CHAPTER : 58

Luna was busy digging through boxes when Harry stormed into their bedroom. She had been watching Harry's conversation with Dumbledore but just like Harry, she too had found the entertainment factor of seeing Dumbledore brought down a few pegs swiftly decline after a few minutes. Now she was happily digging through the multitude of boxes that her father had left with her. After Luna had moved in with Harry, Xenophilius Lovegood had embraced a rather nomadic lifestyle. He'd sold his house, contracted out his printing needs and seemed happy never spending more than a few days in any one location. Which meant that Luna had ended up saddled with all of the years of research materials, books and esoteric tchotchkes that Xeno had collected. This of course came in handy when she needed to look up something that he had told her about years ago. Information that was bound to be somewhere in his files. Now if only she could find it.

She looked up as Harry entered the room — "Wasn't the quote 'a bucket of warm spit'?" she asked.

"Nah," he said. "John Nance Garner said piss. That was just the euphemism that people used to make it a bit more polite. It was either that or telling him that I trusted him as far as I could push him with the force of one of my farts." He sat down heavily on the bed. "What do you think?" he asked her.

"You could have been more polite. Not that it wasn't entertaining. I don't think Dumbledore is used to anyone being quite so rude to him," she said.

"Yes well, I wanted to see just how badly he wanted to find me and... it was kind of cathartic as well," said Harry.

"Cathartic? Why?" asked Luna.

Harry sighed deeply. "That would be a very long conversation, mostly dealing with my years at Hogwarts. Right now, I need to write up a quick contract and came up to find the contract paper."

He looked around the room, which looked remarkable messy. He and Dobby had unpacked nearly the entire contents of his old trusty backpack in their quest to find the books detailing the Fidelius Charm and they had not had the time to pack everything away yet. There were stacks of books, papers, miscellaneous pieces of equipment and clothes dispersed randomly amongst the piles and piles of loose golden galleons lying around haphazardly. He really should do something about that. Why hadn't he converted all those galleons to American dollars? Well, it wasn't as if he needed it and there was something to be said about keeping a large store of gold coins as part of his emergency escape kit.

He had to kick aside several stack of papers before he could open his chest of drawers. The contract paper, which he rarely used, was lying on the bottom of the lowest drawer. Hardly anybody used magically reinforcing contracts anymore but a while back, he had come across a client who insisted on one being drawn up before he would give Harry the job of warding his house. He wouldn't have bothered but this was one of the few clients who wanted to go all out on his wards. Jobs like that were quite rare and besides the contract had only covered stuff that he would have done anyway. Luckily, he still had some of the magically enchanted paper lying around. All he had to do was write out the terms, lay in the sealing enchantments and have Dumbledore sign it.

"Do you need help drafting the contract?" asked Luna.

"Don't think so," answered Harry. "It should be reasonably straightforward. My identity is covered by the Fidelius, so all it needs to cover is...He can't tell or give anyone any information about me or my location. If he has to come here again for any reason then he has to make absolutely certain that no one ever finds out about his visit and that he is not followed by anyone. He can't talk about me with anyone. Can't hmmm...What else does it need? Perhaps a line about him never lying to me. Never attempting to learn who my secret keeper is and if he does manage to find out, by accident or whatever then to never ever attempt to persuade or manipulate my secret keeper into telling the secret to anybody else." He stared at Luna for a moment, thinking hard. "And supposing something happens to me, then he has to make sure that my secret keeper is safe."

Luna frowned, "Cancel that last one," she ordered.

"Why?" asked Harry.

"In case something does happen to you...I really don't want Dumbledore trying to protect me. I'd rather he just keep as far away from me as possible."

"Yes, of course, you're absolutely right," said Harry, thinking of how Dumbledore had arranged to keep him safe after his parents were killed.

"Anyway, that should probably do it, I think. I'll just write it up and have Dumbles sign it," he said.

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