Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Fire and Ice
Conversations
1 reviewWhen her parents become Death Eaters, Blaise Zabini (femaleblaise) runs away from home to avoid that fate, running to her headmaster for help, she is sent to the one place that is better protected ...
1Original
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters attached.
A/N: My sister has pointed out all of the errors in chapters 0 (prologue) to 11, I have corrected those errors and slightly altered several of the chapters, for the better I hope.
Reviewers:
Terris1: I never even thought about that, with your permission I'd like to think about it and see if I can make it work.
Aleh: I'm working on my grammar, but I think I'm fighting a losing battle there.
Chapter 13: Conversations.
On august 28th, their booklists arrived, but, no matter how much Harry wanted to go, the order refused to let him and his friends go to Diagon alley.
With the book lists were the prefect badges for Ron and Hermione, who seeing the letters nearly hyperventilated in worry that she hadn't made prefect again. Ron naturally didn't care less.
Blaise nearly passed out when a shiny silver badge with the Slytherin crest and a letter 'P' on it dropped out of her envelope, it appeared that Parkinson was no longer a prefect.
Seconds later she had a smirk on her face as she whispered in Harry's ear, judging by how red his face went, the rest of the people in the room decided that they would rather not know how she was going to abuse her new position as a prefect.
When a prefect badge dropped out of her letter, Ginny looked like she didn't know weather to be happy about it or cry because she couldn't help Harry with his recently formed 'marauders reborn', that is until Harry pointed to Remus and simply said. "You know Prowler, he was a prefect."
Hearing this, Hermione didn't know whether to berate them or join them, remembering the conversation they had when they became animagi, Harry wanted to set up a group of pranksters to protect the younger students from the bullies like Malfoy, hearing this the lot of them had asked where the contract was, to which Harry replied that they should ask Hermione to make one since she did such a good job on the last one.
Their forms really did fit their personalities, or at least part of it, Hermione was a domestic tabby cat, incredibly smart and loyal, yet not particularly aggressive. Ron was a red timber wolf, while not being the smartest animal around, they are incredibly loyal to the pack and will face any level of danger to protect them. Ginny was a huge lioness, smart yet viciously protective of her family.
From their forms they earned their nicknames, Ron was 'Redwood', Hermione became 'Tabitha', or 'Tabs' for short, Ginny got called 'Prowler'.
The forms helped them in more than one way, especially when Harry discovered that they could take on any of their forms characteristics while in human form, for example, Harry could fire-flash around, or change his eyes to those of a lion for better night vision or an eagles for enhanced vision, he could take on the lions muscle structure allowing him to move faster, jump higher, a lot higher, the things they could change were almost endless.
They had asked McGonagall if it was possible to change individual parts of the body into that of their forms, she said that it was impossible, so they decided to keep that little ability a secret.
Unfortunately, Neville and Luna had been unavailable to join them, so Harry was going to teach them at Hogwarts, while re-teaching the others Occlumency, it turned out that Snape had let his personal feelings get in the way of his teaching again.
Harry had had some fun teasing Ron and Hermione about how he would hate for the trio to fall apart and that he wanted it to stick around forever, of course the rest soon joined in, playing along until Ron and Hermione finally decided that they had better get it over with and tell him.
Harry was extremely pleased with his efforts to look like he was upset, he managed it for all of 2 seconds before he couldn't hold it in any more and he finally burst out laughing, but having turned his back on his friends they thought that the shaking shoulders was him crying, when he couldn't keep it quiet any longer he turned around and gasped out: "I'm really sorry, but you should have seen your faces."
Then he dissolved in laughter again, the couple stood nearby didn't know what to do, on one hand Harry was obviously insane and needed help, on the other he was their friend, so they stuck their heads out of the door and shouted for help.
When it came, they just asked Harry if he had been informed of the fact his best friends were a couple, that promptly set him off again as he nodded, after a few minutes he had calmed down enough to apologise to them, but it was only fair that the two prefects in the group (they hadn't got their letters at this point) be the first victims, and this was the perfect opportunity.
They didn't speak to Harry for precisely 5 hours 36 minutes and 5 seconds: Rose timed it.
