Chapter 24

The Portkey trip to Potter Manor was a tense, silent and uncomfortable affair.

The Delacours had been invited to visit the place where their daughter would be spending her summer, but would now have made polite excuses and gone back to France if the circumstances were different. Only Fleur's unspoken decision to go with the powerful young wizard in spite of what he'd just done prevented them from leaving.

Fleur, though also stunned by the violent display, was less shocked. She had already seen him leave those three Death Eaters to die in the lake and had been aware that Harry had a vindictive streak. His killing of Malfoy had scared her, but not enough to drive her away. She would talk to him first and decide on the future afterwards.

But not today. Today, her sister needed her, so she retired to a room with her family and did her best to calm them down.

Harry and Luna went for the master bedroom, Sirius and Penny following behind them.

Not a word was said as Harry took off his new basilisk hide boots, sat crosslegged on the bed and closed his eyes. Luna meanwhile hopped into the sex swing that Tonks had bought for Harry's birthday almost a year ago now and used is as a… well, as a swing.

"What the hell was that, Harry?" Sirius finally asked, inwardly impressed by his own calmness.

"That was me killing an enemy." Harry replied, already in a meditative state to regain his emotional equilibrium. It had taken a great deal of restraint on his part to not kill Draco along with his father after being attacked. No matter how much he practiced it, drawing on the Sun's power always strained his self-control.

"You told me that you'd only make a few shocking statements, not that you would kill someone!" Sirius retorted hotly.

"I didn't tell you because you would have gotten in the way." Harry countered.

The brutally honest words sent Sirius into a hurt silence. Yes, he would have objected to this plan and may have tried to do it in Harry's stead if he learned of it, but being told so bluntly still hurt.

"You said that he was the one who sent the other assassin after you." Penny interjected. "Was that true?"

"It was." Harry nodded. "I think he was also the one to manipulate those idiots at the World Cup to attack us. In hindsight, that was too specifically focused on us to be random Death Eater hostility."

"How do you know?" Sirius demanded, rejoining the conversation. "You said you'd tell me later, well it's later."

"Adrastia told me."

"You did this based on her word?!"

"Yes."

"She could have been lying, trying to manipulate you!" Sirius was getting aggravated by his godson's calmness.

"Oh, she's definitely trying to manipulate me, but not by lying. She didn't have any solid proof, but the circumstantial evidence and reasoning made perfect sense. I expect she'll be turning up sometime in the next few days again."

"Harry, you killed a man based on the word of a woman who's idea of fun it is to find a rich man, turn him into a doormat and then get rid of him when she gets bored. Why are you not seeing the problem here?" Sirius asked slowly.

"I don't care what she does with people I don't know, as long as she keeps her games away from me and mine." Harry replied uncaringly. "The only problem I saw was that Lucius Malfoy was trying to kill me and you, and he'd already cost Luna her father. He needed to die."

Luna's swinging faltered a bit at the mention of her father, but she determinedly resumed it. She had a new family now and her daddy was back with mummy, she wasn't going to be sad.

"I'm worried about you, Harry. The other times you killed, it was self-defense, this time you deliberately set out to kill a man." Sirius said after a moment.

Penny nodded in agreement. Harry had scared her with what he'd done and it was the first time that she began to wonder about who exactly she was working for.

"And what else was I supposed to do? Let him keep trying?" Harry demanded. "There was no proof and with Fudge in his pocket, Malfoy might have wiggled out of it even if there was. I'm all ears if you have an alternative."

Neither Sirius nor Penny had one.

"I killed someone that was, at minimum, a murderer to make sure he wouldn't be trying to send any more assassins our way and I did it in such a way that anyone else will think twice before trying it again. It's not perfect and it will undoubtedly have at least some of the sheep thinking that I'm a rising Dark Lord or something equally stupid, but it was the best I could do in the situation. I'm sorry that I couldn't tell either of you what I was going to do, but I'm not sorry that I did it."

The older wizard sighed in defeat, conceding that Harry was right. His godson had probably chewed over the situation exhaustively before doing it, as usual and then made the most practical decision, also as usual. It made arguing with him annoyingly hard, just like it had been with Lily. It wasn't even that he disagreed with Harry on the need to do something. He was just… worried.

Penny too had some of her worries settled by his words. The sudden brutality of it had still shocked her, but she had already experienced first hand what Lucius Malfoy could be like.

"It's just… your parents wouldn't have wanted this for you, Harry." Sirius muttered, slumping in defeat.

"I'm sure my parents wouldn't have wanted to die either, bu we know how that ended." That was a low blow and Harry knew it, but he didn't want to deal with Sirius worrying about morality. The mention of his friends deaths and of their killer, Voldemort, whom Malfoy had followed, would remind his godfather of who exactly he had killed this day.

Harry spent the next several hours in his room, not exactly hiding, but definitely making sure that he didn't encounter any of his guests, especially the Delacour parents.

He wasn't afraid of them or what they thought of him, but he didn't want to deal with irrational, half-panicked parents either. He had seen Gabrielle after his duel with Malfoy and surmised that they must not have known what exactly an honor duel entailed, or else they would have taken her away. France was a more modern sort of magical country than the UK after all. Unless it was normal to allow veela children to watch battles to the death, but he found that unlikely.

He'd have the inevitable talk with them tomorrow, after they had calmed down and Fleur had a chance to talk to them. He knew that his veela friend would be less shocked by the senior Malfoy's death and give them a little perspective, even if she didn't know the whole story.

His alone time was interrupted by the pop of a house elf.

"Master Harry sir, missy Tonks is here." Teeny announced. "She bes looking mad."

Huh, he hadn't seen that coming. "Thank you, Teeny."

The happy little house elf popped away again and left Harry to his thoughts, for what little time he had until his ex-girlfriend barged in. Dora still had a standing invitation to the manor, but he honestly hadn't expected her to come haring after him for that duel as soon as her shift was over.

It wasn't more than a few seconds before he heard her stomping up the hallway and throwing open the door.

"What the hell, Harry?" She demanded. She was dressed in a black tank top(with no bra), ripped jeans, a pair of calf high black boots with a light enchantment on them and her vividly orange-purple hair was spiked around her head like an 80s rock star.

Harry smiled at her. "Hello, Dora. You're looking extra beautiful today."

"Don't try to flatter your way out of this!" She said sternly, ignoring that she was, in fact, flattered.

"Your boobs seem to like it, they perked right up." He pointed out.

Tonks grabbed at her boobs possesively and looked at them sternly. "Don't listen to him, girls!"

"It's too late, Dora. If you didn't want your boobs to rebel against you and start listening to me, then you should have paid more attention to those puppies." Harry said faux sinisterly.

Tonks glared at him for a few moments, but the increasing pinkness of her hair gave away her amusement

Finally she huffed and relaxed her posture. "Alright, enough about my boobs. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that I didn't want my life to be constantly under threat by Malfoy." Harry frowned, getting serious.

"And your first thought was killing him in front of hundreds of witnesses?" She asked incredulously.

"No, I just figured it would have the most impact." He admitted.

Tonks snorted. It had impact alright. "And it doesn't bother you at all that you essentially planned out a murder?"

"It was Malfoy. The man was a Death Eater and I'm not going to agonize over it." Harry shrugged.

Tonks nodded with a small sigh. She was familiar with Harry's pragmatic outlook. He hadn't been overly affected by any of his other kills either. At first she'd thought he was just bottling it up, but he was either really good at bottling it up, or he actually didn't have the expected moral dilemmas about killing in self-defense.

Though this Malfoy situation was only self-defense in the loosest possible interpretation of the term.

"This is going to set off a huge shitstorm, you know that right?" She asked.

