Ruthless

SEVEN

Without the Headmasters insistence, Harry saw no reason to plan to return to Hogwarts. He had learned all he could there; the library no longer held secrets for him.

The summer before what should have been his seventh term he instead planned the death of a Dark Lord. Every remaining piece of him, in any case.

Hermione sent her parents away. She did not tell him how, or where. She only sent him an owl requesting to stay with him wherever he went. Harry did not have to consider an answer. He only stopped to pick up Theo first, and with both his shadows at his side they went about acquiring a goblin.

He could have done it with magic, with ritual or spell or potion. Such a thing was possible, but a bad choice.

Harry had no desire to war with the goblins, for they held his gold.

Instead, he gathered what goblins desired most of anything, gold and bronze and silver, precious stones and metals, nearly the entirety of his trust vault, but only a mere fraction of the Potter fortune.

And he gave it to an aspiring young goblin by the name of Sickletooth, who in exchange gladly placed his palm upon a certain vault in the depths of Gringotts and made it open.

Hermione warned the Lestrange Vault would be cursed. Theo was the one who recognized what curses there was, and gave them their choices.

They could spend time dispelling the two curses, and risk being discovered before they could steal the cup.

They could dispel one curse or the other to save time, and bear with the other with difficulty. As one curse was to viciously burn at a touch and the other to duplicate anything touched, this option seemed particularly bad.

Or they could simply destroy the entire Vault.

Sickletooth looked very sad at this option, but Harry decided it was a good one.

With one cast Fiendfyre directed at Hufflepuff's Cup, Harry let the goblin close the door, and listened to the wail of a dying spirit through the thick metal.

-O-O-

The rest of the summer was spent outside of Britain, keeping abreast of the news by the Daily Prophet before it was taken over by a rotten Ministry, and then by word of mouth of the refugees who fled across the Channel to Calais.

Harry wondered what other governments were doing about the upstart Dark Lord taking over the British Ministry. He wondered if they all were guessing who would be next.

French Aurors roamed the streets of every wizarding place they went in France. Hermione knew enough of the language to get them by due to her parents frequent vacations there. Theo wanted them to relocate to Spain, farther away from the reach of the Death Eaters and to an area where he, instead, knew the native tongue.

Harry instead made the choice to return to Britain, and his shadows followed him.

The snake would always be on Voldemort's person. Voldemort himself needed to die as well. This could not be done an ocean away.

It could, however, be accomplished by less direct, if also less satisfying, ways.

Hermione was the one to mention the idea, when they realized what sort of numbers they would face.

If one could not have greater strength in numbers, then one needed a greater weapon. And muggles excelled in such an arena.

Theo was both fascinated and appalled by the tales Hermione spun of guns and bombs and poison gas. Harry only laid out their choices, of which there were many, and made the best ones he could with his limited time and knowledge.