Harry stared at the kids on his doorstep, wondering what the hell they wanted from him now.
Something must have shown on his face, because Hermione Granger was quick to point out, “You told us to come back another time for a visit!”
Harry sighed. He had said that, hadn’t he? He just hadn’t expected them to show up again the very next day. Part of Harry wanted to dismiss them, to send them back to the school, but another part of him realized that perhaps he could find a use for these eager kids.
You see, Harry had a vast network of spies in the form of his dead family members. They were a huge resource and Harry had put them to good use in the past, to listen in to his enemies, to learn their plans, and to help keep abreast of any potential future problems. But no matter how good his family members were at spying, they had one downside. They couldn’t interact with the physical environment around them. They were noncorporeal souls. They couldn’t open a book, or go through paperwork on a desk, or anything that required the ability to physically touch an item.
These three youths, however, could do all those things. And by the looks of it, they were more than willing to become his friends.
Harry offered them all a bright smile. “I did say that, Miss Granger.” He pulled the door open wide. “Come on in!”
“You can call me Hermione,” Granger said as she entered the castle with a spring in her step.
“I’m Harry.” Gesturing to his right, Harry waited until all three kids were standing in the entrance hall, gaping around, before he closed the heavy door. “Let’s go to the sitting room, right through there. Igor, we need tea for four!”
V came flying out of the corridor and landed heavily on Harry’s shoulder. “Hello, hello!”
Ron Weasley looked at V in amazement. “How did you teach him to talk?”
Harry snorted. “He’s always talked, for as long as I’ve known him. It’s getting him to shut up that’s the trick.” That earned him a peck on his ear from V, but Harry merely grinned in return.
The kids all sat together on the couch in the sitting room, while Harry sank down in a leather chair opposite them. Igor came shuffling into the room, carrying a large tray with a porcelain tea service.
“Just put it down,” Harry said, gesturing at the coffee table. “I’ll pour it out.”
“Eurgh.”
The kids were staring at Igor with wide eyes while Harry’s butler put the tray down and shuffled out of the sitting room again.
Hermione cleared her throat. “I’m quite sure that’s an inferius. I looked it up in the library yesterday, and making an inferius is illegal.”
Harry offered her his brightest smile while he poured tea into cups. “So is sneaking into the Forbidden Forest while you’re a Hogwarts student, but here you are.” Then he gave the kids an exaggerated wink while placing steaming cups in front of them. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Yeah, leave the man be,” Ron was quick to say with a glare at Hermione.
“Besides,” Harry said, leaning back in his seat while holding his cup in his lap. “There is such a thing as house loyalty, right?”
“What do you mean?” Neville asked quietly while picking up his own cup and blowing across it.
“My parents were Gryffindors, and so were many of my extended family.” Harry stared over the kids’ heads, as though he was suddenly feeling melancholic. “If I hadn’t been kidnapped and we’d gone to Hogwarts together, I’m completely sure I’d have been a Gryffindor, too.”
“So you’re an honorary Gryffindor,” Ron said with an agreeable smile.
“Thanks!” Harry toasted the boy with his cup of tea. “I appreciate hearing that from a genuine Gryffindor.”
Ron’s cheeks flushed bright red and he quickly took a few sips of his tea, head ducked, trying to hide his face.
“I want to thank you again for returning my family’s cloak yesterday,” Harry said, addressing Neville. “Did Dumbledore ever explain why he gave it to you, though?”
Neville seemed frozen for a second by Harry’s sudden attention, but then he cleared his throat. “Er…no. Just that it was your father’s and you should have gotten it. But since you were missing, I could use it for the time being.”
“How curious,” Harry said with a thoughtful frown, making sure not to sound too accusatory. “I heard recently that our parents were friends, so maybe that’s why the headmaster thought it was a good idea.”
“Yes, that could be,” Neville agreed in a whisper, yet he still looked like he’d never had any real idea of why he’d been given the invisibility cloak in the first place.
Hermione, who’d been listening while seated at the edge of the sofa, apparently couldn’t contain her curiosity anymore. “What sort of magical school did you go to? What did they teach there?”
Harry chuckled as he looked at her expectant face. “I attended Master Karakas’ School for Sorcery in Misty Springs, which was a lovely town built on the side of a mountain in the middle of a rainforest.” All three kids were hanging onto Harry’s every word. “As for what we learned there? The simple answer is magic.” Harry grinned when the kids all groaned in impatience. “Nah, we learned classes very similar to the ones you have here. Plants, potions, runes, curses, wards, and much more.”