"It's a good thing we'll be in the Caribbean then, isn't it?" Harry smirked.

"About that….is Fleur coming too?" Tonks had seen the veela and her family going after Harry so it seemed likely.

"She is."

"Finally got together with her, did you?" She asked sardonically, ignoring the small flare of familiar jealousy. Being replaced sucked, but she had no right to complain.

"Nah, we're just friends." Harry said with a small shrug.

"So you're not sleeping with her?" Tonks asked with some incredulity.

"Friends with benefits." He corrected.

"Is she not relationship material?" The Metamorphmagus asked, unable to help her curiousity.

"It's not that, I just don't want to rush into anything." He shrugged, getting uncomfortable with the way that the conversation was going. Any more and they'd start talking about feelings .

"And yet you've already met her parents." She countered, amused. "You haven't even met my parents."

"I'd have prefered not to meet her parents either, but I could hardly tell them to bugger off." Harry grumbled. "I even have them staying over right now because Fleur is spending the summer with me."

"Oh." Tonks blinked. She hadn't run into anyone on the way up to his room. "So I could have barged in on you talking or shagging Fleur or something?"

"Theoretically." He shrugged, smiling.

"That would've been awkward."

"Quite."

A few seconds of silence followed before Tonks spoke again.

"So, Fleur's joining us on Black Island…."

"Yep."

"Are you sure you still want me there?" She asked, going for a joking tone. "I imagine that an ex-girlfriend would make things complicated."

"I don't see why, it's not like I'm dating any of them." Harry shrugged.

Tonks wasn't sure if he was really that naïve or just deliberately ignoring the explosive potential. "If you say so."

"So, did you want to stay for dinner?" He asked after a few slightly uncomfortable seconds. "It would be just the two of us since I'm kind of avoiding everyone to give them time to cool off. Or we could go out if you'd like."

"Probably not a good idea." Tonks said, though it was tempting. Harry might have friends with benefits, but she was still single and bored and horny. Going on a pseudo-date with him could end up leading to all sorts of complications that neither of them needed in their lives right now. Being friends with an ex was hard enough without sex involved. She knew that from prior experience.

"I guess you're right." Harry conceded, but didn't really mean it. The easy conversation reminded him so much of the time before things had started going bad between them that he'd been feeling almost optimistic again.

What was that quote again? 'Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.' Sounds about right.

The whole situation was stupid, really. They had broken up over four months ago now, and he'd stopped moping about it a few weeks into that time. He was usually better about letting the past go than this. Of course, he was usually also not still feeling guilty for performing Soul Magic on an unknowing person. On an unknowing person that he really liked at any rate.

"Of course I'm right." Tonks puffed up her chest, wanting to put an end to the slight gloom that had descended just now.

"Careful there, Dora. I hear large breasts can cause back problems." Harry said dryly, gesturing at her now DD-cup chest.

"Shows what you know." She replied haugtily. "Metamorphmagi don't get back problems."

"Well in that case inflate away, Bubbles."

"What did you just call me?!" Tonks demanded, doing her best to keep an angry expression on her face.

"Bubbles the inflatable doll?" He said back innocently. "Or would you prefer Dora the Sexplorer?

Coming from anyone else, she would have been extremely offended by that, but she was familiar with Harry's acerbic sense of humor and knew that he didn't mean anything by it. That he could crack jokes about her abilities without walking on eggshells or being an arse had always been something she'd liked. That didn't mean that he was going to get away with it though.

"Why you little…..!" She growled and pounced, her body growing taller and bulkier as she did so.

"This is new." Harry grunted in effort as the Metamorphmagus continued changing until she was 6'1" and had noticeable biceps. He was having to exert quite a bit of effort to keep her at bay.

"I've been practicing." Tonks grunted back, continuing to shunt non-critical mass, such as body fat and reproductive organs, into muscle. Her breasts flattened and became distinctly male looking pectorals, which was as weird as ever, but not as weird as suddenly being genderless. It was worth it though, because it allowed her to slap more muscle onto her bones.

"This is so unfair." Harry complained with a strained voice half a minute of roughhousing later. The Metamorphmagus now looked like a serious body builder and had the strength to match. He was very strong for his size and build, but his lightly muscled form couldn't stand up to that even with the runic enhancement.

"Deal with it." She grinned fiercely. Her head might be starting to pound from the effort of sustaining a transformation so far outside of her usual body mass, but the sweet taste of victory made it all worth it.

And then, with all the dramatic effect of an avalanche, her jeans burst open at the seams, exposing pretty much everything. They hadn't been fully skintight jeans, but they had definitely been meant for female legs and not the tree trunks she'd turned them into. It was pure luck that her boots had been bought in Diagon Alley and had a resizing enchantment on them, a must have for a Metamorphmagus really.

Tonks yelped loudly and jumped away, covering her exposed groin with her hands. Her morphed muscles quickly deflated and left her standing there in a badly stretched tank top and ruined pants.

Meanwhile, Harry had collapsed into helpless hysterics and was cackling madly, tears streaming from his eyes from the force of his laughter.

"It's not funny!" Tonks wailed, her entire body turning as red as her hair, which was now a color that would make a lobster look pink.

Harry did not reply verbally, unless crawling across the floor and nearly blacking out from oxygen deprivation counted.

The next day.

Harry woke up with the rising of the Sun as usual, which was pretty early these days since it was summer. Luna was still asleep, but was fortunately not stuck to him like a limpet as she sometimes was, so it wasn't hard to extricate himself.

He smiled as he went about the usual morning rituals, remembering yesterday. Not so much killing Malfoy as the dramatic visit of his ex-girlfriend. Dora had left shortly after her spectacular wardrobe malfunction, but the fun atmosphere had lingered for hours. He'd missed screwing around with her like that.

Not even knowing that he'd be facing questions from Fleur's parents soon put a dent in his mood. It wasn't like they could do anything anyway. They were probably awake already actually. Veela had the same kind of internal alarm clock that he did.

With that in mind, he made his way down to the sitting room and settled in to a squashy armchair to wait. They'd show up eventually.

It was no more than twenty minutes later when he felt the approach of a familiar Light.

"'Arry? What are you doing in 'ere?" Fleur asked as she entered the room and saw him sitting all by himself with his eyes closed.

"I was waiting for you." He answered honestly.

"Strange, I could swear you were avoiding me." She said pointedly.

"I was avoiding your parents, and that was just to give them a chance to get over their initial freak out." Harry corrected.

Fleur had to admit that 'freak out' was a valid description for her parents yesterday. Her father more so than her mother, but both had been in quite a state. It had taken her hours to calm them down. It was incredibly rude to have guests over at one's home and then ignore them, but it was a fact that with Gabrielle so frightened and her parents on edge that conversation would have been tense to say the least.

She took a seat on the arm of Harry's chosen seat as she asked her next question. "Did you really 'ave to do that in front of Gabi?"

"I would have prefered not to." Harry admitted. "But I never would have gotten a chance quite like that again."

"And 'e really was ze one 'oo sent ze assassin in ze lake?" Fleur didn't think he'd been lying, but wanted to make sure anyway.

"Mhm."

"'Ow did you find out?"

"I have my ways." Harry answered with a shrug. He didn't want Fleur and Adrastia meeting, it seemed like a bad idea for some reason. Keeping them apart when the manipulative witch inevitably showed up would be a must.

Fleur pursed her lips. Harry was being secretive again.

She decided it was better not to ask, as usual. "You didn't give me a tour of your manor yesterday."

"You know, I never understood the point of giving someone a tour around a house." He commented. "It's just a house, not a freaking museum. It has bedrooms, bathrooms and a few other types of rooms and that's it."

