The Unseen Scribe
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Lily's Journal - Chapter 9
🕑 Added 2023-10-18 14:58:10 +0000 UTCAN: Hey guys.
Info dump and some fluff in this chapter.
Hope you guys enjoy this one.
Chapter 9
Harry watched the buildings pass by, deep in thought. He was currently sat in the backseat of the Granger's car, Hermione on his right and Sirius on his left.
It was the start of the Easter break, almost two months since he had captured Pettigrew, and a lot had happened during said time. Sirius was exonerated of all crimes just two days after the rat was caught; his own testimony under veritaserum, the fact that Pettigrew was still alive, and the evidence of his unbreakable vow was enough to free him. He had spent his time since his freedom under medical watch, a mind healer taking care of his trauma due to years of Azkaban; he looked way better than he did that day in Hogwarts, his eyes held more life, his body didn't look as malnourished as it did before, and his hair was cut; overall, he looked a lot more like the 'lady magnet' that he said he was.
Pettigrew questioning was long and revealed a lot of information about the night his parents died. Voldemort wand was found in his possession, and under veritaserum he confessed to have been there that night, that he was the one to collect the dark bastard's wand and that he ran away when Sirius showed up. He also confessed to the murder of the muggles, and framing Sirius for it, hiding with the Weasleys as a pet rat, and even that he was still looking for Voldemort, since he didn't find a body with the wand; he confessed to it all. His trial was held two weeks after he was captured, and he was striped from his Order of Merlin and sentenced to the Dementor's kiss. Harry felt that justice for his parents murder had finally started to be dispensed, but only with Voldemort gone would it be completed.
Professor Lupin had finally approached Harry to talk about his friendship with Harry's dad. But Harry was still annoyed with the man; he had a lot of time to approach Harry before, but he only took the initiative once it was clear that Harry already knew about it. Hermione had been proven right in her theory when he confessed to be a werewolf, and made it all seem that he was helping Harry, that because he was a 'dark creature' he couldn't be around Harry; which really annoyed him. Harry had no problem with the man being a werewolf, what he had a problem with was him using it as an excuse for abandoning the son of the man that he himself called his best friend. And Harry wasn't the only one annoyed with the werewolf. Apparently Sirius also fought with him; the former prisoner had a lot to say to his old friend about abandoning Harry, and not checking on him even once. Harry hadn't said anything to Sirius about his situation with his relatives, he didn't want Sirius to go back to jail, this time for a crime he actually committed, but he thought that his godfather might have learned something about his home situation, probably from Hermione, since he did talk with her for a little bit.
Harry and Hermione decided to show some of their work to Sirius, and to say he was impressed would be an understatement. He thought that everything they were working on was brilliant, and even helped a little, responding some of the questions they had about the notes from Harry's mum, since he was present during some of the experiments she made. He also helped a little in some of their projects. He helped Sue Li to improve her generator a little bit more, since he knew a little about how thermal reactions worked due to working on his motorcycle back in the day. But the project he helped the most was the mirrors one, since apparently both him and Harry's dad had build a similar pair of mirrors during their school days. He showed the group his mirrors, and Penny immediately realized that his mirrors were better than the ones that the group had developed, they were proven to last longer, and there was only one enchantment to both image and sound, instead of the two different ones they were using. Sirius said that his mirrors used a charm invented by an ancestor of his that used to gift mirrors to women he liked and then use those mirrors to watch them change clothes. The group was a little reluctant to use a charm developed by an old pervert, but the charm was a work of art, and vastly superior to their own version, so in the end they all agreed to use it.
Sirius was also really impressed with how they were able to connect more than two mirrors, something that he and Harry's dad weren't able to do, as well as their plan to sell the mirrors. He was a major help in that area, and had already started the process of setting up their business, he even invested some money in it, stopping harry from being the only financial contributor initially. It was decided that the magical side of their company would be divided with 40% going for Harry, something he fought a lot against, but the girls were adamant that he should have the largest share, since most of the money was coming from him; Sirius would take only 5% for his investment, and the other 55% would be divided between the girls. Sirius had also promised to help with setting up their company on the non magical side, including saying he had a surprise for Harry, something that Dumbledore should have told him already, since the old man had taken the responsibility of being his guardian.
