Flitwick had accepted my answer of 'metal work' I had asked a muggle blacksmith to do, and we opened the suitcase together. I wanted to punch myself a second time when we did because there were simple books on kitchenwork and knife-care, and a few sharp kitchen knives visible in the suitcase and nothing else.
If only I had checked beforehand, I would have been so much less flustered and could have given him a less suspicious answer...
Thankfully, he let it and me go, and I hauled the suitcase up to my dormroom with his short escort. It was close to midnight, and it was well past curfew.
"You're back," Harry stated quietly when I entered our room.
Of course, he wasn't asleep yet.
"Yeah, you good? Did you do anything I would do when I was gone last night? Anything I wouldn't? Was Lisa in here?"
"I wish you weren't back," Harry said with a defeated sigh and turned around under his covers.
With a grin, I brought the suitcase to our bathroom, uncaring whether or not Harry would question me later, and unboxed my new assassin gear.
The book on how to care for 'kitchen' knives might just be a cover, but it held genuine wisdom so I kept it to the side and started unlocking all the hidden compartments and disassembling the hidden caches of the suitcase.
I found a white hoodie reminiscent of the garb I saw so many assassins wear in my dreams first, together with white long-sleeved turtleneck shirts. Coincidentally, I learned really quickly that you could easily pull up the turtleneck over your nose, and it would stay there. I was not a fan of turtlenecks, but I would absolutely order more shirts like this or have Patrick steal some.
I also wondered why these weren't put on top as a disguise instead of the knives... but irregardless of that, I started looking through my other new gear.
There was a modern wristblade that looked more like a 'chic' braided leather armband that hid a relatively short razor-sharp knife and a durable meter long wire able to easily cut flesh. The small note it came with said that it wasn't suited for combat at all. There was another wristblade that had the same inner workings and length of the older model Old Man Frye had given me, but it was much, much slimer and was hidden from view even with just a thin long-sleeved shirt over it.
Then, there was a whole cache of throwing knives that, according to a note, could double as surgical tools if properly tended to.
Repeated use was still not recommended, but I was going to use one of these as a practice tool at most and not all of them. Then there was also 'Reparo', the repairing charm, as well as 'Culter Ora', a sharpening charm for knife edges Flitwick had taught us in survival club.
I began to feel like a spy from a movie when I unboxed the next item, a ring with a hidden poisoned pin-prick. This feeling didn't go away when I opened a low-tech grapling hook that I could fasten to my belt after the ring.
I specifically said it was low-tech, because I had seen Anna train with one yesterday that came with its own motor, capable of helping her scale a twenty meter wall in seconds and this hook in my suitcase 'merely' had a spring-loaded, manual winding up mechanism. I wasn't yet sure if I was even going to need it with my 'Arresto Momentum' trick I had discovered for aerial maneuvering, but I would try it out eventually.
-----
Months later on 9th of April, a week before Easter holidays that would extend until 2nd of May until after the pagan holiday Beltane was over, Ravenclaw had its third and last match against Hufflepuff and we could decide the inter-house Quidditch season then and there for the second to last game of the season.
I had another three assassin training sessions with Maxime since then and I was starting to resent the extra train rides I was forced to take because of my paranoia when Anna would drop me off at King's Cross.
But I was absolutely looking forward to getting the Quidditch Cup from Hufflepuff and cementing the end of Slytherin getting both cups, House and Quidditch, awarded in Hogwarts for a few years back to back.
They would have to beat Gryffindor with a ridiculously high score anyway after we lost to Hufflepuff, which wouldn't happen because there was another record I was keen to break.
The fastest Quidditch match in the history of Hogwarts.
To show Quidditch fanatics that the game was stupid and the rules made no sense.
As such, I kept my eagle vision active as Madam Hooch opened the box with the snitch, the two bludgers and the quaffle, and I immediately shot towards the snitch that tried to hide its path by flying low near the ground and disappear behind the scaffolding.
I was aware that I was robbing Harry of an experience he would likely cherish for life, but I already made it up to him by enabling him to become a multimillionaire.
The Morrison crime syndicate smuggling tobacco and other contraband from Calais to Dover was indeed robbed and exposed by his elves... and I had to ask him sincerely not to go for such high-level targets again so soon.
The bleeding heart had heard about the smuggling from his uncle, who apparently had a respected 'business partner' in the Morrison family through his work at Grunnings, the drill manufacturer the fat whale worked at. And it was one more way to get back at his terrible family since Vernon Dursley was apparently implicated but sadly not convicted in any crimes for this last I heard.
Harry even went as far as donating over forteen million pounds to various charities anonymously, and someone connected those to the sixteen million missing pounds, calling Harry's elves the modern Robin Hood.
It was all way too high profile and was sure to arouse the ICW's suspicion if there was a repeat performance.
Back at the Quiddich pitch, I dove down instead of following Roger Davies' lead, did an almost 90° turn just before hitting the ground, and started listening to Lee Jordan's commentary.
