Chapter 97

Movement flickered in the corridor and then a figure stood frozen in the doorway, trapped by the ward Harry had set up. It had its mouth wide open, baring bright, white fangs. Combined with its wide open arms and flashing claws, it looked like a taxidermied bear. Less furry, though. Perhaps a tad more murderous.

"Hi, friend. I'd tell you I'm sorry for the intrusion but I can't really remember being sorry for anything ever and someone told me people would like me more if I was honest more often."

The vampire remained silent, probably due to the fact that she was frozen. She had quite a lot to say, judging by her frantically moving eyes. Her feline pupils darted about looking for any escape. Or blood—vampires were easily distracted.

"What you're probably thinking is something along the lines of, 'Why are you in my house? Why have you turned my chair into a spinny chair?'" He stood up and wandered over to her. "There's a simple answer to both of those questions: I'm Harry Potter."

The vampire probably would have clapped if it could have.

"I realise that that doesn't actually really tell you anything, but isn't being suspenseful fun? More fun than being suspended in mid-air at least!" He laughed to himself.

The vampire, suspended in mid-air, didn't seem as amused.

"Anyway, I understand that you have the extremely valuable book Aedificare Murum written by Ronald Tuba," he said. "Not ring a bell? Talks about building a ward scheme big enough to cover a country—or maybe even a planet—to keep out illegal aliens? Nod with your eyes if you know what I'm talking about."

To Harry's disappointment, the vampire didn't nod.

"This means we're going to have to do the things the hard way, and you're not going to like the hard way."

'You haven't decided what the hard way is yet, have you?' Loki said.

Harry ignored him. He waved his hand and the bookshelf on the wall slid to the side, revealing the safe behind it. He clicked his fingers and the vampire collapsed to the floor. Immediately it tried to turn and dash from the room, but bounced off an invisible wall.

As it turned, snarling, Harry waved his wand. "Fiendfyre!"

A dark fire came raging from his wand, blooming up and splashing against the ceiling. It turned and raced towards the floor before suddenly halting, and slowly retreating until it was a large fireball, with dark shapes writhing just under the surface.

"Are you crazy?" the vampire hissed. "You'll kill us both."

"That's right!" exclaimed a grinning Harry, his arm shaking slightly. "I'm actually pretty trash at this spell and if I don't cancel it in the next twenty seconds it's going to break free."

"You won't." She didn't look so confident.

"You'll find out for sure if you don't open the safe and get me the book."

"It's not here."

"Then I guess we're all going to burn. That's a shame. I always imagined myself dying in a cold, dark alleyway with some hobos or politicians or prostitutes. This is far too classy for my tastes." He shrugged. "Well, we can't always get what we want."

The vampire seemed to realise she was defeated and rushed over to the safe. A moment's magic and it was unlocked and she was thrusting a hefty tome into Harry's hands. It floated up in front of him and magic flickered through the pages.

'Looks legitimate,' Harry said.

'You've never seen this book before. How would you know?'

'I'm really smart, you know. It smells old. Why would it smell old if it wasn't old? And the book we're looking for is old.' Harry flipped the book closed. 'It also says the title on the front.'

"Can you stop the fiendfyre now?"

Harry glanced at her. "Oh, right." He looked at the raging inferno at the tip of his wand. "I can't really do that."

"What?!"

"Well fiendfyre really conflicts with my calm, icy nature, so bringing it back in doesn't ever really go well. It, like, explodes everything." He shrugged. "That's just life I guess." He wiggled the fire around a bit. "You could make me a Portkey to the North Pole, I suppose?"

The runic ward scheme lay sprawled across the floor in front of Harry. He frowned at it. "It just occurred to me—why are we trusting some ancient magic that we aren't even sure work?"

Loki's visage shrugged. "I suppose anything written in Latin just seems trustworthy."

"But shouldn't new magic, like, build on old magic and be better?"

"If magic made sense, it wouldn't be magic."

Harry snorted. "Alright, Professor Dumbledore," he said. "Come to think of it, we should probably ask Dumbledore about the possible negative side effects of this."

"That would probably be the smart thing—"

Harry slotted the Tesseract into its place in the centre. Blue light rushed from it, flowing down the lines painted on the floor. The air hummed with power and the light swelled, pulsing more and more rapidly. Then it receded to only a slight glow and all was calm.

Harry frowned. "I was hoping it would explode. Then I'd have something to do."

"Since it works you do have something to do: track down and eradicate all threats to the Earth. The alien and magical ones at least. I don't think your world-saver ward will detect global warming—though you could probably just fight that by not releasing fiendfyre in the North Pole."

"What, and let the polar bears live on to continue stealing humanity's fish?"

"Perhaps you should tell Fury to get his satellites to spy on them, to ensure they aren't planning anything nefarious."

Harry hummed. "Nah, I'll just get him to get America to stop stopping climate change."

"What could possibly go wrong?"