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Harry debated waking up the elves now but shook it off. Despite his desire to get a firsthand account of what happened here he knew there would be time enough for that later. After all they wouldn't be able to help him against the dementors and even trying would probably get a few of them killed. He well knew that if he was the only magical around they would all bond with him almost immediately and would be forced by that bond to help as they could. He wasn't going to have that on his conscience, and felt that they could sleep for a few more hours.
He rejoined his troops after that and moved to the farthest staircase up. He looked around summoned two more stags, allowing them to feed and empower the group of twelve knights further while he also threw bit more strength their way. He shook his head still not feeling anything close to an effort there and then cancelled the runic array. The knights slammed into the horde on the other side behind their shields, their swords up and questing and the group forged upwards, coming to the next level, and Harry made another runic array to block the rest of the stairwell leading up.
The next three levels formed what looked like the empty square of the castle's backend, and all of them were filled with classrooms was the site of the worst fighting so far, with dementors boiling out of every classroom to try and assault Harry and his conjured troops, but the aura of his stags weakened them as they came forward. Again he conjured up more troops and with his larger spells crashing in the enlarged cadre made their way doggedly forward, moving up only after clearing out a level, linking up with the groups from below when Harry brought the arrays down by the simple expedient of overpowering them.
On the fourth floor they found the first rooms that showed signs of actually being used. One room was obviously someone's personal runic laboratory; the set up was far too disorganized for it to be a classroom. The other one was just as easily seen as a private bachelor's pad of some kind, with a large queen-size bed and furniture done more in the manner of a whorehouse than a normal teacher's room. "Padfoot would approve," Harry chuckled, "But somehow I doubt Ororo would. Must remember to come back and change the décor if they're all like that." He shuddered at the idea that someone like McGonagall had lived in these quarters.
His humor vanished on the next floor, taking with it all the happiness he had been feeling destroying so many dementors because it was here Harry ran into the first few skeletons.
He paused as his knights forged onwards, cutting into the Dementors which even now filled the hallway, the stone knights still taking the lead with the others watching their back interspersed with other stone knights who would guard the doorway while the others cleared out the rooms as they came to them.
Two more Praetorians stood over Harry guarding him as he went to one knee examining the tiny skeleton. It had long since turned to dust, but the clothing was still here, just enough to tell that it might have been a child at some point. After so long gender was completely impossible to tell, of course. He looked around him and saw it was one of many, but this was the only child sized remains in sight. He counted three more skeletons in the hallway, and another in a doorway further down. "What the hell happened here?! This is looking less and less like a school, and more and more like a final refuge that didn't hold out!"
He shook his head. "Questions later, action now." Harry took a moment to pour more power into his conjured troops, then began to send out spell after spell, all his humor gone, replaced by grim determination to end this. Later he would realize that he really should have collapsed at some point with all the spells he was tossing around, but at the time he barely felt the strain, feeling only a little more drained then he had after fighting Magneto.
The classrooms on this level were much the same as they had been in his old dimension, unused and very dusty though they again didn't have the detritus of previous use as they had in his old dimension.
The sixth floor should have been where one corner of the hallway would lead up to the Gryffindor dormitories, hidden behind a painting. Here there was no painting, and the doorway stood open, with dementors coming out of it.
As his conjured troops forged onward Harry found signs of habitation everywhere and far more skeletons on the ground, counting at least forty adults skeletons scattered around the sixth floor, with ten more bunched in front of the entrance to the dormitory. With a heavy heart he moved through the doorway, wincing as he stepped on a bone that crunched underneath his shoe.
The dementors in here seemed a little stronger than the ones downstairs, and he growled angrily pouring more power into his knights. His own spells took on much more vindictive edge, and exploded among the dementor's ranks, slicing and dicing, freezing, burning, electrocuting and exploding. Again none of his spells could actually kill the dementors, but just forcing their bodies to go this corporeal for a minute helped his knights immensely. Soon the common area and both sides of the dormitory had been cleared.
Harry shook his head sadly, walking up the steps on the boy's side and looking into every dorm room. The first-year dorm on either side hadn't been set up as a regular dorm room, instead it had been set up for single residences, and he figured that they had been used by some of the adults that he had found downstairs.
In the dormitories of the second through seventh years however he found each room with six beds rather than the three or four beds that had been normal in his time. And each of them held the ancient eroded remains of a child. There was no sign of struggle in any of these rooms, and his hands clenched into fists, tears half forming in his eyes.
"I'm beginning to put together a picture," Harry said, unclenching his hands and rubbing his forehead, looking down at the bodies sadly. "And I don't like it at all. This place was a final refuge, and it was a trap too. Whoever trapped the dementors in here meant to do it, because they knew they couldn't keep them out for long? And then I guess they put their kids to sleep and fought to the last man."
He shivered suddenly, hoping that none of the kids hadn't known what was going to happen, hoping that their final memories while awake had been happy ones. He knew he would have been terrified knowing that he could one day fall asleep and die in his sleep, knowing of the terror that would come for him. "The question is why? Why the hell set up a final bastion like this if you had found wards that could trap your enemies?"
He shook his questions off for now, vowing silently to himself to come back and bury these bodies to give them as much peace as he could. Harry moved on and found the same setup on the girl's side and then went back out to the sixth floor hallway, his heart filled with rage. His praetorian guards took on a reddish hue as he renewed their powers, but he didn't care so long as their aura still worked to let them slaughter the dementors.