"The man to look out for, the menace on a broom himself, Talion Macnair breaks formation for an immediate nosedive straight to the ground! Is he feeling unwell? Forgot to take a leak before the match?"
"LEE!" McGonagall shouted as another headache was threatening to consume the Quidditch fanatic.
"Oooh, a half-completed Wronski Feint as the non-seeker Macnair pulls up his broom last second to not crash into the ground - but there was no seeker behind him to get wiped out. Hey, Professor, you know what that's called for chasers?"
"Indeed, the Kasovich Maneuver, and I know you know it too," McGonagall explained once she got into her Quidditch fanaticism again but quickly twisted Lee's ear to make him more obedient. The Gryffindor's plan to distract his head of house seemed to have backfired.
With a wince in his voice, Lee continued, "A beautiful Kasovich Maneuver that shows his proficiency with the broom, but what good will it do Ravenclaw? Hufflepuff is in possession of the quaffle, and Ravenclaw is down one man on defense. Did Macnair invent another Quidditch roll? The half-chaser-half-seeker or something?"
I disappeared under the cloth hanging over the wooden stands and shot back out of them on the other side. Almost casually, I flew up towards Harry with high speed and listened once more.
"Beautiful parry by Keeper Hilliard! Ravenclaw is in possesion, but Davies looks angry! There is Macnair again, and he's flying straight to his seeker! The score is 0-0, and Ravenclaw has a hard time sett- IS THAT THE SNITCH MACNAIR JUST THREW AT POTTER?"
Madam Hooch blew her whistle, and the scoreboard changed from 0-0 to 150-0 in our favor. My entire team didn't know what happened. Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff seeker, was the only player on the field who had a wry smile on his face instead of the confused look the other players had.
He had been close to Harry as seekers usually were at the start of a game and had observed me because he was scared for his teammates after I had sent four Slytherin players to the hospital wing last time, and he had seen that I had indeed thrown the snitch at our seeker.
"17 seconds on the clock, and the game goes to Ravenclaw with a score of 150-0! I can not believe this! Macnair dove down a second into the game and caught the snitch well before Hooch blew her whistle to end the game!"
"Why does Filius get all these prodigies," the magiphone broadcasted as it picked up McGonagall's aggrieved whisper, and the older witch started blushing for the first time I had seen.
"That means Ravenclaw is the new Interhouse Quidditch Cup Champion of '94/'95! Big round of applause for the claws - at least it wasn't Slytherin again," Lee commented to the boos of the latter house. "Also, I'm pretty sure Macnair broke yet another record. If he plays as Keeper or half-keeper next year and does something like this again, he will have broken a record for all four Quidditch positions!"
There was some polite applause and some overwhelming cheers coming from the stands, and I decided to ignore my ecstatic teammates and flew over to the Ravenclaw fans to bathe in their adoration. I even started 'surfing' on the broom as I stood on the broomstick instead of sitting on it and basked in their cheering.
"MAC *clap* NAIR *clap clap*! *clap* MAC *clap* NAIR *clap clap*! *clap* MAC *clap* NAIR *clap clap*!" Someone started a chant with a few claps in between the syllables of my name, and it quickly caught on as even some Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs started joining in. Those were some really good sports. Like the term 'bad loser' was foreign to them.
Eventually, Diggory flew close to me and patted me on the back, "Incredible. How'd you even see that thing? We were up on roughly the same height?"
"Hehe, trade secret," I joked with a wink.
"Haaa, well done. I wish it was different, but you deserve the win," he answered with another wry smile and flew away to give Hilliard some space.
Our team captain had some choice words for me as his fist nearly made me fall from the broom I was still standing on as he punched my shoulder.
"You asshole! If you're such a great seeker, why'd you apply as a chaser!?" He shouted with red eyes.
"Hey, I can't play all positions, I'm only a single man on a seven player team," I defended, and I heard the two Ravenclaw beaters snort close to us. So they snorted pretty loudly because the fans were still screaming their lungs out.
Hilliard even pointed to them and said, "See? Nobody believes you! You COULD play all positions. If I wasn't here, you'd be the first keeper-seeker, I bet!"
"Hey hey, why are you so angry about this?" Harry asked as he flew over with a neutral mask resting on his face. "I should be the one being angry. That git caught two snitches in my first three games..."
"Yeah!" Hilliard shouted and pointed to Harry. "You can take your 'there's no I on the team' mentality and shove it! You bastard could have calmed me down all season, and instead, I poured over tactics and training results for all three teams all year! If I get my first grey hair next year, I'll come back to Hogwarts and hex you bald!"
"Uh, is this like, you not getting your own feelings or something?" I asked with an amused expression. "Like, you're inwardly crying in joy but can't express it properly?"
"Shove off, you bloody monster! I lost months of my life because of the stress! And you can catch snitches in less than half a minute! I'm so angry!" He screamed and flew towards the cabin to get changed.
There was no need for a shower. The game was over the second it started.
The rules of the game were stupid, after all.
Harry didn't talk to me much the rest of the day during the festivities. He was off in a corner with Lisa, pouting like a little kid. Thankfully, this wasn't the start of Harry's villain arc. He would get over it pretty quickly and with Lisa's help, no less.
