Harry Potter and the Old Believers

Chapter 01

Tuesday, June 27, 1995

Normally, the week after exams was a noisy one at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This year, the Tuesday after exams was quiet. Only one amongst the students really knew what had happened the previous Saturday, but all knew that another student, Cedric Diggory, had died. They had all seen his body reappear, carried by the other Hogwarts Tri-Wizard Champion. The student who lived, The Boy Who Lived (again), Harry Potter, had been in the infirmary until Sunday evening, and was now only seen briefly as he avoided the Great Hall and other crowded areas as much as possible.

Headmaster Dumbledore had commanded the students not to harass or query Harry, and that an announcement would be made before they left on Friday morning. Most students were more than willing to avoid him. The Hufflepuffs were mourning Cedric more than the rest of the school put together; the Ravenclaws were supporting his girlfriend, Cho Chang; and the Slytherins almost always preferred avoiding Harry Potter on general principle.

The Gryffindors quietly supported Harry by leaving him alone, and silencing anyone who muttered suspicions that Harry might have been to blame for Cedric's death in any manner. With Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, this meant at most a few dirty looks and sharp whispers. Once everyone realized there would be no House Cup awarded that year, silencing the Slytherins already often involved minor hexes and a few split lips. No Gryffindor moved about the castle alone -- they were usually found in groups of at least three for fourth years and above, groups of four or more for the younger students.

It was the end of luncheon, and most of the students were mostly in their Common Rooms, with just a few out on the grounds (it was a chilly day, which accounted for the popularity of the Common Rooms). Only seven students remained at their tables -- three Slytherins and four Gryffindors. As Harry finished his lunch, his close friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, and Ron's sister Ginny, surrounded Harry and let him direct them out of the Hall.

Draco Malfoy and his two followers, Crabbe and Goyle (by now, few people other than their mothers thought of them by their first names) sneered at the quartet in practiced unison. Draco decided to get some air, and so also got up, moving to leave the dining area and go out the front doors. Crabbe and Goyle followed, as usual.

"Poor potty Potter," Draco muttered with a sneer. He had just finished decoding and reading a message from his father, and now had a broad outline of what had happened to Potter the previous Saturday. Reading between the lines, it was in fact rather worrying. Could Potter really have defeated, or at least come out ahead, the Master in a duel?

'No,' Draco decided just as he was almost in range to trigger the doors to open, 'I must be misunderstanding that part. The important thing is, He's back.' That realization gave Malfoy a great deal of confidence -- misplaced, since he didn't realize he as yet had no place in the Dark Lord's hierarchy.

The doors suddenly sprang open, surprising the trio, since they weren't quite close enough to trigger the response. They saw who had triggered it, however; a huge burly man, in what looked to them like Muggle clothing and a scowl on his face.

This should have been surprising. The doors were on alert status, meaning that they should only open to students (including the visiting students from Durmstrang and Bauxbatons), faculty, the Governors, and a few Ministry Officials. All three should have known this meant the man had to be someone important in the School's scheme of things. The thought occurred to none of them.

The man walked up to Draco. Although nowhere near the size of the half-giant Hagrid, this man was some six and half feet tall, and built on equally broad lines as the Care of Magical Creatures instructor. Draco correctly put him at well over 21 stones (ie over 300 pounds) of muscle. The man was dressed strangely, by wizard or Muggle standards, although Draco didn't realize the latter. The man was dressed in worn denim -- jeans, shirt, vest, long jacket, and most oddly, cloak. He wore a blue workman's cap, and dragon-hide combat boots. He had longish black hair, short sideburns, an untrimmed mustache, and piercing dark blue eyes.

"Boy," came a deep bass voice, "do you know where the Headmaster is at the moment?"

Draco had been startled, and had a fair typical reaction for him. To him, this was a Mudblood or more likely squib workman, who should be taught how to address his betters. He sneered and said, "Why ask me, squib?"

Malfoy suddenly found himself slammed against the wall, pinned six feet above the floor by a spell. "'Do not meddle in the affairs of warlocks, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'"

A loud cackling laugh distracted the man, as well as the surprised Crabbe and Goyle. "Poor little Malfoy, pinned like a may-fly!" Peeves the Poltergeist taunted.

"Peeves!" the warlock boomed. "Remember what I said I would do to you the next time I saw you?"

Peeves peered at the man, then screamed and fled through the ceiling.

"Finite Incantatem!"

Draco managed to shift his eyes, and saw Professor Snape, wand out, and a surprised look on his face. "Finite Incantatem!" he said again, but Draco was still stuck up on the wall. He also finally noticed that the stranger didn't have a wand in his hand.

"Who are you?" the man demanded.

"Who am I? I am Professor Snape, potions master. Who are you?"

"Who I am is of no concern to you. Can you give me a civil answer to a simple question? Because if you call me 'squib' like this little twerp, I'll disembowel you on the spot."

Snape gave Draco a slightly disgusted look, then turned a wary eye on the stranger. Any warlock who could pin Draco to the wall without a wand, especially against his own powerful ending spell, was a warlock to be wary of. "He's young, and all student tempers at Hogwarts are strained at the moment. What is your question? After you release him, I'll do my best to answer it."

The man lowered his hand, and Malfoy fell to the ground. "Boy, are you Lucius Malfoy's son?"

"I am," Draco snarled as he got to his knees.

"Tell your father to tell his Master that the Doctor is looking for him."

Draco's eyes widened. None, not even Potter, had ever dared address him or his father in tones like that. "What. . .what do you mean? And Doctor who?"

