Harry Potter: My Way

"Industrial Magic"

By Heliosion

Chapter 1: A Day of Profit

Disclaimer: I own nothing of this damn fine series of books well until J.K Rowling went insane after her first few hundred million dollars and started writing crap after The Order Of The Phoenix because she had so little time left to write with all that money she had to count but hell what can you do? If life gives you lemons make lemonade and that's what I'm going to do with this fic.

Oh yeah for everybody who is not totally switched on italics mean either thinking or talking in any other language but English. I will be sure to tell you if they are doing either okay. I can't be assed to accent the English or whatever so live with it!

Oh yeah jbern I love you so I'm going to thank him for inventing spell chaining which for the sake of this fic I shall call the flicker technique and Penelope Clearwater as a journalist. He told me I could use them if I acknowledged the man for inventing them first.

Mind that some concepts and characters from the Dresden Files are also taken. No main characters but minor characters and their magical ways will also see some action.

This starts in year four (Triwizard) so expect a lot of history details thrown about. This is my world so thank you.

XreviewX

It was the biggest event of its kind that had ever been. From robed wizards, excitable witches, ancient elves, various Fae to beautiful veela and pale-faced vampires, there was a little bit of everything gathered for the festivities. The Quidditch World Cup was in full bloom. With perfect blue skies, burning yellow sun and a pleasant breeze that caught the smell of pine and the sense of nature helping to foster a warm atmosphere.

The land was notoriously xenophobic, violently so in many cases. England persecuted their last great sentient population, their native clans of vampires, into fleeing to their original homes across the sea two hundred years ago. It left only the small independent goblins of Gringotts, unified since the last rebellion alongside a magically bound treaty for extra security, yet, for the name of a sporting event, they had cordoned off the entire stadium and surrounding forest. They placed these unique circumstances in the hands of the I.C.W., or the International Confederation of Wizards, and their mandate, which had a less narrow view. For a few days, the ever so gracious pureblood population of wizards, the largest left over apart from Australia or America, had graciously acceded their untainted land for the use of beings they saw as below them.

Magical tents were situated everywhere, erratically comprising of every conceivable configuration and size. Turret shaped, square and shallow or circular puff tents littered the landscape, compromised of all the colours of the rainbow plus some eccentric shades of pink or magenta. There were all kinds carrying their internal secrets of special space time magnifying charms that made it bigger inside than outside and, sometimes, a few of them were the opposite. Notably, the insular British residents who were given priority in terms of how close to the stadium they were had other illegal adaptations like chimneys or wind vanes that was taking the I.C.W. international task force a lot of time to get them removed or hidden by illusions. The few muggles here, the farmer owner of the land with his wife and children had their minds altered so many times from faults listing from trying to pay with gold galleons or men arriving in dresses mistaking them for robes there were talks of the field hospital at the far end of the compound having to send out a healer. This was to check for instabilities or deviant behaviour that had not been there before the event was organised and if need be administer the proper medical attention lest the British aurors left in charge of their section wouldn't incur the ridicule of their foreign counterparts.

But this mattered little to Harry James Potter. He was in the market region, far entrenched in the European community heartland straddling the forest perimeter where hundreds of stalls packed like battery hens had been set up selling all sorts of goods, produce and even in some cases livestock. All measures of life preferred this bustling, crowded circle of small stalls and food stands to the stiff and racist British areas (not that anything non-human could go in there anyway) despite the cleaner and better protection their market area provided. Crime was rife here, security thinner than the jacket he was wearing, but they could move around without feeling like alien life forms and racism was hypocritical with the menagerie of differing races both from Earth and beyond meandering around the place.

Harry had taken the best spot near the centre, just behind an ice cream cart after arriving here three days before the quidditch world cup final was scheduled to begin. He had evaded the I.C.W. patrols by the skin of his teeth trained to look for people such as him in the forest and had even had to stun three of them to create a distraction to slip away. If he hadn't his trusty invisibility cloak and his common sense to negate the need for a tent or a sleeping bag with insulation charms in place it would have been game over from the thorough search (something Harry wasn't used to from his native law enforcement) they had conducted of the camping field and neighbouring forests. Now he was here, in a perfect location to sell after a few brief duels with wizards just as keen to get the best spots to set up shop with his little brown trunk with bronze fittings open. Inside were six deep caverns from his tinkering providing all sorts of potions and elixirs, brews and home remedies. He sat on a lime green carpet (that could fly to catch people's attention when law enforcement wasn't watching) and had blaring dance muggle music playing to attract attention from a battery operated MP3 player with speakers attached and a loudening charm to increase their tinny sound.

