Surprises
Beep. Beep. Beep. Harry slowly began to wake up before freezing completely. He couldn’t be in Grimmauld Place; it was too bright. The light caused the inside of his eyelids to be a dark red color rather than the black they normally were in his house. This wasn’t his bed; it was too stiff. Harry stretched out his magic, trying to feel if anyone was in the room. He had gotten very good at this during the war. It especially helped whenever he had been captured. When he felt that nobody was in or near the room, Harry relaxed a little but kept his magic actively sensing if anyone was near. Beep. Beep. Beep. What the hell was that noise? Harry carefully opened his eyes.
“Shit,” was all Harry could say before curling up in the small bed. The bland, white walls and impersonal room told him exactly where he was. He was in a freaking hospital. Harry had only been to a hospital once, and it was a terrible experience. He had been six at the time, and Petunia was beginning to make him cook for the family. It had been Dudley’s birthday, so Harry had to use the fine china. As he had carefully set the table, Dudley lumbered in and pushed him from behind, causing him to drop the entire stack of plates in order to catch himself. The Dursleys hadn’t been too happy about that. Vernon had kicked him out of the house after his ‘punishment’ that had caused a broken arm, three broken ribs, and a black eye before ordering him not to come back until after Dudley’s birthday was over. Harry had limped to the hospital because Petunia always took Dudley there when he was hurt, but by the time he got to the hospital, his magic had completely healed him of his injuries. A nurse immediately became suspicious of him since he was by himself and obviously uninjured. She convinced him to tell her where he lived and then called the Dursleys which had led to one of the worst punishments he had ever lived through.
Yes, Harry didn’t like hospitals at all. They were nosy, cold, and completely impersonal. Harry carefully sat up in bed. His body ached. He could barely move. He quickly looked himself over for injuries but found nothing that should be causing him the amount of pain he was currently in. He glared at the tubes that were connected to his arms before reaching to pull them out. His hand didn’t make it very far. A silver handcuff connected it to the bed rail. “What the hell?” Harry mumbled as he yanked on his hand again.
A shrill alarm sounded in his head as his magic snapped back to him. He flopped back down on the bed, but before he could pretend to be asleep a nurse bustled in. “Hi, sweetie!” the nurse said with a fake smile, “I hope you’re feeling well.”
Harry glared at her. He already didn’t like her at all. “Why am I handcuffed to the bed?” Harry growled.
Her smile faltered. “Just a necessary precaution, dear.” She grabbed the clipboard at the end of his bed. “Can you tell me what your name is?”
Harry ignored her question. “Why is it necessary?”
She froze, eyes slowly filling with pity. “How about I go get your doctor?” she said with another fake smile before she hurried through the door. A few minutes later, a portly, bald doctor with a kind face walked in. The doctor gave him a bright smile. “How are you feeling, my boy?”
Harry flinched slightly. The man reminded him too much of Dumbledore. “I’m not your boy,” Harry snarled. The man stepped back slightly, before nodding professionally. “Can you tell me your name?”
“I can. Why am I handcuffed to the bed?” Harry glared at the man. He didn’t like being clueless.
The doctor got a sympathetic look on his face. “Do you remember anything about your accident, my boy?” Harry bristled at the endearment.
When Harry didn’t say anything, the doctor sighed. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you were in an accident,” The man said sadly, “We believe you may have tried to commit suicide.”
Harry stared at the man in utter confusion. Why would he think he had tried to kill himself? Hell, Harry hadn’t even been here long enough-oh. All the pieces fell together. The ritual must have dropped him off in the air. Harry had thought he had just imagined falling. Whoever had found him must have assumed he had jumped from a building.
“Where was I found?” Harry asked quietly.
The doctor glanced down at the clipboard, “You were found near the Borough of Islington.” Harry nodded silently. That’s where Grimmauld Place was. Maybe the ritual was like apparition, and since he didn’t have a clear destination in mind, it just dropped him off close to where he was originally. Harry mulled over the thought. Yes, it was possible; hell, even probable.
The silence must have worried the doctor. “Do you remember anything?”
Harry froze. How was he going to get out of this? “Yes… But I didn’t try to kill myself. I just…fell.” Harry said unconvincingly. The doctor raised an eyebrow at him. “How long have I been here?” Harry asked before the doctor could say anything.
