"'The New Way To Play Quidditch' by Robert Hilliard," I quietly whispered as I opened the Daily Prophet at the breakfast table two days after the match. "'How a first year with no knowledge of Quidditch invented a never before seen tactic', wow. What a byline."
I looked up to the end of the table where my team captain sat and read the newspaper, same as everyone else. He had told me he was looking to become a sports reporter after a muggleborn from his year told him about their dad being the editor in chief for the entire football page, or rather pages, of the Sun - a very influential and big newspaper in the UK.
The halfblood Quidditch fanatic managed to get an article past the Daily Prophet's editor and published an article about me, though curiously my name was only mentioned once. But my half-chaser-half-beater gameplay with the reinforced shin guards was thoroughly analysed in it.
The high requirements for personal fitness and the increased danger due to the 'acrobatics on a broom' were listed as clear disadvantages, but then Robert listed the many boons such a person on a team could bring and almost filled half a page with it.
In all honesty, even I could barely read through it, and it was my tactic. But as I looked at the other students at the Hufflepuff and Slytherin tables in my line of sight, I noticed that those who were clearly invested in the sport were devouring the article with ravenous eyes.
Harry and I had been greatly disliked at this school for various reasons - most of which lead back to Slytherin origins - but the two of us being good at Quidditch seemed to increase our likeability by a stupid amount.
A Ravenclaw girl from the second year who tried out as the team's seeker last year and wanted to do so again this year, Cho Chang, even went as far as stalking Harry in the common room and beyond. Lisa Turpin from our school year was the one who defended him from the girl, though in doing so she made it pretty clear to everyone who wasn't my oblivious roommate that she was doing so for selfish, yet romantic reasons.
I put down my paper and pondered once more on what this school year would now hold since Quirrel was gone and Voldemort couldn't come after the stone anymore. Without Harry having the subconscious need to protect Flamel's stone from evil, the whole plot for the year was pretty much over and I was getting more and more paranoid as to what this would mean for Harry, Neville, and I.
It was not lost on me that the literal, actual specter of Lord Voldemort floated around the entire student body and most of the staff, and yet nobody talked about it. Sure, Malfoy and the other jealous gits would bring up Harry killing someone whenever they could, but nobody mentioned that the living soul body of the vanquished dark lord was present in the school as a parasitical entity being hosted by a professor.
This had Dumbledore's name written all over it.
I had the desire to write to Amelia Bones or Rita Skeeter several times, but the moment I put quill-to-parchment or pen-to-paper, I forgot why I was doing so. Some deeper magics were at play here, and if Dumbledore was really this powerful, I wanted to be a lot stronger before putting my more direct plans into play that would disparage the vaunted headmaster.
As such, the year was slowly coming to an end, and the Christmas break was about to start. Harry would stay at the school despite having a standing invitation from Neville Longbottom and his family, and it might be because I was going and he would have the room for himself.
My grades were still in the top three of the first years, with only Hermione truly beating me since she put much more effort into the theoretical assignments than me.
My investments into the Weasley twins and board games were picking up speed unceasingly. My investment into Spudmore was almost already paid back in full thanks to him hitting three hundred preorders on top of the various stores that reaching out to sell his broom in the months after the unveiling of it.
My training with Flitwick was still progressing at a level that bordered on cruel, not that my teacher thought so. My various clubs were still going tremendously well.
I had gathered some truly rare fungi and herbs during survival club and earned myself not only the high praise of the professors but also almost 200 galleons by selling two particularly rare specimen through Professor Sprout. With my unique eye ability, finding magical plants in the forest was child's play.
The professor had reassured me that those two I sold couldn't be bred in captivity, so I had no reason to hold onto them, and I trusted her input implicitly. Not just because I wanted to stay on her good side with her teaching us so much for free, which meant I didn't care if I was getting stiffed on the deal. I trusted her because she felt comfortable enough to curse Dumbledore around me.
The headmaster had slashed her program over the decades and pocketed much of the resources she gathered and raised over the years as a professor. It wasn't even for money but for his own research. Research that, according to Sprout, he didn't publish for the last twenty years, benefitting nobody.
The worst thing he had done, however, was the fact that house elves were no longer allowed to help out in the herbology and care for magical creature courses as much as they originally did. Something she and Kettleburn fought tooth and nail and still lost.
Maybe because Kettleburn didn't have much of either; teeth or nails.
I stalked towards the Hogsmeade station the day before Christmas, wondering if I could just skip the train ride. My first destination was in Scotland, after all. It didn't make much sense to go to London first only to get back to Scotland.