-----
It was the so-called Easter break, and I stayed at Hogwarts to continue my training under Flitwick and to continue working on some more personal studies.
Many people drove home to unwind, but even more stayed at Hogwarts. The fifth and seventh year students in particular almost all stayed at the school because the final exams were only a little over a month away, and their final exams, namely the O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s were a little more important than those of the other years. They would decide your future career options and showed your measure as a magical in a small frame.
I personally found myself in a room with the Weasley twins on the second day of the break, and they just finished paying me my share for the games they started selling. Apparently Bill, their oldest brother and curse-breaker at Gringotts, used some of his connections at the bank to start selling the games in other countries for us and though the cut we could take was lower, our sales still exploded.
The twins already had the capital to open a shop and then some, and they were starting to discuss options of buying a plot instead of renting only a bit of storespace as intended before.
"Ah, one last thing," I said as I finished giving them my two knuts on how to best advertise their games going forward. "I know I could ask the elves to catch me a rat, but do you mind bringing me Scabbers later this week? I promise I won't harm him so you won't have to feel bad for your brother, but there's something I want to test on him."
"Oh? What could you want with a fat little bum like Scabbers?"
"Ronniekins will be reaaally mad if you hurt his rat."
"Yeah, when Percy got that owl for his nice grades and Ron inherited Scabbers, he turned into a mother hen ever since."
"He does cry the most when we did something to it."
"Yeah, like that time we burned its fur off?"
"Or when we painted it black and turned off all the lights at home. Mum stepped on it like five times before she blasted the windows open."
"Haa, good times."
"Good times," the other twin nodded along.
When they were finally finished, I once more inquired, "So you have no issue with it?"
"Nah, we'll count it as finishing our quota on pranking Ron for the month, so we clear up some time in our busy schedules for better, more important things."
"Snogging our girlfriends," one of them answered with a dreamy sigh.
"Or clogging some toilets for Filch to clean up."
"Or snogging our girlfriends..."
"Or crafting more games to sell."
"Or snogging our girlfriends..."
"Or finishing up some inquiries into available shop spaces in Diagon Alley."
"Or snogging our girlfriends..."
"Oh, come on, I get it! Angelina and Alicia are really hot, and they are yours. If you keep bringing it up, I'll tell them about the incident," I threatened with a mocking glare.
Fred, who I long identified as the more theatrical one, gasped offendedly, "You wouldn't!"
"Would, too!"
"No, you can't!"
"Can, too!"
"Hey, hey. Stop being childish, Gred, little lion," George interjected to calm us down. But he only used that as an opportunity to throw up a smokescreen and to run out of the room with his brother.
When the smoke cleared, my hair was white, and I had grown a comically large twirly mustache. I only heard 'you'll get the rat two days from now at breakfast' - and they were gone.
With a sigh, I took off the mustache and walked out of the room.
'Peter Pettigrew... I got to time it right, lest Dumbledore clears it and makes us all forget or be unable to tell anyone... he can't sweep it under the rug if the aurors are here anyway. I'll have to do something... drastic.'
-----
A day later, I had confronted Harry a little earlier in the day about his invisibility cloak, and so the two of us found ourselves in front of Slytherin dorm entrance after dinner while hidden from view.
Being under the cloak was an experience I hadn't thought was possible. To Harry, nothing changed... much. But to me, the whole world felt muted the moment we were under the thin fabric. My eagle vision couldn't see past the cloak, and while under it, I couldn't even see the thing myself. I barely felt a feint touch on hair and skin, and I heard everything muffled as if I was under water.
It was only after we waited quietly for half an hour that I finally connected the facts and understood that my bloodline didn't just give me eagle vision but also enhanced my other senses magically to some degree. But the cloak blocked it all.
"What are we doing here again?" Harry asked, feeling bored.
"Scheming."
"Scheming to do what?"
"Scheming to get the aurors here tomorrow, no matter what. Trust me, you want in on it."
"How do we get the aurors here?"
"By doing what you do and doing what I do except this time with some more lasting consequences."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked with a neutral tone of voice.
"Pfft, how do you think I knew about the cloak? The ghost revenger some other first years are talking about. The one that hexes bullies and won't ever get caught. That's you."
"Yeah... I guess hiding it from you was pretty non-sensical... but where do you come in?"
"I'm the idiot nightmare."
"You mean you were the reason we played Gryffindor first because you put half of Slytherin's team in the hospital wing last year?"
"Yeah. I've put quite a few of them in the hospital wing, I reckon."
Harry looked at me for a moment before his eyes widened, "You were the one to rob Flint and the Pucey brothers!"
"Yeah, they ambushed Isobel and I when we were just minding our own business. I thought for sure you already knew when you looked at me during McGonagall's announcement the day after."
"... how are you so strong?"
"Who wouldn't be looking to get stronger after that attack on me?" I countered while looking at Harry like he was an idiot.
Sometimes, he was.
In my humble opinion anyway.