“That must have been right strange, to learn foreign magic like that,” Ron said in an awed tone.
Harry shrugged while giving the kids a lopsided smile. “I was four when I moved there. To me Santika’s magic has always been familiar magic. This world is filled with foreign magic as far as I am concerned.” Harry ducked his head a little, pursing his lips. “In fact, I’m feeling a little lost trying to navigate my way around this world, especially with the tournament coming up.”
“Oh, oh!” Hermione looked like she was half a second away from jumping up from the sofa and raising her hand in the air. “We could help!”
Whipping his head up, Harry gave Hermione an utterly grateful look. “Would you?”
“Yeah, we’d be happy to,” Neville said quickly with a solemn nod.
Harry sat up a little, looking from one kid to the next. “I couldn’t ask that of you…I’d need you all to do lots of research and that would take a lot of time.”
“We really don’t mind,” Hermione insisted while Ron started looking a little dubiously ever since hearing the word ‘research’.
“Oh,” Harry suggested suddenly. “I could pay you. Maybe a Galleon a week? Each?”
Ron’s eyes widened in absolute astonishment.
“Gold, gold,” V cawed from his position on the headrest of Harry’s chair, eying up the kids curiously.
“Oh no,” Hermione said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We couldn’t ask that of you.”
“Hermione,” Ron whispered harshly. “If he wants to pay us, let him!”
Neville bit his lip for a moment before staring at Hermione. “I wouldn’t mind earning some gold. My gran never gives me an allowance. She insists if I need anything to just ask her directly.”
Harry sat back while the kids held a silent staring match, confident he’d just secured himself three eager little assistants to take care of a lot of tedious research for him. They were rather obvious kids, and combined with what Harry knew of their families from what his parents had told him, it wasn’t difficult to find a way to manipulate them right where Harry wanted them.
Ron came from a poor family, but he was eager to prove himself, to find fame and fortune of his own. Neville was just as gracious as his parents always had been, a quiet boy with a noble soul. And Hermione was a Ravenclaw in Gryffindor clothing, more than eager to learn anything she could.
“Igor!” Harry yelled towards the doorway. “Bring me paper and quill!”
“Eurgh!”
“All right, we accept,” Hermione said just as Igor shuffled inside the room with a few sheets of paper and a self-inking quill in his hands.
“Excellent!” Harry placed a sheet of paper in front of him on the coffee table and started writing down a simple magical contract. He winked at the kids while he did so. “An employment contract. This way you know I’ll be good for my gold and won’t try to scam you.”
Hermione’s cheeks flushed. “We would never think that.”
“Gran always says that all important deals should come with a written contract,” Neville pointed out, which seemed to reassure Hermione a bit.
“Here.” Harry turned the contract towards the kids, placing the quill on top of it. “Read it through, and if you agree with it, you can sign it.”
The boys seemed happy enough to let Hermione study the contract, which she did while narrowing her eyes and biting her lip. “Why is there a secrecy clause?”
Because Harry wasn’t an idiot and he wanted to make sure the kids couldn’t spill any of his secrets that could get him thrown into prison or worse. Harry offered his new assistants a scheming smile. “It protects both you and me. You cannot accidentally let slip anything about my preparations of the tournament. And no one can make you say anything, either.”
Neville seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “So even if they threatened us, or hexed us, we couldn’t speak of your secrets.”
“Exactly.” Harry gave Neville an approving nod.
“Give me that,” Ron said, all but yanking the quill out of Hermione’s hands. He signed the contract without hesitation. Then he handed the quill to Neville, who also added his signature without any problems.
Finally, Hermione sighed and completed the set with her own signature.
Harry accepted the contract back, added his own signature, and then he pricked his finger with the sharp bit of the quill and pressed a drop of his blood over his name. This way, his secrets would be protected and the kids couldn’t speak of them even if they wanted to. Harry could still spill all of their secrets just fine, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Why add the blood?” Hermione asked a little worriedly.
Thankfully Neville was quick to give an explanation. “It’s normal in contracts, my gran told me.”
“Thank you!” Harry said with sincere gratitude. “Now, your first mission, should you accept it, is to find out everything you can about this blasted tournament. Think you can do that?”
“Absolutely,” Hermione said, legs bouncing as if she couldn’t wait to run all the way back to Hogwarts to start researching at once.
“You three are absolute lifesavers.” Harry leaned back in his chair again with a tired sigh. “I need to compete in that tournament, yet I have no time to find out anything about it. This morning I spent hours at the Ministry to try to get my godfather freed.”
