Magic Knows No Boundaries Chapter 36 (Patreon)

Chapter 36:

Busy Being Busy

-

Harry started his Tuesday with a morning hike, accompanied as he was by a dozen students and the Gray Lady.

He allowed Helena to lead the hike from the front with Harry at the back, in case he needed to take action on anything. You never know, a particularly grumpy unicorn could come across them and decided to gore one of the poor boys.

The October weather was nice and cool, but not yet freezing, making the hike absolutely perfect. No snow making them lose the trail. No biting winds making their noses, lips and ears fall off. The last surviving moss and bushes were still just a little green.

“Why are we going so slow?” Urquhart complained.

Ah, and nearly everyone who came along was a Quidditch player and/or captain like Urquhart there. Although it didn’t seem like he managed to get any of the other Slytherin players to come along. The only Ravenclaw was Cho, whereas half of the Hufflepuff team had come along. Anthony Rickett, Timsin Applebee, and Heidi Macavoy. The only Gryffindors to come along were  Colin Creevey, who seemed to be using the opportunity to sharpen his photography skills, and Dean. Harry guessed that the lack of a football club make this the next best outdoors club to join for him.

“Because this is a hiking club, not a jogging club.” Said the gray lady. “You are more than free to job around the lake and Quidditch pitch if it pleases you.”

That kind of defeated the purpose. The big selling point on the hiking club was the privilege of being allowed to skirt the rules around the forbidden forest. After all, some of these trails did cut through said forest, and with it being so early in the morning that it was as close to stomping around the forbidden forest at night as any of them would ever get. And this was only possible because Harry was there to supervise.

“This is meant to be relaxing and invigoration.” Harry told them. “And it is still a great way to get into shape. It builds an endurance of a different kind to jogging. If you want to try jogging these trails in your free time on weekends unsupervised? I would advise against it, but I can’t stop you either.”

Although, to be fair, Harry had opted for one of the easier trails. One near the mouth of the Black Lake where it opened out to see. The trail and people on it could be seen from all of the Hogwarts grounds and most of the east end of the castle. It was soft dirt, not rocky trail beneath them, with the occasional standing stone from some long-forgotten students arithmancy or warding experiment decorating the hill or slope on either side here or there.

“I’m hoping to get a good photo of the sunrise hitting the trees justright.” Said Colin.

“I’m just trying to tire out my legs a bit more.” Said Dean.

“That’s the spirit!” Harry congratulated. “We’ll start on tougher trails tomorrow, wasn’t expecting all athletes.”

Colin looked at him questioningly.

“You’ll become one eventually if you spend every morning with all of us.” Harry told him.

-

“Thank you Argus.” Harry told the caretaker as he delivered a box of mail marked safe.

“It’s what I do.” Argus said. “Best part of my job actually.”

“Examining potentially dangerous mail?”

“Or confiscated objects. People think because I’m a squib magic is off limits to me. They seem to forget that potions, runes, divination and numerology are just as acceptable to me.” He said with a smirk.

Harry remembered how the Filch of his universe told him that he was the one tasked with stripping his Firebolt in search of curses, with only marginal help from Filius. Filius was a master of charms. Argus was a master of reverse engineering enchantments. Comes with the territory of being the main target of all pranks and in charge of examining all objects coming in and out of Hogwarts.

He wasn’t joking about Squibs focusing on non-wand based magic either. He was probably better at runes than babbling, but his knowledge of these fields were more applied to curse-identification and joke objects.

“What’s the worst you found in the rejected letters?” Harry had to ask as he opened the box.

“One was a powdered love potion tuned to a specific individual, sent anonymously. Probably some wrerewolfesse fangirl. Another was enchanted to shoot small needles filled with blood, likely belonging to a werewolf, into the skin of the person who opened it. Sloppy work.” Filch explained. “The message on that one is pretty clear. Love werewolves so much? Here, become one. Not that it would have worked. That or vampire blood. Vampires get uppity about people helping werewolves but not them. Might have pissed one of those off.”

Yeah, that would have ruined all of his plans. Problem with trying to help vampires was that they were contagious, and dangerous, at all times. Unlike werewolves, with the obvious upside that they were a bit easier to keep under control, as they had more self-control. But still, hard to help.

“Well, thank you very much for keeping me safe. Let me know if you need help with anything.” Harry told the caretaker.

“Can do. If you wanted to start helping me out, you could try living a less interesting life out of the spotlight, but I don’t see that happening.” Argus groused jokingly as he left.

Harry shook his head bemusedly. Moreso than most, that man was an enigma.

He only had a few minutes before his class for the day so all he managed to do was open the box and organize the letters by date, intent on responding to them in the order he received them. To the best of his ability.

