Chapter 174

Working in reverse chronological order he already had the information on the first item before moving onto the second. He also received an earful from the PR woman at the manufacturing company, who wanted to know who was trying to set her up for a prank.

When Harry finally convinced her he was 'writing a book' on the history of that type of item, the woman began to tell him enough information that proved to Harry that the folks in the 'Obliviator Headquarters' office at the Ministry were... just like every other witch or wizard... daft morons.

Moving onto the next one took a bit more work as the company that manufactured the item had long since gone out of business. However, he was able to track down an enthusiast of the history of the devices who related to him a not-so-dissimilar tale to the previous woman.

Harry thanked the man and hung up.

When Hermione read what he wrote, she disbelievingly exclaimed, "You're kidding!"

"Nope."

"That's... that's..." she tried.

"Yep."

The next item - the one Ted added - was going to be, in some ways, risky. He needed information from a huge government department that was currently going through privatisation of its main asset.

However, the frazzled public servant on the other end of the phone call couldn't have cared less Harry was asking the questions he was, but gave him a similarly weird story to the first two.

Hermione shook her head in disbelief of what she'd read from his notes and said, "When you go public with this, people in the Ministry are going to get fired, arrested, charged, gaoled, fined or any combination of those!"

"Not my problem," he replied. "I'm not the one who wrote the laws. I'm not the one who blatantly and outrageously defied them. I'm just the new uninvested Lord who is going to be defending my godfather, the newest uninvested Lord, from a stupid law."

"I don't think it's stupid, so much," Hermione disagreed. "Just... so poorly written as for it to be impossible not to breach."

The final item was the biggest of them all. Harry also had to ring another muggle government department to find out the history of it. However, this time he would have to go into their offices and pay a fee to collect any records on it held there.

He took down the details he needed and where to go to collect the information and would be sending that back to Ted to organise. Either that or the aurors would need to be prepared for a day trip into muggle London. And he didn't want to do that as it would tip-off the aurors what he was up to.

Hermione had told him that she'd been told the previous day that the aurors on their detail were not permitted to speak about what Harry or the Grangers were up to with anyone else not already on the detail. But, surely, one of them would let something slip out at the wrong moment.

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―==(oIo)==―

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Later that afternoon and at Hogwarts, about an hour after Harry finished making his calls just in time for when most government office workers think about heading home for the day, Dumbledore finally woke up in the Infirmary.

As soon as he saw the ceiling and smelled the scent of the wing he knew exactly where he was. But he also smelt the scent of burnt hair over the top of it.

Looking down at his beard, all seemed in order; so he couldn't figure it out.

He'd no sooner woken up and was sitting up when the new medi-wizard walked in from his office and he felt a light waft of breeze on the back of his neck.

"Good afternoon, Professor Dumbledore," he said.

"What day is it?" Dumbledore immediately demanded, reaching around to the back of his neck.

Shocked at what he felt he cried, "My hair!"

"Yes, it is!" the Robinson returned. "And I'm feeling pretty chipper; thank you for asking. As for―"

"Don't be flippant and answer the bloody question!" snapped the old man.

"Well, if you must know it's about fourteen hours before you're free to go on Thursday morning; tomorrow morning. And, as I was saying, as for your hair, it appears your now ex-phoenix did it to you with a great flash of heat. It's that, we suspect, which burnt the back of your hair off, singed the back of your robes, charred your office desk chair, and a few other things.

Spotting his wand on the bedside table he picked it up and cast a quick Tempus charm.

4.30pm

With a grunt of annoyance he realised he'd been out for about eight hours.

"Why wasn't I enervated?" he demanded.

"You were unconscious because your now ex-familiar decided to sever the familiar bond with you," replied Robinson. "We do not enervate people who have been knocked unconscious because of a severed bond. It's unsafe.

"Instead, we allow them to wake naturally - which is what happened with you.

"Now, since you've naturally woken and had your questions answered, I'm afraid you need to lie back down. I need to monitor you for the first twenty four hours of the severed familiar bond to make sure of the stability of your health."

"Go to Hell!" snapped the old man. Then he hopped off the bed and stormed from the room.

'Does that man not know of any other mode of travelling by foot other than storming about the place?' thought the medi-wizard. 'Cranky old bastard.'

Returning to his office, the medi-wizard made an internal floo-call to the Headmistress.

As it connected, she asked, "Yes?"

"Dumbledore just woke and, as I told you he would, he treated me appallingly and stormed out," he replied.

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