“Sirius Black?” All three kids asked at the same time.
“You know him?”
“Yeah!” Ron almost fell off the couch in his hurry to tell the story. “My rat was actually a Death Eater, as it turned out, who had framed Sirius.”
Harry blinked, genuinely not expecting that turn of events. “Do tell.”
And the kids did tell, with lots of details and even more wild gesturing, how they’d all ended up in the Shrieking Shack where the truth came out. There were werewolves and dementors involved, and even Snape had a cameo, and in the end it had taken time-travel to save his godfather’s life, and Harry listened with bated breath to the wild adventure that had taken place just last year.
“You three are the bravest kids I’ve ever met,” Harry said with a proud smile. “You’ll be happy to know I talked to Amelia Bones this morning and told her Sirius never had a trial. She’s looking into it herself and promised to rectify the situation personally where needed.”
“I’m so glad to hear that,” Hermione said with watery eyes.
Ron, however, scoffed. “We told them all that last year, but no one would believe us.”
“But it seems that things will still work out,” Neville said optimistically. “That’s what matters the most.”
“Indeed it does.” Harry got up from his seat. “Thank you for your visit. I really appreciate it. I’m new here and don’t know anyone yet.”
“Friends, friends,” V cawed while flapping his wings, that manipulative feather-duster.
“Yeah, we’ll be your friends, Harry,” Neville said with a happy little smile.
“Absolutely,” Ron quickly agreed.
Harry placed his hand over his heart while giving the trio a short little bow. “That means a lot to me. Come back in a few days.”
“See you!” Ron called as they left the castle, chatting amongst themselves.
Closing the door, Harry leaned his head against it and released a deep sigh. That was one problem taken care of. Now he had three devoted assistants to take some work out of his hands while he tackled some bigger, more important problems.
Namely that almost all the magic Harry usually used would either get him imprisoned for a very long time or even get him executed.
“Fuck,” Harry muttered as he slumped towards the library, summoning the list of illegal spells from the kitchen with a wave of his hand. How the fuck was he going to fix this?
There was the option of running for a seat on the Wizengamot, or for Minister for Magic or something, and try to change the system from the inside out. The problem with that was twofold. First, it would take years and years to get any kind of traction that way, and secondly, the majority of the witches and wizards in Britain were supporters of the light and wouldn’t be happy bringing back previously outlawed dark magic.
Harry sat down behind his desk in the library. “Igor, bring me my wine!”
“Eurgh!”
V landed on the large perch beside Harry's desk, while Keket was stretched out on her favourite bearskin, fast asleep. “Kill, kill,” V called, wings flapping.
“What the fuck?” Harry looked at his companion in utter confusion. “Kill who, or what?”
“Fudge, Fudge.”
Harry briefly closed his eyes and shook his head. “V… buddy… we’re not killing the minister. That won’t solve a fucking thing.”
V ruffled his feathers and glared at Harry with beady eyes. “Bad man, bad man.”
“He’s just an idiot politician, V,” Harry said, throwing himself back in his chair, feet kicking against his desk in frustration. “He doesn’t make the actual laws. The Wizengamot does that.” Running two tired hands down his face, Harry groaned, long and deep. “If only there was a Sildar in this world. At least there I got to make the laws.”
There was a moment of loaded silence before Harry and V looked at each other at the exact same time.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Harry asked while forgetting to breathe.
“Make land, make land!” V crowed, head tossed back.
“Yes, we are!” Harry jumped up, grabbed V’s feathery head between his hand and pressed a loud kiss right on top of it. “Wait, what does this world even look like? They got to have oceans, right? We need maps!”
V was shaking himself as if Harry had just doused him in lice. “Lots water, lots, lots.”
“Okay, what time is it?” Harry turned around in his library, unsure what he needed to do now that he had an absolutely fucking brilliant idea that would solve every single fucking one of his problems.
Well, at least the one about him using illegal magic.
“Let’s go to the bookstore, find some maps!” And without waiting for V to reply, Harry ran to the door, summoning his broom along the way, and almost bowling Igor over who was shuffling towards the library carrying a bottle of wine. V could barely keep up, flapping his large wings, as Harry launched himself in the air the second he left the castle. He flew to Hogsmeade as fast as he could, V screeching in protest behind him.
Thankfully, there was no need to go to Diagon Alley since Hogsmeade also had a small bookstore, which seemed to sell as many second-hand books as new ones, but that didn’t matter much to Harry’s needs.
