Chapter 7: Lords

Arriving at St Mungo's, Harry had to practically run to keep up with Voldemort's long stride as he practically flew through the hospital, picking up a healer along the way.

Being led to Zabini's private rooms, Voldemort didn't bother knocking as he burst through the door in a temper. Harry could tell the Healer obviously disapproved of the commotion.

Looking to the young Lord on the bed, Zabini looked a mess. Harry didn't know wither to be thankful Zabini was awake or not. He wasn't too sure Voldies method for waking patients wouldn't have gotten them kicked out.

"My Lord"

"Clear your mind"

Voldemort frowned as he dived in; He could see signs of obvious tempering with Zabini's memories as well as foreign magic trying to influence him and push him out.

"Have you checked Lord Zabini for tempering?" inquired -more like demanded- Voldemort as soon as he excited the mind of the now unconscious Lord, looking to the healer now that his main target was looking more innocent; causing the man to jump in fright, before diving for the patient clipboard and scan the contents.

"No My Lord"

The healer administered two potions before waving his wand in intricate patterns, jabbing his wand onto a roll of parchment on the last flick. A list of spells, and then potions, appeared on the parchment once the magic had died down.

Looking at the parchment over the healers shoulder, Harry frowned. Whoever had done this was smart; they had used spells to keep Zabini complacent long enough to get obedience and control potions to the caster/administrator into him before obliviating him.

Looking to Voldemort, Harry could see he was anything but happy right now. Unlike spells, potions were much harder to track.

Turning on his heel, Voldemort barked for the healer to record everything before striding out and Appariting back to the Ministry.

Barging into the Ministers office, Frost shrugged when the man there looked at him.

"The Lords and Ladies of the court are to be checked for tampering. Anyone resisting will need to be checked by force." Voldemort ordered the man, who looked vaguely familiar to Harry.

"Yes my Lord."

Watching as the pair hashed it out, Harry kept quiet until they finished. They both agreed the possible tempering of other court members was worth calling an emergence meeting or angering the court for. Following Voldemort as he left the office the Minister's assistant started making floo calls.

Going deeper into the ministry, Harry was confused when they bypassed the trial rooms. :don't the court use the trial rooms?: it was what they used last time he was in Britain.

:The layout of the Ministry was changed when I came into power in order to make it more efficient. There are now 6 courtrooms instead of 36: Voldemort informed him calmly :We are heading to the room where Laws and Legislations are made:

Entering a huge marble door with the crests of the Sacred 28 carved into the store, Harry was surprised to see the marble used was white blue-vein rather than Slytherin green.

Looking for the chair most likely to belong to Voldemort, Harry wasn't surprised to find a throne made out of a rich purple wood.

:Ward stones behind my chair:

Rolling his eyes examined the wall behind the throne through lidded eyes as he thought. Cutting his palm, Harry placed his bleeding palm over the crest of Slytherin discreetly imbedded in the wall.

"Open"

Watching as the wall fell away much like the entrance to Diagon Alley, Harry read the wards present, before weaving the temporary wards into the wards surrounding the hearing room they would be using. Harry linked a secondary identification ward to two separate rolls of parchment, which would allow them to know who was present and who they would need to track down.

Watching from the shadows an hour later as the Lords and Ladies of the upper and lower houses wondered in, Harry could feel Voldemort's magic 'twitching' as the man waited. He knew the man's magic was reacting to the mans agitation. But he really should take a chill pill sometime.

Keeping half an eye out for the signal the Minister had decided on, Harry also kept an eye on the tempest hovering in the middle of the room. Regardless of whether the signal was given or not, he would shut the wards down regardless. Just as planned.

Just as the tempest hit 9:30am, Harry slammed the wards down.

The reaction was instantaneous. The hall erupted when the Lords realised they couldn't access their magic.

"SILENCE"

The silence was pretty instantaneous too.

"It has come to light that members of this body have been cursed or dosed with various control spells and potions. Because of this, everyone within this room that has not already been examined shall be checked for these substances." Voldemort motioned two healers forward. They had both been thoroughly checked just by Voldemort before while Harry was layering the wards.

Starting with the Upper houses and working down, Voldemort and the Healers continued to work until the last Lord was checked.

In the end, 13 Lords of the 58 in attendance were found to be affected.

