Harry Potter: Multiverse Maelstrom: Chapter 8: The Lies of the Ledgers

The somber atmosphere from the end of the last chapter still clung to the audience like a shroud. The image of the small boy fleeing into the cold night, leaving behind a school that had become as much a prison as his abusive home, was a wound that wouldn't close. The Hogwarts staff, particularly Professor McGonagall, sat in stony, guilt-ridden silence.

"A sad tale," Jack said, his voice softer than usual. He swirled the ice in his cup, the clinking sound echoing in the quiet hall. "But a necessary one. It shows what happens when loyalty fails and friendship is broken." He took a deep breath and his more familiar, detached smirk returned. "But the story isn't over. The boy may be gone, but the ripples of his departure are just beginning to spread. Let's watch the chaos unfold."

The screen, which had been dark, lit up once more, returning to the hallowed, and now deeply shamed, halls of Hogwarts castle.

<Chapter 3 Start>

When she confronted the Gryffindors and asked for information, they weren't feeling guilty in the least, saying that they were better off without that dark wizard and that the heir of Slytherin could die for all they cared. Only then the teachers truly realised how badly things had spiralled out of control.

The words hit the Gryffindor section of the audience like a physical blow. The pride, the boisterous camaraderie, the very identity of the house of the brave, all seemed to curdle and turn sour.

"No," James Potter said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He wasn't looking at the screen, but at the scarlet and gold banners that seemed to hang mockingly in the air. "That is not Gryffindor. That is not the house I led. That is cowardice. That is bigotry. That is everything we fought against."

"To say they'd be better off if he died?" Sirius Black was shaking his head in disbelief, his face a mask of disgust. "That's Death Eater talk. That's the kind of poison that comes out of my mother's mouth. To hear it from Gryffindors..." He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

Professor McGonagall closed her eyes, a single tear tracing a path down her wrinkled cheek. Her lions had become a pack of jackals. "I have failed," she whispered, a confession of utter defeat. "As their Head of House, I am responsible for their moral character. And in this world, I have allowed it to rot from the inside out. I have nurtured bullies and bigots."

Snape, for his part, watched with a cold, triumphant sneer. "And there you have it," he said, his voice dripping with condescending satisfaction. "The famed Gryffindor courage. So bold when facing a troll, yet so terrified of a boy who can speak to snakes that they hound him from his home. Their bravery, it seems, is merely a mask for their prejudice."

Searches in Diagon Alley didn't bring them any results. Nobody had seen the boy and the goblins stated client confidentiality and that nobody but the legal guardian of the boy could demand that they gave up his location... Dumbledore tried arguing that he was Harry's magical guardian, but the goblins denied that claim, stating that he wasn't his guardian according to their record, which never lied. They wouldn't give up the identity of Harry's guardian either though.

The scene shifted to the pristine marble halls of Gringotts, where the alternate Dumbledore stood, looking old and desperate, before a stoic goblin teller.

"The Ministry records are clear," Cornelius Fudge huffed from his seat. "Dumbledore was assigned magical guardianship by the Wizengamot! For the goblins to deny it is an affront to the Ministry's authority!"

Griphook let out a dry, rasping chuckle. "The Ministry's paper proclamations are of no consequence to the ancient magic that governs Gringotts' ledgers. Blood and intent are what bind our records, not the scrawlings of wizarding bureaucrats. If our records state he is not the guardian, then he is not the guardian. It is that simple."

Dumbledore, the real Dumbledore, looked deeply troubled. "I never questioned the Ministry's designation," he admitted. "I assumed the authority was lawfully mine. But goblin magic... it operates on a different, older level. If their records contradict ours, it means there is a piece of this puzzle I have been missing for over a decade."

The question hung in the air, unspoken but felt by all: If Dumbledore wasn't his guardian, who was? Sirius Black leaned forward, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. It was supposed to be me.

All attempts of others, including when Dumbledore presented Harry's aunt, were useless. None of them was his legal guardian. It ended with Dumbledore leaving Hogwarts for a few days to thoroughly search the Ministry archives to find out who his guardian was.

