This story about Harry Potter playing with runes and upsetting the applecart that is Magical Britain is shared with everyone on FanFiction for fun.

End of Third Year! And how long until that new movie gets released?

Chapter 13: What Happened to the Grim?

In the chaos of the last two days at Hogwarts in June, Harry teamed up with Justin Finch-Fletchley and surprisingly Hermione Granger to rescue a Hippogriff scheduled to be executed because it clawed Pansy Parkinson in Care of Magical Creatures just after the beginning of the Spring Term.

Harry was shocked to learn that Granger had a time turner (OF ALL THE STUPID IDEAS…), and she thought they could jump back in time to free the creature. Standing just outside the front door of Hogwarts, the three students bounced back two hours. There, they dodged being seen and freed the Hippogriff. The creature flew away, displaying a level of intelligence many wizards didn't have. While running back to the castle with Justin and Hermione, Harry witnessed someone on the other side of Black Lake standing over a prone Sirius Black as the swarm of Dementors descended on them. And this person cast a spell. The Patronus that erupted on the far side of the lake from his spot near the castle made the Dementors flee with the stag chasing after them.

'Was that my dad? No, he's dead…then who did that?' Harry's thoughts were very confused. 'It looked like my dad!'

Then the teenagers hurried back to the castle as time caught up with them just outside the front door. They 'felt' time pop, and after looking around, Harry asked, "Miss Granger, did we go backwards or forwards in time?"

"What do you mean? Backwards, of course," replied.

"Then why was it already dark when we freed the hippogriff?" Harry asked as he pointed up. "But now the sun is still in the sky?"

Justin intervened and asked, "Why does it matter? We saved Buckbeak and got back without any harm."

Nodding his head, Harry said, "You're right Fletchley."

"Thanks for your help, Potter," the Hufflepuff said while Hermione remained silent. The three of them turned to enter Hogwarts just as they heard the screams of a terrified Ron Weasley. A large dog – the Grim – had one of Weasley's legs in its mouth and dragged the wizard toward the Whomping Willow. Harry ran toward the dog and Ron as they vanished down the hole in the ground while Justin and Hermione went for help.

The pair would go to Percy Weasley, Professor Sprout or Professor Flitwick – none of them counted on help from Snape, McGonagall, or Dumbledore. Racing across the grounds, Harry was joined by Professor Lupin, who followed Harry down the hole in the ground near the Whomping Willow and into the ruins of the Shrieking Shack. There Harry confronted the crazed man who called him 'James'.

"Sirius, what are you doing?" Lupin asked with his wand aimed at the escaped convict while Harry tried to calm Ron. However, Weasley would not shut up, so Harry stunned his some-time friend and turned his wand on Sirius Black.

Harry demanded, "Why did you hurt Ron? His leg's broken!"

"It's the rat!" insisted Sirius. "The rat is Peter Pettigrew."

With Lupin keeping an eye on Sirius Black, Harry went back and searched through the pockets of Ron's outer robe. In one pocket, Harry found the stupefied rat.

'My stunning spell got Ron and the rat.'

"Look at his front paw! He's missing a toe on his front left paw – same as the finger Peter cut off on the street in Manchester that day. He blew up the gas main and killed the mudbloods to cover his escape into the sewers!" Sirius explained with an angry tone in his voice. "I was hysterical that day! Then the Aurors showed up, and next thing I know, I wake up in Azkaban."

Thinking furiously, Harry knew the rat wasn't Peter Pettigrew. He had the figurine made from Pettigrew in his book bag. This was some domesticated rat that a runic array had glamoured to look like the rat called Scabbers by Percy Weasley and then Ron Weasley.

To deflect interest from the rat for a moment, Harry asked, "Wait…didn't you get a trial?"

"No, no trial and no one spoke up for me," Sirius said, snarling at Remus. "We were best friends for almost ten years, and you never said anything to anyone. You believed them!"

"Sirius…" Remus said softly.

"Save your breath," Harry told the DADA professor. Turning back to Black, he asked. "Did you betray James and Lily Potter to the Dark Lord?"

"No, James…James, you're the most important person in the world to me. You and your boy, I would never allow anything to harm you," Sirius insisted, and Harry noticed that his mother wasn't mentioned, but he decided not to question this.

Before the conversation could go any further, Severus Snape came through the door that led into the tunnel from the Whomping Willow. The disagreeable potions master had wand out while muttering threats at Sirius Black. The potions professor pulled a potion bottle from his robes and threw it toward Remus.

"Drink your potion, you fool. The moon rises in just a few minutes," he snarled. Embarrassed, the werewolf turned up the bottle and drank the wolf's bane potion. With everyone's attention on Remus, Harry released his spell from Scabbers before throwing the rat onto a nearby table.