3 of the 28 in the Upper House

10 of the 28 in the Lower House

Going over the medical lists while Voldemort went through their political history, Harry noted most of the substances were the same as Zabini, but administered/cast at different times.

The earliest that seemed to be affected was Lord Even, but from the man's file that wouldn't have been hard to do, considering the man had a reputation as a frequent bar hopper he would have been an easy target. But with the last two victims, Harry noticed that the caster of the last victim was the previous victim.

"They seem to have been using earlier victims to curse the more paranoid victims." looking back down, Harry noticed another pattern, "it also looks like they were aiming for those in the upper house." Each victim was someone closer and closer to those in the Sacred 28, until three upper Lords -one level below the Ancient 28- were finally cursed.

Zabini, Ville and Rose.

All relatively weak or new families within the upper house; because some of the Sacred Houses had died out or merged there were places for Newer Houses.

Voldemort nodded, it made sense.

"The Lords of the upper houses, especially the 28 hold more power, as anything the lower house presents has to get through them first before it becomes law."

"What happens if they pass something you don't like?"

"I overrule it"

Harry rolled his eyes. Typical

"Found anything in their voting?"

Voldemort shrugged, "Pro-muggle, Anti-Pureblood and Anti-Dark." He was able to spot that these weren't the Lords usual causes due to their previous voting style from before being cursed.

"So either Dumbledore supporters or muggleborns from previous generations."

Voldemort nodded before sitting back with a sigh, "We'll need to clean the ministry, going by department."

Harry nodded absently; the Spanish King had done the same when revolters had gotten too close to home. Which reminded him…

"What are you?"

Voldemort blinked, "Pardon?"

"If you're not the minister, but still have so much power, what are you?"

Voldemort looked like he wanted to shrug, "I am the magical King of the United Kingdom."

Now it was Harry's turn to blink. "Why did you decide to become the 'King' in the first place then, rather than the minister?"

"Paperwork."

Harry blinked in shock, "What?"

"I had enough of paperwork during my time as a Dark Lord. It took far too much of my leisure and research time, and with the current system, I get all the power the minister does, with half the paperwork" answered Voldemort smugly. There was more to it, but he didn't feel like going into his reasoning just yet.

Harry had to admit, it was brilliant. The Spanish kind had often complained about his own stack of paperwork. Often ranting that one of his traitorous advisors had cursed the stack before their death. By having the Minister do all the work while Voldemort made the decisions, he saved himself a lot of work.

Lazy Bastard.

Returning to his own stack, Harry decided he'd think more on it later; when it hopefully it wouldn't sound so strange.

Long Live King Voldemort!

Long Live King Tom!

Long Live King He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named~!

Harry couldn't stop giggling. It just sounded so odd!

Voldie looked up from his stack at him like he was crazy.

"Tomling~!"

"Master"

Turning to the door, Voldemort's eye twitched as Nagini and Fang slid through the door. Harry fought to keep from laughing again Tomling! Oh, he was so going to use that in the future!

"That reminds me, what magical creatures do you have roaming around?" inquired Harry, "I sensed several magical creature signatures on the manor lands"

"Nagini's latest batch of hatchings haven't left her territory yet. You most likely felt them exploring the grounds." Explained Voldemort patiently

"What happened to the male?"

"She ate him."

"Lovley" murmured Harry as he eyed the large snake. Walking and picking up Fang as he passed, Harry turned back to old Voldie. "I'll look at this again in the morning when I have a clearer head for this." Harry told him, motioning to the file in his hand.

"Good night."

"Nights"

Returning to Voldemort's Manor, Harry started looking through his Egyptian scrolls, Harry tried to find an incantation/spell that would help him ward the Dark Lords manor better. Unlike with the Kings, he needed these wards to allow more than those blood related to the King entrance.

The reason why he was able to keep the Spanish King alive for so long was because he didn't just use one cultures magic; preferring to mix a few together so the assailant wouldn't be able to undo all of them.

"Master. Your meeting be in 1 hour."

Turning to Dobby, Harry thanked him before going to change. He had forgotten he'd set the meeting for tonight, needing to keep with the lawyers working hours if he didn't want to pay an arm and a leg. Though now he supposed it didn't matter so much.

He was meeting with a foreign lawyer he had contacted a while ago when he'd earned enough money to do so; Harry had had him look at the current banking laws in the UK. He didn't like the fact his vaults had been practically frozen when he hadn't committed a crime, only ran.