Farther along on the sixth floor he found the corner where the entrance to the Ravenclaw dormitory should have been, but instead he found a blank wall, and that hurt. Not only did it mean that in this dimension the Ravenclaw dormitories, a scene of many, many happy memories, didn't exist, it also meant that the only children here had been the ones in the Gryffindor dormitories. Even with five or six beds per year that meant that the children here hadn't even equaled the number of children in his own dimension in his generation.
"73 kids out of an entire magical population, that makes no sense! What the bloody fuck happened here?!" The pieces were piling up and the picture was getting uglier with every level he cleared out. They were dying he thought to himself, how long did this war go on against Dementors, how many of them died before they found a way to protect themselves?
He shook his head, and the 'killing', if you could call it that and Harry was actually torn on that point, continued. On the seventh floor, which would lead up in one portion to the headmaster's room and where the Room of Requirement was he paused. He summoned up 10 more Praetorians, bringing up his numbers to twenty four regular Praetorians and seven stone knights. "Clear this level and then two of you stand by the staircase leading up." He idly wondered if the gargoyle was still there, but then again he'd always wanted to destroy that stupid thing.
He however moved to the room of Requirement, which he knew was the only entrance to the hearthstone of the castle. You could change and control the wards from the headmaster's room, but the heart stone wasn't there, and you couldn't add more wards there. Luna and Padma had discovered that, though they hadn't used that knowledge to their advantage since by the time they learned about it the Death Eater Junior brigade had been pulled from the school, and Voldemort never attacked the castle directly.
Before this room had been hidden behind another painting, this one of dancing trolls rather than a fat woman or fruit, but again here it was hidden behind a door. This time it was very much a door, it had a inside and an outside and the door was there to make certain that everyone knew which was which. It had marlin spikes it, had dark painted oak it had a forbidding arch, and was it his imagination or did some of the spikes look as if they were wet with some kind of liquid? No one could look at that door and not realize that what was on the other side was Important with a capital I.
Harry grinned a little, losing some of his grim anger and he wondered if it was the same procedure despite this. Deciding to make sure he paced in front of the doorway three times saying, "I want to see the castle's hearthstone, I want to see the castle's Hearthstone, I want to see the castle's hearthstone."
After a moment he stopped feeling that the magic in the air had changed somehow. Harry nodded and reached out pulling the door open by the central knocker.
The other side of the room was a room made of black/white stone. Lines upon lines of warding arrays and runic symbols spiraled into where the hearthstone stood in the center, a pillar of varicolored rock reaching from the floor up to the ceiling. It seemed to pulse not only to his magical senses, but to his regular sight as well. With a frown he looked at it with his mage sight and after a moment nodded. "It's collapsing, the rock and the wars can't take the power of the lay lines for much longer. I'd estimate it had another 15 or so years before it collapsed, and with it all of the wards of this place." He shook his head, shivering at the idea of the dementors escaping out into the world. "Can't have that after all can we?" With that he moved forward, laying a gentle hand on it and began to shut down some of the wards.
Almost immediately he felt the stone subside a little, while he powered down the wards from a wartime footing, collapsed the anti-animal ward, then the anti-dark artifact ward, and then some specific creature wards. He left the un-plotable array up, as well as the anti-non-magical and anti-apparition wars, and the series of anti-demonic wards of course. After a moment he stepped back his work done for now, and he nodded. "Now, I would like to see a real time map of the castle please."
The room obliged, one wall rearranging itself into a map, and was that relief and welcome he felt in there? He smiled little and said out loud "hello to you too," and the feeling increased a little.
Harry laughed and moved over to the map. Hermione and he had a very large argument once about whether or not Hogwarts was alive. He had said that the castle was alive for a given value of the term, though she never believed him. Her point, that if it had been alive it certainly would pick someone better than the headmaster to be headmaster ,had been a telling point. But alive and sentient in a way that could think for itself were two very different things and it was Harry's argument eventually carried the day. This Hogwarts didn't feel anywhere near as alive and vibrant as the one he had attended for five years, but that was probably because it had never been a center of learning with the high number of kids and barely controlled magical auras to feed off of. But it was still alive in a way, and he wondered what would happen in the future once he made this place one of his bases of operations.
He looked over the map, and realized he had cleared out most of the areas shown on it, the only one remaining was the headmaster's room, and the staircases down to the dining area. He swiftly summoned six more Praetorians then merged them with an even number of stone golems and summoned two more stags to give them more power. "Head down to the staircases down to the stairs leading to the main hall on the second floor. Once there wait and I will take down the wards there. Kill any dementors you find."
The knights all nodded and trooped out with the stags following after. With a nod he left the room, and made his way up to the headmaster's room guarded by two of his stone knights. His forces had been hammered again, leaving him with only fourteen regular Praetorians patrolling the hallway. Still the only remaining dementors anywhere on the castle grounds were the ones stuck between his wars on the staircase between the main hall and the second floor, and his troops would wipe them out soon. He would still go back and check of course, but the battle was over, and it was time to get some answers.
Harry entered the staircase leading up and swiftly found himself entering the headmaster's office. He was startled to find that it was very much like it had been in his dimension with a few differences. There wasn't a place for any bird or avian to land anywhere, no perch for a phoenix. There were only a few books in one shelf, and far, far more knickknacks and only one portrait on the wall up above the desk, which was exactly the same he remembered in his old dimension.
What brought him to a shocked standstill however was the face in that poster. It was almost like looking at Albus Dumbledore again, but thankfully for Harry's sanity not quite. The man in the picture was younger, his beard wasn't nearly as long, and his hair was white streaked with gray and black. But his eyes had that same damn twinkle that Harry remembered, and his clothing looked much the same as well, so flamboyant they should be outlawed for decencies sake.