“Welcome miss Granger. Mr Malfoy.” Harry greeted the two students as they walked in together.

They bowed and took their seats. Susan came in after them, followed by Lavender and many more. When the bell tolled for class to begin he stood up, vanished his conjured chair, and walked over to the chalk board.

“Today, and for the remainder of term, we will be refreshing and improving on your knowledge of dream and omen interpretation.” Harry explained. “Along with the regular mediation. Now. Would anybody here feel comfortable opening up about any interesting dreams they’ve had this last week?”

-

Harry entered a new routine. His mornings were spent on morning hikes with his club, his classes reached a level of repetitiveness that they required much less work than usual, and now his afternoons were mostly spent reading and responding to letters.

As he expected, most of the letters were requests to attend his sanctuary during the upcoming hunters moon on the twenty sixth. He replied to each and every one with an affirmative. There was room for all!

Most of the remaining letters were of support. If Voldemort’s plan was to dirty the name of Hadrian Morrigan, or else overwhelm him with an excess of customers, then he sorely miscalculated. The letters of support, often with offers of funding or volunteering time and labor, were almost as common as the letters asking for help.

The most surprising letter of all came from Dolores.

Dear Hadrian

I am writing to warn you about a potential danger I fear you may not be seeing. You are not the first to try and shelter werewolves, though you are the first to so through private means instead of public.

I have tried to be a part of the latter. On several occasions there have been attempts to form werewolf only communities so that they might quarantine themselves both as a violent threat to society and as a pathological one. I am old enough to remember the days when catching lycanism was still deadly, as the basic nutritional treatment of them was not yet studied well. These efforts were torpedoed by fears of becoming like Muggles.

I am not sure if you took Muggle studies, but extra emphasis is placed on the socialist ideologies of the 21st century. Especially Fascism, Nazism, and Marxism. The latter two of which lead to the wrongful internment and butchering, or worse, of well over 200 million people. Any attempt at creating contained werewolf communities too strongly resembles the evils of Muggle socialists, or offshoots thereof, for wizarding governments to ever approve such plans. You are new to your lordship but even you must know that when Muggles make horrible civic choices, we go in the opposite direction. Hence why all educational institutions and medicine are still privatized despite Muggleborn complaints.

What I am getting at is this:

If your sanctuary continues to succeed, then your success may destroy you. While it has never happened, Muggleborns bang their drums on private industry potentially leading to the same or worse evils of government excess, and should your sanctum continue to expand into an organic werewolf community you can expect accusations of forming a private gulag, or more strangely, a military complex to come at you from the aisle opposed to yours.

So, heed my advice. Do not expand from your 3-day model of sanctuary. Do not expand to providing permanent housing. Do not conglomerate werewolves into their own secondary society like the Jewish Ghettos of socialist Germany. Not only to avoid these accusations, but to help ensure the further socialization and integration of werewolves into society and vice versa which has taken so much work to achieve, to the point they are so close to acceptance it is painful.

You are doing beautiful work. Keep it up.

All of our love, Dolores.

Harry put the letter down. There was a lot to soak in there. From realizing he was on a first name basis with Dolores Umbridge of all people, to her confirming that he had properly creating an illusion around himself of being fully on board with the purebloods of society. His work to build that rapport was paying off. Not least of all because he mostly was. But not to the point that his status as “Muggle raised” had been forgotten. People were rightly fearful that he brought along just a few too many ideals and principles of Muggle society that witches and wizards, by virtue of witnesses such ideals and principles as outsiders with long lives and longer memories, could recognize as moronic.

The letter told him that he needed to do a better job of alleviating peoples fears that he might be bringing with him far left ideological principles. He’d made sure not to give any impressions that he might have extreme religious or industrial ideals, by virtue of not being religious or trying to force the adoption of pointless technologies.

The thing that stood out about her letter the most was her warning that people might suspect him of militarizing werewolves as Voldemort had done. An accusation out of recognizing he had the means, even if he had no motive to do so. The suspicion that he might be conspiring to round them up and kill them, on the other hand, was just outright paranoia of those overly concerned for werewolf safety.

Paranoia was sometimes a good thing. The advice she gave was what he was already planning to do, but her reasoning was a whole new beast for him to struggle with.

He was starting to see why she had been placed in charge of trying to route out Dumbledore’s supposed uprising. She knew how to think like conniving politicos, especially dishonest ones. The reason she’d failed so miserably at Hogwarts, beyond not being suited to working with children or teenagers at all, was because she had been dealing with honest and well-intentioned people. Not the usual ministry assholes. That and her premise, that Dumbledore was fomenting a rebellion against the Fudge administration and Harry Potter was a deranged maniac, was so far off of reality that she stood no chance of succeeding.

-

And so the week passed, leading to a weekend filled with people vying for his time.

