Harry Potter and the Memories of a Sociopath, Ch 20: Investigation

Here's how it is:

During his second year at Hogwarts, Harry is still concerned about the fate of the world and, though Hermione has obtained a phoenix and destroyed Azkaban's dementors, work on the Philosopher's Stone based hospital at Hogwarts has stalled due to ward incompatibilities and the temporary hospital in Azkaban tower has been shut down after being compromised by Bellatrix. Many aurors were killed or fatally injured and are in transfiguration-based stasis awaiting treatment.

Moody detected evidence of horcrux possession on Hermione and probably on Sprout. Draco and other students demonstrated unusual behavior and were later found to have been memory charmed. Harry thought of potential countermeasures Voldemort could have used against parseltongue and obliviation and suspects that Voldemort survived, that his plan had been to pretend to lose while preparing a powerful and immortal host for himself who Harry would trust implicitly (and explicitly, given the unbreakable vow). Unfortunately, that same vow prevented Harry from sharing his suspicions, until Moody revealed that he'd been thinking similar things. Thus far, efforts to locate a horcrux at Hogwarts have been unsuccessful.

Luna demonstrates uncanny knowledge even though she's obviously not a real seer. Moody has hypothesized that Defense professor Gilderoy Lockhart is incompetent and relying on liquid luck for his accomplishments. And obviously plotting something.

Harry has a relatively long list of things he intends to investigate, including big picture items like Merlin's Interdict, prophecy, time-turner paradoxes, magic-technology interactions, and rescuing Dumbledore, as well as smaller scale things like looking into Ravenclaw's Diadem or whether the potion liquid luck is a real thing or a cover story. Magical interferences with technology are proving more difficult to pin down than he had hoped, so he has focused more strongly on learning arithmancy, which involves putting spells together to achieve novel functions.

Public opinion is divided on Harry's recent use of Voldemort role-play to frighten students, and a group of Hufflepuffs are out after curfew...

"You all looked at the right person for entirely the wrong reasons. After I heard rumors of one Ravenclaw facing down five older Slytherins, I came to the conclusion that Harry Potter would be my most dangerous student. You're thinking that I've come up with a wrong answer, aren't you, Mr. Potter? You will learn to expect better of me. Mr. Potter, all things have their accustomed uses. Give me ten unaccustomed uses of objects in this room for combat!"

For a moment Harry was rendered speechless by the sheer, raw shock of having been understood.

And then the ideas started to pour out.

"There are desks which are heavy enough to be fatal if dropped from a great height. There are chairs with metal legs that could impale someone if driven hard enough. The air in this classroom would be deadly by its absence, since people die in vacuum, and it can serve as a carrier for poison gases. The floor can be removed to create a spike pit to fall into, the ceiling can be collapsed on someone, the walls can serve as raw material for Transfiguration into any number of deadly things - knives, say."

"That's six. But surely you're scraping the bottom of the barrel now?"

"I haven't even started! Just look at all the people! Having a Gryffindor attack the enemy is an ordinary use, of course but their blood can also be used to drown someone. Ravenclaws are known for their brains, but their internal organs could be sold on the black market for enough money to hire an assassin. Slytherins aren't just useful as assassins, they can also be thrown at sufficient velocity to crush an enemy. And Hufflepuffs, in addition to being hard workers, also contain bones that can be removed, sharpened, and used to stab someone."

By now the rest of the class was staring at Harry in some horror. Even the Slytherins looked shocked.

"That's ten, though I'm being generous in counting the Ravenclaw one. Now, for extra credit, one Quirrell point for each use of objects in this room which you have not yet named." Professor Quirrell favored Harry with a companionable smile. "The rest of your class thinks you are in trouble now, since you've named everything except the targets and you have no idea what may be done with those."

"Bah! I've named all the people, but not my robes, which can be used to suffocate an enemy if wrapped around their head enough times, or Hermione Granger's robes, which can be torn into strips and tied into a rope and used to hang someone, or Draco Malfoy's robes, which can be used to start a fire. My wand can be pushed into an enemy's brain through their eye socket" and someone made a horrified, strangling sound. "My wristwatch could suffocate someone if jammed down their throat -"

"Five points, and enough."

