And Now for Something Completely Different

Summery: Finally some action in regards to the spy and more magical explanations.

Chapter 10:

Harry kept them at a steady and fast pace until they came upon a fork in the road. They stopped and Harry looked at Cain and DG for directions. While Toto instructed DG with her memories, Harry took a look at their surroundings to try and identify the feeling prickling at the base of his neck. The feeling that told him he was being watched with malicious eyes. A shuffle in the leaves of a tree above them caught his attention and he looked up and narrowed his eyes at it. Faintly he could see the outline of a brown shape he assumed was one of those monkey bats.

He grunted but decided to wait for it to move, since wasn’t sure what it was, before he did anything about it. It would still be in range of a stunning spell for quite a ways if it tried to fly away. At the moment it appeared to be waiting.

Harry listened with half an ear to DG. “This looks familiar. I remember her swinging me on a swing and the sun is reflecting in my eyes…. and the breeze …off the water.” She walked a short ways down the right fork, her eyes still closed. Glitch took up the new path and started down it in a decisive manor. DG quickly shook her head, opened her eyes, and ran down the left fork instead. Harry waited to see what the monkey bat thing would do and Cain took off after DG, trusting Harry to get Glitch. The monkey bat did nothing and so Harry assumed he had mistaken it.

He ran after Glitch and grabbed a hold of him. As they are walking back to go down the correct path, Glitch saw something shiny. In another time Harry might have been amused at Glitch’s fascination and obsession with shiny things. Instead, all Harry could focus on was the chaos that ensued.

Toto screamed out “no” and the brown streak, Harry had correctly assumed was a monkey bat, attacked. Cain shot it, and just as the life left it, Harry felt a dark cry of anguish that resonated in his bones. He felt as if the cry should have shaken the world, but none of the others seemed to notice it.

Glitch reached down to pick up the shinny that started all the mess and stared at it in his hand. It’s such a little thing. He handed the little disk, colored like an oil spill, to Harry and shrugged. He hoped that Harry would give him the shinny back; he hardly ever got to keep them. He didn’t even get one of the shinnies that DG had when they met her. He jumped in joy that he remembered that and Cain put a restraining hand on his arm. Glitch sighed happily. His men never rebuked him for acting silly or distracting them. They just pushed him around so he was not in danger and sometimes they even smiled at him when he did it. ‘Oh Harry is speaking, I may want to remember this.’

“What was that all about?” Harry asked, shifting his attention back and forth between the disk in his hand and the dead bat thing on the ground.

“Well, it’s over so I think we should just pretend it never happened.” Toto said, waving his hands at his side nervously. Glitch noticed that he was sweating again. He seemed to do that a lot. Glitch wondered if there was a doohickey that one could use to clear that up. Maybe a fan, which was powered by magic that you could hold in your hand…or…what was he thinking? Oh well better pay attention again.

“Pretend it never happened?” Cain asked the tutor incensed. “That thing attacked Glitch and it was obviously following us. When she figures out its dead, they’ll be all over this place.” Harry mumbled, “She already knows,” and no one questioned how he knew that.

The shape shifter said, “Well that’s all the better reason to get out of this place.”

Glitch started to get nervous about the copious amounts of sweat the man was extruding. He dug out a rag from his pocket and handed it to him. “You’d better be careful. If you make a habit of sweating that much you’ll likely dehydrate.”

Toto waved away the rag and both Harry and Cain turned to focus on him intensely. Glitch wondered what happened to catch their attention.

Harry, always willing to answer his mental questions, said, “You always seem to sweat more the more nervous you get.” Cain nodded, “I wonder what you have to be nervous about?” They both slowly saddled up to him, like cats playing with a mouse and Glitch felt a female hand on his arm. He turned to look at DG with a question in his eyes. She put a gentle pressure on his arm and Glitch remembered Harry telling him how that was a directional guidance move. Logic dictated that she wanted him to move back. Glitch submissively acquiesced, but wondered at the cause.

When he turned back to where Harry and Cain were cornering the man, he saw that Toto had reflexively put one hand in his pocket. Glitch saw a flash of something shinny in there and yelled out. “What’s shinny in your pocket, can I have it?” Harry grabbed Toto’s elbow and tore his pocket in an effort to remove the man’s hand from his pocket.

A handful of the little shiny disks fell on the ground and Glitch whimpered. Oh how he wanted one. Harry had the one he’d found. It was his. He found it fair and square. He opened his mouth to yell at Harry to give it back, but DG put a hand on his mouth.

He tried to shake her off but stopped when he heard an animalistic growl from Harry. Cain stepped back in shock, and Glitch shook off DG. He wasn’t sure of much, but the last time he’d heard that growl, Harry had torn a limb off a guy who was trying to hurt him. The guy deserved it, but Glitch really didn’t want Cain to get mixed up in it.

He ran up and pushed Cain behind him. Cain grunted and pulled him behind him and pointed his gun at the shapeshifter.

“Remember what I told you would happen to you if you betrayed us dog?” Harry’s voice sent shivers up and down Glitch’s spine. It was barely more then a whisper, but Glitch would have bet the rest of his marbles that not even the witch could sound that malevolent.