"Eet eez to make guest comfortable in your home and not leave zem stumbling about." Fleur told him, a wry smile pulling at her lips. "Like we would 'ave done if not for Penny and Sirius."

"I suppose there is that." Harry conceded.

The rest of the Delacour family showed up at that point, as signaled by their footsteps and a frightened gasp from Gabrielle.

"Good morning." Harry greeted, ignoring the way that Fleur's little sister was hiding behind her father's legs.

"Good morning." The two elder Delacours returned, visibly tense in his presence.

"Fleur, I think your parents want to talk to me alone. Could you take your sister out of here? Call for Teeny if you need anything." Harry muttered so that only she could hear.

Fleur nodded and quickly led Gabrielle away.

"Well, this is awkward." Harry said blandly once they were alone. "Please have a seat, I'm sure you have questions for me."

They moved to a couch and sat on the very edge of it, as if ready to bolt at a moment's notice. But they were sitting down, so that was something.

"Alright, I guess I'll start." He muttered. "I'm sorry that you had to see that yesterday, but I had to get rid of that man before he could try to kill me again."

"Could you not have had him arrested?" Sebastien asked.

Harry snorted at the absurd notion. "I'm sure you have some idea of how corrupt the British Ministry of Magic is. He would have weaseled out of it even if I had any tangible proof, for no other reason than because he was a rich pureblood."

"And killing him like that was the only alternative?" Apolline asked, not quite censuringly.

"Maybe not." Harry admitted. "Maybe I could have found some rock solid evidence and manipulated the current Minister to convict him, or maybe I could have killed him in a more clandestine fashion, but he was too dangerous to be kept alive for any longer than necessary. I wanted him gone as soon as possible and doing it publically like that will warn off anyone that might have had similar ideas."

"Gabrielle is only eight, she shouldn't have had to see that." Sebastien said, his tone growing heated.

"There were plenty of kids there that shouldn't have seen it." Harry responded blandly.

"Yes, and I'm sure you can imagine why we aren't comfortable with Fleur staying with you anymore." Apolline took over.

"Nobody is forcing her to." Harry shrugged, choosing not to mention their little bet.

"You have been sleeping with her." It wasn't a question.

"For about a month now, yes."

"How is it that you remain unaffected by her Allure?" Sebastien asked suspiciously.

"Bothers you, does it?" Harry asked back with a humorless grin. "I'm sure it must have made you feel happy to know that your daughter would be able to control whichever man she chose the same way that your wife controls you."

"I do not control my husband." Apolline said stiffly.

"Really?" Harry asked skeptically. "I know there's a lot of romantic tripe going around about veela, but the truth is that you are essentially watered down succubi. I'm sure that you're happy together, but it doesn't change the fact that you are the one with more power in the relationship, Apolline." Even a veela's enthusiasm for giving blowjobs would be enough for some men, never mind all the magical bits.

He could see that neither of them were especially pleased by his words, but he didn't much care. He'd spoken the truth and wasn't going to sugarcoat things in an effort to get their approval.

"Excuse us for a minute, I need to have a word with my wife." Sebastien said.

"By all means." Harry said and got up. "Come find me if you have anything more to say."

"I don't like him." Sebastien said as soon as they were alone.

"I know, I wasn't too fond of his attitude either." Apolline agreed.

Harry had been right. It was a comfort to know that your daughter would have control of the relationship. Sebastien could not fathom ever doing anything to hurt his wife and they had both expected that Fleur would eventually have a man just as devoted to her.

Except he apparently wasn't. Instead, he was disrespectful to them and immune to both the long and short term effects of a veela's magic. It took all their assurances of their daughter's safety in a relationship and threw them out the window. And that was without even factoring in the fact that he had planned out how to kill a man and then gone through with it.

"Why does our daughter seem determined to make my hair turn white before I turn fifty?" Sebastien asked plaintively. "First she says that she wants to go into a dangerous profession like curse-breaking and now she chases after a killer that she can't control."

He knew that his wife was the one who wore the pants in the family, but Sebastien was alright with that. Apolline was a wonderful woman and he loved her immensely. She had explained about the Joining and he knew that he had technically been influenced into feeling that way, but it didn't matter. They were happy together and that was that. It bothered him that Fleur wouldn't have that assurance. It bothered him that he wouldn't have that assurance for her.

Apolline pursed her lips and sighed. The worst part was that she could understand at least some of Fleur's fascination with Harry Potter. His magic was incredible, it would have drawn any veela to him. It wouldn't necessarily have kept them around, but they certainly would have wanted to bed him at least once. It was just poor luck that their eldest daughter liked a bit of danger in her life.

"She told me that he doesn't want a relationship, so she may get tired of him eventually." She said for her husband's benefit, but didn't believe it. In the few conversations that they'd had on the topic so far, Fleur had seemed pretty determined to stay with Harry.

She could even understand why. Apolline may not be happy about what her daughter was getting herself mixed up in, but she understood why. The powerful magic, the good looks and the great sex according to her descriptions would appeal to a veela's base nature, while the dangerous edge and whatever else she knew of him appealed to Fleur's sense of adventure.

"I hope so." Sebastien said.

Apolline gave her husband a weak smile. She had a feeling those hopes were in vain.

A few hours later the rest of the house had woken up and they were sitting down to eat breakfast together.

Apolline and Sebastien had taken their still frightened younger daughter back to France, though not without first extracting a promise from their eldest that she come visit them soon.

Their conversation was interrupted when an owl flew in through the open window and headed straight for Penny, clutching the latest edition of the Daily Prophet .

Harry wasted no time in summoning the newspaper to himself, just barely snatching it from the grasping hands of his godfather.

"Hey, don't hog the paper!" Sirius complained.

"You snooze, you lose." Harry retorted reasonably, taking a look at the front page.

It featured a full page moving picture of himself casting the Forbidden Sun, though it didn't show the effects on the now late Malfoy patriarch. Probably too graphic. Above the picture was a massive headline boldly proclaiming ' Explosive End to the Tri-Wizard Tournament! ' .

"Someone thinks they're being funny." Harry snorted as everyone crowded around him to see.

"The Prophet always thought it was clever with its puns, the plebs." Sirius also snorted.

"It's true though, it really was an explosive end." Luna pointed out.

"Turn ze page already." Fleur said impatiently, backed up by Penny.

"Alright, alright, keep your panties on." Harry said and turned the page.

The first few paragraphs were just a short recap of the tournament and of his victory and it was obvious even in text that the author of the article was rushing through it in an effort to get to the good part.

In a stunning turn of events, Harry Potter announced his emancipation and thus ascension to the title of Lord Potter, followed immediately by a withdrawal from Hogwarts for both himself and his young friend Luna Lovegood.

"But we're the same age now." Luna pouted.

"They never said we weren't, they just conveniently left my age out of it." Harry said wryly.

An even bigger shock came when the current Lord Black, Sirius Orion Black, who is also Harry Potter's godfather, announced his abdication and left the Black family to his godson, who is eligible to inherit it from his grandmother Dorea Potter neé Black.

Now the Lord of two powerful families, the Boy-Who-Lived immediately began to use his new station to 'clean house' as it were. His first act was to dissolve the marriage of Bellatrix Black to Rodolphus Lestrange and banish her from the Black family, leaving the imprisoned Death Eater nameless and disgraced.

His second act was to banish fellow Hogwarts student, Draco Malfoy, from the Black family.

Lastly, he dissolved the marriage between Narcissa Black and Lucius Malfoy on account of him being a Death Eater. Malfoy disputed this accusation, reiterating that he had been forced to serve He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named through the use of the Imperius, but the new Lord Potter dismissed his claims and offered to face him in an honor duel to decide who had the right of it.