“Hey, Hadrian. Want to join the other club runners and I for lunch this weekend?” Cedric asked him Friday afternoon.

Cutting it a little close there aren’t you?

“Sure! Either day works. I’m sure Bellatrix will want to be there, if for no other reason than to glare daggers at Fleur and to have the opportunity to get some practice duels with her and Viktor.” Ahrry said.

And so, he spent his Saturday morning stopping by Tofty’s to thank Dolores in person for her interesting perspective. He had a quick cuppa with them and left with a single pastry in hand. Then, he visited Jacob.

“Hello parole officer.” Said Jacob, now free of bandages and looking more like himself. “Am I in trouble?”

“Don’t know. Let me check.” Harry said.

He loosened his grip on Ghillie Dhu and let his senses pervade every orifice of the small apartment above Garricks shop. When he had volunteered to be in charge of the man’s house arrest and rehabilitation, the idea of putting him in Garrick’s spare room was a no brainer. Not only was it centrally located, his and Garrick’s ascerbic personalities just meshed.

That and Garrick could kick his ass if he somehow managed to break the wards. Which he had not. Each one was as Harry left it. He was most proud of the one that allowed the person keyed to it, Jacob in this case, to remain tethered to the ward while exiting for five minutes every few hours for bathroom breaks, and for thirty minutes thrice per day for meals and showers. The ward would begin literally rushing his heart if he stayed out longer than that. Slowly at first, to serve as a warning shot.

“I see you got yourself a lot of new books.” Harry said, looking down at an encyclopedia of fighter jets on the small coffee table.

“Not much else to do in here except read.” Jacob complained, turning a page on some strange novel that had George Washington riding a dinosaur on it. The one with the horn on its head.(AN:1)

He knew you weren’t supposed to just a book by its cover, but that was one hell of a cover.

“Well, I wanted to know if you were interested in running security again on the twenty sixth.” Harry asked.

“I literally have nothing else to do.” Jacob answered.

“I mean. Do you want something else to do?” Harry offered.

Jacob looked at him.

“What do you have in mind?” He asked.

“Want to teach teenagers how to shoot guns and bows?” He offered. “The archery and shooting clubs were rejected, but mostly because we had nobody able or willing to teach them. Can’t believe I didn’t think of you.”

Jacob smiled.

“All teenagers should learn basic gun safety and operation, especially wizarding ones who don’t respect Muggle weapons nearly as much as they should.” Jacob said. “I’m in. But who will supervise me?”

“Garrick, of course.” Harry said.

“Like hell I will!” Garrick called up from downstairs.

“Oh, well, plan b then. I’ll take it on as a second club on weekdays.” Harry told him.

“When do I start?” He asked.

“Monday.” Harry ordered.

-

His third stop, before joing the champions and his girlfriend for lunch, was Weasley Wizard wheezes.

“Hey! Welcome in landlord of ours. Like what we’ve done to the place?” Fred greeted him as he walked in.

Harry looked around. The place had somehow gotten even more colorful. The hallway and stairs were so very yellow. When harry raised an eyebrow at the redhead, he turned a dial near the register. The rugs and wallpaper then turned vibrant blue and purple, respectively.

“I could do with some earth tones during the full moon.” Harry said.

He turned the dial again and things wen to their usual browns and tans. Much better.

“So! What brings you here?” Fred asked.

“Wanted to comission some things for halloween.” Harry said. “As a precaution.”

“Precaution?” Fred asked.

“Without fail, Halloween brings upon me some kind of disaster or outright attempt on my life. I want to be prepared.” Harry explained. “I foresee some shit going down.”

“Oh. Well we’re a joke shop, what can we possibly make that would help you in that regard?” Fred asked.

“More than you can possibly imagine.” Harry told him with a smirk.

-

(AN:1) Not making this up. Can’t find it, but I once read a novel in which George Washington regular rode a Parasaurolophis. That was even the cover. Just, north America with dinosaurs.

I just love the idea that wizards and witches, with their longer lifespans, just watch Muggle countries try new things, see it fail spectacular, and just go “Okay. Let’s NOT do that.” Policies in wizarding society probably take decades to pass, with people living nearly to 200, they’re a bit more patient and faster to course correct. There are some old enough to have personally been in private schools before public schools were introduced, to have experienced a private healthcare system back when countries still had them, and seen the absolute disasters that public school and healthcare are everywhere they’ve been tried, with the possible exception of places that had no type of either to begin with.

So yeah. Loooong memories. Slow to change. For better and worse. For better in that they don’t adopt disastrous social programs, for worse because they also don’t adopt new technologies, business models, and the like. But they do eventually. They’re in no rush, they live 200 years. Makes for an interesting society to think about.