He did not want to think about how long it took for him to configure those spatial thinning something or other enchantment he had to invent just to get that muggle technology to work in areas with enormous magical energy in the background and the fact he had to build it by hand to get around the ban on enchanted muggle items in the United Kingdom. It seemed anything apart from auto-mobiles beyond say the 1940s started to go haywire when magic or, especially so, True magic, also known as Sorcery, was within a hundred metres of it. Harry had a hypothesis that was why in certain places for no reason at all in muggle zones with mages living nearby they couldn't get a decent satellite signal like his home of Potter Manor.

Anyway, as he had been boasting about before, Harry was making good business. His sign was attracting attention, a simple laminated piece of muggle made cardboard colour charmed marigold that randomly yelled out over his music about his potion wares. They sang in soprano what was left in stock in real time to what was actually sold and in a tenor tone any special offers with an accompanying flashing sign which writing was constantly changing, declaring proudly that the proprietor would take an oath to guarantee their validity. Also in a powerful shout every five minutes, the talking piece of stiff paper proudly told anyone who would listen, the more disreputable deals in progress around the vicinity of Harry with his messy black hair tied into a rough ponytail and the fact the teen was a licensed grade two potion brewer.

Among the gawping crowds admiring the spectacle, some with allures making Harry's gaze follow them, a greying wizard with a red expensive looking robe that drew a lot of attention approached his tent jauntily while he served a cough solution to a young dryad mother for her sickly looking kid who really needed to find a tree and chill for a day or two. Magical beings rarely did well with wizarding form of travel and especially so when they were symbiotic in terms of sentient life. Something to do with the concentration of controlled magical energy and the interference of an enchanted device to the streams of old magic all sentient life drew their powers from.

"Got any virility solution?" he drawled cautiously with a Scandinavian accent so thick Harry had to tilt his head to get the man to repeat himself.

Harry tilted his glasses with stylishly thin black square frames and answered once he comprehended the man butchering the English tongue. The simple act much to Harry's satisfaction made the buyer nervous. Exactly as he planned it to be exact. "Do you have any paperwork from your healer saying you can purchase it?"

"Well you see…" the man hid his face in his hood and pulled out a money bag from under his sleeve.

Harry knew the type and he was a roguish individual. Simple regulations regarding body affecting potions meant nothing if the customer was good at being discreet. The young mage, his torso shapeless by his long and flowing white hooded cloak pulled around him allowed a ringed hand to reach into a compartment. All he had to do was think about what he wanted and a clear vial with a rubber stopper was placed into his hands (excellent charm Harry had looked up from his family's Book of Shadows) so he could give it the ageing mage who 'dropped' the money bag. Then, he produced a simple vial of pepper up potion, the emerald eyed teenager had stashed under his cloak to cover up the illegal transaction.

"This is all I can suggest without asking for documentation from a registered healer sir." For added emphasis on his fake sympathy he added "Sorry," then looked away guiltily, inwardly pleased with the excellent acting of his customer.

"Are you sure you couldn't… you know," the man looked around continuing his act with Harry playing along with his disapproving frown. "A shame indeed," the man conceded slouching in faux defeat, "As I could pay you more if that helps you."

Harry took the bag covertly and said apologetically, barely concealing a satisfied smirk, "Sorry, sir, but I am a reputable seller. I have read research claiming pepper up potion sometimes has aphrodisiac properties if you're willing to give it a try, but I am bound by the law not to sell potentially harmful substances to someone of your age without clearance from an ordained healer."

"It is a shame, yes, but thank you anyway I will take what I can, good day," the man said with a fake frown. The horny European winked at the kid during their 'transaction' as he slipped easily back into the horde of the crowd. Another deal made more money to line his pockets for later. If he kept this up, his profit margin would be over eighty percent.

Harry was really good at making good money. He loved repeating that fact to himself the longer he hung around here. God bless the biggest sporting event in the world coming to his country to gather the customers in one spot. But what was even more wonderful was swearing oaths about the effectiveness of his potions that helped to draw in the customers, where the surrounding stalls were only selling what they had brought in from wholesalers less regulated than a dog grooming parlour. These mass produced liquids with less than reputable brewers supplying them helped his cause too. Harry had heard rumours of potions with similar colouration being mislabelled like common household violet doxy poison being mixed up with a simple laxative. Or fire water, orange in colour used to treat lime scale build ups mistakenly consumed when thought to be Skele-Gro that left their victim to suffer a slow agonizing death from internal third degree burns.