Sirius actually fought a lot with Dumbledore as well. He blamed the headmaster for his continued incarceration, for not realizing that Pettigrew spent years right under his nose, and for never visiting Harry. Apparently there was a lot Harry should know already that he didn't knew, it was the responsibility of his guardian to tell him about those things he didn't knew and since Sirius was in Azkaban, and Harry's godmother, who he learned was Alice Longbottom, Neville's mum; was also incapacitated due to being tortured into a catatonic state by Sirius cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, it was Dumbledore's responsibility to tell Harry all those things he needed to know. He still didn't know what those things were, Sirius only said that he was going to start telling Harry during the break; He was looking forward to knowing what all the secrecy was about.
The last two months also advanced a lot of their research.
Harry had finally solved the problem with the steel transmutation, the measurements were a lot more precise than the bronze one, but he was able to solve the problem and now had a way of getting consistent, high quality steel, in reasonable quantities. It would never be enough to replace non magical steel production, the amount of magic needed for the transmutation grew with the amount of end material, so no one would have the magic to produce tons of steel, but Harry could probably produce around 100kg of steel with his transmutation method, all of the same quality; so if they ever needed a smaller quantity of steel, it could end up being something useful. But what he was really excited was his new research into fictional metals. He had started to try and transmute Vibranium, but it was extremely difficult, since he didn't have a starting point. He had theorized that around a dozen different metals would be needed, most of them pretty rare, things like Tantalum and Niobium. This meant that his research was stuck, he would only be able to move forward in that area of research once he got his hands on some rare metals. He was hoping that having a registered company would help with that.
With his alchemical research stuck; he decided to work on something similar, but using a different concept. Hermione's molecular transfiguration idea; he learned pretty quickly that it something like that would need a lot of wandless magic, transfiguration on that level of detail would break any structured spell. And making something similar using runes would be an even bigger challenge, there weren't any runes to replicate a transfiguration spell, so they would need to invent a whole new set of runes to work with; the RoR should be able to help with that, but it would take a long time.
Hermione's research was also showing some results. She managed to bring the temperature of her cooling runes to around 160K, almost enough to work with superconductors. She was still having some troubles with using the air runes to make a pressure chamber, things were still exploding due to air pressure and magical interference. But they weren't breaking as quickly as they used to, it was minor progress but still progress. She also managed to lower the amount of wasted energy on her lightning receptors by almost 40%, it still wasn't enough to make them commercially viable, but it was massive progress.
Padma had made some major progress in her magical TV project, and it was almost completely finished; the new enchantment that Sirius provided for the mirrors helped her immensely, they were a lot more stable than the previous one, and were holding well to the larger mirrors, The last test mirror lasted three weeks before it lost the enchantments, not enough to sell, but massive improvements from before, when it barely lasted two days. She was now trying to make improvements to the new enchantment, and was also thinking of using a different style of mirrors to see how much of a difference it made.
Sue Li had started working on a new project. With her generator project finished, she started to look for other things to work on, and decided to stay on the field of electronics, this time trying to develop a more cost effective way of isolating them from magic. The current method only worked with the runic array etched in silver, both inside and outside of the casing of any electronics they wanted to use. Using that much silver would quickly grow to be expensive, even with the room of hidden things providing them with all the silver they had used to date, it would still end one day. She was currently researching how EM shielding worked in muggle build devices, hoping to find something cheaper to work with.
Hannah had also started a new research. After her experiments with telescopes showed results she started to research about non magical transportation; she spent a lot of time researching about cars, trains, ships and airplanes, and had got it into her head to try and replicate them with magic, or maybe just find a way to make use magic to make them more efficient.