It was also alive, unlike the few portraits that Harry had passed, and before Harry could get over his shock it spoke. "I don't know who you are," said the man jovially "but if you were able to fight your way in here you must be a massively powerful wizard indeed, with more spells at your command than I ever heard of. What are those knights might I ask? Ah, but wear have my manners got to, I am Douglas Wilberforce Dumbledore, first and last headmaster of Hogwarts."
Harry scowled angrily but used a Scurgify spell on the plush chair, then gingerly tested it. Finding that the inside cushion had collapsed he sighed, waved one hand to set it on fire, then transfigured the desk into a leather chair complete with footstool. He sat down, put his feet up, and only then looked back up at the painting which he magically pulled off the wall above him and stuck on the wall nearer eye level. "First of all, turn off the bloody bollocking twinkly eyes. You're reminding me of someone I loathed, and you're about two seconds away from taking an Incendio to the chin."
Douglas Wilberforce, or DW to his friends (when he had them anyway, and that was a long, long time ago) blinked in surprise. "Really? That's surprising as it's a family spell, and I was the last of my line. Wherever did you meet someone who could use the…"
"One second, and I'm not from around here and that's all you're going to get." Harry intoned, and between two fingers of one of his hands a small flicker of flame appeared.
This time Douglas took the hint and canceled the Twinkle, which was in fact a subtle spell design to get people to lower their guard around the one using it. "I do apologize it just is very strange to actually talk to someone else at all. The other painting inhabitants have all faded over the years, the magic of their portraits dying. I am sorry if my continued use of the Twinkle offended you."
Harry flicked his fingers extinguishing the fire there. "That's alright old boy, now what the bloody fuck happened here?! Why the hell did you trap the dementors in here with you, and why the hell did you have kids here when you did it?!"
Douglas shuddered a little seeing the power the young man before him was giving off. "To learn that is a long tale, but tell me how in the world did you get in here, where are all the dementors? I would think they would be after your soul the moment you stepped through the door."
Harry's emerald eyes narrowed. "The dementors are all dead, or soon will be. You lot never heard of the Expecto Patronum spell? It drives off dementors and lethifolds and even vampires at times. I won't say it was easy but it was doable. Now answer my damn questions, or we'll have to see if some flame spells will loosen your tongue." The man's resemblance to him of too damn many names was bothering the hell out of Harry, scratching at a wound that Harry had never really gotten over.
Douglas seemed to collapse a little. "We, we never came up with anything like that. It was only the runic arrays of the genius Salazar Hufflepuff that allowed us to even trap the dementors in this castle. But wizard-kinds tale begins far before that final act." He sighed sadly. "For that we must go back to when wizards decided to separate themselves from the non-magicals and other magical communities."
"That happened sometime during the reign of Arthur right? I've been told Merlin was your leader then."
Douglas looked at him for a moment and his gloomy countenance actually broke for a moment and he chuckled. "Not exactly. You see my boy Merlin wasn't all he was cracked up to be. Oh, he was a magnificent sorcerer, and a battle wizard of renown, but he was also jealous, avaricious and a letch. While in war we looked to him to lead us, when the wars ended we were happy to distance ourselves from him. He was embroiled in a battle against his former lover/apprentice at the time, so had little attention to spare for us. No, we wished to be left alone, and so the wizards of the time, including my own ancestor, decided that we should remove ourselves. There was already talk about magic being a sign of demonic dealings, and we had no wish to involve ourselves with the religious fervor of the time. More we naturally looked down on those without magic, and felt they should be left to their own devices. They had involved us in their wars, and we wanted nothing more to do with them and their sanctimonious, holier than thou attitudes."
Harry's eyes narrowed again at that thought, but he waved a hand for the man/portrait to continue which he did. "We retreated into small enclaves all over England, after all, with apparition distance matters not at all. At first all seemed well. We created our servant class, the homunculi house elves, and wiped out the dragons and other beasts who preyed upon us and upon the non-magicals, and our wards were so strong that even if a non-magical village was within sight of our own community they would never see us. But eventually numbers began to tell."
"We had barely 10,000 members at first, and alas, we were as human as the other magicals. Within a decade of our hiding behind our wards there was a civil war when one enclave decided to conquer the others, which further cut into our numbers. Then the problems began. Every generation there were less and less children born with the magic inside them. And as it was law by that point to put to death any baby born without magic, or numbers dwindled further. There was another civil war in my great grandfather's time, which dwarfed the first one, about what to do to try and combat this downhill spiral. It matters not who won, in the end our numbers were lower than ever. The enclaves leaders came together in an attempt to try and find a solution and it was determined that there needed to be more movement between the enclaves. This school was started as a place for young people to meet and gather. It took forty years to agree to put it in place, and longer than that to actually build it."
Douglas sighed. "This was compounded by yet another civil war in my father's time. Several prominent leaders wanted to break down the wards. They felt that what we needed most was new blood to infuse all our enclaves, not just exchanging blood between our scattered communities."
He looked up. "You can understand why that idea terrified most of us, my boy. For even though we had magic, they bred like rats, they could simply overwhelm us if they wished, and most of us had no wish to involve ourselves in their affairs. And of course there was the fear that in bringing in non-magical blood, we would only deplete our own magic further. So there was another war, and our numbers cut down further. By the time the school was finished there were barely four thousand adult wizards in the world."