Entering the mans office, Harry took the seat the man indicated.

"I have looked over your file. So long as you remain within the commonwealth, you won't need to deal with the ministries, only the banks."

Nodding, Harry got to work signing the appropriate paperwork the Lawyer gave him, after reading it first of course.

Transferring most of his sizable wealth to Australia, due of their privacy laws, with a quarter of his wealth going into to a bank in Malta and another in Scotland.

Returning to the manor, Harry began looking at his investing folio and going over his family investments for when he made his trip to the Bank in Scotland.

Some of his families previous investments were either stagnant or had gone bust and been siphoning money. He cut them off with his magic, he planned to reinvested the money into Agricultural businesses in Australia, as well as housing projects.

He planned on buying a lot of seemingly worthless land in the middle of Australia he had had his eye on for a while, Harry would set the locals to digging a river through his new properties towards the sea with high stone walls on either side. Because it was worthless land below sea level, he could snap it up for pennies, but once he was able to connect his man-made river to a water source, that worthless land would be worth millions.

Sealing the parchment with the Potter and Black crest, Harry placed the scrolls in the documents compartment of his trunk before retiring to bed.

0Snake0

Following Fang into the Greenhouse, Harry saw Nagini coiled around a nest of green eggs he didn't remember seeing before.

"My Mate and young" declared Fang proudly, "They are due to hatch soon!"

Staring bug-eyed at the unnaturally large mound of eggs, Nagini suddenly striked, swallowing Fang whole…

Bolting upright, Harry was breathing heavily and covered in sweat. He couldn't remember most of his dream, but he knew he needed to find Fang. Throwing the cover off of himself, Harry frantically flared his magic in search of Fang. Running after the echo he got back in response, Harry destroyed all the wards in his path as he ran through the manor through the door at the end of the hall.

Dodging the spells that came for him, Harry dived for Fang, snatching him from Nagini's evil clutches, before hissing reassurances while checking Fang for injury.

Staring up at the nut-job straddling his hips, Voldemort was in disbelief as Harry continued to hiss nonsense and wiggle around on his lap. While the stimulation was quite pleasant, he failed to see what had brought Harry to his room.

Seeing the boys lids start to drop, Voldemort decided to get to the bottom of this nonsense.

"Why are you in my bed goldilocks?"

Receiving a blank stare in return, Harry just half shrugged, mumbling more gibberish, before snuggling into a now traumatized Dark Lord. Who did the only thing a sane man would do. Flinging Harry off of him, Harry landed with a startled yelp on the floor.

"Wha-?"

"Got sleep in your own bed!"

Blinking stupidly for a moment, when Harry finally processed the situation -or woke up enough to do so- he blushed to his hairline, before bolting out the door in embarrassment.

Taking Fang with him.

0Morning0

The next morning, a fully dresses Harry was pacing in his room. Debating whether it would be worth it to go down or hide in his room all day.

Deciding it'd just be worse if he didn't show, Harry made his way down to breakfast.

Voldemort waited just long enough for him to order his food off Dobby.

"Your rather affectionate when half asleep." Commented Voldemort offhandedly as he ate his bowl of fruit and drunk his tea as he eyed his companion discreetly.

Harry blushed, even as he scowled in the man's direction.

"You didn't have to tell me Nagini ate males!" accused Harry, fully blaming Voldemort for putting the idea into his head!

"You didn't need to ask" countered Voldemort, who in reality was finding a great deal of amusement from this situation despite the midnight wakeup call.

Deciding to change the subject, Harry jumped straight on the work train.

"Are there any leads on the pod of Romanian Longhorns?"

"The search has been narrowed down to land or sea." Voldemort expression neutralled as he entered what Harry had decided to dub 'business mode', but his eye's still displayed his amusement as he looked at him, "The Muggleborns highly doubt they would have been transported by air, as the size of vessel required would have been shot down by the muggle military if it entered our airspace."

Harry nodded, "There's also the possibility that if one of the Dragons could have woke up and unbalanced the aircraft. Their plan would have been ruined." Running his mind over what he would have needed to pull this off, Harry decided they would have had to go by sea if the Dragons were imported.

"I think they would have had to come by sea. Like on a cargo ship in a shipping container." He knew you could get some pretty big ones if you were willing to pay.

"Why do you say that?" inquired Voldemort assessingly as he eyed Harry from across the table.