The doctor looked down at the clipboard again. “You’ve been unconscious for three days, but you’ve healed incredibly fast. It’s a medical miracle, I’d say.”
The doctor’s eyes seemed to hover over something written on the sheet he was looking at. The doctor sadly glanced down at Harry. “We found a surprising amount of scar tissue all over your body,” Harry tensed slightly, “If you are being abu-” Harry cut the doctor off. “I’m not feeling well. I think I need to sleep some more.”
The doctor watched him sadly before nodding. “If you need anything, just call for a nurse,” he said before leaving the room.
Harry seethed as he listened to the doctor’s footsteps fade away. As soon as everything became quiet outside, Harry snapped his fingers at the handcuffs, unlocking them. He shot out of bed and began to look for his clothes. “Hate hospitals,” Harry growled as he finally found his clothes neatly folded up with the elder wand placed neatly beside them, “If they had seen Kali-” Harry stopped from putting on his clothes and looked at his wrist. He hadn’t noticed it before but the wrist Kali usually curled up on had been the one handcuffed to the bed. For the first time in weeks, Harry was alone and he didn’t like it.
“Kali?” Harry called out, looking around the room, “Kali, this is no time for tricks!” The dragon was smart. Surely she hadn’t been caught by the hospital staff. A quiet chirping filled the room as she stuck her snout out from underneath the bed. Harry relaxed. “And here I was worried about you,” Harry rolled his eyes and quickly finished pulling on his clothes. He glared down at them. They had large patches of blood scattered through them. “Scourgify,” Harry said, hopeful that his magic wouldn’t act up and clean the entire building. The blood quickly disappeared from his clothes leaving them looking new. He glanced at them again before transfiguring them into wizarding robes. “Perfect,” Harry said with a smirk.
“Come on, Kali, it’s time to go,” Harry called as he snapped the elder wand into his wand holster. Kali quietly flew to his shoulder and nuzzled his cheek. Harry smiled slightly, “Yeah, yeah. I missed you too, you beast,” Harry said before turning on his heels and disapperating from the hospital with a crack.
Harry quickly maneuvered through Diagon Alley. He stopped outside of Gringotts and took a deep breath. This was it. This would determine if all his plans would work or not. Harry just hoped the spell would hold. Harry stood up straight and regally strode into the bank. He looked like a pureblood lord. The small crowd inside the bank became silent and parted for the man who looked like he could rival a Malfoy. A small smirk graced Harry’s otherwise blank face. Looked like his plan was working so far.
Harry made his way over to a desk. “What do you want?” A goblin asked gruffly, not looking up from his desk. “I would like to claim a lordship,” Harry said evenly.
The goblin finally looked up and glanced at Harry. He sneered at him, obviously unimpressed with Harry. “And what lordship would you be claiming?” The goblin sneered.
Perfect. Harry smirked. It was going better than he expected. “The Emrys lordship.”
A small gasp filled the room before it was replaced with loud whispers. The goblin stared at Harry in shock before his face became blank. “I’m sure you are aware of the blood test you have to take in order to accept this lordship.”
“Of course,” Harry said as he rolled up his sleeve and held out the arm that Kali wasn’t wrapped around. The goblin watched him carefully as he pulled out a small knife and sharply drew it down his forearm. Before Harry could so much as flinch, the goblin snatched his arm and held it over a paper. Harry watched with bated breath as drop after drop slowly fell onto it, praying that the spell would hold.
Before Harry had traveled to the past, he had found a spell in the Black family grimoire that would suppress certain bloodlines. If the spell was cast with the intention of only blocking one or two bloodlines, it would block those and allow other, older bloodlines to become dominate. It had been created originally to make sure that the old, powerful pureblood families didn’t disappear when they didn’t have a male heir and were forced to marry into other families. Merlin had bound bloodline into the Potentia Dracones Praecedentes so that the next owner of the book would be his heir since he didn’t have any children of his own. Since Kali had accepted Harry, she had inadvertently named him Merlin’s heir. Well, technically Slytherin had been named Merlin’s heir, but he hadn’t accepted it, so the lordship passed on to the next owner of the book. In theory, the spell should have hidden the Potter and Black lordships and only allowed the Emrys lordship to show in any kind of ritual or spell, but since his magic had been acting up so much lately, Harry didn’t know if the spell would last or completely hide his other lordships.