Hermione also had some interest in it, and spent some time talking with Hannah about electrical airplanes, how much better for the environment they would be, and how one of her generators could be use to power a plane; that is, once they were finished.
Talking with his hufflepuff friend about her research made Harry start to think about cars and gasoline, which gave him an interesting idea; it might be possible to reverse the air making runes they were using for many of their projects to take air instead of releasing it, and then use that process to separate CO2 of the atmosphere, and maybe even turn that CO2 back into fossil fuel, turning things like coal and oil into renewable resources. It would be a long and complicated project, but the payoff would be amazing from both an environmental as well as an economic point of view.
Luna still hadn't started to make any practical research, spending her time reading about biology, anatomy, botany and genetics. She still wanted to understand and combine the DNA of magical and non magical animals, but now she also showed some interest in human DNA as well. It was an area of research that took a lot of knowledge to even start experimenting with; messing with the basics building blocks of life itself was never easy. It also needed a lot of delicate equipment, things that they couldn't get in Hogwarts. Luna research was usually nightmare inducing to Harry, not because of what it was, but because of Luna herself. He could quite easily imagine her thinking it was a good idea to combine human and cat DNA to make some of those Japanese cat girls that Lee showed him a few times.
But it wasn't just research that happened in the last two months.
Harry also spent a lot of time learning the patronus charm from professor Lupin, and was finally able to cast a corporeal patronus last week. His patronus was a large stag, one that, according to both Padfoot and Moony, looked like it could be the son of both his dad's and his mum's own patronus, which looked exactly like their own animagus forms. His dad had become an animagus still in school and his mum had achieved her first transformation about a month before she died. Harry was pretty happy with his patronus, feeling that it was a connection to his parents that he didn't had before, and when he showed it to the girls they all congratulated him, and them Hermione started to beg him to teach her the charm, and since he couldn't say no to her whenever she pointed those large chocolate colored eyes towards him, he told her he would teach her after the Easter break; which made the other girls also start to ask him to teach them, so now he had a class to teach once the break was done.
He had also played in another quidditch game and easily won it. It was almost unfair to Cho Chang, the ravenclaw seeker, his new broom was vastly superior to her's and he had months to train with it. His Firebolt was almost an extension of his will at this point, responding almost to his thoughts instead of his movements. The party in the common room after the game was pretty fun, and even some of their hufflepuff friends visited, their ravenclaw friends on the other hand, spent the next few days without speaking to Harry, saying that he didn't need to humiliate their team that badly.
Penelope was also still focused on her studies, but Harry had talked to her a little bit about properly employing her as a researcher once she graduated and their company was founded; she still wanted to get a mastery in charms but she was quickly forgetting about her desire to work in the ministry, she was apparently having too much fun with their research, and she was seriously thinking of making a career out of it, instead of her previous thoughts of being a professor. She was thinking of asking professor Flitwick to take her as an apprentice when she graduated; it would be the best of both worlds, she would get her charms mastery, and stay close to the rest of the group to help with their research.
Hermione also spent another month looking a bit knackered, even after dropping divination. Until Harry decided he had enough of seeing her that way and confronted her one day when they were alone, and once he hinted that he knew about the time turner, she finally confessed, showing him the time turner and saying that professor McGonagall was the one that provided it to her, but she still refused to drop another class. After that little conversation he staged an intervention with the help of the other girls, Ron and Neville. Harry didn't say anything to them about the time turner, but they still helped with showing Hermione how much she was hurting herself, after that she finally agreed to drop muggle studies and take a more balanced class schedule. And the difference was visible almost immediately, the bags under her eyes disappeared and she was a lot less short tempered, she would never, not be short tempered, she was Hermione after all, and she had a reputation to lose her temper with those that interrupted her reading or homework long before she started bending the laws of time; but she was a lot more pleasant to be around these days.
"Harry, my parents are talking to you." He heard Hermione say, and felt her elbow hit him on the side.
