Harry Potter and The Shadowed Light

It begins

Harry Potter and the Shadowed Light

Chapter 38

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Previously

For the next few hours Harry watched in fascination as between them they mapped out his mates return. He had never known just how much sway Narcissa had in the social circles until this point. He was honestly in awe and more than slightly wary of the blonde woman. She knew gossip about everybody and had blackmail on even more, he had though Lucius was a good social manipulator yet compared to his wife he was a novice.

Seeing his face Sirius laughed.

"What did you expect from a Black?" he asked, grinning with pride at his cousin. At one point this level of manipulation would have horrified him, but now he could appreciate the delicacy of it. Why fight a war with spells when you can win it with a few well placed words?

By the end of the night they had a game plan, and Marvolo was set to slowly rejoin the world starting with the new season of the Wizengamot where he would re-claim the Slytherin Lordship and seats.

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Meanwhile

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August 31st, headmasters office, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Albus knew something was happening, he could feel it in the air and he knew it had something to do with that damn brat. He needed Harry Potter to fight the Dark Lord, he needed that traitorous brat to come to heel and start listening to his superiors. Why the brat couldn't just follow the carefully laid out plans he didn't know, but it was infuriating... Decades of preparation would not go to waste, he refused to allow it.

To make things worse, his subtle attempts at getting his plans back on track using the Longbottoms had been shutdown with a finality that had jarred him. Neville Longbottom wasn't his first choice of friend for the brat but he was better than nobody, yet his subtle hints towards Augusta had been rejected; the proud woman flat out telling him to leave her grandson and his friends alone before unflinchingly telling him to leave and not to darken her doorstep again unless it was a matter of Neville's education, and even then to send somebody else. He had hoped she would be reasonable, that the tragedy of Frank and Alice's situation and the cause behind it would make her manageable but his clever hints and manipulations had made the bitter woman even frostier. No, he couldn't use the Longbottom boy, and the rest of Harry's friends were too dark or too protected for him to try to sway to his cause, if only the brat would see reason...

//

The Hogwarts express, September 1st

"Promise me you'll save a copy of Dumbledore's face when he first sees you at the autumn Wizengamot meeting," Harry begged, his reluctance to be parted from Marvolo obvious in how he hung from the man as they said their goodbyes.

"I will," he promised, smirking at the thought of the man's reaction.

Marvolo's official reintroduction into society was planned for the autumn session of the Wizengamot, however he had subtly been sending out feelers to his old contacts and solidifying his alias's background with well placed bribes to make his return as smooth as possible. Many of his old followers and sympathisers had been contacted, and his web of influence was once again being spread across the UK and into Europe. The subtle placement of documents, forged and official had been filed and delivered into the correct places and Marvolo was pleased with the deviousness that his minions had been working. He couldn't risk Dumbledore or any of his sycophants being able to poke holes in his new identity; he now had school records from the Durmstrang Institute showing and impressive but not obscene set of OWLs and NEWT scores and a Mastery in the Dark Arts and Defence against the Dark Arts from the Bulgarian Ministry Of Magic. He had photographs in old archives, news paper clippings of false achievements and even people who could and would recall a gifted but not socially exuberant young man who attended classes and a few social gatherings but overall didn't leave much of an impression.