Honor duels have long since fallen out of favor, but they remain a valid - if archaic - means of settling serious disputes between the Lords of the Wizengamot. It should be noted that Lord Potter was under no obligation to offer this option as the Malfoy family is not part of the Wizengamot and could not have done anything about the decision.

"I get the feeling that the Daily Prophet is trying very hard to make it clear that they're not accusing me of anything." Harry mused, stopping for a moment.

"And all you had to do to get a little courtesy from them is publically kill someone." Penny said sarcastically. Unlike Harry, who had flatly ignored what the Prophet was doing throughout the year, she had read every issue and been severely annoyed by all the speculation into his love life.

As soon as the duel began, it was clear that Lord Potter had the advantage and was easily the greater wizard.

Because of this, the surprise when Malfoy disarmed him was even greater. It was shortlived however, as Lord Potter immediately demonstrated an immense proficiency in wandless magic, the like of which our world surely has not seen since the time of Merlin himself.

"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't they?" Sirius muttered.

"They're reporters, what do you expect?" Harry snorted.

Malfoy was caught off guard as completely as the spectators and was swiftly defeated. Lord Potter then proceeded to accuse his opponent of attempting to assassinate him so that his son could have inherited the Black family.

When Malfoy did not deny the accusation, Lord Potter finished the duel with an immensely powerful spell he called 'the Forbidden Sun', which is likely of his own creation and was cast wandlessly. Experts theorise that Lord Potter must have an astonishingly massive magical core to allow for the use of such powerful spells with no wand.

Harry sneered at the newspaper. Trust the media to spread ignorance and misinformation. Magical core indeed!

The article went on for only a little while longer, notably absent in any kind of wild speculation about his life that had characterised previous articles about him. It didn't even mention that Fleur had gone with him at the end of that debacle.

All in all, the article had a definite feel of 'please don't come burn our homes down, we're being good'. It was better than them proclaiming him as the next Dark Lord to be sure.

"I wonder how people will react to this?" Harry mused.

Arundel.

" Damn, Harry went all out." Tiana whistled.

"How can you be okay with this?" Jade demanded heatedly. "We're partners with a murderer!"

"It was Malfoy." Bryanna said dismissively. "The bastard would've had us all killed or groveling before his precious pure blood if he could. Good riddance to that."

"And I doubt those accusations about assassination were just hot air." Tiana added.

Bryanna suddenly froze for a moment and then grinned widely. "I just realized that this means we don't have to wait until Harry is seventeen to open our store."

"Hey, you're right!"

Isabel and Jade looked at each other nervously, not understanding why their friends were able to so easily brush off something like this.

The Burrow.

Breakfast was loud a affair at the best of times in the Weasley household, but today was exceptional by any standard.

Ginny stayed quiet as the debate raged around her.

Percy was ranting about Harry being Dark, Ron was alternating between agreeing with him and cheering for Malfoy's death, the twins were whispering heatedly to themselves in a corner, their father was trying to calm things down and their mother was ranting about Harry's upbringing for some reason.

Ginny herself was just sort of glad that she wasn't Harry's friend anymore. The boy she had met on the Hogwarts Express just shy of three years ago couldn't have done this. This new Harry frightened her.

Spinner's End.

Severus had a sour look on his face as he read the newspaper.

The past school year had brought his hatred of Harry Potter soaring to new heights. The brat had been an intolerably entitled bastard the whole year and a bully to boot, even worse than his father really. And he hadn't been able to do anything about it.

He'd only seen the truth with Lucius' death. Harry Potter wasn't much like his father at all and what resemblence he'd once had to his mother had vanished as well.

Harry Potter was far too vicious to be compared to either of his parents.

Well, Severus supposed it didn't matter anymore. The little psychopath was leaving Hogwarts and taking his crazy friend with him. Maybe if he was lucky, Severus would get to see Voldemort and Potter kill each other somewhere down the line. That would be a treat, seeing the two people he hated most in the world tearing each other apart. The only thing that would make it better was if Black got mixed up in it too and ended up being collateral damage.

Ministry of Magic, Minister's office.

Fudge frantically read over the article and hoped it would calm things down a bit. He didn't need any more problems with Dolores imprisoned and Lucius dead. Who would he ask for advice now? Amelia was after the Minister's chair, he was sure of it! Why else would she keep pushing for more funding, more authority, more everything?

Maybe… maybe he could get Harry on board with him? They had worked together before and it had gone well. Yes, that was a good idea. He'd send an owl to the new Lord Potter. It was better than crawling back to Dumbledore.

Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa put down the newspaper and looked at her shaking hands. She'd thought they had stopped doing that yesterday.

Draco had stormed off in a rage after seeing the title and picture on the front page. Her son had tipped between a tearful depression and a frothing rage ever since Lucius had been killed. When they had arrived back home yesterday, he had set out to vent his fury on their house elf.

Narcissa had let him, being in no state to do anything for him herself. House elves existed to serve their masters anyway and if it could make her son feel better by serving as a punching bag for him then it was doing its duty.

That had been a mistake. Draco had beaten the creature to death in his rage and they couldn't afford a new one. She was no longer a Malfoy and couldn't access the vaults and Draco was underage. They had no ready funds and no source of income until he turned seventeen, which was two years away.

Lucius had never set up a trust vault for his son and even worse, had never believed in paying for anything up front. The deadline for paying next year's Hogwarts tuition was approaching and they had nothing to pay it with. The only ready gold they had was what had been lying around the manor, and that was not much at all. She wasn't even sure if she could afford to buy her son a new wand to replace the one that Potter had broken.

She could go to another family for help, but that was risky. Some families hated the Malfoys and others would use the situation to take advantage of them.

It was also moot. Nobody would help them after the statement Potter had made when killing Lucius. Only one thing truly mattered in the world and that was power. Gold, prestige, influence….. all these things were just expressions of it, but what use were they against the raw magical might that Potter had demonstrated yesterday? Her husband's, or ex-husband's she supposed, burned body was the answer to that.

Potter had shown that the Malfoys were his enemies and nobody would be want to be seen helping them now. Not anytime soon. Especially with how foolishly Draco had attacked him at the conclusion of the duel. Potter could easily make more demands for that assault, it being the actions of a grieving son notwithstanding. Nobody would care about Draco's emotional state in the face of Potter's power. Even the Ministry would sooner bend its laws to accommodate Potter than openly challenge him now. They had given way before Voldemort at first as well, before it became clear that he wouldn't stop. They had done the same for Dumbledore once as well, with only time having dulled the memory of the power he commanded.

She couldn't even sell anything to scare up some gold. She wasn't a Malfoy anymore and had no right to it. And of course, Draco was too young to do it. Even if she could have done that, it likely wouldn't be fast enough to pay for Draco's Hogwarts tuition. That wasn't even considering how much she would be ripped off because everyone would know that she was desperate.

And then there was the threat of being cast out of the Black family still hanging over her head. That would be a disaster. If that happened, she wouldn't even be eligible anymore to be Draco's legal guardian. She would be nameless, which was in some ways worse than being a mudblood. Mudbloods could at least crawl back to where they came from, but she would have nowhere to go. The fate that might befall a disgraced highborn woman didn't bear thinking about.

She had never appreciated the kind of strength Andromeda must have had to willingly walk away from her family. Well, she could appreciate it now.

Bellatrix had been cruel even as a child, Andromeda willful and headstrong and then there was her, Narcissa, the baby of the family. The one who had always been the ideal of a pureblood princess from the ancient house of Black. The one who always had everything handed to her because she was the favorite.

