Shadows Unveiled: The Unbroken

Chapter 54 - 54: Pasta is Fine

For Harry, the rest of the day passed in a blur, filled with chaos. The rest of the order had turned into headless chickens after learning the death of Dumbledore, showing their utter lack of initiative the worst way possible. Even McGonagall, who was in a considerably better condition, looked too shaken to actually do anything.

Considering the Order of Phoenix was supposed to be the bulwark against the darkness Voldemort trying to spread, it wasn't exactly a good display.

It all came to ministry, it seemed. Harry was glad that he had an in with the Amelia Bones, who was the likeliest candidate to take Fudge's place as the Minister.

Even Sirius was not an exception to that rule, walking around in confusion while the others languished in sadness. It would be a lie to say Harry wasn't suspicious of that fact, especially in contrast with the great anger he had been showing when he left Dumbledore's office.

Harry might have written it off as a natural phenomenon of shock, but after five years of overly suspicious circumstances - peaking with Snape's presence in the ambush at the Bones mansion - Harry wasn't willing to give him that credit.

He was glad that Fleur had dropped the cloak in his room after their outdoor adventure, because that allowed him to wear the cloak and follow Sirius for a while, trying to find an opportunity to check.

The opportunity came two hours later, when Sirius decided to go upstairs to pick up something. Harry followed him silently, casting a stunning charm from behind not to take any risk.

Only then he used his wand to cast an impressive number of detection charms, trying to find a spell on him. He failed to do so at first, but that didn't prevent Harry from peeking into Sirius' mind, trying to make sure nothing was out of order.

Sirius' mind was the most chaotic mind Harry had ever stepped on. Years spent in Azkaban left a permanent gloom in his mind, and having an Animagus form he had used repeatedly hardly helped to keep his mind ordinary. Together, they made his mind resemble an endless storm, rain mixing into thunder, ready to pull anything that came close.

However, even in that chaos, Harry could see hints of silver on the edges, desperately trying to worm themselves into the chaos, slowly succeeding despite the resilience of the chaos. The magical constructs were amazing, and against someone more normal, it would barely take minutes to sink into their mind irreversibly, achieving whatever they were supposed to do without leaving evidence behind.

The strength of the spell, combined with the timing, left little doubt about the source of the event.

Apparently, Harry wasn't the only one that was using magic tricks to play with the minds of their allies. Pity, Harry thought. It would have been amazing if Dumbledore taught him that spell, which would have enhanced the efficiency of his conditioning-based approach several times.

"Stingy old goat," Harry murmured as he tried to use his magic directly to unravel the spell, but had little success. He was strong, suspiciously even stronger than he had been expecting compared to Dumbledore, but he still failed to cancel the spell because he was afraid of hurting Sirius.

Luckily, he had other options to negate the damage. This time, rather than casting a spell, he had reached to the spell through legimency, connecting it with his own mind while creating a fake mind for it to manipulate.

The magic slammed to him as hard as a rabid dragon, making him tremble despite targeting the fake mind rather than his mind. Dumbledore might be a manipulating goat, but he was the greatest manipulating goat, with more than a century to perfect his skills almost religiously.

As he tried to fend off the effects of the spell, he started examining the memories that were supposed to be deposed into Sirius' mind as well as the mental conditioning to make sure Sirius worked based on those memories only when certain conditions were triggered.

And after examining some of the memories that had been delivered, Harry had to admit, the world was lucky. Despite his weird manipulative ways, Dumbledore was obsessed with not being evil to the level of total passivity. If he was a proactive evil wizard like Voldemort, Harry doubted that the world could have survived that.

The memories didn't contain Dumbledore's perspective, limited only to the memories he was willing to commit to the spell, but still, the number of details, such as the source of Voldemort's immortality, their probable locations, assumptions about their protections - dangerous enough that one of which apparently responsible for ultimately killing Dumbledore - as well as the names and the sources of information of every single death eaters.

Just from that information, Harry could see that Dumbledore had all the information he needed to make Voldemort's resurrection a very short affair, only to fail spectacularly, which was ironic.

Though despite everything, Harry had to admit that Dumbledore was still had good intentions. Horrible execution, especially thanks to his mismatch between his obsessive need to control everything and his passive approach due to fearing his own power... For example, among his plans, there was an extremely convoluted plan that would somehow allow him to stay alive after willingly sacrificed himself to stop Voldemort, betting on the fact that by doing so, he would destroy another anchor of Voldemort's immortality.

Harry had no intention of following that plan, of course, because it clearly relied on the interaction between half a dozen unstable factors such as his mother's blood magic, Horcruxes, and the way prophecies interacted with reality.

Hopefully, he could find a better solution than a desperate attempt of a crazy wizard.

Harry stayed in Sirius' room for almost two hours, trying to categorize everything dumped by Dumbledore's spell while simultaneously cleaning the memory blocks and a number of compulsions that were supposed to come along with them, as well as monitoring Sirius' mind.

Only after making sure there was no side effect on Sirius or himself, Harry left Sirius' room, leaving him to finish his sleep. He left a note to Hermione about going out for a breather, before directly Apparating into Bones mansion.

He was interested to note that his priority access to the wards was still active. He was surprised, because Amelia Bones clearly was not someone that would let something like that happen. While there was no one in the inner wards, the outside, there were several Auror guards, stationed under a completely different ward scheme to protect them from assault.