Once the evening august 31st rolled around Harry, Blaise, Rose and Hermione had packed everything up ready to go to Hogwarts, Ron and Ginny on the other hand just dumped their stuff in their rooms, they'd pack in the morning before walking to the station like last year, except no snuffles bouncing around.
But just as they got settled in out of the way of the order meeting that was about to start, the whole group had been asked to come down to the kitchen to see professor Dumbledore, complying, they found most of the order there.
"Excuse me professor, but why do you want to see us?" Harry asked curiously.
"Well Harry, first I'd like to know why you, Ms Potter and Ms Zabini aren't attending your Occlumency lessons." Dumbledore replied in a slightly reprimanding tone.
"We don't need them, what would you like next?"
"What do you mean you don't need them, you have to be able to block out Voldemort."
"Standard Occlumency shields don't work on me since I'm an Empath, before you ask why I didn't tell you it's because I only discovered the ability this summer...and you don't need to know, your not my guardian, you have no say in what I do and do not tell you. Now next point." He stated.
"I am going to test all of your Occlumency shields to determine whether or not it is safe to let you in on the meetings." He said, only to be met with outrage from many in the order.
"They're too young!"
"They're not trained enough!"
"They have no experience!"
Were some of the things been shouted around, but the loudest voice was Mrs Weasley. "You can't, it'll disrupt their education and put them in unnecessary risk!"
"SILENCE!" professor Dumbledore bellowed at the room before continuing once silence had descended. "They will not be going on active missions, but they disserve the information that could save their lives, their training is not a problem as Harry had the whole summer to train his sister and Ms Zabini how to fight, no doubt this year they will learn how to operate as part of a team, no their education should actually increase as they will have more information to make decisions on and less to assume."
"That still doesn't account for their lack of experience." One of the order spoke up confident that his participation in the Azkaban battle was more experience than all of these upstarts put together.
"No it doesn't does it, they all have varying degrees of experience, the most belongs to Mr Potter, at 11 he stopped Voldemort from stealing the philosophers stone, at 12 he killed a basilisk with the sword of Godric Gryffindor, at 13 he and Ms Granger rescued a condemned hippogriff and then an innocent man, at 14 he won one of the most dangerous tournaments in a century, then went on to duel Voldemort himself, then last year he risked his life doing what he though was the right thing to do at the time and through his leadership skills got his friends out alive, injured yes but nonetheless alive. How is that for experience Mr Whitethorn?" Dumbledore asked, his eyes twinkling overtime.
"Good, now Harry, you first, legilimens." Dumbledore said.
Harry was shocked at first; he hadn't even seen him draw his wand! But then the spell connected and Harry felt Dumbledore gently probing his mind, sensing what he thought to be a way in, he hit hard on Harry's outer filters that had just shifted slightly.
"Very good Harry, who may I ask, taught you to shift the shields slightly when I found a weakness?"
"No one, I felt you probing on my filters, when you felt what you thought was weak, you hit hard, to do that you had to pull back slightly, as you pulled back I strengthened that part and let you crash straight into the filters, it was just an idea I had when you started probing."
"Why do you call you shields filters?"
"Because that's what they are, they let my mental abilities out while protecting my thoughts, if you had gotten past them you would have seen my thoughts and unimportant memories, like what I had for breakfast, the colour clothes I was wearing last Friday, so on, my more important memories are contained inside a shield, not a filter that can be worked around, but a proper shield that is reinforced every night after I sort my fresh memories out, that takes about 10 seconds now that I'm used to doing it subconsciously, if I were to be overcome by the imperious curse my shields would still hold, so professor, do they satisfy?"
"No, they don't 'satisfy'." Dumbledore said. "They exceed anything ever thought of, I thought of using a second shield over important memories, but it was too hard to maintain two, you, I can see have the perfect shielding technique, far more effective than my own, as it also allows you to use you empathy. You pass, welcome to the order of the phoenix, and please take a seat. Ms Zabini, your next..."
As Harry expected, Blaise and Rose passed the test with flying colours, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were in need of help, before they left Harry offered to teach them personally on how to create Occlumency shields.