"I'm sorry, I was a little distracted. Can you repeat the question?" Harry said, after rubbing the spot that Hermione hit, it was a little painful.
"We were just asking what are you researching, Harry. Hermione said that you are also working on some interesting projects, something different from her own projects." Hermione's mum, Emma Granger asked.
"I'm working on a few different things at the moment, some of it has interloping aspects with Hermione's work, like the runes she used to make her pressure chambers, they are the same that I use in my laser project, just in a different way." Harry responded, downplaying a little his own projects. He still didn't like being the centre of attention and always tried to move the conversation away from him.
"What kind of laser are you working on? We use lasers in our work sometimes." Emma asked again, giving him a soft smile.
"Well, when you start working on a diode laser let us know, we could use one at work." Emma said, still smiling at him. "What else are you working on?" She asked.
"I also started working another project recently, it is actually something Hermione thought about, molecular transfiguration. It would use magic to change objects in the sub-atomic level, rearranging protons, neutrons and electrons into new atoms and those atoms into new molecules, thus making permanent transfigurations, something impossible to do with magic at the moment; but with think that knowledge of how atoms work might be enough to make this new type of transfiguration work." Harry responded. Taking a moment to catch his breath he then added. "Well, that's not entirely true, alchemical transmutation can permanently change something into something else, but I also studied a little bit of alchemy for another project, and alchemy is a lot more complicated than transfiguration."
"We think that maybe something like that could be used to make a magical version of a Star Trek replicator." Hermione added, and Harry saw Emma's mouth open a little in shock, while Hermione's dad, Dan, almost lost control of the car.
"Well... that is certainly an interesting research." Emma responded, her voice sounding a little awed.
"Just don't bring the Borg to Earth and we should be fine." Dan said from the driver's seat, making Emma laugh a little.
"Yes, and if you do develop replicators, remember to share them with the rest of the federation." Emma said, still laughing, making both Harry and Hermione laugh as well, and Sirius took look around a little lost, not getting the joke.
They made some small talk for a few more minutes, until Dan drove the car into a driveway towards a relatively large home, nothing to extravagant but enough to show that the family that lived there had some wealth. They got out of the car and took their baggage from the boot, walking inside the home Harry saw various pictures of a young Hermione gracing the walls; walking towards one he saw what looked like a five year old Hermione riding a bike, her father a few steps behind her. It was a perfect picture of a happy family, and he imagined himself in Hermione's place, his dad a few steps behind him, and his mum behind the camera taking the picture.
"So, what do you think?" Hermione said, approaching him and obviously asking about his opinion on the house, but he pretended to have misinterpreted her.
"I think young Hermione looked pretty cute, but not as much as older Hermione." Harry responded, making Hermione blush a deep red.
He looked behind her and saw Emma giving him a large smile; Sirius giving him a proud one and mouthing "Good job." He kinda understood Sirius' proud look, since he was the one to teach him that line, during one of his visits to Hogwarts. But Harry thought that it might have been better to save his little bit of flirting for another time when he saw the look in Dan Granger's face. Harry's only thought at that moment was oops.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was the day after the start of the Easter break. Harry and Sirius had been invited by Emma to stay with the Grangers for a couple of days, under protest from Dan. Harry heard Hermione's dad calling him 'daughter stealer' under his breath. Sirius' visits to Hogwarts in the last few months had done a lot for his self confidence and to his understanding of his emotions. He now knew that he wanted Hermione to be his girlfriend, but he was still gathering the courage to ask her; she was his best friend, and he didn't want to mess up his relationship with her.
They spent the last of yesterday talking about a bunch of different things. Harry and Hermione told the adults a lot more about their research, as well as what the other girls were working on. Hermione's parents already had a pair of mirrors that she had sent for them in January, but they received the new and improved version last night, and they were awed at how much the image and sound quality was improved from the previous version. They were also really interested in meeting the rest of the girls, but that meeting would have to wait for the summer.