"Hmph," Harry said. "Ten Quirrell points to one House point, right? You should have let me keep going until I'd won the House Cup, I haven't even started yet on the unaccustomed uses of everything I've got in my pockets" or the mokeskin pouch itself and he couldn't talk about the Time-Turner or the invisibility cloak but there had to be something he could say about those red spheres...

"Enough, Mr. Potter. Well, do you all think you understand what makes Mr. Potter the most dangerous student in the classroom? Say it out loud, please. Terry Boot, what makes your dorm-mate dangerous?"

"Ah... um... he's creative?"

"Wrong! " bellowed Professor Quirrell, and his fist came down sharply on his desk with an amplified sound that made everyone jump. "All of Mr. Potter's ideas were worse than useless!"

Harry started in surprise.

"Remove the floor to create a spike trap? Ridiculous! In combat you do not have that sort of preparation time and if you did there would be a hundred better uses! Transfigure material from the walls? Mr. Potter cannot perform Transfiguration! Mr. Potter had exactly one idea which he could use immediately, right now, without extensive preparation or a cooperative enemy or magic he does not know. That idea was to jam his wand through his enemy's eye socket. Which would be more likely to break his wand than kill his opponent! In short, Mr. Potter, I'm afraid that your proposals were uniformly awful."

"What?" Harry said indignantly. "You asked for unusual ideas, not practical ones! I was thinking outside the box! How would you use something in this classroom to kill someone?"

Professor Quirrell's expression was disapproving, but there were smile crinkles around his eyes. "Mr. Potter, I never said you were to kill. There is a time and a place for taking your enemy alive, and inside a Hogwarts classroom is usually one of those places. But to answer your question, hit them on the neck with the edge of a chair."

There was some laughter from the Slytherins, but they were laughing with Harry, not at him.

Everyone else was looking rather horrified.

"But Mr. Potter has now demonstrated why he is the most dangerous student in the classroom. I asked for unaccustomed uses of items in this room for combat. Mr. Potter could have suggested using a desk to block a curse, or using a chair to trip an oncoming enemy, or wrapping cloth around his arm to create an improvised shield. Instead, every single use that Mr. Potter named was offensive rather than defensive, and either fatal or potentially fatal."

What? Wait, that couldn't be true... Harry had a sudden sense of vertigo as he tried to remember what exactly he'd suggested, surely there had to be a counterexample...

"And that," Professor Quirrell said, "is why Mr. Potter's ideas were so strange and useless - because he had to reach far into the impractical in order to meet his standard of killing the enemy. To him, any idea which fell short of that was not worth considering. This reflects a quality that we might call intent to kill. I have it. Harry Potter has it, which is how he could stare down five older Slytherins. Draco Malfoy does not have it, not yet. Mr. Malfoy would hardly shrink from talk of ordinary murder, but even he was shocked - yes you were Mr. Malfoy, I was watching your face - when Mr. Potter described how to use his classmates' bodies as raw material. There are censors inside your mind which make you flinch away from thoughts like that. Mr. Potter thinks purely of killing the enemy, he will grasp at any means to do so, he does not flinch, his censors are off. Even though his youthful genius is so undisciplined and impractical as to be useless, his intent to kill makes Harry Potter the Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom. One final point to him - no, let us make that a point to Ravenclaw - for this indispensable requisite of a true fighting wizard."

"Mr. Potter..."

Harry opened his eyes and saw a glowing white cat floating above him.

"... I'm in the second floor corridor nearest the Hufflepuff common room, about halfway to the History of Magic classroom. There's something here you should see."

Harry glanced at his watch: 2:30AM. That couldn't be a good sign.

Harry quickly got dressed and headed out. The walk gave him ample time to relive the dream. He could only conclude that despite Voldemort and Bellatrix on the loose, his subconscious had found the time to obsess about his own potential as a threat. That couldn't be a good sign.

Some time earlier...

"Minerva! Headmistress McGonagall! Please wake up, it's an emergency! Come to the Hufflepuff common room as soon as possible."