The rest of the meeting was basically a formal welcome to the order, introduction to the people and their organisation, the order was a lot more complex than Harry had thought at first, there were three main sections to it, the largest was combat, a total of thirty witches and wizard were in there currently, then was intelligence, many of the Aurors that were in the combat section had secondary roles in this one, a total of 15 people, including 10 that were combatants, the last was leadership, Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley, Mr Weasley and about 5 more were the ones that lead the combatants in battle and had access to all of the intelligence that came in and made the decisions, when the introductions had been made Harry turned to professor Dumbledore and spoke up.
"You are recruiting more people aren't you? We're outnumbered by at least two to one, say about 250 to 300 DEs against about 100 Aurors and about 20 people that are in the order and aren't Aurors, to put it simply we need an army, a big one at that."
"Yes we are recruiting Harry." Dumbledore assured the young man.
"Good, what is the ministry doing to protect peoples homes?"
"They're sending out leaflets on self defence and the like."
"Useless." Harry stated in disgust.
"What would you know about what is and isn't useless?" Snape asked in an acidic tone.
"Do you think the Death Eaters will attack in ones or twos? No they'll attack in groups of 5 or 6, six DEs willing to use the unforgivables against two parents that know basic self defence, those two people will be given confidence by those leaflets, but they'll give them the wrong sort of confidence, it'll make them think that they can fight, so they stand when they should run, the ministry is helping kill those people, not protect them."
"They don't need to know how to fight, they need to know that they can run, even if the floo network is cut off and anti-apparition wards are in place, if I was in the ministry I'd be sending free portkeys to each house with a witch or wizard in it, whether there first year muggleborns or aging purebloods."
"How much is a portkey to the ministry to make?" Harry finally finished.
"Depends on how far they go, from the northern tip of Scotland to the ministry is about thirty galleons, from here to the ministry is about 1 galleon, why?" an order member that works in the ministry's department of magical transportation answered.
"Not two way portkeys, one way only."
"About 2 galleons each, no matter the range, why? The ministry would never agree to it."
"About how many homes are there in the country with a witch or wizard living in it?" Harry asked the room in general, ignoring the ministry official.
"Thousands, five, six thousand at least, probably more." Someone guessed.
"Lets say twenty thousand then, just to be safe, that's forty thousand galleons..." Harry said before trailing off in thought.
"What do you have in mind Harry?" Tonks said, successfully breaking him out of his thoughts.
"How many adult witches and wizards are there in the country?"
"Thirty thousand upwards, why?" someone else guessed.
"Lets say theoretically that there are fifty thousand adult witches and wizards in the country, any one could be attacked while out shopping or in their own homes, correct?" at their nods he continued. "If each one were to have a multi-use one way portkey to their home, then if they were attacked in the street they could portkey straight home, one password activated, multi-use portkey to their living room would cost...what? Five galleons each."
"That's 250,000 galleons, their children could be carried by their parents as anything or anyone being carried or touched by a person using a portkey is brought along with them, if their home was to be attacked then the family could gather in the living room and use a one way, one use portkey to the ministry, that's 40,000 galleons, a total of 290,000 galleons to keep people alive, correct?"
"I believe that is a correct assessment Harry, but the ministry would never pay for it." The headmaster said.
"Who said the ministry was going to pay?"
"Harry, that's a lot of money."
"So, I've got a lot of money, why not use it for something useful?"
"What are you two talking about?" Mrs Weasley asked.
"I'm going to set up a fund to arrange for the distribution of portkeys as I've described, just to be on the safe side I'm going to make it a straight 350,000 galleons to start with and add more if needed." Harry stated to the room as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You have that much money?" Rose asked in awe, her adopted parents were rich, but not that rich.
"WE, are that bloody rich we could give away several million each to different causes and the only difference to the bank balance would be a change in numbers five or six digits from the left." He stated quietly to Rose, so only her and Blaise heard.
"A foundation like that needs a name." Dumbledore stated, his god-forsaken twinkle in overdrive.
"When ever I'm near a dementor I hear my dad telling my mum to get me and run, but there was no where to run, so, if no one has any objections I'd like to call it the Lily and James survival fund. I only put one condition on their distribution, known Death Eaters are not given them and they are not placed in their homes."