It made this all the sweeter to his profit margins taking that little bit more care in his business practices. A good reputation by word of mouth in this place had helped when pricing items as well which was nice. He could charge a few sickles more than his competitors who could only guarantee that if something went wrong the one afflicted would be lucky to even hear the name of their alias they used ever again.

"Excuse me," asked a velvety tone. Harry was rugby tackled out of his cash induced ecstasy to turn to face the customer and instantly the young man batted down the hatches by erecting his occlumency, the technique to scatter ones memories to help resist the mental manipulation of his emotions. If you needed a metaphor for how his mind was working, his memories were pin balls bouncing around inside his head so fast they couldn't be used as references for his emotions to follow. To add overkill, his aura began to fluctuate randomly just below the perception of the naked eye to stop the veela allure trying to unconsciously synch with him.

"Can I help you Miss?" Harry greeted the young veela with eastern European inflections in her voice. She was very much so a pureblood from the tell-tale platinum blonde hair, the small but manageable bosom that looked large on her frail frame and she had shapely, long and slender legs that hung from her little red dress perfectly. Just like the wizarding slavers between the twelve to fourteenth centuries had bred them to be like to the smallest detail.

The veela looked surprised that Harry could form a coherent sentence instead of burning her image into his retinas, bowing to her every whim with her allure blasting out at him and drooling from being within a mile of her presence. In fact, she was radiating so much of that compulsion every man who passed gawped at her before loved ones irately moved them along or their sudden stalling made the person behind them in the busy crowd bump into them and forcing them out of their funk. She had to be fully matured, a woman of vast experience in how to use her inborn powers as her allure tried five different ways to synchronise with his aura with no effect before the woman gave in.

In an instant, her look of concentration changed. Her voice became smaller; her cherry lips pouted cutely, her eyelashes fluttered submissively as her pre-programmed genes tried a different tack that replicated a kicked puppy. If he didn't have total control over his mind Harry might have actually been a big enough sap to fall for it.

"Do you sell potions for children?"

"I sell anything from general healing potions to balms for measles." He recited, smiling victoriously as she futilely tried to snare him again with absolutely no success. She had met the wrong seller this time.

Her perfect posture shrank, became smaller to enhance her kicked puppy impersonation. All she needed to do now was pitifully whine to complete the look. "Do you have anything for the blue shade fever?"

Blue shade fever was a contagious virus that was as common as measles had been long ago. It took a simple, inexpensive treatment to treat a fluctuating body temperature and fluid build-up in the lungs, but it was indigenous to only veela and if left untreated only led to a slow and painful death. Among his trips included some time with their race to be specific a few of their flocks located around the globe and some of the pure bloods that had married into wizarding bloodlines hence a lot of his understanding towards veela, their language and culture.

"Is your child a pureblood too, madam?" he asked politely. The woman nodded. The dress he took note of was frayed in places meaning she was not very wealthy, maybe part of the commune flock the Bulgarians had brought over for their mascots. He was lucky he knew the right dialect to spare her blushes if her game plan was to get a freebie. "Can you afford this my lady? I noticed your state of dress." When it came to veela, he had from experience it was better to be direct with them. They were creatures that had the capacity to snap their fingers and get what they wanted. It was bred into their very being and trying to play mind games back at them guaranteed hostility if you were a stranger.

"You speak our language?" the woman said in surprise. Nobody bothered to learn the sentient tongues anymore not that there were many of them left with wizards around the centuries enslaving all if not at least ninety percent of all sentient life at one time or another in their history on this realm. The only way the veela customs, etiquette and history had escaped annihilation like the vampires was down to luck and some good hiding places. Poor clans of giants once rich in music and dance had been reduced to mere brutes by exterminations, infighting and inbreeding.

"I speak all four dialects from the black forest to the desert plains," Harry supplied handily. It was required for the things he did on the side for even more money and wizards did have literal talking books to help him along. "But back to the question. Can you afford to pay the going rate?"

"I cannot," she admitted, "I had hoped you and I might come to some sort of agreement."