She opened her eyes in time to see Sprout's patronus fade away.

A few minutes later, as she neared the room, Sprout called out "This way", and started climbing a staircase. McGonagall rushed to catch up.

"Six of my students are missing", Sprout announced. "As soon as I was informed, I asked the prefects to help me start a search. We haven't found them, but you need to see this."

Written on the wall in large red letters was the message: "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware."

Even earlier...

Cedric cast a light from the end of his wand but kept it horizontal, ready to cast a curse if necessary, as he strode forward.

The other students held their breath and tried not to make a sound.

Cedric stopped. The door to the classroom on his left was wide open. He listened for a few seconds, then took a step into the room, quickly taking a dueling stance and sweeping his wand around the room.

He promptly collapsed backwards into the hallway, his eyes open but unfocused.

Most of the others screamed as they felt the magical explosion. Someone ran forward and called out, "He's not breathing!"

Some began to retreat, while others froze in place.

They heard something moving inside the room and instantly fell silent and raised their wands.

McGonagall sighed, "Keep searching for the students. I'll call Filius to help me find out what caused this."

Sprout asked, "I know Albus is officially missing, but I don't suppose there's any chance you could get him an emergency message?"

"I suppose there's some possibility he set up a spell to bring him to Hogwarts when he's truly needed, but if there is such a spell or a way that I could trigger it, I don't know of it."

McGonagall then sent her patronus to summon Flitwick, Lockhart, and Harry, and Moody.

Flitwick arrived first, and McGonagall told him about the missing students and message. He began using his wand to scan the text and surrounding area.

Harry overheard part of the explanation while walking down the hall and immediately activated his time-turner.

Moody announced, "I can't believe you called Lockhart before me."

McGonagall turned to see Moody and Harry step around a corner, "He is a professor at this school. And may have something useful to contribute."

"Luckily, Harry called me six hours ago. So I've had twelve hours to investigate."

"Time turners don't work like that."

"I kept going back to the moment after Harry called me and searching in different directions. But it was apparently too late. Both the basilisk and its master were already gone."

"What?"

Harry interrupted, "Let's start at the beginning." He sighed, "They were all dead when I arrived. I don't know for how long, but they were still warm-ish. I called Moody, then six of his time-turned selves appeared and examined the bodies. Then all of the Moodys searched while I cooled the bodies and worked on transfiguring them. I don't know whether they can be revived or how much brain damage they'll have if I do, but I have to try.

"The first Moody arrived maybe ten minutes later and I explained the situation. He scanned the message on the wall, helped me transfigure the rest of the bodies, then time turned back. We've been in the library since then."

Moody explained, "They had no visible injuries. It looked like they'd been hit by killing curses. But you and I have tested the wards that tell you when unforgivables and memory charms are cast. We couldn't test the wards for death or serious injury, and apparently you're not getting those notifications, so we'll have to work on that later. Anyway, we researched other spells that could mimic the effect of a killing curse but would be less likely to be detected."

Harry added, "A basilisk is most likely. I think their eyes emit something like an extremely low powered killing curse in all directions, which can be blocked by essentially anything opaque. So it only kills with a direct hit to someone's central nervous system which, in practice means that someone has to look at its eyes such that the curse hits their retina-"

Moody interrupted, "However it works, looking at basilisk eyes kills, and looks enough like a killing curse."

Harry continued, "Also, it fits with the Heir of Slytherin message because the parselmouth connection. We should probably check Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets."

They both stared at him, Moody asked, "You know where it is?", while McGonagall exclaimed, "Mr. Potter! You promised you'd report that if you found it!"

"It kind of slipped my mind with everything else that happened that night... there was an entrance in the dungeons, but I don't remember where. There's another entrance via a tunnel that opens in the graveyard near Hogsmead. That should be easy enough to find..."

A few hours later, they emerged from the tunnels into a closet in an unused fifth floor classroom.

"That place is a complete maze. We'll never be able to find anything down there."