Glitch knew that DG has a kind soul and so was less then surprised when she called out to Harry. “What’s going on? What has he done? What are those things?”

Harry grunted and Cain figured that was his cue to take up the explanation. “He’s been leaving bread crumbs.” Glitch spoke up from behind him, “The shinnies?” Cain almost chuckled at Glitch’s obsession but he held it in. “Yea, She’s had an inside man.”

“Tutor?” DG asked in a small voice and Cain winced at the realization that she’d need an explanation from the man. Gods save him from bleeding hearts. He watched Harry lean back slightly and knew that Harry understood her need.

Toto wet his lips and his eyes moved rapidly from Harry to Cain to DG. “For 15 yeas…15 years she had me down in a dark hole. She came…..Azkadelia offered me my freedom…if I tracked you.” He focused his pleading gaze directly on DG, sensing that she was his only hope. “If I’d said no, she would have killed me. So I figured…” he swallowed, “That I could at least keep her off your back while I helped your rediscover your magic.”

“Bullshit” Harry spat just as Cain asked, “why drop the disks at all, why not let us get away clean?” It didn’t matter what his answer was, Harry would probably kill him anyway. Cain felt the little law man inside him grumble, but they were in war, people died in war; traitors died in war, or you did.

“You know as well as I do that that would never have worked. I was bought us time.”

Harry, apparently fed up with lame excuses said, “I think its time to put this dog down.” DG ran up to him and Cain was happy to see that she knew better then to touch the sorcerer while he was in this state. “We’re all looking for second chances.” Harry grunted, “I’m not” but Cain could tell his murderous attention was way-laid. Cain’s tin man was pleased but the rest of him was weary that they would now have to keep watch over the dog.

“Thank you.” Toto breathed out. “That doesn’t mean I trust you, but you’re the only one who knows what Ahomo looks like.” DG grumbled.

Harry coughed out a chuckle, “are you kidding me. I know what he looks like and you all saw pictures of him. Why do we need him?”

DG looked equal parts pensive and fearful. Cain had sudden insight, that had been her only plan to prevent Harry from killing the man. Without hesitation, Cain pulled his gun and shot Toto in the thigh.

The shape shifter when down with a startled scream and Harry and DG looked at him. “We don’t. Harry can you turn something into metal?” Harry nodded. “Then make him a metal jacked for his dog form and we’ll put him on a short leash.” The grin that came over Harry gave Cain duckbumps and both he and his inner tin man agreed that it was a good thing the grin wasn’t pointed in their direction.

“Shift.” Harry ordered the man. Toto let out a long whine as he slowly changed into his little innocuous form. Harry bent down and picked up two leaves and a rock from the ground.

This would actually be complicated. Transfiguration could only do so much. He could change properties of things, but what Cain was proposing was permanent and a full material change. Something like that wouldn’t stay that way for very long without a rune stone. Ron had talked him out of taking Ancient Runes, even though he was interested in it. So he’d done quite a bit of personal study on it when Ron was away. He was remorseful that he wouldn’t be able to learn more here. Maybe when this was all over he could find a way back and get some more books.

The rock was rather perfectly formed for what he wanted to do to it. It was roundish, but it had three almost flat sides, like someone had beaten it on the ground until it flattened out.

He pulled out the yew wand, which had more experience with Runes and would therefore allow it easier and traced out the Jerda rune, which absorb and hold the magic he put on it preventing the magic he cast on it from drying up and reverting, on one flat side. It flared yellow as he traced it and then settled down in black on the stone. Harry let out a relived sigh, he wasn’t sure he remembered the proper way to trace it; muscle memory was a wonderful thing. On the opposite side he traced the Tamara rune, which would prevent animagus changes and make it indestructible. On the final side he traced the Flarka rune, he had to shift the things in his hands a little to make a small cut on his arm and dabbed the rock, Flarka side down, in the blood. This would lock and key the spells to him and only his spells. The Flarka rune was actually the one he’d used obsessively after he’d found it at school. No matter the magic cast on it, this rune could not be broken by anyone not of his blood. His only fear had been that Voldemort actually had his blood in him.

Some days the thought that technically Voldemort’s new form made him Harry’s son, had caused all sorts of panic.

Harry put down the rock next to the two leaves he’d picked up. He used a runic tie to attach the leaves to the rune stone and then transfigured them into a collar and leash. Next, he put the leash and collar on the little dog and the stone on his back. Harry transfigured the stone into a metal jacket that didn’t restrict his joints in anyway.

He was rather satisfied with his work. It had been some time since he’d created anything like that.

He tilted his head curiously at them, “Are we get going then?” Glitch chattered at him in amazed glee at all the possibilities of his magic as they walked down the path DG had chosen.

An: the duck bumps are an idea that made me giggle. what if there were no geese in the O.Z.? What would happen to goosebumps? let me know if the magical theory was hard to understand. I like knowing how things work and so i try and make it up as i go. The runes are just made up words that sounded okay. they dont mean anything. You're welcome to use them provided that you let me know so i can read it.