The one who had never known a day of hardship in her entire life. Not until a wizard with glowing green eyes and unbelievable power had killed Lucius in retaliation for the assassination attempts made on him.

She had known about Lucius' plans, not the details of course, but the broad strokes. She had supported it even. The thought of her family passing into the hands of a half-blood instead of her own perfect son had been insulting. She had never fathomed that it would lead to her world collapsing around her.

She had barely gotten any sleep last night, worry and grief keeping her awake.

The harsh truth was that she needed help.

She had briefly considered going to Andromeda, but dismissed the thought almost as soon as she had it. That bridge had been burned a long time ago. Her older sister was more likely to slam the door in her face than help her. And, if she was being honest with herself, Narcissa could admit that she didn't want to live on the fringes of magical society like Andromeda did with her mudblood husband.

What she really needed was to make sure that Potter wouldn't decide to hammer the last nail into her coffin in a fit of pique. She knew from Draco's letters that he wasn't the pure-hearted paragon of good that the stories had made him out to be before his return to their world. He had a mean streak, as if that wasn't obvious enough from the way he had killed Lucius.

She would write a letter to that mudblood steward of his, asking for a meeting.

Narcissa bit her lip as she was reminded of another potential problem. That was the same mudblood that had been Head Girl last year and who had given Draco a detention. The same mudblood that Lucius had mader sure would never be able to get any respectable work in Magical Britain.

It had seemed like such a small thing back then, just showing an uppity little mudblood how the world worked. It wasn't the first time that Lucius had done it and she had agreed with it. Couldn't have the rabble thinking that they could get away with things like that after all. It was bad enough that Dumbledore humored them by allowing them to become Head Boy or Head Girl.

But it hadn't been just any mudblood, had it? Potter had counted her as a friend, given her a prestigious position in his own family and spent the whole school year demonstrating his displeasure to Draco with a series of humiliating pranks. She hadn't even connected the two events until now.

She'd need to be polite, and stop thinking of her as a mudblood. The ice she was standing on was far too thin to allow for any slip ups during conversation.

Hogwarts.

Albus Dumbledore put down the paper and stroked his long beard in thought.

This entire situation had blindsided him utterly. Harry had always acted so very much like a Ravenclaw - if a bit more surly than most - that this sudden burst of Gryffindor boldness backed by Slytherin cunning and ruthlessness had come seemingly out of nowhere.

Most people would be surprised to hear that Dumbledore didn't handle sudden and unexpected events too well. Most people thought that he always had an answer ready no matter what happened, but that was just not true. He was, first and foremost, a scholar. Circumstances had forced him into strife and leadership, but that was not his prefered state. It was why the position as Hogwarts Headmaster was more valuable to him than his other two titles.

It was why Voldemort had given him so much trouble. The Dark Lord didn't play by the rules. When he got upset, he upended the board instead of thinking carefully about his next move.

Harry had also just upended the board. Albus didn't know how the boy had learned that Lucius was behind the assassination, but he had to agree that it was likely. The problem was that Harry hadn't tried to find a way to prove it. Oh no, Harry had instead contrived a situation where he could outright kill him and sod the proof. Albus had been so stunned that he hadn't been able to find a way to control the situation in time.

And the power that Harry had shown, he'd never imagined such a thing done wandlessly. No matter how he looked at the Forbidden Sun as Harry had called it, he couldn't think of a way to replicate it with a wand. The spell simply had too many components to remain stable. If Harry was capable of that, then there was really no telling what else he was capable of.

Albus was deathly afraid that he had missed the making of another Dark Lord. He had not seen the darkness in Gellert until it was too late. He had clung to hope with Tom and shut his eyes until it was too late. Had he been doing it again with Harry?

He had spent most of the night with his Pensieve, going over all of their past interactions, looking for clues that he might have missed.

Harry had been a quiet and withdrawn boy in his first year. His second had seen the advent of a bad temper, but still nothing to really be concerned about. His third saw him becoming sexually active as well as more secretive. And his fourth was when he began to completely reject authority.

Albus couldn't be sure, but given the rate of his growth, he guessed that Harry must have performed whatever ritual he had used to speed his maturity during his first summer break. He recalled how the boy had refused to stay at Hogwarts back then because he had 'things to do'.

All this retrospection still didn't give him any solid information however. Was Harry Potter walking down an evil path? He feared it was so, especially in light of the people Harry had killed so far, but he just didn't know .

He would visit Potter Manor a bit later in the day and talk to the recently emancipated lad. With Harry not coming back to Hogwarts in September a lot of old plans were useless. He needed more information.

Back at Potter Manor.

Harry had barely put the paper down when the distinct sound of the door knocker was heard.

"I wonder who that could be?" Penny said with a small frown, moving to answer.

"I could think of one or two people." Harry muttered. It could be either Dumbledore or…..

"Harry, it's-" Penny began once she came back, but was interrupted by a sensual female purr.

"My, my, my, when I asked you if the award ceremony was going to be more exciting than the third task, I certainly wasn't expecting the show you put on."

"Hello, Adrastia." Harry greeted with resignation. She was earlier than he'd expected.

"Harry." She replied, taking a grape from a nearby plate and sucking it sensually into her mouth. "Care to introduce me to the ones I haven't met yet?"

"I guess." He sighed at her theatrics. "Girls, this is Adrastia Zabini. Adrastia, meet Luna Lovegood and Fleur Delacour."

"Hi." Luna beamed, giving the beautiful older woman a wave.

" Enchanté ." Fleur said with much less enthusiasm than Luna. Harry's attitude towards this woman was putting her on edge.

"Are you ready to talk about that thing I mentioned yesterday, or should I sit down and join you for breakfast?" Adrastia asked, smiling beatifically.

"Now is fine, come on." Harry got up, leaving his unfinished breakfast for later.

"'Oo eez zat woman?" Fleur asked once they were gone. She'd seen her talking to Harry yesterday too.

"Trouble." Sirius grumbled.

"So?" Harry prompted.

"So…." Adrastia drawled back with a smirk, sinking languidly into her seat.

"I'm not in the mood for games right now, so get to the point if you would."

"Very well." She pouted playfully. "You want to know why I advised you not to cast Narcissa out of the family."

"I have some guesses." He admitted.

"Do share."

"Blackmail?" He couldn't really think of anything that he could actually blackmail the woman for, but it was the most likely option to his thinking.

"Certainly an option, but so very unimaginative."

"Enlighten me then."

"You made a good choice in employing Penny to be your steward, a smart choice." Adrastia said, seemingly off topic.

"Are you implying I should do the same with Narcissa ?" Harry asked incredulously. "The woman whose husband I just killed? I'd have to watch out for betrayal at every turn!"

"She would be useful to you." Adrastia said, apparently ignoring his reasoning for why this was a bad idea. "Much as I enjoy these little détentes of ours, I cannot be here to give you advice all the time and your grandparents' portraits are a poor substitute for a real person. The Malfoys were the social elite before you destroyed them, making Narcissa an ideal choice as a social planner for you."

"I'm not a very social person." He grumbled.

"All the more reason why you need a social planner." She countered. "Like it or not, you've just become a big name in British magical politics. Very soon now you can expect to receive proposals and invitations to social events. Snub them at your own peril."

Even Harry could guess what would happen if he did that. People tended to get nervous around very powerful anti-social loners that refused to interact with the wider population. The Hogwarts student body had been the same, bunch of twats that couldn't grasp the idea that some people simply didn't enjoy being around most others.

"You still haven't addressed the the issue of me potentially getting stabbed in the back if I did that." He said sourly, conceding the point.

"We have ways of controlling difficult people, you and I." Adrastia said, her dark eyes gleaming with things that she usually kept carefully concealed.