"I don't agree with prostitution," Harry insisted, noticing some of the looks he was getting from the Slavic crowd. They had the most daily contact with the veela tribes that were the most numerous in terms of groups and numbers. To see someone with an English accent chat away in the black forest dialect to a veela was a novelty to them. "Here take it," Harry said, taking the woman's hand and slipping the potion up her sleeve taking care to have a glazed look to pretend to be compelled that allowed him to search her surface thoughts and indeed panicked thoughts about her daughter in squalid conditions, making his blood boil from their mistreatment. The Bulgarians were going to be introduced to a curse or two one of these days. "Praise is to the maiden, may her voice call you home and greet you to the flames of the phoenix fire fields."

"Thank you, good sir," she said with a grateful expression, "If you ever find yourself next to the Danube please when you get to the green fields colony ask for Dara," the woman said. To be given her name was to show her intention to one day repay you for an act of kindness. "What is your name?"

The raven haired wizard was leery of handing her his full name. Fae and the seasonal courts could do strange things knowing how you pronounced your full name. It was fortunate his real mother followed ancient tradition and given him three middles name she never told his father.

"It's Harrison James Potter, but call me Harry."

"My daughter, Eva, will learn your name I swear Harrison James Potter."

"I thank you for the honour." Harry always loved the old traditions. It was a shame they carried little weight nowadays especially around here where their isolation could afford them, ignoring the courts of Winter and Summer.

"Will you accept my invitation as payment?"

"Yes, I will take you up on your offer, Dara." To accept an offer was considered polite courtesy despite the charity he was showing her. It was in their blood as descendants of faerie and denizens of the Nevernever to make deals and one sided exchanges only happened with the high Sidhe with the magic to keep foolish magi coming back to them. Harry really enjoyed taking advantage of all this maybe a bit too much. "Take care of your daughter. I will not be watching the game, so give my people a good show."

The woman didn't say goodbye and ran like the hounds of Hades were on her heels in her haste to get back to her daughter. The boy wizard tracked her for as long as he could see her in the bustling crowd until a new customer demanded his attentions, this one stupidly tried to barter with him and trying to use her heavy accent to embarrass him into selling cheaply to no avail.

Just because he didn't like to use legilimency didn't mean the crafty potions seller did not employ it when people took the piss with him.

That was what happened for the rest of the afternoon in general. He served potions to the crowd, debated/exchanged threats with some other stall owners and offered unofficial medical advice to a goblin with gout. He also swore the teen had attended to a Drakon, out of place from their usual desert world who was identified from the scaly looking markings around his eyes that he claimed was from a self-transfiguration accident. The dragon lookalike had requested something for a sore stomach talking for half an hour before not buying anything but thanking him for his aid and time Harry had taken out to talk to him. This kept on until everyone started to converge on the stadium near the front of the field for the start of the finals.

Harry started to pack up his items, smug that his rivals all seemed chock a block with leftover stock. He on the other hand had barely any pepper up potion, virility solution or his favourite prank potions the children loved to buy. His potent love potions were all sold to some giggly girls from Beauxbatons, who paid ten times what they should have when he added a slightly dangerous ingredient, raw dragon blood to add time to the effect it would have on people. His other stores were depleted nicely, selling double what they cost to produce and by the time the green eyed seventh year student finished the inventory, storing his signs into their slot in the deepest compartment while packing away his music system and rolling up his carpet before concluding with shrinking his trunk the weary but exhilarated wizard was nearly on his lonesome. All other sellers were moving towards the match or retreating to their designated resting area but it didn't matter to him either way. He had no interest in quidditch and his daily work had already been completed for today.

Instead of going to the game, where his father and famous little sister were probably with his younger still sisters, Harry draped his cloak completely over his person and tucked his ponytail to one side in front so the raven haired mage could pull his hood up on his cloak. His whole existence became like a cloud, dragged by the currents known as the stragglers heading to the merchant area set aside for sleeping in. He had been so happy nobody British (not that he knew many with his family situation) that he was acquainted with had done as he expected and stayed away from this area. One word from a nosy family friend and the game would be up.

He had no desire to let his father, Lord Potter, holder of the family blood magic to find out he was here without telling his Lordship. He didn't want to hear another rant on why his behaviour shamed his family name, especially with how hypocritical it sounded when they hadn't seen eye to eye for years and spoke to him only really during official occasions. Because, come on, one accident with a magically modified jet ski (that bleeding Sirius Black thought was the funniest thing since Monty Python) and they never stopped you hearing about it.