After a general murmur of agreement Harry asked if someone could sort out the arrangements for him because he wouldn't have the chance, a minute later, the ministry official from the department of magical transportation stood up. "I'll make the arrangements for you, you'll have to get the ministers approval of course, but if you get me a vault key and the approval I could have them being sent by the 21st, give or take a few days."
"Good, I'll stop by Gringotts tomorrow and have a vault set up for you to access the funds, I'll talk to Hermione about press release of the information, once the shipping date is confirmed I'll have it released through a source that I know won't cross us, or at least she won't once a new prison is set up."
"Won't the minister try to take all of the credit for this project though?" Tonks asked.
"Probably, but mine and Professor Dumbledore's names carry a lot of weight now we've been proven to be telling the truth, he attempts to take the credit and I'll provide documents that prove the money came from my vault and went into a vault I set up. So I'll Just blackmail him, or get him kicked straight out of office. Decisions, decisions." He said.
"Not very Gryffindor of you Potter, more...Slytherin." Snape said trying to get a rise out of him.
"Yeah, well...the hat that suggested it." Harry said with a smirk. "But I'd rather leave it to the professionals, I just let my Slytherin side out every once in a while...must be why I break the rules so much."
"You lying little brat, you could never get into Slytherin, your too stupid."
"Crabbe and Goyle aren't?" Blaise retorted.
"They're smarter than him."
"In your little dream world maybe." she snapped back. "Just 'cause Harry looks like his father doesn't mean he's a carbon copy of him. From what I've heard of his parents, he's more like his mother."
"Enough, all of you, Severus, I must once again ask that you get past your childish grudge. As for you two, you should show Professor Snape his due respect."
"We'll show it once he drops his grudge against me."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The rest of the meeting was rather boring, mainly recruiting progress reports. Once it ended, Harry, Rose and Blaise went to bed. Blaise being in bed with Harry had become so common that no one said anything about it anymore.
The next morning was chaos, the only two to sleep in were the only ones that needed to pack, but with everyone else, including Harry when he got back from his trip to Gringotts, roped in to help, they were ready to set off for Kings Cross Station at 10 am, early for once.
The group walked as quickly as they could and arrived at around 10:30, of course Harry had to explain how to get on to the platform to Rose which took the best part of 15 minutes.
Then Harry spotted someone he didn't expect to see there; looking decidedly nervous as she searched the crowd for someone was his Aunt Petunia.
As he approached her, she spotted him and her expression changed to one of nervous fear.
"Hello Aunt Petunia, who are you looking for?"
"You. I wanted to speak to you before going to your school. I was hoping to get some answers about what happened to our home."
"Oh, well it's hard to explain, I suppose it's easiest to say that Voldemort used a very powerful beam of energy to smash the house because he though I was there."
"Oh, well...I also wanted to apologise. I know it's too late now, but I'm sorry for the way we treated you, what you said that dinner time got me thinking, I was younger than your mum, and was taken in by the stereotypes of witches made by fairytales, so when I got my Hogwarts letter, I refused to go." She was tearing up by now, but she went on.
"And grew to hate your mum because she could accept it, she didn't once think bad things about it. I thought she was a freak because she accepted who she was all those years ago, when I couldn't. I'm so sorry about everything, so sorry that I didn't treat you properly." She was pouring tears out by this point and Harry couldn't help but at least give her the chance to redeem herself.
"Aunt Petunia, I'd like you to meet my sister, Rose this is Aunt Petunia."
"Hello Aunt Petunia, it's nice to meet you." she said as polite as possible.
"H...Hello Rose."
"Aunt Petunia, you said that you didn't accept the fact that you're a witch, does that mean that you accept it now?" Harry asked curiously. "And what about Dudley?"
"Dudley isn't a wizard, and I accept that I'm a witch now."
"How would you like me to teach you magic next summer?" he asked unsurely.
"I'd love to learn...you'd better go now, it's five to eleven. Goodbye Harry."
"Goodbye Aunt Petunia." Harry said as he turned to enter the platform.
"Goodbye." Rose said as she walked behind Harry.