Petunia Dursley, who had been silent until now, let out a noise of pure indignation. "He dragged me to that... that freak bank? To be stared at by those... creatures?" The idea of being involved in the magical world, even to deny a responsibility she never wanted, was utterly offensive to her.

"And you're not his guardian either," Lily said, her voice soft but laced with steel. She was looking at her sister, truly looking at her, for the first time since they had arrived. "You took him in, Petunia, but you never once cared for him. You were a warden, not a guardian." The truth of the words left Petunia speechless, her face a pinched mask of resentment.

Harry Potter meanwhile couldn't care less about the chaos he had caused in the wizarding world and that they were searching for him. He sat in his lounge and read through the books for sixth and seventh year at highschool. He had easily managed to get an appraisal of the best schools in London from the London library as with him inheriting a massive fortune from his parents, they even had an account at the Bank of England in his mother's name filled with one and a half million pounds, he could easily pay for the best schools.

The scene cut abruptly from the gloomy, frantic search in the wizarding world to the warm, brightly lit interior of the Potter flat. The alternate Harry was curled up on a comfortable sofa, surrounded by books, a cup of tea steaming on the table beside him. He looked... happy. Peaceful. The contrast was staggering.

But it was the detail about the money that caused the next uproar.

"One and a half million pounds?!" Arthur Weasley gasped, his mind struggling to even comprehend such a sum in Muggle currency. "In his mother's name?"

Lily Potter stared at the screen, her brow furrowed in utter confusion. "But... that's impossible. My parents were comfortable, yes. My father was an engineer, my mother a homemaker. They had a nice house, a car... but they weren't millionaires. Where would that kind of money have come from?"

Petunia’s face was a study in pure, undiluted envy. Her entire life had been a struggle for middle-class respectability, and all this time, her freak sister had been sitting on a secret fortune? The injustice of it all was so overwhelming that she couldn't even speak, she could only fume.

Jack cleared his throat, deciding to offer some context. "An interesting little wrinkle in this reality. Perhaps your father, Mrs. Potter, was a more successful engineer than you knew. A few patents, a wise investment... Muggle money can multiply in ways magic can't. Or maybe," he added with a mysterious smile, "it's just a convenient plot point."

He wondered why he hadn't known how wealthy his family had been before, but he suspected that nobody wanted to give him ideas of leaving the Dursleys for good. How anybody could think that he would see that place as home he didn't know, but Dumbledore, who according to Hagrid had left him there, had to be aware of Harry's reaction to being able to live somewhere else, or he wouldn't have taken steps to prevent that Harry found out.

The accusation, so similar to the one made by the imposter in the last story, landed with renewed force because it came from a boy who felt so much more like the real Harry.

The real Harry looked over at Dumbledore, the same question in his eyes. "Professor... did I... did my parents have a house? Other than Godric's Hollow?"

Dumbledore met his gaze this time, his own eyes filled with a pained honesty. "Yes, Harry," he said softly. "The Potter ancestral home. It was placed under a Fidelius Charm, but after your parents' death, the location became... inaccessible. I did not tell you because I believed the only place the blood wards would hold was with your mother's sister. It was a decision made for your protection, but I have come to see that I deprived you of your heritage in the process. For that, I am truly sorry."

The confession, freely given, was a world away from the accusations being leveled at his alternate self on the screen. But the core truth remained: Dumbledore had kept secrets, and those secrets had cost Harry a childhood.

While he didn't understand too much about his finances yet, he knew that he was more than loaded and could easily get himself the best possible education far away from stupid Hogwarts. He could eat as much as he wanted, he could do things in his free time that he had longed to try, but was never allowed and he could finally be free of the stupid fame for something he didn't even remember.

The simple joys this Harry was discovering—eating as much as he wanted, having free time, being anonymous—were a heartbreaking litany of everything the Dursleys had denied the real Harry.

"Far away from stupid Hogwarts," McGonagall repeated, the words like a knife in her heart.

"He's free," Lily said, her voice filled with a complex mix of sorrow and relief. "For the first time in his life, he's truly free. Safe, well-fed, and able to choose his own path." She looked at James, her eyes asking a silent question. Is this not what we would have wanted for him?