Now the man in the portrait actually shuddered, his eyes closed in remembered fear. "Our leaders met together to discuss a solution to our waning numbers. It was clear that the faction that wanted us to take down our wards, despite slowly losing the war, had actually won, since it was clear that it was the only solution with our numbers so low. Unfortunately at the meeting our debate was interrupted when IT appeared."
Harry leaned forward, eagerly. "It, what was this it?"
It was a being the likes we had never seen before. It stood taller than the tallest building, it was clad in armor from head to toe, fantastical armor of red and black bands. It seemed to have no face, only a tall helmet with what looked like pipes leading off it, and an inner light shining through the black portions of its helmet." Douglas recited. "I was barely forty years old at that time but I remember it like it was yesterday, not three hundred years ago. The thing, it gave off this aura like nothing any of us had felt, it was like looking into the face of a god. But this was not a kind or even a vengeful god, but an uncaring, an unfeeling one."
Harry stiffened, a memory from the worst day of his life in the negative Zone coming back to him. The armor was different, the one I ran into had green designs on a dark red background, but the feeling, the size and the inner light coming from its face, bloody hell, there's more of them! I fucking killed a planet to take that arse out, and I'm not certain it worked either! Just because the thing didn't come after me again doesn't mean I killed it.
Douglas hadn't noticed his audience's distress. He was in full flow now, and wouldn't have stopped his recitation if he had. "The thing said something, words we couldn't understand, something about an experiment and going with the alpha rather than the beta, and then suddenly it waved a hand and there were the last of the darklings, the ones who wished to take over the non-magical world. Its hands came together and suddenly they changed into the creatures of showed and darkness that we would come to call the dementors for the effect they had. I was one of only two to escape that day."
Harry leaned back, rubbing his face worriedly. So this thing told the wizards here they were a second experiment, then what was the first? Bloody hell, knowing my luck I'll probably find out eventually. When it attacks me most likely. "So the dementors attacked you, and none of you could figure out how to deal with them?"
"No," Douglas shook his head mournfully. "The things spread over the land, killing villages of non-magicals as well as wiping out our communities. One after another they all went silent, but we had learned that they were seeking us out on purpose you see. The dementors, when one of them takes in sufficient energy from the souls it devours, it can split itself, making more of them. But magical souls are the only souls with enough power to push them over the edge so to speak. Eventually the last groups retreated to the school, where the magical architect Salazar Hufflepuff, last scion of two ancient houses, had built so many wards. But there were so few of us, only forty or so adults, and seventy odd children of various ages. Hah, there were more house elves alive than there were people!" Harry's eyes again narrowed at the implied belief that house elves weren't people, but didn't interrupt. "And here we discovered a last parting gift from the giant being who inflected the dementors on us. For when we ran medical scans on the children we found they were all infertile.
Douglas's voice became hoarse, and he fought back tears. "It was then that Salazar was able to devise a ward to keep the dementors at bay, too late for us alas. We then held a conclave, us adults who remained, and decided to, at the last, at least seal our killers in with us. We could not allow them to go free, since the non-magicals had no defense against them. So Salazar created his ward, adding it to the matrix already in place on the hearthstone. About two weeks passed, then when we felt the dementors closing in, we all retreated into the castle, leaving the door open behind us. The children we put to bed. None of them knew what was happening, we made certain at least that their final moments were happy ones, then fed them a kind of poison, a painless death. Then we put the house elves in stasis. Their souls were like snacks to the dementors, and they had no defense in them. Better to die in their sleep, their magic peacefully drained out then to have their souls destroyed. It was decided I, who had been chosen as the school's first headmaster, should activate my portrait once the doors shot behind the dementors, locking them all in with us, as something to tell any who came after what happened, if any ever came. It took the dementors hours to file in, the entire first few stories were full of them, but we had retreated to the topmost three. I rushed up here to order the front doors to shut, activating the anti-dementor seal there, then raised the wards to a wartime footing, powering all of them via the ley lines beneath the school. I then activated my portrait, and that is the last of our sorry tale."
Harry closed his eyes, his hands clenching and unclenching as he thought about what was said. It told him a lot, but it also told him that these wizards were even worse than the ones in his birth dimension. Killing squibs like that had never been made into a law, custom in some families yes, but never a law. Nor had they been so arrogant as to cut off all ties with the rest of humanity. Oh, inbreeding was still an issue, but becoming less so when he left, mostly because he had helped wipe out the families most taken with the practice admittedly, but still.
What infuriated him the most however was the fact they never even attempted to save the children. So what if they were unable to have kids, they could still have escaped and lived long, possibly happy lives elsewhere. Certainly with the help of the number of house elves there were downstairs they could have. But instead someone had come up with this grand gesture, and everyone went along with it. This wasn't like Masada, where the defenders knew anyone taken alive would have lives marked by misery and cruelty as slaves. This was taking a perfectly good gesture, one that could have saved lives, and ruining it in Harry's opinion. Overall he felt that the wizards had created at least half their problems all by themselves before Mr. Red and powerful showed up.
But there's no point talking to a portrait about his living self's actions, and I have better things to do with my time. Indeed looking outside Harry noticed it was dark outside, which meant he had spent the entire day fighting his way through the castle. He stood up, baring glancing at the portrait. "I'll be back if I have any other questions. Right now I want to get some fresh air." He walked off, followed by his stone knights, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, leaving behind a quietly sniffling portrait of a man who had been unable to change his beliefs enough to stave off the destruction of his people, and who had, in the last not realized that their lives mattered more than a defiant gesture.