But I didn't need Dumbledore being able to glean anything from my movements. As much as I liked Lavender and hoped her affection for me turned out to be genuine at the end, I was starting to suspect the headmaster had his hand in it because of the abruptness of it all. He put the Weasley twins up to besmirching my name. He hindered the investigation into my tormentors. He made us all unable to tell a soul that Voldemort was back by possessing a professor. He... was truly unhinged in my biased opinion of the man.
Sitting in the compartment with a heavy brown muggle coat as opposed to the school robes, I made myself comfortable in silence. I had moved ahead of the girls from my year who would have likely wanted to share a compartment with me, but I wanted to get some quiet thinking done to plan my Christmas break.
When the door opened just before the train started moving, a special friend I made this year entered. Someone who I knew would respect the silence I clearly craved by not sitting with my year mates.
"Lara," I acknowledged with a soft nod and turned back to my book.
"Talion," she whispered and sat opposite me after securing her trunk and closing the door after casting a soft-powered notice-me-not-charm on it.
Four hours into the drive, just after the lunch lady left, we started our first conversation that had me chuckle inwardly because she bottled her curiosity for such a long time.
"You're traveling rather light. Or did you fit your belongings into that pouch of yours?"
I smiled and answered, "Nope, left most of my stuff in my room. I doubt Harry would steal it. He's not the type. Plus, he has more money than the two of us could ever spend in a lifetime."
"I'll have you know, my tastes can be rather expensive," Lara teased back with a meaningful grin.
"Ah, priceless artifacts that nobody can identify and are therefore sold for a premium. I bet Harry has a few of those in his family main vault. No need to go shopping for them, and definitely no need to steal them."
Lara lifted an eyebrow and curiously inquired, "Are you trying to set me up with him?"
"Hehe, good luck getting past Lisa. And good luck getting past Cho before that."
She shook her head and quipped, "No need. He's cute and all, but he isn't my type."
I put my hand over my heart and shot back in fake hurt, "You're not into boys with scars? Oh no!"
Her answer was a parchment roll to my head as she pointed a finger at me.
"The scars have nothing to do with why I'm not into you or him," she said with a condescending smirk.
"Sure. Now, anything fun planned with your dad or something?"
"Nope, just spending time together. What are your plans?"
I gave her a mysterious smile and responded, "They are many, and they are varied."
"Fine, don't tell."
"Meeting a few friends of my mum and going artifact hunting," I said after copying Lara and looking at my book once more.
She looked back up for a short moment, started smiling, and turned back to reading.
Another couple of hours later, we finally arrived, and I gave my goodbyes not just to Lara but also the other girls who had been looking for me in the train before. I had prepared gifts for them all, and since I didn't have owls, I handed them over right there.
Most of them got a rather expensive scarf that I had Patrick steal in the muggle world. Well, indirectly. He started stealing muggle money from gangs and various kingpins of crime during his downtime after I gave him options to alleviate his boredom while I was gone.
And then he used that stolen money to 'buy' the scarves by stealing them and placing a premium into the shop's register during the night.
For a personal touch, I learned how to sew with a spell and embroidered their respective initials into the fabric and enchanted them with a fresh air charm with Flitwick's help that would hold for this winter and maybe the next.
The only one to get something different were Mandy, who got a book on history of magics as an inside joke and a scarf, and Hermione, who got a book about darker magics from my grandfather's collection... and a scarf. I didn't want her to become a dark lady or anything like that, I just wanted to ensure she didn't neglect one branch of magic and have a shaky foundation. Also, I had Patrick copy the full text on a computer by compelling a muggle to do it, so I was losing nothing thanks to the invention of printers.
Oh yeah, Lara also got something else, just because I could since Patrick 'found' a book written by a decorated muggle historian who came ridiculously close to finding out the truth about magic as he provided proof of all kinds of myths to British magical folklore - chief of which were King Arthur and his knights of the round table in Avalon.
To make sure Patrick and I didn't break the statute of secrecy during any of this, Patrick dilligently paid the bewitched muggle who copied the books into digital form with the stolen cash from the criminals. And those criminals, whom he stole only a large percentage of money and not everything from, the elf turned into the MI6 since some of the policemen were pretty corrupt on the lower rungs in the areas the criminals resided in.
Barely a few months into his favorite new pasttime, Patrick and by extension House Macnair and I became muggle millionaires. If the ICW truly didn't look into this and I was allowed to keep doing it, I wondered why not every magical simply became a vigilante in the muggle world to become rich.
