Chapter 27

The chapter was named *What Goes On In Knockturn Alley*.

## Plot

On October 3rd, one month after Harry's Hogwarts enrollment, a poly juiced Clare Cooper just finished servicing a man as a prostitute. She was working as one for three years already and trying to save up enough tip money to get a new wand. Clare was one of five muggleborns who signed an ironclad contract which didn't allow them to get out of the brothel and forced them to work in the sex industry. But she was the only one who tried to break the Statue of Secrecy in the past and due to that was forced to wear a collar.

That evening she was to service and eat with a customer who didn't require her to use poly juice, a rarity in the sex industry, since only an older customer under the name of Robert Volf wanted to have sex with her that way. She got also informed, that the wizard was one of the most powerful ones in Magical Britain. At the allotted time she got to meet Harry Potter in his Slytherin persona and got invited to talk with two friends in the shrunken trunk he resized in her room, while Harry organized something to eat.

In the trunk she met Daniel and Emma Granger and after being asked, told them her life story. When she was young she got an invitation to Hogwarts, but her parents disallowed her to attend the boarding school. She then did normal schooling and once she was seventeen, she wanted to take a part time job to earn some money for uni expenses and signed a contract. But this contract was later on revealed to be an expensive immigration contract from the muggle to the magical world, where every possible memory of her from family and friends got completely removed. The magical debt she accumulated from the signing got sold the a brothel where she since then had to work for.

She tried to run away several times, but never got far away enough. Once she managed to get to a police station, where she tried to explain what happened to her, but by that she broke the statue of secrecy and since then had to wear a collar forcing her to not run away. With the collar any breaches would have resulted into a direct shipment to Azkaban. She also explained that she would like to get a wand and visit a magical school, but wasn't sure if this was possible anymore.

At that moment Harry returned and explained to Clare that they needed a witch to power the wards at the Granger home. He disclosed Dan and Emma's muggle heritage and that their daughter now went to Hogwarts and couldn't do it anymore. Dan and Emma were additionally working on runes, enchanting as well as product development and for that they also needed someone who could use magic. The only thing Clare had to do was to sign a contract and begin living at the Granger house, but Harry also would have to buy her debt and thus still completely own her.

For Clare, who had a lot of bad memories with the wizarding world, didn't believe in everything that was said, but Harry gave her a week to think through everything. It would better her situation on all accounts, but she couldn't get her hopes up anyway. During the week she had one bad client who forced her to pay for some damage she did, nearly taking half of her savings away. Thus when Harry came back, she readily agreed to take up his patronage.

Everything moved pretty fast after that. She got allowed to live at the Granger's and Harry also got her a way to visit one of the magical schools in Britain, the Shoe, where she finally could learn real magic. The Grangers gave her tour through their house, where she got explained that any electronical devices stopped working after the war wards were installed. They also told her she shouldn't use her wand freely. She might be of age, but still didn't have her education and additionally there were wards around the home picking up any magic with only one magical home in the neighborhood, the Grangers. To be better safe, than sorry, they showed her an fideliused room where any magic she did would not be detected.

When they went to toe Garage, Emma showed her a milling machine to help to produce amazing magical devices. They sold their dental practice to buy this one, but Clare interrupted her, that it would not work anyway, as the other Magical devices. Emma explained that old families like to do rituals, who were very sensitive to magic and for that they usually own a ritual room which dampens all magic inside and around it. They'd use a similar room to make all of their electronics work in their house again.

During Clare's time at the Grangers, that special room was built by house elves from the Parkinson family, contracted by the Boneslicer clan. Through Goblin's one could make dealings with darker or light houses without any bigger problems, even tough you didn't have the same political mindset. The Granger's also had a floo installed, got magical lightning for their rooms, gave Clare a house ring to war and did some tests with Chocolat frog cards as well as brooms, which Clare could operate or animate, but the Granger's couldn't.

Finally Clare also was about to have her first day at the Shoe. Prior to her enrollment, she had seen Hermione fighting the Troll in the prophet and thus got even more hyped learning magical stuff. But the happiness got damped a little bit when she tried to open her own vault at Gringotts. As it turned out, she already had one, but had no recollection of it. Next she finally was able to buy her own robes, books and even a wand, at Ollivander. The Ollivander family currently holds the title Most Most Ancient in the wizarding nobility due to being so old. Ollivander overall expressed, that dealings with Lord Slytherin were always surprising.

In the end Clare got a Clare held a thirteen and a half inch yew and phoenix feather wand and had her first day at school. The headmistress Madam Goose didn't welcome her warmly but she could still go to school without an hitch. The classes itself were very restricted and some of them focused on wizarding law and culture, to make everybody understand, that the noble houses rule all of them and that everybody should respect them. Clare thought, that everyone should respect them, but not because they are noble, but know very dangerous magic.

She also told her much younger co-students, that she worked for Lord Slytherin and everybody was totally flabbergasted by that, but she herself could not understand the groupie behaviour. When she came back home that evening, she noticed the Grangers in flagrante, in the ritual room where Daniel wore a Slytherin mask and they role played Emma being punished. Clare was in generally very forthcoming, because she herself has experienced worse. Next she asked whether they did something interesting with the milling machine and they did.

Clare's job was it to put magic in there, and once she managed to do it, the objects the Grangers crafted managed to hover 3 inches above the ground. Dan explained that wizards could not do something like that and next they would work on an Disillusionment device. Over the next week Clare still couldn't believe how much her life changed and feared that everything could still crush down on her. During one of the evenings she came home, the Grangers received a letter by the Weasley twins, who proclaimed themselves to be the Hogwarts Buccaneers.

The Grangers were about to send a reply, but still needed a name for their own organization. They decided to be The Edge Settlers, based on their overall situation in the wizarding world, living on the edge of it, without chances to become more. During Christmas Clare finally got to meet Hermione, where they had a discussion whether Lord Slytherin was as great as everyone claimed. Clare was still suspicious of everything and could not share the "greatness" with Hermione.

After Christmas Lord Slytherin visited the Grangers and asked for a magical walkie-talkie device he needed to get the Philosopher's stone. Part of that device would be stolen from a magical artifact imbued with family magics, Harry still had to get thee rights for. Around February Clare still had doubts whether everything was a dream or not and the real intentions Lord Slytherin might have had. She was currently with the Grangers, Lord Slytherin and the Greengrasses at an auction where Harry purchased the first house elf he needed for his manor for a cost of 7,600 galleons.

Once the auction finished, all five were calmly working down Diagon Alley when Robert Volf interrupted them. He claimed that he owned Clare due to another contract she made, worth 400 Galleons, but she couldn't remember any of it and it explained her already established Gringotts vault. She had her memories removed and a possible legal feud would have taken several months, where Clare still would have been forced to live in Azkaban. In the end Lord Slytherin and Lord Volf agreed to a duel, because Volf also wanted some kind of retribution for how Lord Slytherin handled his grandson in the Slytherin common room.

The duel itself finished very fast and with a lot of injuries on Volf's part. Once Harry received the sex contract, he claimed it to be paid in full and Clare finally started to believe, that people truly cared for her and that she could believe in her Lord. At the end Harry tasked the Grangers to build a submarine. Meanwhile it turned out, that Volf took the open confrontation with Slytherin, so that Malfoy could see the memory of the duel and thus pin point who the mysterious Lord Slytherin was.

Every dueler had his own style and Malfoy had an extensive memory database with all duelers from all over the world. In the end he came to the conclusion that Harry must be Lord Voldemort and reported it as such to the horcrux diary.