“Merchant!” Harry bellowed as he rushed inside the shop, broom still in hand. “I need maps of this world!”
The young girl behind the counter blinked large, blue eyes at him before swallowing a time or two. “The geography section is that way.” She gestured to Harry’s left, where there was indeed a sign hanging from the ceiling in the back of the shop that said ‘geography and maps’.
“My thanks!” Harry hurried towards the section, V hopping on his shoulder in sheer excitement, and there he piled just about every book and map that even remotely had anything to do with the geography of this planet into his arms. The clerk seemed a little flustered as she added everything up, as if she’d never had this large of a purchase before, and Harry waited not so patiently until he could hand over a substantial handful of gold before shoving all the books and maps in his satchel.
Once home again, Harry yanked several of the large tables in the library together to make one large surface with a wave of his hand, and then he piled all the books and maps he’d just purchased on top of it.
“Igor, bring me a bowl of stew!” Harry was happy to see Igor had left the wine on his desk, so Harry poured himself a glass while he waited for his butler to bring him his dinner. Igor wasn’t much of a cook, but he could serve a bowl of cold stew that Harry could easily heat up with a charm.
While Harry and V devoured the stew they studied some of the maps to get an idea of where the borders of each country ended. Harry had been four when he’d left earth. He’d never seen a map of his planet of origin before, or at least not that he could remember, so seeing how much of earth was covered in oceans was a bit of a surprise. One of the books Harry had purchased spoke of territorial waters and high seas, and it seemed that each country owned their own coastal waters but that the rest of the oceans was pretty much fair game. This included both the muggle and wizarding laws.
One of the maps that showed a decent view of Ireland and Britain’s coastal waters refused to stay rolled open, but Harry had just the thing for that. He reached inside his satchel, pulled out the dark prophecy orb, and used it as a paperweight to keep the map opened so he could pick out a location for his own country.
“There, there,” V chattered while pecking at a certain spot on the map.
“Yeah, that might work,” Harry agreed with a relieved smile. For the first time since he found himself unexpectantly in the wizarding world, Harry felt like things might turn out fine.
Harry had trouble going to bed that night, since his mind was filled with plans and things to remember, and he wrote almost a book’s worth of to-do lists when it came to creating his own country. Finally, when he was nodding off over the maps well after midnight, V had enough.
“Bed, bed,” V cawed, hopping around in front of Harry and pecking at his face until Harry woke up enough to decide that yes, he probably should get some rest because tomorrow was going to be a long, long day.
Harry was up at the crack of dawn, brimming with excitement. He didn’t think he’d felt this alive since his kids were little and he got to watch them grow up, basking in the warm glow of happiness new parenthood provided.
For breakfast Harry fried three eggs and a couple of slices of bacon, and he also made four sandwiches with cheese and cured ham, which he packed for lunch, together with a few portions of dried fruit and nuts. He’d need his energy that day.
Keket opted to stay in the Forbidden Forest, to explore it some more, since shrinking the castle with living things inside of it wasn’t a good idea. In a pinch, for a short time, it was possible, but for longer periods it wasn’t advisable, since the shrinking charms Harry used weren’t meant for living things. Igor was dead, so he always stayed inside without accident, never voicing any complaints.
Harry packed up his castle, mounted his broom and took off towards the south west, crossing over from Scotland to Ireland and following the Irish coast south until the very tip where he turned west into the open seas. He used a charm to track the distance he travelled and exactly 25 kilometres away from the Irish coastline, Harry halted his broom in the air and observed the choppy waves around him.
Here he was going to build a brand-new country, one where dark magic was allowed. In fact, all magic would be allowed and encouraged. And because it was a sovereign nation, no one, not Dumbledore, not Fudge, not anyone in the Ministry of Magic could complain.
Harry had some experience with land expansion.
Once the population of Sildar had really started growing, they quickly ran out of land. Not homes, they had plenty of those, and could easily build more with magic. No, with an increasing population, they needed more and more land for agriculture. They needed vast tracks of farmland to grow wheat, oats, barley and corn. They needed hills to grow grapes for wine. They needed space for more olive groves for oil. They needed more orchards for all manner of fruit. And they needed lots and lots more grazing land for cattle, sheep and goats. And some new forestland to keep more pigs also became necessary.
And thus Harry had spent a few years coming up with a permanent way to grow their island. He’d tried all sorts of things, but in the end the simplest solution actually worked the best.
Transfiguration.
When you had lots of water, you could transfigure that water into other things. Such as rock.
