The Kindly Ones

The Kindly Ones

Chapter Eight

Our Hero Shares his Secret.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all his associated parts, belongs to JKR. \'ALL\' his associated Parts.


This chapter beta’d by Licelli, who should sit down after hacking through my terrible grammar and spelling.


\"Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!\"
-- Rule One (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time)

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\"Now if I could be anywhere I wanted to be in the world, it bloody well wouldn’t be here!” Harry was leaning backwards in his chair flicking little bits of parchment up in the air. In a few minutes his friends would be walking through the door to hear his secret. He knew he was going to sound whiny but he just had to say it once more
\"Why is it always me?\"
That felt good, a little bit of angst now and again was good for you.
From the other side of his door he could hear the strident tones of Ron and Hermione fighting.

\"No, magic was not used in the making of the movies.\"

\"There is no way muggles could do those things with comp - tutors.\" It appeared that they had been to the cinema during the holidays.

\"Ron not everything good in the world was made with magic.\"
\"I still say that those Lord of the Rings films were made using magic. Peter Jackson has to be a wizard.\"

Harry heard Hermione’s resigned sigh, \"Fine Ron what ever you want, just shut up.\"


When the two walked through the door they saw Harry, who had gone from throwing paper in the air and progressed to wastepaper basketball, the occupation of the terminally procrastinating.
\"So Harry what ya doing?\"

\"Contemplating global domination, but not much else.\"

\"That’s nice, can I have Australia? I always wanted to be on Neighbours!\" Hermione went along with Harry’s diversion.

\"Sure, Ron can have Russia and Hedwig can have Canada, but I’m keeping Hawaii and Fiji. I always wanted an island retreat.\"

\"Hey, how come I get Russia?\" Ron complained as he sprawled out on the room’s couch.

\"Well if you don’t want Russia, pick a continent!\"

\"India, I always wanted a pet elephant.\"


As the three split up the planet after Harry’s planned domination, it was decided that he would go for the nuclear weapon strapped to a giant drill set to go off in the centre of the earth; an oldie but a good one, and all his evil minions would have to wear silver lame’ suits and plastic orange hard hats.
\"So why have you really asked us here?\"

\"Yeah, Harry, it’s nice to know that if your ever conquer the world I’d get to become king of India, but what’s up?\"

Harry slumped further down in his chair and sighed, playing with the ripped parchment in his lap. \"Guys, you know I don’t mean to knock you but, as soon as more than one person knows a secret it’s no longer a secret. And keeping a secret at Hogwarts is like holding water in a sieve. \"

Both teens nodded in understanding. \"It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you guys, it’s just…\" Harry stood up and began pacing. \"I don’t want the whole school to know.\"

Ron and Hermione watched Harry lose the ability of inner monologue. After a few minutes of his ranting he drew to a halt.
\"Ahh well fuck it. If I don‘t tell you guys I will probably regret it even more.”
\"Okay, the night before I went to Diagon alley to pick up my stuff for the year, something happened. When Vernon decided to lay into his favourite punching bag, there was this light and then I found myself with this”. Harry jerked his jumper over his head showing the deep midnight blue feathers picked out in silver trailing down his back and past the waist of his pants.

Before his friends could start talking, Harry continued. \"When I went to Gringotts to take out some cash, there was this box sitting right in the middle of my vault.” With that he pulled out a little wooden box that had been sitting beside his chair and handed it to Hermione.

\"Inside was a letter from my Great, to the power of whatever, grandmother, telling me I am an Erinyes. She went on to say that they are like magical bounty hunters and in her letter she told me that I was going to have all these weird physical changes.\" Harry held out a hand and began to list the changes his body had been going through counting them off on his fingers. “First was the back tattoo. Second my hair has turned into something from medusa, and has an literal mind of it’s own. Third I have fangs which are poisonous, how annoying is that going to be when I want to kiss anyone. That’s all I can think of right now. Knowing me I’ll probably end up with two heads and a tail.”

Hermione had opened the box and was pulling out the papers and the whip, necklace, silk rope, glass bottle that had been sitting inside.
\"Harry, have you looked at any of these items?\"

\"Ahh no, not really. I’ve been avoiding even thinking about the whole mess.\"


\"This is all pretty strange. I don’t know what to say really.\"

\"Harry, can you fly?\"
\"Ron there are more important things than whether he can fly or not.\"

Harry pulled his jumper back on. \"Ron, for all intents and purposes, they are as useful as if they really were a tattoo. And let me tell you, watching my hair try to eat my comb is just plain weird. Thankfully the teeth are retractable. I don’t want to think about how hard it would be to eat an apple with fangs.\"

\"Fangs? Cool, can I see?\" Ron stood up excited.

Harry shrugged and opened his mouth, the thin retractable fangs extending his eyeteeth by a centimetre.

\"Bloody amazing! Hey Hermione check this out.\"
\"Ha, ha, laugh it up, I’ve bitten my stupid tongue I don’t know how many times before I worked out how to retract them.\"

\"We can just call it Harry’s new party trick!\"

\"Give it a rest Ron. There have been a couple of other things that have been happening. That is, whenever I’m around a whole lot of wizards and witches I hear this noise; I can’t really describe it. I’ve never heard it before. But what’s nasty is that I can smell this horrid stench throughout the castle. It fades and grows. Is it me or has the plumbing backed up again.\" Looking up from studying the necklace from the box Hermione spoke.


