie Minnie, you could argue that I was just displaying loyalty to my house mate like a good Hufflepuff! I only went into the bathroom after Hermione screamed and didn't resort to attacking the troll until it became obvious that it was the only way to save her."
Pomona said "Here Here!"
Minerva, Neville and the girls were shaking their heads at him but they all burst out laughing.
Harry turned to Hagrid then. "By the way Hagrid, if you ever get into a card game with a mysterious hooded stranger and he tries to put up an illegal dragon's egg as his stake again, don't take the bloody egg, call the bloody DMLE!"
Hagrid was looking confused. "What?"
Hermione shook her head at Harry. "It was Quirrellmort Hagrid. Everyone knows how much you love dragons so when he got you into a card game with him in the Hogs Head and put up the dragon's egg as a stake you couldn't resist. He used that to wheedle the fact that music will always send Fluffy right off to sleep out of you in order to get past him. That bloody dragon got us in all sorts of trouble! You hatched her and were trying to raise her in your cabin even though you bloody knew it was illegal to raise dragons in Britain... stupid Ronald got himself bitten by her so he was in the infirmary so with his hand all swollen up and Harry and I had to get her up to the astronomy tower by ourselves so that some of Charlie's friends could manage to pick her up and start her on her way to Romania. Thanks to Malfoy and that horrid Filch we got caught and ended up spending the night with you in the Forbidden Forest on detention because something was killing the unicorns. That was also Quirrellmort! He was killing them to drink their blood in an attempt to survive until he could get the Philosopher's Stone... Harry ran into him after Malfoy ran off and left him when they were following the blood trail that an injured unicorn had left, but Firenze the centaur drove Quirrellmort off and saved him."
Harry hugged her again. "Then the next year our Halloween treat was the Chamber of Secrets….. Shit! We still haven't done anything about the basilisk or acromatulas yet!"
That of course got another "WHAT?" from everyone.
He looked at the older ones. "Do you remember the stories about Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets?"
They nodded and he went on. "It exists, it's under Black lake. You can get into the tunnels that lead to the Chamber from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Slytherin's monster is a thousand year old basilisk that's at least seventy or eighty feet long. Riddle managed to get control of it back in the early Forties, he was planning to use it to cleanse the world of Muggleborns, and I think it kept growing after that because he didn't put it back into stasis when he shut it in the Chamber again. In the last timeline Lucius Malfoy slipped Riddle's diary into Ginny's cauldron when they were getting her books and things for her to come to Hogwarts. It was the first and most powerful of Riddle's horcruxes and she was possessed by Riddle through it…."
He stopped and turned to face Ginny. "You were a lonely girl who'd had no-one to talk to most of the time for years Ginny, because your mother had spent the last three years trying to mould you into the perfect tool to snare me and my fortune. She'd messed up your head so badly that you jumped at the chance of having a friend to talk to, even if it was through a book…. Just remember that that isn't who you are! Who you are is the person who you did the right thing when she tried to make you play along with her games this time!" Fred put his arm around Ginny to comfort her and when she was OK, Harry went on.
"It wasn't too difficult for Malfoy to get the opportunity because it was bedlam in Flourish and Blotts that day, Gilderoy Bloody Fakehart was having a book signing in the store and he had assigned his full set of seven bedtime story books as the text books for his Defence Against the Dark Arts classes…."
Minerva broke in at that. "Are you telling me that Dumbledore hired that useless bloody peacock to teach Defence?"
Harry nodded grimly. "He was so determined to make it easy for Riddle to get rid of me so he could step in and be the saviour again that he was prepared to condemn an entire generation to the same fate…. It was Quirrell possessed by Riddle this year, next year it was a coward and a fake who taught us even less, Third year it was a werewolf, Fourth year it was a Death Eater polyjuiced as Uncle Alastor who taught the unforgivables in class, Fifth Year it was Delores Bloody Umbridge, Sixth Year it was Snape, and Seventh Year it was Amycus Carrow."
Alastor spat out. "How in the seven hells did a known Death Eater come to be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts?"
"They'd basically taken over by then, they were mostly still hiding in the shadows but they were definitely in control. Riddle had Snape installed as the Headmaster after Dumbledore ran away to sit out the war somewhere safe while anyone who wouldn't declare for Riddle was being tortured or killed."
"Where was Dumbledore?"
"I don't know, as far as I know he refused to tell anyone. When we finally defeated Riddle, he waltzed back in and used his connections to take over again but he'd never explain where he was or why he didn't do anything to help us. He was probably holed up somewhere with a gaggle of boys, or goats if he was really determined to keep it quiet."
"It was Aberforth who had a thing for goats Ladd…." Alastor shut up when Harry shook his head grimly.
"No it bloody well wasn't! Your dear friend Albus cast compulsion and memory charms on everyone and set up the evidence to frame Aberforth for it when he was caught, he testified against his own brother to send him to Azkaban in his place! I got it out of his head when I was removing his ability to harm others."
Hermione hit him then because it was obvious that Remus was thinking about what a dark werewolf might have done to the children. "Tell Uncle Remus the whole story Harry! You can see that you've got him worried!"
Harry nodded and turned to Remus. "I'm sorry Uncle Remus, you were the werewolf, and you were the best Defence teacher we ever had! Dumbledore was desperate to keep his job because the Board of Governors were talking about getting rid of him after the Chamber of Secrets debacle, and hiring a fake like Lockhart as the Defence teacher had made his position even more precarious. He must have only remembered the way you were around the full moon and thought that that would have restricted your ability to teach us properly because he and most other people were shocked by how good a job you did do of teaching us, but Snape made sure that the fact that you were a werewolf came out so you got fired at the end of the year….. That reminds me... everyone needs to learn how to cast the Patronus charm to deal with dementors, because we had much too much exposure to those things in the other timeline….."
"Look…. covering even the major points of these stories will take time to get through, so if we're going to go into them tonight we may as well get comfortable first?"
Everyone agreed that that was valid reasoning and that it would be a good time to take a break to do so.