They also talked about their Harry's idea of starting a company to sell their products. The Grangers helping them a lot, since they knew some of the difficulties they would have, due to running their own dentistry practice. But Sirius put a stop to that conversation, saying that he would help them to set up a company, but still not explaining how. Something that Harry saw greatly annoyed Hermione.
Sirius then started to talk about all the steps he was taking to open a company on the magical side, how they had already divided shares between Harry and the girls, even if it would still take a couple of months for the company to be fully registered and ready for sales. The magical government worked a lot slower than the non magical one in some way, and a lot faster in others; so, some of the things they needed to do to set up a company could take months, while other could be solved in a few hours.
It wasn't all business talk. They also had a nice dinner and then spent a few hours watching TV, Sirius almost drooling at the thought of having something like a TV in his home, and he spent some time asking Harry and Hermione how far along Padma was in her magical TV project.
Speaking of Sirius' home, that was where they were going after they leave the Granger house. Apparently Sirius paid a lot of money for the goblins to go over the entire house, removing all cursed objects. It took only a few days for the goblins to clear all but one of the cursed objects, his house elf had apparently almost attacked the goblins when they tried to take a locket that supposedly belonged to Sirius' brother, Regulus. Sirius had allowed the elf to keep the locket, which made the elf stop calling Sirius unworthy, something that according to him, the elf had been doing since he was a child. He then hired some people to completely renovate the place, and it supposedly made a huge improvement, but Harry still doubted that, since Sirius kept calling his house grim old place.
Harry looked to the side when he heard someone coming closer to him; he saw that it was Sirius and perked up a little, since his godfather had promised the day before to explain what all those secret things that Dumbledore should have taught Harry were.
"Hey, pup. You ready to talk?" Sirius asked, seating on a chair next to him. They were both on the upper floor balcony of the Granger house, looking over the backyard.
"Finally." Harry responded. "What is all that secrecy about?" He asked, drawing a smile from Sirius.
"Nothing too bad, Prongslet. It is about your heritage and inheritance, something that your father would have told you if he was alive, now it is my job. You should already know about your family, Dumbledore should have told you, but he didn't, so now I will." Sirius said, his face suddenly losing the almost constant smile and turning... serious.
Harry just nodded his head in response, thinking that it was something that he should've known, but it didn't seem that important. Sure, he wanted to know more about his family, but his desire was a came from an emotional need to know his family, what Sirius was hinting at seemed a lot more important than just an orphan wanting to know about his family.
"Anyway, the first thing you should know is that your parents truly loved each other, even if they had a rough start."Sirius said, with a sad, longing face. "They only started dating towards the end of sixth year, after your grandparents died and Prongs grew up a little. You have to understand that James was a prankster at heart, but I will freely admit that some of our pranks could cross the line into bullying sometimes; and your mother hated bullies, so she hated James for most of our Hogwarts years." Sirius explained, a sad smile on his face. Harry was a little hurt to know his father was a bully, he also hated bullies so he didn't like to hear that a man he always heard how much he looked like, could be one; but he was also happy to know that his dad grew out of it.
"Another thing you should know is that your mother used to be friends with Snape." Sirius said, and Harry couldn't stop his mouth from opening, shocked that his mother could ever be friends with Snape of all people. "They grew up together, living on the same street. Snape was the one that told your mother that she was a witch when he saw her first bout of accidental magic, and even with Snape being sorted into slytherin and Lily in gryffindor, they still keep being friends, until fifth year, when Snape called her a mudblood and she dropped all contact with him." Sirius explained, and Harry could definitely see it happen; Snape seemed the type to do that, and his mother seemed like the type of person that could hold a grudge.