It was an easy jaunt across the bumpy grass field to where he would be sleeping tonight. It was near the undesirables or to be precise an area providing a physical border between the normal tents and them. It stank of discrimination, something his people would do or pressurise the I.C.W. into implementing at the last minute. Harry, being on his lonesome, let his prankster side take over and began taking down some of the simpler illusions hiding things such as smoking brick chimneys hanging from the cloth made tents or melting balcony windows into slag. Petty perhaps, but his views on sentient rights were pretty obvious with how he treated them in his limited interactions with them.

To the back of him, the crowd of the slumbering stadium awakening, indicating the starting of the game. In the mid-evening velvet coloured sky, Harry could make out specks of grown men riding on what was no more than brooms with flying charms attached. They were hovering above the stadium, just out of sight from the crowds by how the incline of the stadium walls leaned inwards. A magically amplified voice belted out an incomprehensible noise that reached out far enough for Harry to hear the arrogant bluster of someone with a sense of self-importance bigger than the Minister of Magic's sense of worth. Or, wait, this was a British event. It was likely the arrogant sod talking was the Minister of Magic, the esteemed Cornelius Fudge.

He had met the guy once. His father, who probably was sitting beside the fat cream puff with his youngest sisters and, of course his famous sister, the Girl-Who-Lived, had introduced him to the man at a party when he was barely the height of his mother's knee. It barely took a minute to see that the rotund fatso was a fame hungry man-whore who hung around anyone with power. A World Cup Quidditch Final would have been impossible to resist.

Harry could never understand why anyone would enjoy playing quidditch when you had games like football to enjoy, an influence he owed to his absent mother. He was happy it was the off season right now, but when at the academy it was bloody hard to get any of the football results to find out how his beloved Tottenham Hotspur (an old girlfriend loved them) were doing. All he had outside of surreptitious visits to Hogsmeade, where he could slip out and using a fire place linked to the Floo network to catch the rare game on the sly, was an expensive magazine that had to travel through a convoluted system of delivery from a muggle P.O box to a raven of his. An amazing species of magical bird they were, for they had to safe crack into the post box each month to bring to his breakfast table.

Speaking of said raven, when was the last time he checked his P.O box? Harry scratched his head trying to remember while he played Houdini with his dad again, wondering how long he noted his son wasn't hanging around the manor.

Deciding that the situation wasn't worth bothering about anyway for the time being, Harry entered the circular encampment of merchants and passed by a number of wizarding tents that had magic that kept the owners of this camp away from here. They were far more elaborate, built like homes for families who travelled around selling their wares at the various wizarding events and fairs around the world. He saw rolled out gardens, corrugated iron fences and chimney stacks. Harry picked out wooden Japanese bathhouses, authentic looking stone Roman baths and for those a bit more wealthy storehouses for food or goods to sell.

The raven haired mage passed a French family having a barbecue of a cockatrice and some other strange smelling meat on one side and a Chinese style pagoda tent with an old man sorting through his medicine chest with various remedies. Harry was sure he would need a month of study to identify everything the man was tinkering with in glass vials. Western medicine and eastern medicine were still for the most part separated by secrecy (even with Mao chasing them into Tibet and beyond decades ago) and mistrust and they had cures one side did that the other didn't and so on.

He kept up his trip around the world until he was near the back end of the camp hugging the forest until he came to a clearing under a large ancient tree that had been carved with symbols to create the ward line. Here controlled magic was pulsing through the organism like a computer processor that kept the creatures that may dwell in the forest far away from him like exiled earthbound Fae or perhaps even evil spirits. Harry could spy a camp just inside the tree line that had to be where the veela who weren't performing at the event were sleeping for the night. The shadows of the trees hid their numbers, their type of dwelling and anything that might give a horny wizard an advantage if he so chose to come in during the night and help himself to a straggler like, say, a child or one that was physically weakened since he knew there was an outbreak of blue shade fever.

Harry wished he had just given that woman his entire stock. Sometimes his greed got the better of him.

The mage drew his wand from within his left sleeve and muttered a number of spells. Motes of light burst out from the tip as he weaved it like a conductor's baton weaving common protection spells all campers should know according to 'The Great Outdoors And What Could Devour You' and adding a couple of security spells against thieves or woe be his misfortune rapists with extreme prejudice. Harry engorged his trunk and weaved a spell that shrunk his cloak as he pulled the clasp off to let it pool to his knees where it continued to become smaller until what he picked up was nothing but a handkerchief he tucked into his jean's back pocket.