Finally reaching the platform and the famous red Hogwarts express, which was swarming with Aurors to ensure that Death Eaters were not present, after saying their goodbyes and several hugs all round from Mrs. Weasley. The group was onboard the train with seconds to spare before it set off.
A/N: My sister has pointed out all of the errors in chapters 0 (prologue) to 11, I have corrected those errors and slightly altered several of the chapters, for the better I hope.
Reviewers:
Terris1: I never even thought about that, with your permission I'd like to think about it and see if I can make it work.
Aleh: I'm working on my grammar, but I think I'm fighting a losing battle there.
Chapter 13: Conversations.
On august 28th, their booklists arrived, but, no matter how much Harry wanted to go, the order refused to let him and his friends go to Diagon alley.
With the book lists were the prefect badges for Ron and Hermione, who seeing the letters nearly hyperventilated in worry that she hadn't made prefect again. Ron naturally didn't care less.
Blaise nearly passed out when a shiny silver badge with the Slytherin crest and a letter 'P' on it dropped out of her envelope, it appeared that Parkinson was no longer a prefect.
Seconds later she had a smirk on her face as she whispered in Harry's ear, judging by how red his face went, the rest of the people in the room decided that they would rather not know how she was going to abuse her new position as a prefect.
When a prefect badge dropped out of her letter, Ginny looked like she didn't know weather to be happy about it or cry because she couldn't help Harry with his recently formed 'marauders reborn', that is until Harry pointed to Remus and simply said. "You know Prowler, he was a prefect."
Hearing this, Hermione didn't know whether to berate them or join them, remembering the conversation they had when they became animagi, Harry wanted to set up a group of pranksters to protect the younger students from the bullies like Malfoy, hearing this the lot of them had asked where the contract was, to which Harry replied that they should ask Hermione to make one since she did such a good job on the last one.
Their forms really did fit their personalities, or at least part of it, Hermione was a domestic tabby cat, incredibly smart and loyal, yet not particularly aggressive. Ron was a red timber wolf, while not being the smartest animal around, they are incredibly loyal to the pack and will face any level of danger to protect them. Ginny was a huge lioness, smart yet viciously protective of her family.
From their forms they earned their nicknames, Ron was 'Redwood', Hermione became 'Tabitha', or 'Tabs' for short, Ginny got called 'Prowler'.
The forms helped them in more than one way, especially when Harry discovered that they could take on any of their forms characteristics while in human form, for example, Harry could fire-flash around, or change his eyes to those of a lion for better night vision or an eagles for enhanced vision, he could take on the lions muscle structure allowing him to move faster, jump higher, a lot higher, the things they could change were almost endless.
They had asked McGonagall if it was possible to change individual parts of the body into that of their forms, she said that it was impossible, so they decided to keep that little ability a secret.
Unfortunately, Neville and Luna had been unavailable to join them, so Harry was going to teach them at Hogwarts, while re-teaching the others Occlumency, it turned out that Snape had let his personal feelings get in the way of his teaching again.
Harry had had some fun teasing Ron and Hermione about how he would hate for the trio to fall apart and that he wanted it to stick around forever, of course the rest soon joined in, playing along until Ron and Hermione finally decided that they had better get it over with and tell him.
Harry was extremely pleased with his efforts to look like he was upset, he managed it for all of 2 seconds before he couldn't hold it in any more and he finally burst out laughing, but having turned his back on his friends they thought that the shaking shoulders was him crying, when he couldn't keep it quiet any longer he turned around and gasped out: "I'm really sorry, but you should have seen your faces."
Then he dissolved in laughter again, the couple stood nearby didn't know what to do, on one hand Harry was obviously insane and needed help, on the other he was their friend, so they stuck their heads out of the door and shouted for help.
When it came, they just asked Harry if he had been informed of the fact his best friends were a couple, that promptly set him off again as he nodded, after a few minutes he had calmed down enough to apologise to them, but it was only fair that the two prefects in the group (they hadn't got their letters at this point) be the first victims, and this was the perfect opportunity.
They didn't speak to Harry for precisely 5 hours 36 minutes and 5 seconds: Rose timed it.
Once the evening august 31st rolled around Harry, Blaise, Rose and Hermione had packed everything up ready to go to Hogwarts, Ron and Ginny on the other hand just dumped their stuff in their rooms, they'd pack in the morning before walking to the station like last year, except no snuffles bouncing around.