Did they all collectively look down on muggles so much they didn't care about the buying power of millions in muggle cash?
The goblins had a service package that would allow us to make this money legitimate and even invest it for us, though since their mandated contracts with wizardkind only extended to magical currency, their rates for the muggle services were absolutely cutthroat. Losing more than 75% of the money just to launder it seemed absolutely ludicrous, so I was going to use this Christmas and the next break to look into my options.
Once I was far enough away from the busy train station, I entered a snow-covered abandoned alleyway and called for the Knight Bus, just in case Dumbledore would follow up on my movements.
A quick trip to the Leaky Cauldron for the public floo had me staring at the fireplace and the time as I cast a prolonged Tempus variant that allowed for even the seconds to a minute being known.
At exactly 6:54pm and 32 seconds, I used the floo and called out 'Macnair Place' and was gone from London and back up in Scotland in a matter of gruesome minutes in the fiery green freefall that was the floo network.
"Welcome, Master Talion," my house elf greeted while he once more extinquished the fireplace to make sure the floo was down.
"Hey, Patrick. Seems like everything worked out. Do we have everything ready for the move?"
"Yes, Patrick has been doing it all. You can fly away to the first spot after your inspection."
I looked to the house elf in the dark room barely lit up with a few torches. He was pointing at a large map of the British Isles with three spots clearly marked on it. This house, the shack in Goldsborough, and the 'first spot' mentioned by the miniature magical butler.
"Alright. You can move the last of the trunks then. But leave one near the entrance. I'll do my tour now," I ordered as I committed the spot marked on the map to memory once more.
I would be meeting Patrick there after a likely hour-long broom ride, and he would take me into the wards of the humble Goldsborough residence after that.
Elf apparition was very practical. But going vast distances with someone coming along was almost impossible without serious harm to the magically-dependant creatures. Apparition, in general, was a little less convenient than the canon story would have you believe. Even short distances needed a minimum casting time of a second where you build up your magical energies and intent. Instantaneous displacement and moving great distances in the blink of an eye was impossible in this world, I had checked with Flitwick. When I asked if 'blinking' was feasible in duels, as in appearing a short distance away by teleporting in the blink of an eye, Flitwick shook his head and explained the limitations of magical travel to me.
Even portkey travel, the fastest magical long-distance travel method, was far from instantaneous.
"Malfoy's threat... Dumbledore's willingness to use me as bait... it's tragic that I won't be able to live here," I mumbled as I walked through my oppulent ancestral home. It would need a thorough redecoration because of Walden Macnair's questionable tastes, but it was truly grand.
Three wings, three stories, portraits hanging in groups of three.
It was clear whoever designed this place placed great importance to the magical number of three, I idly noted as I walked past portraits of great family ancestors. And while they might have boasted about great accomplishments, neither of them could tell me about it because not one of them was a more expensive magical portrait.
With my occular ability active, I walked through every room and checked every wall and nook for hidden items or passages. I did find a few of these secret passages, abandoned walkways for servants between rooms, but no valuable hidden items so far.
Until I found my mom's old room. It was completely destroyed, likely by Walden's hand, and had none of the charm the rest of the house held. The wallpapers were burned, the flooring splintered. None of the furniture was complete, none of her belongings seemingly remained.
But I lifted a floorboard near her bed because it lit up in a white shimmer. In the hidden space, there was a delicate silver and mahogany box with the symbol of the brotherhood on it, the capital A.
I regarded the box from every angle to see if something bad was going to happen if I opened it, but instead, I learned that this box slightly bigger than my foot merely contained a booklet.
'Nothing is true; everything is permitted' the title of the book read.
"'To say that nothing is true is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile and that we must be shepherds of our civilization. To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic,' a wise man once said. These pages will help you realise the full potential of working behind the scenes for the betterment of all, as an assassin," I read out loud as I opened the booklet to read the foreword.
"So my mum found the codex of this brotherhood somehow? Is that how these dreams I'm having are connected to me?" I wondered as I leafed through the pages of this book that gave the reader a rigid training regimen I was familiar with from the dreams, and tips and tricks of the craft of an assassin, a spy, an infiltrator.
"Is that what gave my mom the courage to spy on the dark lord and betray her family to the forces of good?"
I sat on her broken bed, wondering if this book, this ideology, was the reason she risked it all. Did she become a spy to make sure society wasn't broken beyond repair and to be a shepherd of our magical civilization? Or did she do it because her father married her off to a cruel and evil man?