\"No, Peeves was banished to the highest tower after he tried to play a prank on the Bloody Baron and was caught. Look I’m going to ask a silly question, because I know the answer, do you want me to go to the Library and search for any information on Erinyes?\"

Harry hung his head in mock resignation.
\"Yes, I know if I tried I would spend twice the time with half the result. Plus I promise you the biggest box of chocolates from Honeydukes’ that I can buy.\"

\"Certainly, what are friends for, but I expect no nougat in my chocolates.\"

Ron picked up the little glass bottle that had been sitting beside Hermione. It was oval shaped and seemed to be empty. It had been rolling about on the couch, as it did not have a flat bottom.
\"Hey Harry why did you get an empty bottle. I got more useful stuff when my great uncle Jonas died. And he had a strange fetish for muggle underwear.
Your relatives suck.\" With this statement he placed a fingernail under the lid of the small metal lid and flicked it off. The supposedly empty bottle began to emit a strange red mist.

\"Ron, what the fuck did you just do?\" Harry screamed as the mist slowly oozed out of the small bottle, hissing when it meet the material of the couch.

\"He just opened a strange bottle, taken from a mysterious old box that no one has ever seen before. Ron you are a complete idiot!\" Hermione yelled at the stunned red head, who had immediately dropped the bottle and leaped away from the couch on which it had landed. All three began backing away from the spreading mist.


\"Oh shit. Hermione fix it!\" Hermione scowled at the other Gryffindor and aimed her wand at the slowly growing mass of mist, which was drifting off the couch and towards the fire. ‘deleo, discedo, perficio,’ the bright yellow light which sprang from her wand was swallowed by the mist.
\"Mione did you take a look at any of those papers, did they say anything about this.\"
Hermione scowled when her spell didn’t work and shook her head.

\"No but there is probably a big warning sign in there.\"
The mist was slowly growing but there was still a gap to the door.

\"Who’s up for running for it and leaving it for Dumbledore to clean up?\"

\"Ron, who knows what that mist does. For all we know it could eat through the stone and leave half the kitchen as mulch before we even got to the Headmaster.”

\"We can’t let that happen. Harry do something!\"

Dashing across the room Harry grabbed the box before the mist reached it; luckily the papers were still inside.
\"Hermione, do you think you can contain it at least?\"

\"I’ll try, . .’uentus’ a stiff breeze flew from her wand surrounding the mist and pushing it away from the three Gryffindors. But it continued to grow.

\"Do you think you could get the lid on it that way?\" Ron asked as Harry quickly scanned the papers, taking nothing in but looking for anything to do with the bottle and red mist.

\"No, the mist is hiding the bottle and I need to see it, to perform the necessary spell.\"

Harry chucked the box and the rest of the papers to the ground as he shouted \"Eureka. This mentions a bottle of Eumenides; it contains the blood essence of Uranus, spilt at his castration. Eww!!\"

\"Harry hurry up \" Hermione spoke as the red mist poured out of the top of the mini tornado she had produced.

\"Okay, something about Tartarus . . . Corcyra, . . . . Uranus, father of the Titans, yada, yada, yada, here we are - the bottle can be used for the capture and torture of those with divine or semi divine blood, must never fall into the hands of a titan. All living, or once living, material that comes in contact will dissolve. Only an Erinyes can handle it without being destroyed.\"
At this, they finally noticed that half the couch was missing, eaten away by the mist.
\"There’s a little note on the side, ‘great for cleaning up after a big party.\" Harry hung in his head \"I hate my ancestors.\"

Dropping the paper he walked over to the mini tornado,
\"Could you stop that so I can get to the bottle, Mione?\"
After a quick ‘finite’ the mist began spilling out of the wind prison. As Harry walked to it, Ron spoke.

\"Hey Harry, if you don’t come back, can I have your Firebolt.\"

\"Ron shut up,\" and with that he stuck an arm into the mist; it didn’t fall off so he walked in.


Once inside the mist it felt as if he was at the centre of a bubble. Everything on the outside was distorted but inside there did not seem to be anything wrong. His mouth tingled and his fangs pushed out his eye teeth. There was a heavy and thick smell of old blood inside the bubble.

Harry waved a hand at Ron and Hermione,
\"Hey guys I’m okay.\" They didn’t react. \"Ron you smell like old fish and your mother dresses you funny.\" Still no response. Before he got carried away he remembered the mist was spreading, and his friends wouldn’t be able to just walk into it. He didn’t want to end up with two puddles of slime as his sidekicks.

Walking over to the couch, which had been eaten away by the mist Harry saw the bottle. Beside it lay the little lead lid. Quickly he thrust the lid into the bottle sealing it tight. With that the bottle once again looked innocent.

After a few moments he began to notice that his surroundings were loosing their distorted quality and walked towards his friends. Once he was outside the range of the mist he turned around. The red mist was fading like fog hit by sunlight and it was quickly gone, leaving a barren patch of clean flagstones and a few shreds of wood and carpet.

\"So does that mean I can’t have your Firebolt?\" was Ron’s comment as the last of the mist faded and revealed the remains of the couch, side table, carpet, and everything else that had been standing where they had just been sitting.

\"How about two boxes of chocolates and a shopping spree at Flourish and Blotts?\" Hermione stared at the cushion she had been sitting on, or what she thought might have been her cushion. The little bits of colour left in the green sludge looked like the pillow.

\"Fine, two boxes and a shopping spree, you said. Just promise me: Ron is never to go anywhere near that box again.\"

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Authors Note
Thanks for the reviews.
I have plans for that bottle and all the little items sitting in the box.
All the spells used are Latin, I used my text book to check.