Chapter 30

The chapter was named *Securing the Area...*, was the first half of a two-part chapter series and officially began the second book finale.

## Plot

With Dumbledore thinking Harry to have been successfully alienated from the Gray, he looked for new ways to frame him into being put in Azkaban. Throughout the day he tried to find different ways to do it. Accio-ing Harry's loose hair did not work and using Nymphandora Tonks' metamorphmagus power was also out of the way, after a short interview with her.

Harry in the mean time visited Lucius Malfoy for the first time and pretended to be knowledgable of Lord Voldemort himself, even implying and making Lucius think Harry potentially might be the Dark Lord. Since Lucius already thought he might be the Dark Lord, he easily complied with the implication - that the dark house should start to ignore Harry Potter for a month, and so he instructed his son to the deliver the message to the rest of the dark children. They additionally agreed to a united front against Dumbledore at Hogwarts, since he had begun to manipulate too much.

After the meeting Harry decided to name his newly acquired house elf Plato and gave him a general rundown how to address him properly, whether in his child- or adult form. The trio next prepared themselves to act accordingly, when parts of their memories were removed due to obliviation or through fidelius charm. They wanted to perform all the tasks in the upcoming coup to the best to their abilities and without any mistakes or hesitation.

They also accidentally discovered a weakness in the fidelius. As long as only the eye of Kilrogg went into to the fideliused location, Daphne would be able to remember location, despite not knowing the secret. Harry ordered them all to keep this discovery a Slytherin family secret, since he himself found the spell was essential for a multitude of uses.

Since Dumbledore's plans with the metamorphmagus didn't work out, he instead invited John Potter to help him in his scheme to get Harry into Azkaban, one way or another. Dumbledore confirmed John's suspicions from the beginning of the school year, and admitted, that Harry was very dangerous. With Albus' confirmation he also finally deduced, that Harry came with him from the future, and confronted him publicly in the library, before Harry ushered both of them into an an empty classroom.

Harry confirmed him being from the future, but he also claimed he had no knowledge about, and no contact with Lord Slytherin. Since both couldn't resolve anything, John met with Susan, who informed him that Granger was having her healer's training and that she could pretend to be her and gain some kind of information. But Susan could not hold up the charade for long and Daphne realized, that the person was definitely not Hermione. With a the help of wandless magic Daphne managed to incapacitate the imposter.

Due to the short duel also a priori incantatem effect happened, making Daphne realize her unknown assailant was Susan Bones. To not make everything that happened to be disclosed in public, Susan agreed to three minor favors, house Slytherin could demand at any time in the future. While this happened, Harry had a meeting with board of governors as Lord Slytherin, where they have been discussing school related matters and Harry was looking for potential allies he could sway to the Gray.

The night before the duelling tournament Daphne, Hermione and Harry finally started to try to secure the room with the thousands mirrors with a fidelius charm. They could skip some rooms with the help of the pipe systems, but still had to face three of them before they could start the most important part of the operation. Dumbledore was immediately alerted to the attempted break in and suspected Lord Voldemort, yet unfortunately for him, had to go through more rooms since he didn't know about the shortcut.

In the end, it was race as to who was faster. Harry disabling the current fidelius, or Albus arriving - and Harry was first with his task. Dumbledore immediately realized the fidelius went down, and so summoned the aurors with a patronus after closing off the school in an emergency castle lockdown. He had misjudged the situation and Harry took advantage of this. Once Harry had successfully cast his own fidelius charm, everybody other than him forgot about the Philosopher's stone completely.