Harry blinked, "It's what I would have done if faced with the same problem. But there's also the problem of finding the dragons in the first place."

Voldemort relaxed back into his seat, "the largest population of Romanian Longhorns is in Hungary, but the closest reserve is the one in Romania."

Harry blinked, that really sounded like a bad pun with what the pod had done the other day. Like 'Romanian Longhorns Hungary' or something. Finishing his breakfast, Harry stood.

"Could you please not go anywhere today?" Harry pleaded, "I need to do some work with the wards."

"So long as nothing happens, I should be able to remain here." Drawled Voldemort after a moment, eyeing Harry strangely "What are you doing?"

"I'll be cataloguing every ward you currently have and how strong they currently are today before I start looking into improving them, but if you decide to go walk abouts like the last time I may end up collapsing all your wards" threatened Harry calmly. It was a real possibility considering how delicate messing with wards could be. If he was startled, he may pull too hard or put too much magic at once into the ward he was working on.

Voldemort nodded, he didn't want to chance the wards falling after spending months building them. He would be remaining in the castle.

Returning to his room, Harry removed the blueprints from his desk draw. He'd need to return them today sometime. Looking at the blueprints one last time, Harry set one of his special quills to copying the blueprints of Conexus Castle onto another set of parchment.

Waving his wand over the new parchment, Harry wrote his opening sentence in English:

You have to find someone else to lean on, or you're going to drive yourself mad.

Before speaking the password phrase in parcel:

"Been there. Done that. Bought the pills."

He'd heard the phrase somewhere else before, but he couldn't recall were. By having the opening phrase in English, he was hoping if anyone was able to get their hands on his map they'd assume the password was in English as well.

Weaving the anti-revealing charms into the parchment, Harry also weaved a wrong password phrase:

Too Bad, So Sad

He was kind of hoping Voldemort would try just to see his face. He bet it would be pensive worthy.

Summoning the ward stone again, rather than a net, Harry set it to show him the runes and symbols used in the wards with a nifty little spell he'd invented. Tapping his wand to the web that appeared, Harry transferred it to a spare parchment, letting it settle and fill the page. When the magic finally settled, the parchment was filled with magical formula in the form of various Runes of Parcel or Celtic origin. Reading the parchment, Harry wasn't surprised to find half of the runes a red colour, indicating they were blood runes. While they were more secure to the caster, if they weren't laid properly they turned into rather flimsy wards. He would need to check how these were laid before he started messing with them.

Reading over the others, Harry could see that while their consequences where a great deal darker than the average home, their purpose was the same.

Returning to the net version of the ward stone, Harry set his palm just above the sphere, trying to locate were the highest concentration of magic was coming from. He needed to find the physical ward stone for when he made changes.

After an hour of searching with no results, Harry decided the smart bastard had laid a secondary ward around the stone to prevent others finding it.

Thanks to the spells he'd invented when he had apprenticed under a Ward Master in Greece, he had been able to cut down the identification time from two weeks to a few hours.

It may take more magic at once but it was thankfully quicker.

Stretching, Harry stood and done some more full body stretches after having been sitting for so long. Frowning when he realised how stiff he actually was, making a note to get back into his old routine as soon as he could.

Casting a tempus, Harry wasn't surprised to find it was almost past lunch. Walking out the door, Harry made his way down into the kitchen. Making note of where the best places to draw the runes would be before heading lower.

Arriving in the Kitchen, Harry fixed himself a quick sandwich and tea before heading back upstairs to his room after nicking a bowl.

Pulling one of his scrap parchments from the bin, Harry wrote all the languages and cultures he knew down, before carefully tearing the parchment up so that each square had one word written.

Closing his eyes, Harry reached his hand in the bowl and pulled out four pieces of parchment. Opening his eyes, Harry read what he had to work with.

Prussia

China

French

Greece

Celtic

He could work with this, though he was surprised and extra tag had come out with one of the others.

The French were well known for their proficiency in Pleasure Magic, and had made a number of innocent looking but deadly wards in the past with 'harmless' pleasure runes as their base. He could use those to harm those who got past his other wards along with the Celtic runic wards.

China and Prussia would be best as offensive wards, while Greek were better for defensive.

Summoning his books on the different runes, Harry wrote a list of what he needed to start warding or do before hitting the books to decide what he wanted to use.