Harry rubbed some imaginary lint off his black turtle-neck sweater collar and checked that a silver chain long enough to dangle from his bellybutton was still in place. On the end was a purple crystal with a red substance like blood inside. According to his family, the Potter side that is with links to Peverell the one who possessed the so called third hallow, the mighty invisibility cloak that never dimmed for a millennium, this red substance was phoenix fire in liquid form. A long nearly forgotten family myth spoke of a phoenix turned into flame by a forbidden ritual that a Peverell came across long ago and bottled in this mystery crystal that so far resisted all magical means of opening it. The early Potters, before signet rings were used, wore it to identify their head of house and before they even became known as clan Potter, four hundred years later it brought them luck in their tribal disputes in Wales. That was until his great grandfather put it into storage where it laid unattended until his first year when he felt it almost calling out to him. It had been his first trip to his family vault with his folks when he was four and his father did the traditional ceremony of allowing each son or daughter of school age to take an item from the vault as a keepsake or a reminder of where they came from.

The ancient item despite its majesty clashed with his navy blue denim jacket that was covered from collar to bottom in badges. All of them were muggle unless in a place saturated by magic like the naked chick around his collar that suggestively wiggled her boobs or the pumpkin juice company's pumpkin that bounced up and down like a spring. An on-going collection, he was upset to say he could not increase since they weren't selling any at the stands at the world cup.

This discontent carried in the grumbled incantation he made that channelled red fire from his wand tip. With a continuous stirring motion he made the fire become spiral shaped like a fiery flying snake in mid-air that upon being discharged from his wand hit the soft grass like a stone. It created a camp fire like someone had doused the soft grass with napalm that needed no wood or fuel to keep burning brightly. There he sat down comfortably and warmed his hands to wait for the stars to come out or for the game to end.

Time passed slowly and the sky soon became blacker than the heart of a Dementor. The stars started to sparkle and the roar of the crowds became background noise like audio for the visual effects of the stars he was so used to sleeping under. He lay down after a while, the soft grasses silky like well rough silk where from he never moved from for several hours thinking about such mundane things like what he would do about the celebrations. Should he go and mingle with the winners afterwards? Or should he consider just grabbing a meal from the stands that would pop up to serve the winners? He even entertained the idea of revealing to his father he had escaped the manor he was meant to be in for extra classes this summer to enjoy life until the absurdity of the idea made him snort. He pondered his course of action for the evening alongside his potion stocks, what homework he needed to finish and occasionally like all teenage men tended to what the veela inside that hidden camp were up to. The darker sky hid what little he could make out about their activities to even the smoke from their fires.

Silently with no need for an oral invitation several other campers with no ill intent to set off his wards gathered and took refuge next to his fire. Some added their magic to the fire while others did what they wanted. Some men or women (it was hard to tell since he was lying down) gave their thanks but kept their distance most probably due to his exposed wand sheathed in a shoulder mounted holster on his left forearm that, according to the old ways, signified a man who was not in the mood for idle conversation. He heard the rattling sound of dice, the chuckles of old men playing cards and the soft reassuring voices of women tending to small children.

It didn't matter to him. Harry knew the unspoken law that a camp-site not specifically warded to keep out people meant an open invitation was given to those who sought shelter where they could not create it themselves. Harry was a money grabbing hustler with a side of devilry in his transactions he wouldn't lie about that but the teen did genuinely care about people like this. Back in Europe with no understanding of the continental languages besides French at first (due to necessity and of course English) many had reached out to him as he had travelled during the summer and winter months with the aid of his friends. Many called themselves gypsies, soothsayers and other foreign to the British titles other than wizards. They had freely shown their ways to him without deceit or price to pay and since then he gave the same kindness to people down on their luck like him in return.

Of course he owed those people for taking him in when he wasn't at school or journeying around the Nevernever and some even admit loving the scamp. The day his father did a horrible deed that even now the boy tried to suppress. His father's decision to be a distant father to anyone other than his daughters and his bastardly ways driving mother away… But if only his family…

Those thoughts made him stand up on all fours hunched like a silverback, spooking the crowd of strangers around him. Some had gone for wands while mothers tried to look as small as possible. He spotted a dryad vanishing into the ward tree for safety that with all that controlled energy fused into it must have been like going for a swim in Fiendfyre. He made the universal symbol of peace with his wand. The way he went about it was, by how Harry slowly and deliberately clipped the extra leather clasp around his wand to make it harder to draw, made the tension filled atmosphere drift away.