"You can't be serious." Harry said flatly, leaning back into his own armchair.

"Deadly serious." She purred, getting up and gliding towards him.

"I am not going to use the Joining to turn her into a slave." He said tersely, keeping his anger at the suggestion in check.

Adrastia had by this point walked around his seat and placed her hands on his shoulder, leaning down to whisper into his ear. "You don't have to. All you need to do is….. encourage her to be grateful to you for being a merciful lord."

"By fucking her brains out." Harry scowled, offended by the suggestion. This was exactly what he didn't want to use the Joining for. When he did it together with Fleur, it was beautiful. What Adrastia was suggesting was anything but.

"I know you've thought about it." She said in a sultry tone, gently squeezing his shoulders and sending her aura to mingle with his for as far as he would allow. "Narcissa is a beautiful woman after all."

"Of course I've thought about it, it's what I do. I think." He grumbled, keeping a careful watch on what she was doing magically but not expelling her. She was letting him sense her intent and he could tell that she was sincere in trying to help him, though there was still the shadow of an ulterior motive behind it, but it didn't feel malicious. Not towards him at any rate.

"And don't deny that it appeals to you." She went on, her voice now a seductive whisper. "What you did to poor Lucius… I know revenge when I see it, and revenge I respect. You could have his woman as well, have Draco's mother begging you for more. She would enjoy it even."

That was far too tempting for Harry's comfort and he shrugged her hands off.

Adrastia backed away easily and walked back in front of him. "Well, it was just a suggestion. You could also leave things as they are and see if she can convince anyone to help her out financially since she and Draco currently have no access to money of any kind."

Oh. Harry hadn't even thought of that.

"Or if you are feeling particularly cruel, you could cast her out of the Black family and see what happens. She might be able to find a relatively respectable job, but I hear that disgraced noblewomen make for quite the attraction as whores. I must admit that I am curious to see if she has the strength to endure that for the sake of her son or if she would take her own life."

Well that was one option that he wasn't planning to use anymore. He may not have any fondness for Narcissa, but he couldn't bring himself to knowingly condemn her to that. Annoyingly enough, he felt a small bit of gratitude towards Adrastia for suggesting that he not banish Narcissa from the Black family. It would have made him feel terribly guilty if he did that and learned about the consequences later.

As he walked through the doors of 74 Cromwell Road, Harry felt like an intruder in a stranger's house. This place had never felt like home in the sense of family, but now it even felt foreign as a residence. It only confirmed his decision that it was time to cut ties with his foster parents.

"Anybody home?" He called out, not feeling in the mood to search the house.

He heard the sound of approaching footsteps in respouse to his shout and smiled tightly.

"Who are… Harry?" Roberts said, starting out hostile at the apparent stranger and trailing off into bafflement at the sight of him. Harry had been rather big and old looking for his age the last time they had seen him, but this was getting ridiculous.

"Robert, Katherine." Harry nodded at them. "We have to talk."

"We were expecting you yesterday." Katherine said, a tremor of nervousness in her tone. There was something deeply unnerving about the hardened green eyes staring at her. She didn't understand the boy they had taken into their home seven years ago anymore, hadn't understood him for some time really.

"I know." Was Harry's only response. "I'll get right to the point. I've just been emancipated in the magical world. I don't need you anymore."

Robert spluttered in outrage. "Don't need us anymore?! After everything-"

His budding tirade was silenced with a wave of Harry's hand. His mouth still moved but no sound was produced. "Shut up and listen."

Robert was already forcibly shut up, but stopped trying to talk anyway and his wife followed suit, frightened by the overt display of power.

"You've done a lot to help me even if your reasons were selfish. You got me out of that orphanage, got me the finest education money can buy, got my eyes fixed, made sure I ate well and left me enough time for my own purposes. For all of that and more, I thank you." Harry said sincerely.

"You also taught me a lot of important life lessons. You taught me that optimism is useless, that people aren't against you so much as they are for themselves, that family is just a word and that if you want something you have to get it yourself. For that too, I thank you. These lessons have been invaluable so far and I'm sure they will continue to be in the future."

Both non-magicals averted their eyes. The genuine sincerity struck far deeper than angry shouting could ever hope to.

"I'm sure your plans have been inconvenienced by my absences these past couple of years and I can't say that I really care about that. You bought my cooperation in your silly social schemes by giving me a place to stay and I don't need that anymore. I don't need you anymore. You can tell your 'friends' whatever cock and bull story you want about me, I don't care. I don't hate you, I don't even resent you, but I don't want anything more to do with you either. You still have my phone number and I won't go into a purple-faced rage if you contact me, but don't bother me with social calls. In recognition of what you've done for me, I'll pop over if you really need my help, but only for serious things. If you decide to foster or adopt or even conceive another kid, I'd advise you to try being a little more parental. Goodbye."

With a final wave of his hand to dispel the Silencing Charm on Robert, Harry apparated away.

As he walked back through the front door of Potter Manor, Harry mused that the final confrontation with his foster parents had gone rather smoothly. It was amazing how easy these things were when only one side had the priviliege of speaking.

Returning to the sight of Albus Dumbledore waiting in his sitting room produced nothing but a frown from the recently emancipated wizard.

"You're here already?" Harry asked critically. "It's not even lunch time yet."

"I take it you were expecting me then?" Albus asked, furrowing his bushy eyebrows.

"After yesterday? Of course I was expecting you." Harry rolled his eyes.

Albus didn't let the surprise he was feeling show on his face. "You killed a man yesterday, Harry."

"I've killed people before." Harry countered blithely.

"Killing in self-defense is different from deliberately setting out to kill someone."

"And deliberately setting out to kill someone so that he stops sending assassins after me is different from random murder. What's your point?"

"You could have searched for proof of his crimes." Albus said, sounding disappointed.

"Because that's worked so well in the past." Harry jeered sarcastically. "Come on, Albus, get to the point. You're here because you're afraid of me going 'Dark' or something equally asinine."

The old wizard was startled by the shocking directness of the statement. He was used to rather more circuitous conversations, but since Harry had ended any chance of that happening he would simply have to go along with it. "Can you blame me?"

"I guess not, old wizards are notorioulsy prone to paranoia after all." Harry jibed. "You don't have to worry though. I have no interest in taking over the world, or even part of it for that matter. It's too much work and it would suck up all my free time."

"Harry, this is no laughing matter." Albus said with a deep frown.

"I'm not joking." Harry said flatly. "I know this might shock you, Albus, but it is possible for a person to be something other than a rainbow farting do-gooder or a puppy kicking arsehole. I don't care much for people or politics and I certainly won't waste any more time on either than I absolutely have to. I'm a Wizard and I concern myself with magic above all else."

Albus knew of course that the world was not cleanly divided between good people and bad people, only small children thought otherwise, but he still worried. A powerful wizard who didn't restrain himself could easily fall into evil with the right provocation. He felt that perhaps Harry's claim about not caring for people was a tad exaggerated since he clearly cared for those close to him, but perhaps he simply hadn't wanted to name exceptions. What struck the old wizard the most however was the certainty in Harry's words, the almost audible capitalization when he named himself a wizard. He wasn't a boy adrift on the tides of life anymore, but a man with a clear course.

The sense of great power coming from him didn't hurt in reinforcing his words either. Albus was certain that Harry would soon surpass him. How he managed it at such a young age, he couldn't fathom, but it was happening.

A wizard's true power lay not in the number of spells they knew or the destruction they could cause, but in their understanding of the world and their life experience. By some means, Harry had gained vast knowledge that should have eluded him for decades yet and Albus genuinely feared what he would become in those decades. The idea that he would be able to match Voldemort on an even keel no longer seemed so out of reach.