"Close enough. And it's a message simple enough for a Malfoy to remember." The man shifted his eyes to Snape, ignoring the sputtering Draco as he had ignored Draco's henchmen. "I am looking for the Headmaster. Is he in his office?"

"I believe so." Snape first saw that Draco was physically alright, and hurried to catch up to the stranger, striding quickly towards the Headmaster's office.

The stranger and the pursuing Professor Snape met up with Professors Flitwick and McGonagall, who were approaching the guardian gargoyle from the other end of the corridor. Flitwick stopped in shock, his eyes wide and his jaw open. Snape and McGonagall stared at the two men.

"Filius, Miss McGonagall," the man stated. He waved his hand, and the door opened without a password. "I shall probably talk with you sometime this week or next." McGonagall's face registered extreme confusion, and then shock at least as strong a Flitwick's.

The door shut.

"Who was that?" Snape demanded.

"Well, it looked. . .and sounded. . .like Doctor Titus Pwy," Flitwick said in a bewildered voice.

"Who is?"

"He was my first Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," McGonagall said.

"And my only Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," Flitwick added. "And Albus' for that matter."

"Impossible! That would make him at least fifteen years older than Dumbledore!"

"The Doctor was the most powerful wizard I've ever seen," McGonagall said, still in shock. "But except for his hair, he always looked very young."

"And, come to think of it, the Doctor's whitening hair looked a bit like it was bleached," Flitwick mused. "Those few strands of grey look a lot more natural, but could it be?"

"The Doctor?" Snape asked.

Flitwick smiled at the memory. "He had a Muggle doctorate in Classics. We simply called him 'the Doctor.' If any newcomer asked Doctor who, he'd laugh, because Pwy means 'who' in Welsh."

"That's. . .that's what he said." Snape looked at them. "You meant 'the most powerful, other than Dumbledore, right?"

They both shook their heads. "Most powerful," McGonagall said simply, "or so he seemed at the time. Not as. . .wise or as broadly knowledgeable as Albus, although he was certainly brilliant in most fields."

Flitwick agreed. "True; Charms, Transfiguration, Defense, Runes and languages, History, Astronomy. The most brilliant dueler I've ever seen." A dueling champion in his youth, that was a major compliment from Flitwick. "Quite knowledgeable in potions, although not quite in your or Albus' league, Severus. Not much on Care of Creatures or Arithmancy, although that might have been because we didn't very good teachers for the subjects, then, and he didn't talk much about their areas."

"He certainly mentioned history," McGonagall said. Like most students and faculty throughout the 19th and 20th century, she didn't think much of the History of Magic teacher.

-"He really disliked Binns, before and after he died," Flitwick agreed, remembering talk from his first years on the staff.

"But could that man, who looks about thirty at most, actually be this Pwy? And if he is, how. . .and why is he here?"

"The only answer possible to guess at is to your last question," Flitwick said. "Whomever that man is, he's likely here because of the events of last Saturday."

Albus Dumbledore was studying his pensieve, when a sharp knock on his office door startled him. Startled him, because he normally was aware of anyone coming close to his office. That this approach hadn't rather disturbed him, although he quickly decided he had been deeper in study than normal. "Come in?"

Dumbledore came to his feet as the big man came in, shocked.

"Hello, Mister Dumbledore. You haven't been too successful keeping the peace recently, have you?"

"Doctor Pwy?"

Fawkes flew off his perch and lit on the man's shoulder. "Hello, Fawkes. Looks like he's at least been taking good care of you since I've been gone." He stroked the phoenix. "How's my best friend at Hogwarts." The phoenix trilled a short burst of happy song.

"How?"

"I left after nearly thirty years here because it was becoming too obvious I wasn't aging normally. Bleaching small parts of my hair white wouldn't work any more and people like you can see glamours. There wasn't a good faux aging potion that I could take long term back then, either. I also left, as I said at the time, to defend America from Grindelwald's stooges. I could hardly come back unaged. I helped clean up the remains of problems in the US, and then went into research for over a decade, partially on my own, partially at the Sefydliad. I then went back to a Muggle university, and ended up getting another Muggle doctorate, again in ancient history, this time specializing in Egyptology and ancient Mesopotamia. I've been teaching for the last thirty years; this gave me access to Muggle-controlled areas of Egypt, where I made some interesting discoveries."

He sighed. "I really enjoyed my time in the Muggle world. Still, I knew I would have to retire soon. I still own the valley in the far west, almost inaccessible to Muggle or magic, but I didn't feel like retiring back there again, like I did in the Fifties. So, I started getting back into greater touch with the general Magical world just before Christmas. I didn't like what I was reading. I came here in late May, setting up a new persona in Muggle London, just in case I need it. Then, I heard part of what happened Saturday night. He's back, isn't He?"

"He is."

"Then I am, too. Harry Potter may be the key, but I cannot let him bear all the weight you seem to have put upon him."

"How are you here? Not why, we can discuss that later. How?"

The man shrugged. "An unrecreatible accident back in Eighteen-ninety, when some other students and I were trying to make a Philosopher's Stone, or Sorcerer's Stone if you prefer. Essentially, it seems as if I age about a year for every ten. Surely you must have suspected?"

"No, I didn't." Dumbledore looked abashed. "So, you are. . . ."

"I was a hundred and twenty-three a few days ago. I probably look a little under thirty, right?"

"True."

"Now, tell me everything I need to know. Then, I'll think about it, and then we can talk about possible . . . situations and solutions."