OOOOOOO
Clint grumbled a little as he came back to the house he and the other four SHIELD agents he was working with at present were using as their base of operations. He hated all this sneaky-spy stuff, give him the violent-spy stuff any day. After using his code key to enter the house he immediately got his wish, because the sharp retort of a rifle suddenly sounded.
Clint, or as he was better known to his friends, Hawkeye, ducked and rolled forward, pulling out a pistol and shooting even as he rolled. His accuracy with any kind of weapon served him well here, and his single return bullet slammed into the white facemask of the group at the top of the stairs who had been shooting at him.
The man went down, but Clint was dismayed to see that his team were also down, blood leaking out from under their bodies, their killers turning to bring up their guns to bear on him, he dove for the door to the bathroom, using it as cover and returning fire. His shots hit the large bruiser who had been standing in the center of his attackers dead center, but the man shrugged them off like it was nothing and charged.
Hawkeye jumped backward, rolling and diving gunfire from behind even as the giant man crushed the doorway that had been defending him. Clint rolled to the side, swiftly opening the door to the basement and diving down the stairs.
Once down he swiftly divested himself of his suit and grabbed at his back, where a collapsed bow had been hidden with a small bundle of arrows. A flick of his wrist and it snapped into position, and he grabbed one of the arrows fitting it to his string before turning up to face the stairway down.
The giant led the way down, and it took three arrows to the head, one hitting right on top of the other, to kill him. The man went down, blood and robotic fluids leaking from under his mask. But by that point another seven purple and red spandex clad troops had made their way down and taken cover around the basement, firing back at Hawkeye and forcing him back into cover. He could hear even more of them still moving around upstairs and he cursed. "What the hell have I gotten myself into here?"
A distinct rumble answered him and he frowned, then turned when he heard the rumble of stone and mortar moving. Behind him a hole in the wall cracked and crumbled into existence, and Lance looked at him. "A bow and arrow, you any good with that?" He gestured, and suddenly the ground of the basement bucked and rolled, cracking in places while coming up to give Clint and Lance more cover in others.
"Yeah I'm good with it kid, what the hell are you doing here anyway?"
"These guys've been following me ever since I got back into town, well except at the school for some reason." Charles routinely kept an eye out for his students at school, and any groups approaching it with ill intent would find themselves suddenly turned around, their minds momentarily blanked out. Such was Charles' telepathic power that any kind of defense was useless against it. "I noticed the same truck I saw yesterday following a car that looked like yours, and then saw you walk into this house."
Shots began to come their way once more and he scowled. "You got anywhere else we can go? I've got no idea what they want with me, but they obviously want you dead."
Clint frowned, shooting one of the men almost absent mindedly, but another one of the giants, who Clint now recognized as some kind of robot or cyborg, charged. Before he could do anything however Lance darted forward, hands clenched into fists. A wave of something shot out form his fists, impacting the ground underneath the giant, and it became almost liquid, dragging him down before hardening again, almost cutting him in half. "Not bad kid," Clint stated, shooting down two more of their attackers. "And yeah, I've got an idea of where we can go, but we need to shake these fuckers off first."
Lance grinned. "Funny you should use the word shake, they don't call me Avalanche for nothing!" he kneeled down, slapping his hands onto the ground in front of him, and suddenly the ground and the walls began to shake and rumble again. "Get in the tunnel, I'll be right behind you!"
Clint knew not to argue and fell back into the tunnel Lance had made, taking up a position where he could cover the kid as he worked. An instant later Lance joined him, and over his shoulder Clint could see the entire basement starting to come apart and sink.
The teen pushed the older man along, the tunnel filling in behind them until the two of them appeared in the backyard of a house a few buildings over from the former SHIELD safehouse. Clint led the way out onto the street, jumping over the fence as Lance had earlier, then paused and shook his head at the sight of the former safehouse. The entire thing had collapsed inward, as if the ground underneath had become a sinkhole, trapping those inside underneath its rubble. "So, you think we got them off our backs?"
Clint laughed. "You don't do anything by half do you kiddo? Yeah I think you can say that, now let's get outta here."
Clint led the way again, heading for a drop point where he could contact his superiors, Lance tagging along behind him, knowing now that the group after him wasn't with the government, and more trusting of Clint now. "By the way, are you guys hiring?"
Clint smiled laughed again. "Come see me when you graduate from high school punk." Lance shrugged, that would have to do for now, and the two of them continued on their way through the night ignoring the sounds of the sirens coming closer.
OOOOOOO
Harry's anger left him the moment he was away from the man who reminded him so much of the master manipulator, leaving him only with the grief, the bone deep sorrow at the loss of so many lives to the stupidity of wizards.
"Damn it, what is it about being born with magic that removes the common sense?!" He leaned back against the wall of the hallway outside the circular staircase leading up to the headmaster's room, not even noticing as the two stone knights that had accompanied him up moved past him, still looking out for enemies.
Harry didn't notice, his eyes slowly filling with tears. "All those lives lost because wizards felt they were so much better than everyone else, despite all evidence to the contrary. Those kids, killed because someone wanted to make a bollocking grand gesture!"
He felt a sudden weight on one shoulder, a downy head butting into his own gently, and he looked up to see Hedwig leaning in eye to eye, her hunters gaze somehow softened in concern. "You always know when I need help don't you, Hedwig?"
The owl precked softly, nipping at his ear as if to say 'of course I do you silly boy' and Harry chuckled wetly then shook himself. There were still lives here he could help, and he pushed himself off the wall purposefully. Grief could come later.