"What will you do now?" Albus asked softly.

"Travel a bit, see the world. Learn how different people did magic." Harry replied with a shrug.

That didn't really ease the old wizard's mind. Voldemort had also travelled as a young man.

"What about Voldemort, Harry? What about the prophecy?"

"He's dead isn't he? We destroyed his phylactery in the Chamber of Secrets." Harry asked, playing dumb. He wanted to see if Dumbledore was willing to cooperate yet.

"Alas, I fear he had more."

Harry feigned surprise. "I didn't know that was possible."

"I suspect nobody did until Voldemort accomplished it." Albus said with a nod.

"So, do you have any idea where he hid the others?" He wasn't going to mention the locket.

Harry pretended not to notice the way that the old man's eyes flicked towards his scar for a split second. It had faded only slightly after he had expelled Voldemort's soul fragment from himself. So, Dumbledore knew about that and hadn't said anything. How ominous.

"No, unfortunately."

"Well I'm not going to put my life on hold for that madman. I'll leave finding them up to you since you knew the crazy bastard better anyway."

"You're going to just leave?! Even knowing that Voldemort is still alive?" Albus spluttered, stunned by Harry's flippancy.

"What else do you expect me to do, sit here twiddling my thumbs until he shows up?" The younger wizard asked sarcastically. "With the prophecy in play, I'll end up fighting him no matter what. I might as well learn a few things in the meantime."

"Harry, this is incredibly irresponsible of you." Albus went for the disappointed grandfather act out of habit.

"Wanting to live my life is irresponsible?" Harry asked, heat creeping into his tone. "Fuck you, Dumbledore."

"What?" Albus blinked, the sudden vulgarity derailing his thoughts quite handily.

"Prophecy or not, Voldemort is more your Dark Lord than mine. I'll fight him if I have to, but I'm not going to sit around shitting myself at the thought of him. It's been almost fourteen years since he was defeated, what have you done to make sure he can't come back since then?"

Albus wasn't sure how to answer that question and Harry didn't really give him time to do so in any case.

"I know you came here quaking in your boots at the thought of me becoming another Dark Lord. Well, you can rest assured that it won't happen. I might not be the nicest of people, but I don't get my jollies from torture and murder either. I'm not even interested in toppling the government despite how corrupt it is, too much work as I said. Now I'd appreciate it if you got out of my house, and try to remember next time that it's rude to drop by unannounced."

"Harry, I only have the greater good of the Wizarding World in mind." Albus said sadly. This wasn't how he hd envisioned this conversation going.

"That's nice. Personally, I don't give a shit about it. I might not even have bothered worrying about Voldemort if it wasn't for that bloody prophecy." Harry scoffed.

"'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'" Dumbledore quoted.

"Oh, are we trading trite sayings now? I have one of those too. 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'. I hear that Hitler and Grindelwald had some ideas about the Greater Good too, so I'll wager that my indifference is far more benign than your 'good intentions'."

Albus visibly flinched at the unexpected lance into an old wound.

Harry stared after his uninvited visitor long after the man had left, thinking. Albus Dumbledore wasn't an evil man, but he was infuriatingly condescending and hypocritical, all the more so because he didn't even seem aware of it.

Harry had asked Penny to look into the man's past actions as Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. He had also looked at whatever historical data was publically available on him and learned that he was rumored to have some history with Grindelwald aside from just their famous duel. What exactly that history was he had no idea, but it was there.

Penny's research had uncovered some rather surprising information.

Despite being a known supporter of muggleborns and equality, Dumbledore didn't actually do anything to support it. Unless you counted frequently making muggleborns Head Boy or Head Girl in Hogwarts, which Harry didn't.

He had all the power in the world to push for change in magical Britain's stagnant culture, but he did nothing. He proposed no new laws and suggested no changes to existing ones. In fact, the only thing he seemed to do was go with the flow and react to things as they came, and even then he just maintained the status quo. That he was powerful was beyond dispute, but he did nothing with that power.

Albus Dumbledore the Useless.

Even during the war against Voldemort, he wasn't seen doing much at all. Everyone knew that the Dark Lord avoided direct confrontation with him, but that was it. There had been no more than a mere handful of battles between the two of them. And he never, ever made the first move. It was always a reaction to something that Voldemort and the Death Eaters did.

Albus Dumbledore the Defensive.

Harry in fact suspected that he could have proclaimed himself a Dark Lord right in Dumbledore's face, and the old man would be so stunned that he wouldn't know what to do. Of course, anyone could talk shit about being a Dark Lord, but it didn't mean anything if they weren't out there spreading chaos and mayhem, so maybe that was a bad example. Still it highlighted Dumbledore's problems quite nicely. He gave other people the disappointed grandfather act if they didn't do what he expected, but he couldn't be arsed to act on his own.

No wonder the scum weren't afraid to cross him anymore, plotting under his very nose.

Albus Dumbledore the Toothless.

In the wake of his conversation with Dumbledore, Harry went into the basement of Potter Manor and into the room he'd turned into a private workshop.

There he took out the box containing the Horcrux locket that had been in his keeping for a year now. He'd had it with him at Hogwarts and had tried to glean something from it at least twice a month, to no avail.

At first, he'd simply been fumbling around and accomplishing nothing, but that had changed over time. Amusingly enough, his increased knowledge of souls came almost exclusively from sex. Adrastia's little revelation of the Joining and then the constant use of it on Luna and Fleur had proven unexpectedly helpful in figuring out the Horcrux.

He had approached it from the entirely wrong angle at first, treating it as a simple enchanted item. It was much more than that. The Horcrux was almost a living being, with a mind and soul of its own even if its body was made of metal rather than flesh.

That was a problem. Harry couldn't do anything to a living being with an independent mind. Voldemort's soul was closed tighter than Gringotts and resisted all manipulation. More importantly, it was aware, Had he the inclination, Voldemort could perform the Joining without much issue. It might be possible to track any other Horcruxes the Dark Lord had made with it, but this part of his soul would never help him with that. Only Voldemort could track his own soul.

You would think that a simple soul fragment wouldn't be strong enough to resist whatever he wanted to do, but again it wasn't that simple. A soul wasn't a cake to be partitioned and distributed. It wasn't a mirror that could be broken and its pieces scattered. The act of murder did not 'break' the soul. All of that was just a metaphor that helped the mind picture it. The soul wasn't an object, but a complex spiritual concept that encompassed everything a person was while still remaning a distinct entity from the mind and body.

The true nature of the soul still eluded Harry, but he knew enough to know that keeping the Horcrux around was pointless. The only way he would ever be able to use it to find the others would be if it helped him do it, which was unlikely to say the least.

"Kreacher." Harry said softly.

"Filthy half-blood called for Kreacher?" The cranky old elf asked and then gasped as he saw the locket that his previous master had entrusted to him. "Master Regulus' locket!"

"I know you wanted me to destroy it back when we found it and you've been very patient while I researched it. I've learned all I can from it now." Harry said, pulling out a small vial of basilisk venom and handing it to the transfixed house elf. "Would you like to do the honors?"

Kreacher took the vial with a shaky hand and looked up at the current Lord Black. The one he had continually insulted, but who had never taken offense and always treated him kindly and who was now giving him the means to fulfill Master Regulus' final request. Perhaps he wasn't such a bad master after all, even if he was a half-blood.

Carefully, Kreacher poured the venom over the locket, watching wide eyed as an unearthly shriek emanated from the hated object. The old elf felt as if a massive weight had lifted off his shoulders and he stood taller. He could be a proud elf of the Black family again.