Harry shrugged, "I'll try to find an optimal maze navigation algorithm and we can try again. Or maybe someone can find a way to modify the map to plot the tunnels; I believe that's what Voldemort was using it for."

Moody warded the entrance so McGonagall would be notified if anyone approached it, and they returned to area near the Hufflepuff room.

On the way, Lockhart intercepted them, smiling brightly.

McGonagall called angrily, "Professor Lockhart, where have you been? We had a situation and couldn't reach you."

"I was out of the castle. It took some time for me to get back."

Moody stared Lockhart down and demanded, "Where exactly have you been for the past 8 hours?"

"Brazil."

McGonagall queried, "The Acromantulas?"

"We could say that I didn't have enough time to transport them all the other day."

Moody continued, "Anyone who can verify?"

"I had the portkeys made a few days ago, and no one was with me when I made the trips, though I suppose there were a few ladies at the bar who'd remember me."

"Names?"

"I didn't exactly take attendance."

"Name of the bar?"

"I could possibly find it again..."

Moody grinned dangerously, "So you have no alibi."

"My contract doesn't say anything about being in Hogwarts castle at night or having my movements restricted in any way. It says I must be present for my classes, offices hours, and any extra-curricular activities I sponsor. And anyway, I was doing my best to avoid the defense position curse."

"Oh?"

"I've read up on what's happened to previous professors. Many times their contracts were not renewed due to incompetence, sometimes resulting in their own injury or injured students. Of course I don't have anything to worry about there." He smiled at Moody, who scowled back. "And I don't think I have to tell you about the scandals many of the others get into. Therefore, I've precommitted to spending as much time as possible outside the castle. Can't get into trouble here if I'm there, can I?" He stumbled, caught himself, and attempted to lean against the wall in a casual-looking pose.

McGonagall frowned, "Are you drunk?"

"Well, I didn't think it was a good idea to apparate on the way here if that's what you mean." He made a quick exit, which was, of course, totally dignified and not influenced at all by the angry look McGonagall was giving him.

Harry found himself confused. He'd ignored most of the conversation, having found the topic boring, but something about what Lockhart had said felt significant. He'd need to keep thinking about it. But dealing with this year's defense professor wasn't particularly high on his priority list. Hopefully Headmistress McGonagall could handle it.

Lockhart shook his head as he walked back to his room, thinking about how that conversation could have gone better. He stopped when he noticed a student whose name he couldn't recall waiting outside his room. "It's after curfew. You should be in your house's common area or room or something."

"I needed to talk to you. I... recently acquired this artifact that I believe may be valuable and historic. Do you have a way to find out if it's real?"

Lockhart continued walking forward, "Oh. That is interesting. Let me see that..."

Moody practically spat, "How can you let that man work here?"

McGonagall shrugged, "He may be a poor role model, but we need defense professors, and he was the only competent candidate who applied for this year." She glanced at Harry, "and at least he wasn't the one pretending to be Voldemort at dinner."

Moody turned to Harry and narrowed his eyes, "I swear you've gotten stupider since last year. I'm almost not even surprised after you picked a pointless fight with Lockhart and hid your suspicions about Hermione."

McGonagall looked confused, "What about Hermione?"

Moody grunted, "That she's possessed by Voldie." McGonagall gasped. Moody turned back to Harry, "Actually, it bothers me less that you tried to hide information that you considered sensitive than that you thought I wouldn't figure that out for myself. It's like you don't even know me." He turned back to McGonagall, "Yeah, that's why we haven't been inviting her to our meetings like we were earlier this year."

McGonagall frowned, "I had been wondering about that. But... really?"

Harry frowned and responded to Moody, "It's more likely that you only notice whether people exceed or fall short of your expectations and that your expectations for me have significantly increased since last year. If your expectations are tuned accurately, I should surprise you in positive and negative ways about equally often."

Moody looked at Harry thoughtfully for a moment, "Well, you're right about one thing: my expectations for first year students can only increase." He leveled his wand at Harry, "anyway... finite incantatem... polyfluis reverso... nullus confundio." He continued casting, checking for horcrux possession and other things Harry didn't recognize.

