Dumbledore shuffled parchments on his desk and regarded the empty classroom as the last of his students filed out.
Just as Severus said, Harry Potter seemed to be well isolated and friendless. But he was also smart and knowledgeable. Maybe the boy's isolation was working against his plans. After all, all that time spent alone was probably spent in the library or such like. The question was, which was more dangerous… a knowledgeable Harry Potter or a connected one?
He didn't even need to think for longer than a moment. Connected. A connected Harry Potter was far worse than a knowledgeable one. So much depended on people either not caring what happened to the younger Potter or being ready to believe the worst of him.
He seemed to be slowly getting the Lord Slytherin situation under control, but Harry Potter was still a danger. He couldnot allow another Dark Lord to rise. He absolutely - could - not - allow it.
He shuddered and wrestled control over the obsessive thoughts flying through his mind. Damn ritual.
...
For the inner-circle girls of the Gray faction and their secret lordly classmate, the next two weeks flew by in a swirl of classes, studying, training, and politicking. A quick expedition though the pipes, to the third floor corridor, revealed that the defences around the stone had indeed been reset, much to Harry's annoyance.
Hermione did succeed in cracking the VCR programming obstacle, but they then immediately ran into the fidelius trip line the moment they stepped into the next room, causing them to completely forget where the stone was. The Headmaster had then almost nabbed them, and they decided from then on not to make another attempt on the stone until they had a solution.
With Hermione's hint from Madam Pomfrey, those solutions now trickled in like the eternal autumn rain that drizzled outside. The library's restricted divination section contained many tantalising hints and descriptions of all kinds of amazing spells, although they'd yet to find an actual how-to guide.
This was in-part hampered by the limited time they had for the search. Daphne was juggling the political boon of being the troll-slaying Slytherin princess with the fallout from the Bloody Baron taking up the head of Slytherin Hogwarts House.
Many of the students seemed to think Lord Slytherin was playing silly buggers with them, although there were others who pointed out that, terrifying though the Baron was, he was still fairer than Snape.
Harry tap-danced through a couple of meetings with his fellow Gray faction leaders and both Hermione and Daphne received owls from their parents questioning the appointment of the Bloody Baron while both lauding and decrying their Daily Prophet front page troll slaying antics.
Even Ginny had grilled Harry when he'd next dream visited her, even though he hadn't even been there, and Alex's next owl to Lord Slytherin had been one long plea to be taught to 'fight like those kick-ass girls'.
Harry had so many things going on, it wasn't until the start of November, the day of the duelling club tryouts, that he even had time to check in on one of his more unexpected and opportunist projects.
He stood in a secret passageway, holding a note in one hand. He knocked on the lid of a trunk with the other.
The lid opened and a familiar shade of red hair popped out, followed quickly by the hair's head.
"Greetings, Harry," said one of the Weasley twins. "I see you got our little note."
Harry nodded and followed the twin into the trunk. "Yeah." He looked around. The trunk wasn't as big as his, and only contained the one compartment, but it looked serviceable. "So this is your HQ? It looks well used."
The twin who'd let him in beamed and waved to his brother. "It is well used. Got a great deal on it from the man who was selling them."
The other twin raised his head from where he'd been working on something at a bench. "Yeah. We've wanted a secret place to do our projects for ages, but all the hidden passageways at Hogwarts are at risk of being discovered by Filch. Not a problem with this baby." He patted a wooden wall fondly. "When we're finished, we just pop it in our pocket."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "You funded this on our arrangement? I'm surprised you found something like this for so little."
Twin A beamed. "Like we said, we got a good deal. And it wasn't the only thing." He waved to a wall. A small collection of ingredients and materials lined the wall on a shoulder height shelf.
Harry stepped over to the shelf and ran a thoughtful eye along it. "Nice collection of basic raw material," he commented. "Possible applications in potions, enchanting, crafting, and… alchemy?" He looked towards the twins.
Twin A sat down on a rickety looking wooden stool. "That's what we want to talk to you about."
Harry conjured a plush seat of his own causing a round of widened eyes. He sat down. "Go on then."
The twins looked at each other. "Well," Twin B started, sitting at the bench, "We've been working on a few projects since we started Hogwarts."
"To begin with it was mostly how to get around the castle without being spotted by the powers that be-"
"-But last year, we also started working on ideas for… things."
Harry tilted his head. "Things?"
"Well, pranks mostly. But they have other applications as well. When we leave home at the end of Hogwarts we want to be self-sufficient."
"We love our Mum, but she can be a bit overbearing at times."
"And if she had her way, the two of us fun loving jokesters would go to work having our souls sucked out by a nice clean ministry desk and a nice clean ministry badge."
"We've been saving our pocket money and we figured we could get a good product line of joke stuff together to go against Zonko's by our sixth year."
"But half of what we're thinking of making isn't really joke stuff."
"But we also know that actually mass producing stuff like Flume does takes serious gold."
"And we wouldn't have a clue how to go about selling stuff to big name people like the ministries or the old family businesses-"
"-So, we figured we'd stick to joke stuff."
"Stuff we can sell to our classmates or by owl order."
"But…." Twin A stopped tapping the tips of his fingers together from where he'd been resting his arms on his knees. "… Maybe there are other options now."
They both looked at him, expectantly.
Harry leant forward in his chair. "Exactly what kind of 'stuff' are we talking about here?"
Twin B stood up, walked over to a nearby shelf, withdrew several rolls of parchment, and deposited them in a pile in Harry's lap.
Harry unrolled the first one and whistled. "Magical listening-in devices?"
"Yeah, the idea is that the listening bit, what we call the ear, uses mundane methods to pick up the sound, then a special tube-like rune stone in the middle of the line uses magic to transport the sound to a second ear on the other end of the line."
"That way you can get around certain wards designed to stop eavesdropping-"
"-Because there's no actual magic being used within the ward. It's not even 'eclektic.'"
Harry's eyes flicked over the many scribbles surrounding the parchment's drawings. "And the distance?"
"We think we can get up to ten metres distance. The main limitation is the size of the runes."
Harry nodded. This had potential. Certainly as much more than a prank toy. He unfurled the next roll. "A spray can?"
"Not just any spray can. This will be able to store and deliver any potion in a fine mist to a target up to three metres away."
Harry frowned. "You mean like this?" He reached into his pocket and withdrew his empty spray can of drought of living death.
The twin's faces fell. "It already exists?"
...
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