"I will tell more about your parents later, it would take too much time to explain everything you probably want to know." Sirius said, giving him a teasing smile, and making Harry chuckle a little. "Your parents were amazing people, uncle Charlus and aunt Dorea took me in when I ran from home. Your grandmother was the younger sister of my grandfather, and yes, that means we are related by blood, most pureblood families are. That also means that you are related to the Weasley's, since Arthur's mother, Cedrella, is also a Black; but you are also related to Draco Malfoy, since his mother Narcissa is my cousin." Sirius said, once again shocking Harry. "But like I said, most pureblood families are related in some way, so you are related to pretty much everyone from an old magical family. The ones you definitely need to meet are my cousin Andromeda, and her daughter Nymphadora." He added, smiling at the end.
"But again, if we start talking about family we will stay the rest of the day here." Sirius added, adopting a... serious tone. "What I wanted to tell you about is your assets and inheritance. You know about your vault in Gringotts, but that one is only your vault, you will have access to the family vault once you turn seventeen. I as your godfather and legal guardian have some access to your family business, but not the vault, so you have a lot more gold than you thought." Sirius said, and Harry nodded in understanding.
"How much is a lot more?" Harry asked.
"I don't know, you will have to ask the goblins to make an audit of your vaults for that." Sirius responded.
"Now, what you will be surprised with is that not all of your inheritance is in gringotts. There is also the family office that manages the Potter trust fund in London." Sirius said, and Harry must have shown his surprise since Sirius started to laugh. "You really think the old magical families would leave all their money with the goblins? You know how much Binns can go on and on about goblin rebellions, we are not that stupid as to leave all of our money with a race that can seize our gold and declare war on us at any moment. As much as they like to deny it, every pureblood family has some business in the muggle world." Sirius said, still chuckling.
"I set up a meeting with your trust manager, he should be able to help you with setting up a company on the muggle side like you want, he should even be able to help you with what you can and can't sell to the muggles, since most people who work on your family office are either squibs or have magicals in their families." Sirius explained.
"Thanks, Sirius. That should really help a lot." Harry responded, smiling at his godfather, and making him smile in return. Sirius opened his mouth to say something else but they were interrupted as the door to the balcony opened, and Hermione walked through it.
"I will leave you two alone for now, we can talk more later, Harry." Sirius said, giving Harry a wink as he rose from his chair and walked out. Hermione taking his empty seat.
"So, he finally told you what all the secrecy was about?" Hermione asked once she sat down, giving him a smile.
"It was just things about my family and my inheritance. The interesting thing is that my family have some business on the muggle side, it should make things easier to set up the company we want." Harry responded.
They stayed a long time talking, just enjoying each other's company. Sometime during their talks they both rose from their chairs and went to the railings, holding hands and looking over the Granger's backyard. They must have spent hours talking because the sun was starting to set when Harry looked to his right; Hermione had her head resting on his shoulder, and they were still holding hands. He thought that the sunset was beautiful, and the moment felt right, so he gathered his courage and said.
"Hermione."
"Yeah, Harry."
"Would you like to go on a date with me?" He asked, suddenly feeling nervous, his courage leaving him after the words left his mouth.
"I would love to, Harry. Just remember, you are my best friend first, and my boyfriend second." Hermione responded, and Harry felt like his heart would jump out of his chest in happiness.
"That sounds perfect to me." Harry agreed. He turned to his right when he felt her head leave his shoulder, and saw the large smile on her face. He then leaned forward, Hermione also doing the same, their lips touched as they shared their first kiss, and Harry hoped it was the first of many.
AN 2: I always thought it was weird how the goblins controlled the gold, after the many wars fought between them and the wizards, so I did something about it.
The fluff is real. And now that Hermione has secured a boyfriend she can let her kinky side out, it is always the quiet ones.
I will see you guys in the next one.
Comments
Aeden Emrys
"She was thinking of asking professor Flitwick to take her as an apprentice when she graduated; it would be the best of both worlds, she would get her charms mastery, and stay close to the rest of the group to help with their research." A very good thought, that I hope comes to pass. And its great to see Harry and Hermione becoming an official couple!