Like he had suspected he didn't have much trouble with the material in any class. Maths was a little challenging... he could cover those in two weeks. ... Perhaps he could say that he had been sick for a month and had therefore missed a lot of classes before he and his family had moved to London.

"Catching up on a year of Muggle secondary school in two weeks?" Hermione said, a note of pure, unadulterated academic respect in her voice. "He truly is brilliant. I always said he didn't apply himself enough." She then seemed to realize what she was saying and blushed. "Not that I blame him, of course, with everything else he had to deal with."

Snape sniffed derisively. "Muggle subjects are laughably simplistic. Any wizard of average intelligence could master them in a fortnight."

The ease with which this Harry planned his return to the Muggle world, his confidence in his ability to fit in, only highlighted how much of a stranger he felt in the world he was supposed to belong to. He was more comfortable planning a lie for a Muggle teacher than he was facing his own housemates.

Albus Dumbledore sighed tiredly in his chair. He had been running around trying to find out who Harry's guardian could be and the riddle was still unsolved. The Ministry records were faulty. ... His aunt wasn't his guardian either, even if she had functioned as that since November 1981. From what she had told him, more like yelled at him, she didn't have any documents for Harry and had never bothered to get them.

The scene cut back to Dumbledore's office. The alternate Headmaster looked exhausted, defeated, surrounded by piles of useless parchment.

"So she never even legally registered him as her ward?" Amelia Bones exclaimed, her monocle nearly popping out. "The boy has been a ghost in the Muggle system for a decade! No birth certificate on file, no school registration beyond the local primary... he could have vanished without a trace and no one would have known!"

"She only enrolled him in primary school because the neighbours would have talked otherwise," Remus said, his voice laced with contempt. "Not out of duty or care, but to maintain her own pathetic facade of normality."

This was such a mess. He hadn't realised with all the trouble being caused from the opening of the Chamber, how the students had mistreated Harry. Oh, he had known that they had shunned him for speaking parseltongue, but he had been sure that part would blow over with time. And a bit of adversary wouldn't harm Harry.

The final lines of Dumbledore's monologue landed with the force of a physical explosion. Lily Potter was on her feet in an instant, her face white with a rage that eclipsed any she had shown before.

"A BIT OF ADVERSARY WOULDN'T HARM HARRY?!" she screamed, her voice echoing through the vast hall. Every head turned towards Dumbledore, who flinched as if he had been struck.

"Lily, please..." he began.

"Don't you 'Lily, please' me, Albus Dumbledore!" she cried, her voice breaking with fury and grief. "My son was being beaten and starved in that house for ten years! A house you put him in! And when he finally gets to the one place he should have been safe, you see that he's being shunned and ostracized, and you think to yourself that a little more suffering would be good for his character?! What kind of monster are you?!"

James and Sirius were right beside her, their expressions equally thunderous. "We trusted you, Albus," James said, his voice dangerously quiet. "We trusted you with our son's life. And you treated him like a pawn in one of your games. A piece to be hardened and sharpened through suffering."

"And what was your endgame, Albus?" Sirius snarled. "After all that 'adversary' made him tough enough, what then? Was he supposed to just march off and die for you?"

The accidental, horrifying accuracy of Sirius's question hung in the air. The real Harry stared at Dumbledore, the phrase "sacrificial lamb" echoing in his mind. Dumbledore could not meet his eyes. He could not meet any of their eyes. He simply sat there, the weight of his alternate self's callousness—and the echoes of his own—crushing him into silence.

The problem was that he didn't have anybody while the school turned against him, and that it didn't end with shunning. No, whenever no teacher was close, students had hexed Harry and their spells had become more and more hurtful.

The final sentence confirmed their worst fears. It wasn't just whispers and isolation. It was physical assault. The teachers' collective failure was complete. They had not only failed to provide emotional support, but they had also failed in their most basic duty: to keep their students safe from harm within the castle walls.

The screen went dark, but the damage was done. The trust between Dumbledore and the Potters was shattered. The staff of Hogwarts was disgraced. And somewhere in an alternate London, a twelve-year-old boy was happily studying Muggle physics, blissfully unaware that he had just dismantled the legacy of the greatest wizard of the age without casting a single spell.

<Chapter 3 End> was displayed on the screen.