Harry rolled his eyes, "I'm me and I'm not under any spells. I think I would've known. And I don't feel any different now."

"No, you wouldn't know. You'd probably be the last to notice. And now I suspect you don't even have a plan for what to do next."

Harry sighed, "I'll have to think about it."

Harry sat in his office, thinking. He was reasonably certain Moody was wrong, but decided it would still be prudent to check his office for anything suspicious.

He emptied the contents of his pouch onto the desk. He lifted his wand and cast a confundus detection charm at one of his textbooks. Negative result. He moved on to another and continued.

A moment later he stopped and stepped back, looking around at the shelves and back at the pile of objects on the desk. "This is going to take forever. I need a faster way to do this."

"Come in, Harry", Flitwick called.

"Hello, professor. I'm trying to charm something to detect confundus charms, to turn red if it touches something charmed with a confundus and green if it touches something without a confundus."

Flitwick frowned, "That's a relatively straightforward application of arithmancy. I'm surprised you're having an issue."

Harry sighed and handed him a thin wooden rod, resembling a two-foot long wand, "That seems to be a popular opinion recently."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Flitwick inspected the wand with his own, "The charms on this will do exactly what you described."

Harry nodded and opened his pouch, placing his arithmancy textbook, a can of comed-tea, a notebook, and the dueling target on a desk. "Then try it on these things and compare the results with your own detection charm."

Flitwick briefly frowned, then stepped forward. "There's a confundus on the comed-tea, as we already knew. Have you been playing with that again? The other objects are clean." He then touched the objects with the detection-wand. "Green, red, green, and... red? Oh. That's odd."

"Yeah. That's the result I've been getting. Do you have any idea what could do that?"

Flitwick silently cast a series of analytic charms at the dueling target, then at the detection-wand. "Has anything else produced that result?"

"No, it hasn't turned red for anything but the comed-tea and dueling target."

"Well, this is exciting! No one's found a problem with the standard analytic charms in centuries. We should figure out exactly what triggers the false result with the analytic charm on a stick. Lots of people will be interested to know about it. Especially if we can find a case where it also affects the charm when cast directly."

"I have another hypothesis. Can you put the other confundus analysis charms on that rod? To show what a confundus is doing?"

"It's more complicated than that..."

"Can you check whether there's a confundus that does one specific thing?"

"Yes. What are you thinking?"

"Check if there's a confundus that causes people who cast a confundus detection charm to think the result was negative."

Flitwick stared at Harry for a moment, "That's an interesting idea." He silently cast spells at the detection-wand for a moment, then touched the dueling target. The rod turned purple. Flitwick looked up at Harry, surprised, "You were right!"

Harry nodded, "I'm going to call Headmistress McGonagall. She needs to see this."

"It's an interesting use of arithmancy, but I don't know that it's worth her time..."

"Trust me, she'll want to see this. I'll have her meet us in the defense classroom." He walked out, briefly turning back to make sure Flitwick was following.

A short time later, Harry and Flitwick met McGonagall and Moody in the defense classroom.

Moody noted, "It looks like Lockhart's already left for the day."

McGonagall asked, "What is it Professor Flitwick, Mr. Potter?"

Flitwick looked over to Harry. Harry began, "This dueling target has a confundus charm on it-"

Moody quickly cast an analytic charm and interrupted, "No, it doesn't."

"One effect of the charm is to fool people who cast analytic charms at it into thinking there's no confundus."

Moody nodded slowly.

McGonagall said, "That's... disturbing. Anything could be charmed and no one would ever know."

Flitwick elaborated, "You can find them if you charm an object to do the detection for you."

Moody looked around, then turned back toward Harry, "A nearly undetectable curse on a dueling target. So this it then?"

Harry nodded, "I'm pretty sure. I suspect the other targets are the same, but we should check. They're held in the ceiling somehow."

Flitwick gestured his wand at the ceiling, opening it. He cast a series of spells at a roll of parchment. The parchment exploded into shreds which flew out in all directions, collided with every object in the room, then reflected back and formed a scale model of the room, mostly green, but with red spheres at the ceiling. "All of the dueling targets, and only the dueling targets", Flitwick concluded.