Hedwig left his shoulder, never liking being on her human when he was moving around like that. Oh she liked it when he had a forearm, but his shoulders moved a little too much, especially down stairs. So one stone knight suddenly had an owl on its head as it followed its creator down the hallway and then down the stairs. Harry moved down the last flight of stairs cleared by his conjured troops, finding they had again taken casualties, but nodded. "I want half of you to head back to the Room of Requirement and await further orders. The other half is to split again, half to come with me, the other half to split again and head to the main entrance and the back door leading out onto the grounds behind the castle."
He had seen the runic array on that door, and knew there wouldn't be any dementors out on the grounds anywhere. In fact he thought his troops had already destroyed all of them, but he wasn't about to become overconfident. He summoned up seven more Praetorian knights, pushing them into an equal number of stone golems. "You seven, I want you to head up to the girls bathroom on the second floor. Head in and see if there is anything there. I'll join you after I'm done waking up the house elves."
The ten new stone knights nodded, and the entire force, now again about forty-eight strong, broke up and moved away on their various duties, with five following him, one stone knight and four regular Praetorians. Harry moved through the main hall and down the corridor on the other side of the entrance hall, finally coming to the entrance to the house elves area, smiling faintly. The fact this Salazar Hufflepuff had created a ward to defend and protect the elves powered by the ley lines rather than their own magic gave him a slightly better opinion of the man, despite his having gone along with the 'grand gesture' scheme.
He ordered the knights to wait here, and then entered the house elves' hallway. Once inside Harry looked around then nodded. "As new lord of the castle, I ask the stasis wards in this hall be taken down." He wasn't actually certain he could do this, but he had noticed the stasis wards on the hearthstone, and it made sense they too would be coupled to the main arrays of the castle. And since he was the only living wizard in the castle and had interacted with the hearthstone, he felt it likely he could give orders like that.
After a moment he was proven incorrect and he sighed. "Oh well, back up to the hearthstone boys." He took the trip quickly, stopping only to confirm that there was indeed no sign of a chamber of secrets, once more showing that the castle hadn't been lived in long enough to develop any little (and not so little) secrets he had been used to in his old dimension. This one however he was glad to see wasn't there, and he ordered the seven stone knights to spilt up and join the defenders at the two entrances.
Harry gathered up the group outside the hearthstones room and they all trooped inside. He moved over to lay a hand on the hearthstone itself then asked. "I would like the map to show any remaining dementors, if there are any." The map remained unchanging and he nodded. "I would like the map to show any more dangers to myself in the castle."
Again the map remained unchanging, and Harry felt the hearthstone almost warm under his hand, welcome and anticipating. That proves it, you can only imbue something with magic for so long before it starts to fundamentally change. Heh, fun. Harry grinned and then intoned the next bit in a loud voice. "Then as last living wizard and as both vanquisher of the dementors and new defender of the castle of Hogwarts I ask that I become its headmaster."
For a moment nothing happened, then suddenly the runic arrays everywhere in the room glowed with a brilliant orange and purple light, as images and power filled Harry's mind. He had to fight his mutant power for a moment, as it wanted to drain the magic trying to fill him, but it was easy enough, and the feeling faded swiftly as a deep booming bell tolled throughout the castle. Then it was over, and Harry shook his head woozily. "Okay, that was a trip. Now, I would like the stasis wards in the house elves section of the castle taken town please. Then lock down and bar entry to the headmaster's room. I'll deal with that portrait later, possibly when I have need of kindling."
The hearthstone seemed to thrum under his hands, almost purring like a giant cat, and Harry suddenly knew that his orders had been obeyed. "While we're waiting…" He flicked his free hand, and suddenly all of the Praetorian knights were gone, the power he had been sending them cut off. The stone knights however remained and he began to wordlessly send them elsewhere in the castle tying their power into the wards of protection and defense inside the castle itself. A moment later it was done, and the stone knights trooped out to take up their new positions.
As they were trooping out the door hundreds of pops rent the air, and Harry looked up to see what looked like over two hundred or so house elves had suddenly popped into the room, filling it from end to end. Their faces were ecstatic and almost all of them were bouncing up and down in eagerness and joy. The moment they appeared their voices began to clamor over one another. 'Bes you our new master?', 'bes you the lord?', 'oh so much work to do', and other such shouts assaulted Harry's ears, and he held up a hand. "Quiet down guys, I can't hear whatever the heck you are saying!"
The elves quieted, then one of them, the oldest with pale white skin, long droopy ears and a small stick he used as a cane, moved forward. "Please sir, I's be Dilly, the oldest here. Be's you the new master? Can we's bond to you now?" The last question made the others shout agreement, but Dilly turned and glared the others into silence.
"Dilly," Harry spoke slowly, "Do you know what happened here?"
Dilly's ears drooped further touching the ground, and the other's looked down in sorrow which was enough for Harry who nodded. "Then yes Dilly I am the new master of the castle. I came from another… well another dimension if you can understand that. I was astonished to find Hogwarts here as well. I cleared out the dementors, they're all dead now." That brought a rousing cheer from the elves, though many still looked misty-eyed. "I have plans for he castle, and I'd love to have your help, but why do you say you want to bond to me? Aren't you being fed by the magic of the castle?" He resolved to ask Dilly about his take on events later, right now it was too raw in him to want to go over it again, Harry couldn't imagine what it must be like for the elves.