On top of transfiguration, Harry learned that the key to creating huge tracts of new land was duplication, which fell under charms. Once you mastered the art of using transfiguration and duplication simultaneously, you could really create enormous amounts of land reasonably quickly.
The first thing Harry needed to do now was create the beginning of the landmass’ bedrock. Sitting on his broom, with V perched on the handle in front of him so he could keep an eye on what Harry was doing, Harry squared his shoulders, stretched his arms and pointed his wand down at the water and concentrated on turning water into rock straight down using transfiguration. At the same time, he sent his magic sideways to duplicate the rock in all directions. It took a few hours until Harry reached the bottom of the ocean, but by then he had a wide, and very deep, pyramid of sheer rock on which to build the rest. Harry flew in a wide circle around the pyramid and transfigured more water, while duplicating more rock, again sending it all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.
By the time Harry took a break for lunch, he had a wide pillar made of solid rock that stood a good 15 yards above the waves.
It was a start. A very good start.
Harry spent the rest of the afternoon repeating the process until by the time the sun was setting Harry had a rocky basis about the size of ten football fields towering above the waves. He touched down on the rock with a huge grin on his face and quickly conjured a big flag on a wooden pole. The green and yellow flag sported a crossed wand and staff over the image of a raven’s silhouette with spread wings.
It was the flag of Sildar, designed by Harry and V.
Now it would be the flag of their new country.
Harry inhaled a deep breath, stuck the flag into the rock beneath them and said loudly, “I dub thee Silgram!” Which meant so much as ‘my own land’ in Santireen.
“Home, home!” V cawed while he flapped his wings as he hopped on Harry’s shoulder.
Popping up his castle took five minutes and Harry stuck his head in the door the moment it was done. “Igor, bring me a bowl of stew. And some wine!”
“Eurgh!”
Once Harry had a warm bowl of stew in his hand, he sat down on the rocky edge, waves crashing far beneath his dangling feet, and he and V enjoyed their dinner while they watched the sun set over the ocean.
After the bowl was empty, Harry set it aside and raised his glass of wine in the direction of magical Britain. “Fuck you and your laws!” Then he gulped it down in one go while V chattered with laughter beside him.
There was still a lot to do to make this a truly habitable land instead of a slab of rock in the ocean. But Harry had plenty of experience doing just that, plus he wasn’t in a hurry. He had a place to call home now, where he could use all the magic he wanted, and where he made the laws. Expanding the land and dressing it up with topsoil, plants, trees and animals was a job for the coming months, and probably even the coming years.
Thanks to the bloodstone Harry had all the time in the world.
Once darkness had fallen Harry and V stayed out on the rock for an hour or so, enjoying the sounds of the ocean and the sight of all the stars above them, but eventually they went inside the castle as the November air was quite chilly. But the moment Harry entered his home, something occurred to him.
“Want to come?” Harry asked V, without specifying where he was going. This had never kept V from joining him, though, and his companion eagerly hopped back on his shoulder. Harry concentrated for a few moments and apparated straight to the doorstep of Grimmauld Place where he wasted no time and knocked firmly on the door.
Remus answered and seemed surprised to see him judging by his wide eyes. “Harry? Come in.”
“Thanks!” Harry quickly slipped inside the door while V cawed in greeting. “I’ve got news.”
“Is that Harry?” Sirius came from the direction of one of the rooms to the right and gave Harry a questioning look. “Hey, Harry.”
“Hi!” Harry spread his arms wide and gave the two men a huge grin. “I made a country!”
“What?” Remus eyes widened even more.
“Huh?” Sirius glanced from Remus to Harry and back, looking like the people around him had suddenly started talking in a foreign language.
“Hear me out,” Harry said, talking as quickly as he could because he was so fucking excited he couldn’t help it. “I know you all hate dark magic, but I can’t help being a dark wizard. And the laws in this country suck, they really, really suck. I don’t want to live here, so I made my own country. It’s still a work in progress, but I promise you it’s going to be great.”
Neither Remus and Sirius had any immediate comment on that, other than eyebrows that kept rising higher and higher.
“Now the good news. It’s my country, so I make the laws. And I can tell you, Remus, there are absolutely no restrictive laws in Silgram concerning werewolves. And I can tell you, Sirius, that Silgram does not extradite people to Britain, or anywhere else.” Harry beamed at the two men before him. “So, if you can lose that anti-dark magic stick you’ve got stuck up your arse, Sirius, you can come live in my new country and be a free man. What do you think?”