Harry commented, "I'm going to need the details on how you did that. Some of those spells should help with another project-"

McGonagall interrupted, "What exactly does this mean?"

Moody turned to McGonagall, "Where did those targets come from?"

"I... don't recall. They still have internal magic, so they can't be more than a few years old."

Harry shook his head, "My previous research hinted that they may be able to absorb magic from Hogwarts."

Moody chuckled softly, "This is definitely it."

McGonagall repeated, "What do you mean?"

Moody smirked, "no matter how you change classrooms or revise syllibi or rename classes, someone's going to teach dueling or defense skills in some form. And that person's classroom is stocked with dueling targets. Apparently not regular dueling targets, but mysterious confundus-charmed dueling targets that no one remembers ordering. And let me guess, Harry- you've been carrying one of them around all year- for some kind of research?"

Harry looked down and nodded.

Moody chuckled again, "Well, I'm taking credit for ending the Hogwarts defense curse."

McGonagall and Flitwick exchanged a surprised glance. Harry just nodded again.

Moody elaborated, "I cast a confundus breaking charm on Harry and a few hours later he's discovered a decades-old confundus curse that Dumbledore couldn't solve. I'm taking credit."

Harry sighed, "Yeah, all things considered, I really should have seen this coming earlier. The way the defense curse reliably results in the dismissal of every professor within the year has similarities to the way comed-tea reliably results in-"

McGonagall interrupted, "So how do we break the curse? Is there a way to remove the protective confundus to see what else it's doing?"

Moody replied, "I'd guess it's lowering people's inhibitions until they do dumb things. That would explain why your defense professors end their careers in diverse ways that were consistent enough with their personalities that no one was ever totally sure the curse existed. And I don't think we should break it until after we get Voldemort out or he might cast something harder to detect. And I don't think we should tell Lockhart, or anyone else about it."

McGonagall scowled, "I know you don't like Lockhart, but you're asking me to allow a teacher to get hurt. Or worse, hurt students."

"We can regularly cast nullio cunfundus at him. He'll be fine. And your students are exactly as safe as they were the last time I told you to fire Lockhart; nothing has changed. Anyway, in the mean time, we should check you office and Harry's office for anything else like this."

Sometime later, two additional confunded objects were discovered, in the Headmistress' office. One was apparently a section of the wall that was difficult to look at directly but otherwise seemed unremarkable.

Moody closed his human eye, pointed his wand in the appropriate direction and cast nullio confundus about twenty times at slightly different points. He announced, "I got it!" He then canceled a disillusionment spell and a small piece of parchment became visible, still stuck to the wall. He walked over and cast a series of analytic charms, then set it on fire. After it burned completely and he had vanished the ashes, he informed the others, "It was an espionage device. Transmits images and sound somewhere else. It was a good one too, no way to trace who was watching, as if we didn't already know. Apparently he had to use different way to spy on us after we stopped inviting the girl to meetings."

The other confunded object was a small fiddly thing with golden wibblers.

Moody frowned, "Do you remember where that came from?"

"Albus made it."

Harry laughed softly. When the others looked at him, he quickly explained, "First, it amuses me that Dumbledore had known about this effect, but used it as a prank and apparently never considered weaponizing it. And second, confunding an object to influence your opponents into defeating themselves is certainly an unusual use of an object in combat. It's certainly something I didn't know could be done with a dueling target last year."

Moody stared at Harry for a moment, "Do you have a workable plan to get Voldie yet?"

"I have... most of a plan. I think we should execute after dinner. I think we'll need lots of aurors and at least one person who still has 6 hours on their time turner for today. And Bones should probably be here too; I'm sure she wants to know what's going on. Let's meet back here at 11 to discuss details, right now I'm starving."

As Hermione walked down the hallway to the Great Hall for breakfast, someone called her name. She turned to see Ginny approaching.

"Hermione, I could really use your help with something if you have a minute..."

Hermione paused for a beat, then put on a friendly smile and replied, "Sure Ginny, what do you need?"