Chapter 16
“Albus! Albus! I can’t take it anymore! I want him out of my house!” Molly Weasley screamed from the floo.
Albus quickly made his way to the fireplace to find out what was going on now. “Molly, my dear, what has happened?”
“Black! I want him gone!” she demanded.
“What did he do?”
“He won’t stop with the pranks. I will no longer have him in my house.”
“I’m sure it’s a slight misunderstanding.” Albus began, hiding his annoyance.
“No, Albus. He’s worse than my twins. His pranks are breaking things and hurting me and Arthur. I will not stand for it!”
“He has nowhere to go, Molly. I will talk to him.” Albus gave her his signature disappointed look.
“Albus…” Molly hesitated, her voice becoming a whisper. “Do we really need him anymore?”
Albus froze.
“I’m just mean, he’s not doing anything to help. Potter won’t even respond to his letters or anything. He is not contributing to the Order, he’s just dead weight. He’s also a dark wizard.” Molly quickly explained.
“Molly, I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we still need him.” Albus let out a sigh. “I had told both Sirius and Remus, to go look at house he could live at that had room for Order meetings.” Albus wasn’t too shocked by Molly after all, it was she who got rid of her brothers when they became more trouble than they were worth.
“Okay, Albus.” Molly calmly agreed. “I will give them some time, but you need to talk to them about their pranks or I’ll put them in a coma.”
“Of course, my dear.”
After saying goodbye to Molly, Albus went back to his desk. He rubbed his forehead trying to dispel this newest headache. He would put it past Molly slipping them a potion and keeping them drugged up for the remainder of their stay at the Burrow.
He would need to impress upon Sirius to stop with the pranks and to find a place quickly.
--*--
Harry had snuck back into St. Mungos with the potion he made to help his greats grandson and his wife. He first began casting cleansing spells on the couple. He didn’t want anything interfering with their minds when he gave them the potion. He even removed the healing coma know that most still slept after it was removed.
Once he was satisfied, he first went up to Frank and gently poured the potion in his mouth. He massaged his throat as the potion went down so he did not choke. After he drank it all he moved to Alice and repeated the process. Within 24 hours the two would be healed.
Harry gathered his stuff and made his way out of St. Mungos and back to Hogwarts. It was still early enough he could spend some time out in the Forbidden Forest.
--*--
Harry prowled around the forbidden forest in his Wampus cat form. He didn’t go out as far as he usually did when he was in his Shadowmane form as the Wampus, while fast was not as fast as a Shadowmane, or as big. Still, he enjoyed roaming in the forest in this form.
As Harry wandered, he was thinking of what he should do next. He wanted to do something to the traitors, hurt them where it counts. While he was more or less being passive aggressive at the moment, slowly distancing himself from them and making causal comments that made them look bad and their own reactions making it look worse, but he wanted to do more and to the others.
Dumbledore was taking a popularity hit due to the Ministry for refusing to admit the Dark Lord was back. There were still a number of Dumbledore sycophants that believed anything Dumbledore said. Besides, if Voldemort did something stupid and the Minister started believing Dumbledore, they would go back to grovelling to the twinkly eyed bastard and most likely give him even more power. Harry needed something more that would cause people to question and doubt the old man.
While he did disown Sirius, he didn’t believe that was enough. Sirius had tricked a known abused orphan into believing he cared for him just for money, said orphan’s money. James was his best friend, yet he called him a traitor, why? Harry would need to know in order to deduce what would be the best way to get back at Sirius.
Since Sirius was involved, there was no doubt that Lupin was as well. While Lupin did teach him the Patronus charm he didn’t even reveal his connections to James until they all ended up in the Shrieking Shack. After third year had ended Harry even sent Lupin a letter hoping they could keep in contact yet nothing. Lupin ignored him until last summer when Dumbledore obviously sent him and the rest of the morons to come and collect him.
As for Molly and Arthur Weasley, Harry knew that they would be used to people looking down on them and seemingly always stand together when faced with the wizarding world's contempt for them. Maybe what Harry needed to do was to break them apart. Get them to lose trust in each other and doubt each others’ motives. Divide and conquer as it were.
As for the younger kids, he didn’t want to be too cruel but at the same time he didn’t want to be too lenient. Both younger Weasleys were spoiled brats that were literally raised to follow Dumbledore. Granger on the other hand, was raised away from Dumbledore in the muggle world, unless that was a lie?
Harry was going to have to go digging. He also needed to find out if there were others involved that he didn’t know about. Now that he was ready for the ritual to give Voldemort back his sanity and the time was almost upon them, Harry needed to start working on his other plans.
*crack*
Snapping out of his thoughts, Harry used his sense to see what caused the sound.
There.
About 10 meters away from him was an adult wizard with his back to him who had just apparated into the forest. The wizard was in plain brown robes that looked like they had seen better days. He had a bucket hat on hiding any hair, if he had hair that was.
The strange wizard let out a huff and sat down with his back to the nearest tree. Harry cautiously began to circle the man to see if he recognized the strange. Staying low to the ground Harry got around to the front of the stranger. As he crept closer, he could see the wizard's eyes were closed as he leaned against the tree and he was shivering. He didn’t recognize him but wondered why a stranger would be here, especially since Hogwarts wasn’t too far away.
With a deliberate step, Harry crunched some leaves.
The wizard’s eye snapped open and connected with Harry’s. Without any hesitation Harry used his Wampus Legilimency ability and easily slipped into the other’s mind. The stranger’s name was Timothy Trudgeon, he was a recently turned werewolf and was just looking for a place to rest for a day or two. He used to come to this spot when he was a student at Hogwarts. He meant no harm and only needed some peace away from everyone.
Harry left his mind as easily as he entered.
Trudgeon gasped and stared at Harry fearfully.
Harry huffed and cautiously walked closer to the werewolf until he was kind of close. Keeping an eye on Trudgeon, Harry shuffled what little bit of snow that made it down to this area of the forest out of the way so there was a crude circle empty of snow. Harry then walked up to a different tree and jumped up and started knocking off loose branches. Once he had a decent amount he hopped back to the ground and began gathering up the branches. Finally, Harry started placing the branches in the circle. He hoped the other could figure out what he was doing.
Once Harry had a good enough pile in the circle plus extra wood off to the side, he cautiously moved to lay down next to the wizard to share some of his body heat.
Trudgeon slowly moved, as if still expecting Harry to act, lifting his wand and after a few tries managed to start the fire.
Harry stayed there and kept the fire burning through the rest of the night for Trudgeon as he slept. He wasn’t sure why he did what he did. Maybe because he understood what it was like to struggle and that any helping hand was appreciated, no matter the form it came in.
Once morning came Harry gathered more sticks then went hunting for Trudgeon. He caught two hares and placed them by the fire. He then gently nudged Trudgeon to wake him up. Harry used his paw pointing to the freshly killed hares before he left. Harry had to go back to Hogwarts, unfortunately people would notice if he wasn’t there.