Dilly nodded gravely, his face screwed up in thought for a moment as he thought about how to explain the nature of the bond. "Yes master we's be fed by the castle, but it be's like gruel for humans. Not tasty, yucky, we's can live on it, but it not be nice. When the castle full of children, they's magic bes added in, making it more like good strong soup or even full meal, buts not now."
Harry sat down, leaning against the hearthstone for a moment, the welcome warmth of it flailing him as he came down to eye level with the house elves. "Well Dilly, I don't have a problem bonding with you all, in fact it would help me out a lot, but I have some ground rules that you all will have to obey. I'll say them now, and if any of you disagree, I'll try to find a way to make the castle's magic more, um tasty I guess, for you all. Okay?"
Two hundred small house elf heads nodded wildly as one and he chuckled before going on. "First, I'm not going to be your master, I hate being addressed like that by anyone, I can be your friend, but when you bond to me, you become part of my family, not a mere servant. So any of you I bond with should call me Harry, or if you can't manage that Mr. Potter." Elf eyes teared up at the generosity of the master, even while a few uttered that it was against all decorie (decorum), but Harry wasn't finished. "Second, there will be no self-punishments. I don't know how it was before, but all of you regardless of if you bond with me or stay bonded to the castle, you're no longer allowed to punish yourselves. If you think you've done something wrong, I want you to tell me, and if there is punishment it will be light. Understood?"
The tears were flowing more freely now, and practically every elf there thought their new master was the nicest master that had ever been. "Third, I know that house elves pride themselves on doing their jobs unseen, and at times I will want that to be the case, but for the most part I want to see you as you're going about your work. That way no one will be able to forget the good you're doing. And fourth, none of you are to work yourselves into exhaustion no matter what. I know there's a lot to be done just around here, but we'll work on it slowly, I don't want anyone working themselves too hard. And fifth, if anything attacks you, you are allowed to defend yourselves to the best of your ability."
Now the elves were jumping up and down, the ones in the back trying to press in to get closer to their new master. "Now, knowing those rules, do you all still want to bond with me?" Harry suddenly found himself under elfy-pile, and laughed at their exuberance.
Dilly soon got control of the group and two by two the elves came forward, and Harry laid his hands on their little hands and said the words "I bind you to me as family and friend" over and over, eliciting tears of happiness and gratitude in all of them.
The elves for their part were now looking at one another in wonder, standing tall, feeling stronger and livelier than they ever had before, even the ones who had been bonded to other masters before. Their new master's power filled them, making them more powerful than anything they had ever imagined was possible. One adventuresome youngster popped out to a nearby room and clicked his fingers. The dust everywhere and the cobwebs all disappeared and he gaped in shock. Normally hat would have taken several minutes, now it barely took a few seconds.
He popped back to find that Harry had finished bonding the last of the house elves and was now giving them their first orders. "Alright, I'm going to give you all some orders now, but wait until I'm done before haring off. First I know house elves need to eat food too, so I want fifty of you to head to the forest and looked for wild plants, onions, edible mushrooms, carrots, whatever, another fifty to head to the lake and see if you can figure out a way to get some fish out. Ten of you head down to the kitchen and clean it up, see if there are enough utensils and other things to use. Who here knows how to write?" About twenty hands went up including Dilly's, and he nodded. "Alright, I want you to go through the castle and mark down the number of rooms, the amount of furniture that's decayed and other things. Do you know how to measure things?"
Dilly nodded. "Yes Master Harry, we's does. Our magic lets us do it easy. What you be's wanting it for?"
Harry ignored the master there, realizing they needed that stability right now, and conjured up twenty notepads complete with pencils. "I want you to mark down how many yards of rugs we'd need for the first floor and the hallways, as well as how many square feet of walls we have for hangings, pictures and other things." Dilly nodded resolutely. That would take some time, but they could do it.
There was a pause as a thought occurred to Harry. "Also mark down your own areas, those little houses of yours are awesome, and I want to know if you all want anything to make them better." The house elves grinned at one another, happy with that thought.
Harry's next words sobered them up however. "The rest of you I want to split into three. One group is to begin cleaning the castle, start from the first floor and work your way up. I… I want the second group to head outside and begin to dig some graves for the children who died here. The grown up wizards," he nearly spat the word, "Their skeletons can be tossed in the lake. The last group is to prepare the bodies for burial." The house elves all nodded somberly and they began to pop out to their various duties.
Two of them however only disappeared from view, keeping an eye on their master to see if he thought up anything else he wanted them to do. They watched as Harry leaned back against the headstone, tears beginning to fall silently from his face. One of them looked at the other and they both popped out to the hallway outside. "The master be's hurt in the heart. He bes sad and weepy about what happened to the former masters."
Both elves ears drooped in response to that. None of the elves had gone along willingly with the idea of being sealed willing when Master Hufflepuff had sealed them away, but they had no defense against dementors, and unlike humans for whom the process was terrifying but painless, to them having their soul sucked out was an extremely painful way to die.
"What's we do to help him?" The male asked then gasped, looking over his mate's shoulder. "EEEP!"
The female, who was named Tilly and was Dilly's daughter, turned and gasped. One the stone knight standing at parade rest outside the door to the classroom they had appeared outside of was a snowy owl. Both elves froze as that hunter's gaze swept over them. Even knowing they were too big for the owl to make a meal of they still felt the impact of that predatory stare. Then Tilly gasped, and relaxed. "Her owliness be's the masters familiar, his magic be all over her."