Harry carefully watched the paper. If this didn’t work then the rest of his plans would go up in smoke. Slowly, the blood on the paper began to form the elegant cursive words, Hadrian James Emrys-Slytherin, Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Emrys and Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Slytherin through rite of conquest.
Harry raised an eyebrow at the last part of the sentence. That wasn’t supposed to have happened. He hadn’t even known he had been Lord Slytherin in his original time. He should have checked for any additional lordships when he had taken out all the money from the Potter and Black Vaults in his time, but, really, who would have expected this? Certainly not him. Riddle was definately not going to be happy.
The goblin stared down at the paper in shock. He carefully glanced up at Harry before bowing his head to him, ignoring the sharp gasps from the rest of the people in the bank. Goblins rarely showed respect to wizards. They only respected those who they deemed more powerful and dangerous than them. For a goblin to show such a blatant form of respect for Harry, he must have deemed him an extremely formidable person. “It is an honor to meet you, Lord Emrys-Slytherin.”
The whispers in the bank grew louder. This would definitely be all over the Prophet tomorrow. For the first time in centuries, there was a Lord Emrys, not to mention Voldemort evidently wasn’t the Lord Slytherin he claimed to be.
Harry kept his face carefully blank as he bowed his head to the goblin in front of him. “The honor’s all mine.” The goblin eyed him warily before snapping his attention to a goblin beside him. “Go get the Emrys and Slytherin lord rings,” he snapped at the smaller goblin. He nodded nervously before bolting through the door leading to the vaults.
Harry glanced behind him. When had the crowd gotten so large? When he had entered Gringotts, the bank had maybe fifteen people in it, but now the bank was half full. Harry smirked slightly before he faced the goblin again. Yes, this would work perfectly. The wizarding world was the equivalent of a high school rumor mill. He would be a mystery to all the pureblooded families. The titles he had received would make them curious about the supposed pureblooded lord and cause them to play right into his hands.
“Lord Emrys-Slytherin,” the goblin said, snapping him out of his thoughts, “Here are your rings.” The goblin set two small, ornate boxes in front of him. Harry carefully open the first one. The ring truly was beautiful. It was delicate, with intricate silver swirls surrounding a dark cobalt stone. A small dragon, which looked disturbingly like Kali in midflight, contrasted strikingly against the dark blue stone it was on. With a small smile, Harry slipped the ring onto his ring finger. A large influx of pure magic flooded through him, causing his eyes to widen slightly and flash gold before he was able to form his blank mask again. The foreign magic swirled inside of him, mixing with his already volatile magic. Harry eyed the other box in front of him. He didn’t know if his magic could handle another addition. It was already swirling dangerously underneath his skin, his meager self-control barely stopping it from breaking free and causing havoc in the bank.
Harry shook his head. He’d have to accept the other ring. It would look bad to the crowd behind him if he only took Merlin’s ring and left Slytherin’s. To all the purebloods it would look as if he was rejecting the Slytherin lordship, and effectively ostracize him from the very people whose respect he needed to gain.
With a deep breath, Harry shakily reached out for the box and opened it. Harry was slightly shocked by its appearance. While Merlin’s ring had been quite simple, this ring was beyond lavish. The ring was in the form of a head of a silver basilisk with its jaws stretched wide around a large emerald. It was extremely life like, with its large fangs hanging over the green stone. Shakily, Harry slipped the ring onto his ring finger with Merlin’s ring, watching silently as they merged together.
Harry tensed as another wave of magic flooded through him. It was completely different than the magic he had received from Merlin’s ring. The power from Merlin’s ring burned through him and constantly whipped around his body, almost as if it was looking for a way out. The power from Slytherin’s ring felt like ice. It seemed to freeze the blood in his veins and was completely different than anything he had ever felt. This magic felt… calculated. It didn’t flit around his body; it remained still before it lashed out at anything it perceived as threat. The air around Harry crackled dangerously, causing the crowd behind him to take a few steps back.
Harry gave the goblin a sharp smile. “Thank you for your service, but I must take my leave now.”
The goblin nodded warily before returning to his paperwork.
Harry turned on his heels and regally walked out of the bank, the crowd silently parting for him. Harry smirked slightly. Yes, almost everything was going exactly as planned. Now all he had to do was send a letter to a certain Headmaster, and then he was returning to his one true home, Hogwarts.