But just as they got settled in out of the way of the order meeting that was about to start, the whole group had been asked to come down to the kitchen to see professor Dumbledore, complying, they found most of the order there.
"Excuse me professor, but why do you want to see us?" Harry asked curiously.
"Well Harry, first I'd like to know why you, Ms Potter and Ms Zabini aren't attending your Occlumency lessons." Dumbledore replied in a slightly reprimanding tone.
"We don't need them, what would you like next?"
"What do you mean you don't need them, you have to be able to block out Voldemort."
"Standard Occlumency shields don't work on me since I'm an Empath, before you ask why I didn't tell you it's because I only discovered the ability this summer...and you don't need to know, your not my guardian, you have no say in what I do and do not tell you. Now next point." He stated.
"I am going to test all of your Occlumency shields to determine whether or not it is safe to let you in on the meetings." He said, only to be met with outrage from many in the order.
"They're too young!"
"They're not trained enough!"
"They have no experience!"
Were some of the things been shouted around, but the loudest voice was Mrs Weasley. "You can't, it'll disrupt their education and put them in unnecessary risk!"
"SILENCE!" professor Dumbledore bellowed at the room before continuing once silence had descended. "They will not be going on active missions, but they disserve the information that could save their lives, their training is not a problem as Harry had the whole summer to train his sister and Ms Zabini how to fight, no doubt this year they will learn how to operate as part of a team, no their education should actually increase as they will have more information to make decisions on and less to assume."
"That still doesn't account for their lack of experience." One of the order spoke up confident that his participation in the Azkaban battle was more experience than all of these upstarts put together.
"No it doesn't does it, they all have varying degrees of experience, the most belongs to Mr Potter, at 11 he stopped Voldemort from stealing the philosophers stone, at 12 he killed a basilisk with the sword of Godric Gryffindor, at 13 he and Ms Granger rescued a condemned hippogriff and then an innocent man, at 14 he won one of the most dangerous tournaments in a century, then went on to duel Voldemort himself, then last year he risked his life doing what he though was the right thing to do at the time and through his leadership skills got his friends out alive, injured yes but nonetheless alive. How is that for experience Mr Whitethorn?" Dumbledore asked, his eyes twinkling overtime.
"Good, now Harry, you first, legilimens." Dumbledore said.
Harry was shocked at first; he hadn't even seen him draw his wand! But then the spell connected and Harry felt Dumbledore gently probing his mind, sensing what he thought to be a way in, he hit hard on Harry's outer filters that had just shifted slightly.
"Very good Harry, who may I ask, taught you to shift the shields slightly when I found a weakness?"
"No one, I felt you probing on my filters, when you felt what you thought was weak, you hit hard, to do that you had to pull back slightly, as you pulled back I strengthened that part and let you crash straight into the filters, it was just an idea I had when you started probing."
"Why do you call you shields filters?"
"Because that's what they are, they let my mental abilities out while protecting my thoughts, if you had gotten past them you would have seen my thoughts and unimportant memories, like what I had for breakfast, the colour clothes I was wearing last Friday, so on, my more important memories are contained inside a shield, not a filter that can be worked around, but a proper shield that is reinforced every night after I sort my fresh memories out, that takes about 10 seconds now that I'm used to doing it subconsciously, if I were to be overcome by the imperious curse my shields would still hold, so professor, do they satisfy?"
"No, they don't 'satisfy'." Dumbledore said. "They exceed anything ever thought of, I thought of using a second shield over important memories, but it was too hard to maintain two, you, I can see have the perfect shielding technique, far more effective than my own, as it also allows you to use you empathy. You pass, welcome to the order of the phoenix, and please take a seat. Ms Zabini, your next..."
As Harry expected, Blaise and Rose passed the test with flying colours, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were in need of help, before they left Harry offered to teach them personally on how to create Occlumency shields.