"Thank you, Master." He said, manfully holding back his emotions. He wouldn't blubber like that silly Potter elf did all the time.

"You're welcome, Kreacher." Harry replied with an amused smile. Not being able to use one Horcrux to track the others was bad, but seeing Kreacher proudly puffing his chest out was damn funny. "Will you finally agree to wear something nicer than that pillow case now?"

"This is proper house elf clothing." Kreacher insisted stubbornly, as usual.

"Well I won't force you, but I really think it would look better if we got you a nice uniform." Harry said with a shrug. "I'm sure I could convince Bryanna and Tiana to make something for you."

"Kreacher will think about it." The old elf grumbled. He knew those girls were barely a step above mudbloods, but they had been nice to him and were friends of the master. Maybe a uniform wouldn't be so terrible.

Meanwhile, back at Hogwarts.

Albus sat at his desk, listlessly popping lemon drops into his mouth.

Everything was all wrong. Harry Potter had no care for Britain, thought nothing of the people that would suffer under Voldemort. He didn't even seem interested in avenging his parents. If not for the prophecy, he would spare no thought for Voldemort at all.

Harry Potter was selfish and self-interested. Albus had thought that leaving him to grow up with muggles would keep him away from his fame and allow him to grow up into the fine young man that James and Lily's son would surely be. Certainly, it had prevented him from growing up bigheaded and entitled, or Merlin forbid a blood supremacist, but he was no hero.

With the lad so clearly belligerent towards authority figures and unwilling to see him as a mentor, Albus had envisioned the two of them working together to hunt down Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, with Harry eventually facing off against the restored Dark Lord. He would be defeated of course, but that would just make Voldemort mortal again. Albus didn't like this plan, but with the alternative being an immortal Voldemort ruling the world, what he liked wasn't even a factor.

But Harry wasn't playing along. He had made it quite clear that he wasn't interested in his destiny. It would catch up to him eventually of course, destiny had a way of doing that, but what would happen to the world in the meantime?

Bringing Harry fully into his confidence had never crossed his mind. Even telling a selfless and self-sacrificing man that he needed to die for the greater good of all was a risky gamble, telling someone like Harry would be insane.

"What do I do now, Fawkes?" Albus asked softly, looking towards his feathery friend but not really expecting an answer. "How am I supposed to work towards Voldemort's final defeat if Harry will not even stay in Britain?"

Fawkes gave a reassuring trill that made the old wizard think that everything would be alright.

"Thank you, old friend." Albus said with a smile. He could always rely on Fawkes to make him feel better, even if it didn't aleviate his worries.

Evening of the same day.

"You are of course, joking." Fleur said flatly.

"Nope, I'm dead serious." Harry said brightly.

"Zis is not a maid uniform, eet eez lingerie!" The veela protested, holding the offending garment at arm's length.

It was black with a little white apron design to be sure, but that was where the resemblence slowly came to an end. For one thing it was less of a dress-like garment and more of a tube top with a tiny little skirt attached. And that was all that there was to it really, except for the fishnet stockings and headpiece accessory.

"I did say it would be extra sexy." Harry shrugged. "It has an enchantment worked into the bust for support, so you won't be needing a bra."

"Zis eez humiliating." Fleur grumbled.

"Lost bets usually are, but if you hate it that much then I suppose you could welch out on it." He shrugged again.

Fleur's eyebrow twitched. Her pride would never allow that. "Fine, I will wear eet!"

"Can I have one too?" Luna asked, bouncing lightly on her feet and staring at the pretty outfit.

"Errrr…." Harry responded eloquently. He hadn't planned for this.

"Yes, 'Arry, can Luna 'ave one too?" Fleur asked, gloating shamelessly at his consternation.

Looking at Luna's pleading gaze left him with only one possible answer.

"Sure." He sighed.

"Yay!" Luna squealed and threw her hands around his neck.

There was a knock on the door at that point.

"Come in." Harry called.

Penny entered, took one look at Fleur holding a rather fetishistic French maid outfit, shook her head and decided to pretend she hadn't seen anything. "Mail."

"Important mail?" Harry asked in resignation. She wouldn't have brought it to him if it wasn't, but one could hope.

"Yep."

"Alright, lay it on me."

"Aside from an abnormally large amount of fan and hate mail, you also got an interview request from the Daily Prophet ."

"Pass."

"A job offer from the Department of Mysteries."

Harry snorted. "Pass." No way was he shackling himself to the Ministry like that. Damn Unspeakables probably just wanted to know his secrets.

"An invitation to join the Auror Corps, signed by Director Bones herself."

Harry blinked. Was Bones taking the piss out of him? "Send back a rejection, but be politer than normal. And include a bottle of firewhiskey."

"Why would you send her firewhiskey alongside a rejection letter?" Penny asked, looking at him funny.

"I have a feeling she'll get a kick out of it."

"If you say so." Penny said, still looking at him funny, but moving on to the next set of letters anyway. "A bunch of thinly veiled solicitations for donations from a variety of places."

"Pass. No donations until I start making money again." He was well aware that rich people occasionally needed to toss some money around to look like they cared, but he wasn't planning to do a Weasley and spend his limited supply of money carelessly.

"A request from Minister Fudge to meet with you at your earliest convenience."

Harry rubbed a hand over his face with a groan. Fucking Fudge. Telling him that he was on vacation for the rest of the summer probably wasn't a good idea, though it was certainly a tempting one. "Tell him I'll be there in… two days." An adult for barely one day and he was already getting pissed off by all the twats asking for things.

"Alright. An extremely polite request from Narcissa Black to meet with Lord Black at a time and place of your choosing. This is actually some of the most refined grovelling I've ever seen."

Harry worked his jaw as he considered this one. He'd been thinking of what to do about Sirius' cousin since Adrastia's visit, but was still no closer to having an answer than he had been this morning.

"Tell her….tell her to come to Grimmauld Place in four days, on the 30th." The old home of the Black family was much emptier than it used to be but there was still some furniture there that hadn't been sold yet. Using it for this also seemed like a better idea than having her come over to Potter Manor or him going to Malfoy Manor.

Amelia's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she unwrapped the bottle of fine firewhiskey that had just been delivered. A few quick spells determined that it wasn't tampered with.

Reaching for the accompanying letter, her eyebrows furrowed further as she read Harry Potter's refusal to join the Auror Corps. She hadn't really expected him to accept, but it had been worth a try. He would have probably driven Scrimgeour crazy, but the prestige would have been more than worth it, not to mention his obvious power.

But the firewhiskey….

Abruptly, a dry chuckle erupted from her throat as it dawned on her what was being implied here.

"Cheeky bastard." She muttered to herself. Damned powerful wizards and their secrets. Potter somehow knew that she wasn't exactly upset by Malfoy's death, and he had the nerve to send her something to celebrate with.

"Well, why not?" Amelia said and poured herself a glass. "Here's to you, Edgar."

Her poor, careless brother, who had been murdered by Death Eaters towards the end of the war while on a date with his wife. Amelia had been babysitting Susan for them, which was the only reason that she had any family left.

If it wasn't for her niece, she might have decided to get some revenge and damn the consequences. It didn't even matter if she got the exact ones that had killed her brother. One Death Eater was as good as another. The animals were all the same anyway.

This thing with Malfoy had been murder. Legal murder, but still murder. Potter was definitely someone to keep an eye on, as it said quite a lot that he had been willing and able to go through with it. She didn't know if the others he had killed was also deliberate on his part or if it really was just trouble being attracted to him. Either way, she couldn't say she was displeased with the results. If he went after anyone else she would hunt him down like any other criminal, but as long as it was just Death Eaters then she wasn't inclined to look at it too closely.