Harry stayed near outside to examine the new defensive measures, which was much more than Amelia Bones' current position deserved, even after an immediate attack to assassinate her.

"Her role as the Minister should be even more certain than I expected," Harry murmured even as he continued to examine the wards, curious whether the new structure could block the attack of Voldemort if he struck without warning. After some consideration, Harry decided that it would, but due to splitting wards into two sections, the Aurors that were defending the Manor would have much more significant losses.

And interesting, if inevitable, trade-off to make sure no spy could access the wards to change it like they had done the last time. Considering the dearth of capable managers in the magical world, it was a justified call, even though it was a bit coldblooded.

Considering the results of Dumbledore's obsessive need to make everyone redeem themselves, Harry was more than happy with the existence of someone that could make those cold yet necessary calls.

He just needed to make sure he wouldn't fall on the wrong side of those decisions. And what better way to do that than by using his priority access to Minister to remove that probability.

By any means necessary...

And if having such access could help him smoothly live the next decade, well, Magical world owed that to him after saving them from darkness several times since he was a baby, like some kind of fucked-up baby Jesus spreading miracles. He needed to make sure he had a better ending.

However, his desire to work on his plans disappeared rather quickly when he walked upstairs, only to be distracted by the sound of a shower. Considering Amelia Bones could hardly leave the Ministry while the overwhelming event of Dumbledore's death, Harry had a good guess about the identity of the person in the shower.

He decided to surprise his redheaded friend by sneaking into the shower.

First, he removed his invisibility cloak and put it into his pocket, before removed the rest of his clothes and put them on a corner, getting completely naked - though he still cast a spell to secure the bundle, making it invisible. The mansion was supposed to be safe the last time as well, but that didn't prevent his Potter luck from striking.

Only then he unlocked the shower door with a silent spell, sliding through the door before closing it as silent as possible, trusting the sound of the shower to mask the voices. But when he turned to look at the shower, he met with a sight he wasn't expecting.

It took a moment to process his surprise, because through the obstruction of the steam, what he had seen was more or less what he had been expecting. A young beauty with the curves to die for, beautiful enough to start a war. Her back was turned to him.

There were some differences between what he remembered, and the sight, like slightly smaller - though still large enough to be called huge without being blamed for exaggeration - and a slightly larger ass. Of course, it was only Harry's unique perspective that allowed him to take note of those details even faster than the color of the long hair that was sprawled on her shoulders, a beautiful chestnut brown instead of a healthy red.

Harry didn't need to wait for her to turn before accurately guessing her identity. Hannah Abbot, Susan's best friend who was famous for her silence, and yet another reason why all Hogwarts robes needed to be burned, and the school needed to embrace something closer to Muggle style.

If Hannah was revealing even half of those assets with a modest-length skirt, her reputation as a shy recluse could have never pushed Hogwarts men away.

His thoughts about the dress code were interrupted when Hannah turned to face him, only to freeze completely, her mouth open in shock, making no noise.

After everything, Harry was certainly not self-conscious about his nakedness, so he stood there, waiting for her to say anything. Meanwhile, his eyes were drawn to Hannah's body, recording every single detail of her body before she kicked him out.

He started from her bare feet, which was dainty enough to look amazing in a stiletto, before starting to climb upward, enjoying the sight of her lusciously plump legs, thick enough to be sexy, not thick enough to be classified as fat, wrapped only in water drops.

Since there was no shocked cry kicking him out, his gaze continued to climb upward, reaching the treasure between her legs, which, unfortunately, concealed successfully due to one of her hands firmly pressing on it, helped by the positioning of her legs.

So, he let his gaze climb up even further, widening in appreciation as she tried to contain them with just one arm, which, naturally, failed spectacularly. Her trembling arm barely managed to cover her nipples, even her areolas peeking occasionally while the water continued to dance on the surface of her fair skin.

Seeing she had no intention of actually speaking, Harry spent some time examining the perfect lines of her breasts, their perfection no doubt helped by her natural magic, making his mouth water.

He was glad that he was naked, because otherwise, his raging arousal would have been mighty uncomfortable.

Soon, he let his gaze trail down once more, enjoying the sight of her body again before finally looking at her face, which was almost catatonic in shame, her gaze firmly on the floor, unable to look anywhere, too panicked to even reach for a towel to cover her body.

Just as he was about to say anything, a voice reached from outside. "I'm going to cook some pasta for dinner," Susan shouted from outside. "Do you want anything else?" Hannah naturally failed to answer, which prompted Susan to shout once more. "Hannah, can you hear me?" she asked, her voice getting closer.

That finally managed to push Hannah to answer. She might be extremely shy, but she wasn't stupid. A peek into her mind earlier had shown that Susan had already told quite a bit about their relationship to her best friend, and she was clever enough to know that no explanation could make the scene to Susan, seeing her best friend naked with her 'boyfriend'.

Well, at least what she knew. Harry had a number of entertaining ways of making Susan okay with the full implications of the situation, but Hannah's crippling shyness gave him a different option, amusing enough that he wanted to try just how far he could push her without any magical tricks.

Well, except the one he needed to recover from the current situation. He reached to her mind, suppressing her panic just enough that she finally managed to answer. "Y-yeah, pasta is fine," Hannah said, her gaze still on the floor.

Harry just smiled as he took a step forward, enthusiastic about the next few minutes... It was just what he needed to relax after indirectly battling with Dumbledore for the last few hours...