The owl nodded and stared at her, and an image popped into Tilly's head of a tall, regal looking black woman with white hair. It took a moment for her to understand, but she at last got what the owl was trying to do. "You's think this woman be's able to help the master?" Another woman was shown, this time with fiery red hair and eyes the color of jade, as well as a dining table and the concept of distance. "You's want one of us to goes get one of these mistresses?"
The olw nodded regally, and Tilly face firmed with decision. "I's will go." The owl sent another image, this time of a huge ocean, and the elf girl shrugged. "Normally it bes too far to pop, but the masters power be's giving me the strength." The owl nodded again, and the elf popped away.
OOOOOOO
Ororo sat next to her redheaded friend at the breakfast table scowling. Harry hadn't come home last night, and she just knew her emerald eyed lover had gotten into some kind of trouble.
Jean frowned worriedly looking at her and wondering where Harry was, and if she could get away with smacking him upside the head for worrying Ororo like this. And yourself too, can't forget that, a portion of her mind mentioned, its not just a crush and you know it. Jean resolutely ignored the voice coming from the portion of her tower she had set aside for emotions, not wanting to think about that just now when her friend was so distressed already.
The others at the table were subdued, knowing Mr. Potter hadn't returned, but not really worried about him just yet, it was more the pouting frown on Ororo's face that kept them quiet.
That quiet was disturbed by a sudden pop from behind Ororo and Logan, who had been sitting on her other side turned swiftly, his claws popping out ready to lunge, but he stopped at the little creature standing there looking a little worried. All the others looked over the table at the thing, their eyes wide. It had huge pointy floppy ears was wearing what looked like a gray toga, and had huge, bulging round eyes that dominated a narrow face.
The being ignored the stares it was getting looking up at Ororo. "Be's you master Harry's mistress Orry?"
Ororo blinked, then blinked again, shooting a glare over at Kurt who was chuckling at the way the little being mangled her name. "I suppose you could say that, but I prefer simply Miss Ororo to mistress. Why, what has happened, and who are you?"
"I's be Tilly miss," the elf bobbed a little curtsy, then answered the rest of the regal woman's questions. "The master be's…not fine, he be sore in the heart and head. Her owliness told me to come and get you and mistress Flamehair to help."
Jean's eyes widened and her eyebrow's weren't the only ones that shot up at her being included in that. She ignored the other's surprise, though she did note Ororo's little smile, showing no surprise or concern at her being named as someone to help Harry when he was feeling down. "Er, my name's Jean, actually, and since it's a school day, I can't come with you I'm afraid. I'm certain Ororo can handle it."
Ororo nodded decisively. "Indeed, though I have to wonder what happened. Now, how are we getting to him?"
"You's just need to take my hand miss." Tilly stated, happy that both the master's ladies seemed as nice as he was.
Ororo nodded before looking at the others. She could see the concern and wariness building up in Charles and Logan's face, but she somehow knew this wasn't a trick of anything. Harry needed her help, and she would be there for him, as he had helped her before. "I'll see you all later I suppose, and Harry and I will tell you what happened when we get back." Before either of her fellow teachers could say anything she reached out and took the little beings hand, and with a pop disappeared, leaving behind some very worried people. Strangely only Jean wasn't concerned, and turned back to her meal with a clearer head than before, certain that Storm would be able to help Harry with whatever it was.
Ororo suddenly found herself in a stone hallway, the air a little cold around her, but not unpleasantly so. The little creature that brought her here gestured at the rather forbidding doorway a few feet in front of her. "The master be's in there miss Orry."
Ororo nodded and moved to the doorway. Inside the enclosed room she could indeed see Harry, leaning back against a pillar of stone that seemed to be thrumming somehow, it and all the walls she could see covered with what she recognize as runes like those Harry used so often. She stepped forward a little warily, her claustrophobia acting up but thankfully the room was large enough to let her keep control. She went to one knee next to her lover and gently drew him into a hug.
Harry stiffened for a moment as he felt arms go around him, and then calmed down as his sense told him who it was, the smell of his lady, the feel of her skin against his neck, the color of her hair. He didn't question why or even how she had appeared like this, he simply turned into her embrace and with a sob broke down utterly at last.
Ororo shook her head slightly in sadness. Harry cared, truly and deeply cared for people, not just those he knew, but those he hadn't met. Here he never even had a chance to save his fellow wizards and it had hit home hard. And he had a soft spot for kids, which made this all the more tragic to him. The worst part was that Ororo could find no words to comfort him, nothing that wouldn't mean speaking ill of the dead or sound trite or rehearsed. All she could do was hold him, giving him what comfort her touch and presence gave, and she did so willingly, smiling faintly at seeing the even someone as powerful as Harry needed a shoulder to cry on.
She continued to hold him as the story of what he had found here came out, causing tears to spring to her own eyes at the senseless, meaningless deaths the children here had suffered, once more coming to realize that above and beyond the power he wielded, the mind he had or the dreams he had decided to pursue, it was the soul of the man, that caring, gentle, protective soul, that made her fall in love with Harry.
After about ten minutes Harry's sobs subsided, and Harry began to recover himself. He pulled back, giving Ororo a kiss on neck and then the lips as he did so. "Thanks love, I really needed to get that out. But how did you even get here?"
"I was brought hear by a little creature who called herself Tilly. Would you care to explain what she is, and why she cannot seem to pronounce my name correctly?" The language teacher arced an eyebrow at her lover, and Harry began to laugh. It was a somewhat manic, brittle laugh, but nonetheless it was a laugh, and Ororo was happy to hear it. Harry stood, up as he began to explain what house elves were, and escorted her out of the room. After that he began to show her around what would soon become their new home.