The rest of the meeting was basically a formal welcome to the order, introduction to the people and their organisation, the order was a lot more complex than Harry had thought at first, there were three main sections to it, the largest was combat, a total of thirty witches and wizard were in there currently, then was intelligence, many of the Aurors that were in the combat section had secondary roles in this one, a total of 15 people, including 10 that were combatants, the last was leadership, Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley, Mr Weasley and about 5 more were the ones that lead the combatants in battle and had access to all of the intelligence that came in and made the decisions, when the introductions had been made Harry turned to professor Dumbledore and spoke up.
"You are recruiting more people aren't you? We're outnumbered by at least two to one, say about 250 to 300 DEs against about 100 Aurors and about 20 people that are in the order and aren't Aurors, to put it simply we need an army, a big one at that."
"Yes we are recruiting Harry." Dumbledore assured the young man.
"Good, what is the ministry doing to protect peoples homes?"
"They're sending out leaflets on self defence and the like."
"Useless." Harry stated in disgust.
"What would you know about what is and isn't useless?" Snape asked in an acidic tone.
"Do you think the Death Eaters will attack in ones or twos? No they'll attack in groups of 5 or 6, six DEs willing to use the unforgivables against two parents that know basic self defence, those two people will be given confidence by those leaflets, but they'll give them the wrong sort of confidence, it'll make them think that they can fight, so they stand when they should run, the ministry is helping kill those people, not protect them."
"They don't need to know how to fight, they need to know that they can run, even if the floo network is cut off and anti-apparition wards are in place, if I was in the ministry I'd be sending free portkeys to each house with a witch or wizard in it, whether there first year muggleborns or aging purebloods."
"How much is a portkey to the ministry to make?" Harry finally finished.
"Depends on how far they go, from the northern tip of Scotland to the ministry is about thirty galleons, from here to the ministry is about 1 galleon, why?" an order member that works in the ministry's department of magical transportation answered.
"Not two way portkeys, one way only."
"About 2 galleons each, no matter the range, why? The ministry would never agree to it."
"About how many homes are there in the country with a witch or wizard living in it?" Harry asked the room in general, ignoring the ministry official.
"Thousands, five, six thousand at least, probably more." Someone guessed.
"Lets say twenty thousand then, just to be safe, that's forty thousand galleons..." Harry said before trailing off in thought.
"What do you have in mind Harry?" Tonks said, successfully breaking him out of his thoughts.
"How many adult witches and wizards are there in the country?"
"Thirty thousand upwards, why?" someone else guessed.
"Lets say theoretically that there are fifty thousand adult witches and wizards in the country, any one could be attacked while out shopping or in their own homes, correct?" at their nods he continued. "If each one were to have a multi-use one way portkey to their home, then if they were attacked in the street they could portkey straight home, one password activated, multi-use portkey to their living room would cost...what? Five galleons each."
"That's 250,000 galleons, their children could be carried by their parents as anything or anyone being carried or touched by a person using a portkey is brought along with them, if their home was to be attacked then the family could gather in the living room and use a one way, one use portkey to the ministry, that's 40,000 galleons, a total of 290,000 galleons to keep people alive, correct?"
"I believe that is a correct assessment Harry, but the ministry would never pay for it." The headmaster said.
"Who said the ministry was going to pay?"
"Harry, that's a lot of money."
"So, I've got a lot of money, why not use it for something useful?"
"What are you two talking about?" Mrs Weasley asked.
"I'm going to set up a fund to arrange for the distribution of portkeys as I've described, just to be on the safe side I'm going to make it a straight 350,000 galleons to start with and add more if needed." Harry stated to the room as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You have that much money?" Rose asked in awe, her adopted parents were rich, but not that rich.
"WE, are that bloody rich we could give away several million each to different causes and the only difference to the bank balance would be a change in numbers five or six digits from the left." He stated quietly to Rose, so only her and Blaise heard.
"A foundation like that needs a name." Dumbledore stated, his god-forsaken twinkle in overdrive.
"When ever I'm near a dementor I hear my dad telling my mum to get me and run, but there was no where to run, so, if no one has any objections I'd like to call it the Lily and James survival fund. I only put one condition on their distribution, known Death Eaters are not given them and they are not placed in their homes."