He hated entertaining those thoughts. The wounds that had not scabbed over properly that itched horribly in his head of the betrayal they reminded him of. His family, the distance they created both figuratively and literally by being a useless dad or a mum that left with no real explanation albeit he knew where she was. The poison that abandonment caused bled deeper by the second and little was there to hold it back and Harry was positive it would stay until he graduated and he wouldn't return to this country full time. Too much of his world revolved outside one pathetic island nation that had long lost its lustre.

"Excuse me," a soft voice asked hesitantly. Harry jumped in surprise and searched around the camp ground until it repeated itself and traced the sound a little lower of his eye line to a small blonde child. She was a beautiful child; lithe, vulnerable looking and she had these big old blue eyes that made his heart melt with her waif like clothing. The little girl was clearly malnourished, all sharp angles and nearly all skin and bones.

"Can I help you?" he asked carefully, searching for a mother or a parent that was watching her. He found no concerned mothers or a scolding father hurrying to pull her away from the intimidating man. The girl did create an atmosphere about her like one would feel from a treasured pet you just wanted to pat on the head.

The girl contemplated her answer. She had her nose scrunched up in concentration and was generating attention from the other figures around the fire, which worried him since most of it was from men or cloaked figures that were very obviously males. Some women were violently using means to draw some attention from this little girl but not every man was attached to a ball and chain. One particularly filthy specimen of something pretending he hoped to be a man seemed to be edging closer to her by the minute. In all this made him wonder why they were all so interested in a blonde haired, blue eyed childlike she was a veela or…

Harry upon figuring out what race she was most likely to be drew his wand and created a gunshot sound from his wand. Everyone tensed and the little girl shrank and covered her head with her hands.

"You are safe," Harry said soothingly in an attempt to appease the girl. He barked out a charm to ensure privacy but didn't put the wand away to warn off the people enthralled by the girl's quite weak charms. Compared to the veela from before, the young girl couldn't control any of her allure, which was why they never left the colonies until they could. "Now what do you want?"

"I don't speak English very well," the girl admitted in poor hesitant English. But, hey, she had been better than half the buyers in the market.

"Is this better?" he asked in the same dialect he used for the woman earlier. The shy girl nodded demurely. He patted the ground next to him until he realised his mistake and just patted the ground a little away from him. His mistake you might ask? He had suggested to an allure generating being which was legendary for proximity increasing the potency of their allure to sit next to a vulnerable magi. There were no exceptions no matter how immature the fire woman was. The girl took the spot on the grass never taking her eyes off his wand.

"Much better, sir," she replied finally upon sitting down and hugging her knees. Harry got a good look at just how thin she was, seeing her ribs poke through the tattered cloth she called a dress and feeling pity for her he took out a muggle chocolate bar from his breast pocket and offered it to her.

"Chocolate," he said with some cheer, "You must be hungry." She eyed the foil wrapped bar then in a move that stunned how quick it had happened the girl had snatched it, unwrapped and began to devour the confectionery like a pack of lions would a downed zebra. Harry waited patiently for her to finish glaring at all of the campers who continued to stare at her like a piece of meat as she dropped her guard to sate her hunger.

These people were good people but they were wizards first and wizards had this barbaric universal belief going back centuries that all things considered sub-human species in their eyes to be worth nothing. She was also emitting an allure that anyone could sense and apart from the infancy of its potency, most weak willed men would still stoop to the low of raping a child or even worse use her as a hostage to get her very maternal mother to take the child's place.

"Thank you," the girl said finally, offering him the rubbish left behind. Harry smirked and removed it all with a deliberate flourish of his stick.

"So what did you want anyway?"

"My mother told me about you."

Harry didn't know many veela so he took a shot in the dark about her identity. "Was her name, Dara?" If this was the case, how did Dara help this girl that had to be her only daughter, Eva, find him here out among all these people? Where he was not even registered (at least officially) in the merchant guild camp? It was a little disconcerting since Eva, the child veela had never laid eyes on him before but he was more concerned at why she was taking such a risk coming out into the open like this. He especially wondered why a woman like Eva from an incredibly maternal race was not being straight with him about her reasons for coming here.