After a general murmur of agreement Harry asked if someone could sort out the arrangements for him because he wouldn't have the chance, a minute later, the ministry official from the department of magical transportation stood up. "I'll make the arrangements for you, you'll have to get the ministers approval of course, but if you get me a vault key and the approval I could have them being sent by the 21st, give or take a few days."
"Good, I'll stop by Gringotts tomorrow and have a vault set up for you to access the funds, I'll talk to Hermione about press release of the information, once the shipping date is confirmed I'll have it released through a source that I know won't cross us, or at least she won't once a new prison is set up."
"Won't the minister try to take all of the credit for this project though?" Tonks asked.
"Probably, but mine and Professor Dumbledore's names carry a lot of weight now we've been proven to be telling the truth, he attempts to take the credit and I'll provide documents that prove the money came from my vault and went into a vault I set up. So I'll Just blackmail him, or get him kicked straight out of office. Decisions, decisions." He said.
"Not very Gryffindor of you Potter, more...Slytherin." Snape said trying to get a rise out of him.
"Yeah, well...the hat that suggested it." Harry said with a smirk. "But I'd rather leave it to the professionals, I just let my Slytherin side out every once in a while...must be why I break the rules so much."
"You lying little brat, you could never get into Slytherin, your too stupid."
"Crabbe and Goyle aren't?" Blaise retorted.
"They're smarter than him."
"In your little dream world maybe." she snapped back. "Just 'cause Harry looks like his father doesn't mean he's a carbon copy of him. From what I've heard of his parents, he's more like his mother."
"Enough, all of you, Severus, I must once again ask that you get past your childish grudge. As for you two, you should show Professor Snape his due respect."
"We'll show it once he drops his grudge against me."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The rest of the meeting was rather boring, mainly recruiting progress reports. Once it ended, Harry, Rose and Blaise went to bed. Blaise being in bed with Harry had become so common that no one said anything about it anymore.
The next morning was chaos, the only two to sleep in were the only ones that needed to pack, but with everyone else, including Harry when he got back from his trip to Gringotts, roped in to help, they were ready to set off for Kings Cross Station at 10 am, early for once.
The group walked as quickly as they could and arrived at around 10:30, of course Harry had to explain how to get on to the platform to Rose which took the best part of 15 minutes.
Then Harry spotted someone he didn't expect to see there; looking decidedly nervous as she searched the crowd for someone was his Aunt Petunia.
As he approached her, she spotted him and her expression changed to one of nervous fear.
"Hello Aunt Petunia, who are you looking for?"
"You. I wanted to speak to you before going to your school. I was hoping to get some answers about what happened to our home."
"Oh, well it's hard to explain, I suppose it's easiest to say that Voldemort used a very powerful beam of energy to smash the house because he though I was there."
"Oh, well...I also wanted to apologise. I know it's too late now, but I'm sorry for the way we treated you, what you said that dinner time got me thinking, I was younger than your mum, and was taken in by the stereotypes of witches made by fairytales, so when I got my Hogwarts letter, I refused to go." She was tearing up by now, but she went on.
"And grew to hate your mum because she could accept it, she didn't once think bad things about it. I thought she was a freak because she accepted who she was all those years ago, when I couldn't. I'm so sorry about everything, so sorry that I didn't treat you properly." She was pouring tears out by this point and Harry couldn't help but at least give her the chance to redeem herself.
"Aunt Petunia, I'd like you to meet my sister, Rose this is Aunt Petunia."
"Hello Aunt Petunia, it's nice to meet you." she said as polite as possible.
"H...Hello Rose."
"Aunt Petunia, you said that you didn't accept the fact that you're a witch, does that mean that you accept it now?" Harry asked curiously. "And what about Dudley?"
"Dudley isn't a wizard, and I accept that I'm a witch now."
"How would you like me to teach you magic next summer?" he asked unsurely.
"I'd love to learn...you'd better go now, it's five to eleven. Goodbye Harry."
"Goodbye Aunt Petunia." Harry said as he turned to enter the platform.
"Goodbye." Rose said as she walked behind Harry.
Finally reaching the platform and the famous red Hogwarts express, which was swarming with Aurors to ensure that Death Eaters were not present, after saying their goodbyes and several hugs all round from Mrs. Weasley. The group was onboard the train with seconds to spare before it set off.
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