"That is my mother," she replied, identifying herself as her child Eva. With the time needed for the medication to take effect, this was consistent and made her story sound just as truthful as possible. The potion dried up the fluid in the lungs and converted it into moisture for her lungs instead and her fluctuating temperature would be stabilised as soon as it took its part in the process of removing the fluid from her lungs.

"How did you find me and why please are you here?" Harry insisted, resisting the ever so tempting urge to use legilimency on this girl. He tilted his glasses comically in an attempt to make her laugh and succeeded when she made a sound like a finely tuned piano but her expression was more sombre.

"Mama told me she tried to use her Parousia on you and failed. The traces of it are still clinging to your aura." Learning to cleanse his aura of veela's power was added to his 'to do list' and someone, or rather his contacts in the veela community, had conveniently forgotten to mention that titbit. He had no idea lingering traces of a veela's Parousia or Presence as it translated in Greek could be seen by anyone apart from a wizard using the Sight that slowly drove a wizard mad if you overdid it. "I just wanted to thank you for saving me," she added hesitantly, bowing her head. "So thank you sir for your kindness."

"You're very welcome," Harry said, taking the compliment well. It was awfully self-satisfying to get one when he normally never heard about his buyer's health after selling the medicine to them. "Is that all, Eva?" he faltered when she showed off a look of surprise that made her look like a dumb blonde when he used her name, "Your mother proudly told me your name."

"But veela don't tell humans their daughters' names," she mumbled worriedly before suddenly as if something miraculous had come to her she beamed at him and hugged him out of the blue.

Harry stiffened at being embraced. Very few these days was allowed to get that close for a very long time. Insecurities were rife making him very harsh and his acquaintances had not been very successful in removing that habit. His eyes travelled everywhere but the girl who was drawing a lot of attention to herself from the watching people enjoying his fire, including the stadium where smoke was gathering high in the sky near the stadium and fire was burning.

A fire, a pretty bad one had broken out near the stadium where the British tents were standing. Somebody had to have erected a silencing field, a social faux pas since it was expected in camping etiquette that only the creator of the camp-site could adjust or erect new wards. It was plainly obvious since no screaming or rampaging crowds that were charging towards them for the safety of the woods was audible to his ears in this quiet camp. Harry used the counter charm, the invisible ward shattered like a football smashing through a window and the screams you would expect from a mob of fleeing spectators that were doing their best to break the world record for the most people acting like headless chickens swiftly followed. The sounds of a burgeoning roaring fire from the lit up field of burning tents fought a valiant battle against the noise of his conjured flame.

His first thought was of the girl hugging him. She seemed to tremble suddenly and grab onto him and with her condition he was amazed to see that the vaunted veela super strength, a product of needing the extra muscle when they took their 'Soma,' state or the veela bird girlie thing. They needed it in order to fly and she was not affected by her dilapidated condition. He took one calculating look at the crowd approaching and made a decision with their course heading to the veela camp within the forest's boundaries.

He pointed his wand, thirteen inches, made from the ancient tree Yggdrasil and fashioned with a basilisk optic nerve core blended with a drop of his own to focus it. He made a come hither motion ferociously that made the fire from the camp fire leap up like it was the interior of an erupting volcano. The fire began to spin counter clockwise and made a ring of fire around the camp that blocked off the immediate route to both camp-sites. He pointed to his invisibility cloak, the only thing belonging to his family his father had willingly gave him that wasn't due to tradition in his pocket and enlarged it to the normal size.

"Please wear my cloak and stay close to me," Harry requested, ignoring the frightened masses of the camp fire that were looking at him with ambivalent looks depending on who you were looking at. From disbelief from some of the women that scared people were being shut off from safety to fear from the children from the heat of the orange flame. The girl continued to shiver, but a reassuring hand on her shoulder had her calm down. "We're going to your camp. If I know trouble, it usually leads back to your people no matter if they were behaving or not." He opened a hole in the flames and grabbed her delicate invisible hand. "Don't let go of my hand," he demanded gently, "As long as I am alive, you will not be harmed."

Not totally believing his own words, Harrison James Potter was on his way.

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(Terms provided unofficially by PhanatasmagoricBlade so love him and read his neglected fic not being repeated)

(Greek)

Floga-flame

Soma-body

Parousia-presence

A/N Just for future reference guys ^^