"Peter!" shouted Black, pulling the attention of Snape and Lupin back to the moving creature. All three wizards began to throw spells at the rat and each other. Harry ignored the wizards and levitated Ron through the doorway and away from the battle. Once Ron was safe, Harry turned around to find Sirius Black and Professor Snape hurrying toward the exit from the shack.

Harry was pushed into the hole, and he fell, pushing the floating Ron ahead of him.

"Go, get out…Moony's about to come out for his monthly visit, and we gotta get out of the way," Sirius shouted. "Even a calm werewolf is terrible company."

Closing the door to the Shrieking Shack behind him, Snape growled, "The wolfsbane makes the wolf calm and keeps Lupin in his right mind. But we can't be around him."

Pushing 'James' and the stupefied Ron Weasley ahead of him, Sirius hurried through the tunnel while Snape lingered to ensure the door stayed closed. Harry climbed out at the end of the tunnel near the Whomping Willow, and Sirius followed, but then the crazy escapee closed the hole, trapping Snape in the tunnel.

"Snivelous will be safe if he closed the door into the shack. Moony always stays in that one room, and the two will rescue each other in the morning," Sirius said. "Or they'll kill each other tonight…I don't care."

In the moments that followed, Sirius forced Harry to desert Ron and led 'James' away from the castle. They stopped for a moment at the edge of Black Lake to talk, but the convict grew angry when the teenager insisted that he was 'Harry' not 'James'.

"Don't try to prank me, James. Harry's just a baby!" Sirius growled. "Now, let's get out of here!"

"No, I'm not going anywhere with you!"

Breaking into tears, Sirius attempted to grab Harry's wand, but the young wizard's quick reflexes allowed him to jump back and cast the stupefy spell on Sirius as the air turned cold, the lake froze over, and the Dementors descended on them.

CHANGE SCENE: THE DEMENTORS

Harry Potter stood over the unconscious form of the man who claimed to be his godfather. The presence of the horde of Dementors descending on them crept into his soul and left him feeling cold and lost. But then he remembered watching this scene from the other side of the lake just an hour ago. He'd helped Justin and Hermione manage the escape of the hippogriff Buckbeak from the ministry executioner.

'I thought it was my dad, but it was me. I cast the Patronus,' he remembered.

Aloud he said, "I cast the Patronus! It was me that drove them away!"

Lifting his wand in his right hand and wrapping his left hand bearing his rune ring to magnify his spell around the first hand and wand, he smiled, remembering the look on Dobby's face when he flooded the room of requirement, the other successes with his runes, creating gold, laughing with his quidditch teammates, and learning with the other students this year.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry yelled, putting his left hand with his magnification power ring on top of his right hand, holding his wand, and willing every jewel of magical power at his disposal into the spell. Without a moment's passing, Prongs exploded from the end of his wand and leapt forward to attack the Dementors. The young wizard stared as the figure galloped away – Prongs was huge, corporeal, and raging mad that Dementors dared to threaten his wizard again. In just a moment, the stag barrelled into the crowded black cowls and ripped them to shreds with antlers and hooves. The Dementors turned to flee, but Prongs pursued them stamping several as others met their end on the points of his sharp antlers.

Unexpectedly, Harry saw a fireball streak across the sky toward the front of the fleeing Dementors and join the fray, setting Dementors on fire and turning others back that flew into the antlers of Prongs.

"Hehe…" Harry giggled, feeling lightheaded from casting so much magic and watching Prongs kill Dementors, and then Fawkes, the headmaster's phoenix, joined the battle. He sat on the ground and called out, "Dobby."

The elf popped up immediately, and before he could cry or shout at Harry, the young wizard said, "Find Ron Weasley. He's near the Whomping Willow and needs to go to the infirmary then come back here. I'm going to petrify-shrink-move Sirius Black. If it doesn't work, we'll think of something else."

Holding out his left hand where the rings he'd made were, he thought to make the petrify-shrink-move one visible. Then he muttered, "Go."

The man's body vanished, and Harry felt in his pocket to clasp a figurine. Then he lay down on the grass to rest as a search party from the castle approached. When Dobby returned, Professor Flitwick was levitating a sleeping Harry Potter back toward the castle.

Change Scene

Prongs and Fawkes hunted Dementors across the length and breadth of Britain. After killing the swarm around Hogwarts, the hunters visited the Ministry for Magic underneath London and destroyed the six Dementors kept there to be the executioners for the Wizengamot. There were screams from the creatures as the corporeal Patronus and phoenix crushed and burned the foul creatures.

Dolores Umbridge, recently re-hired as an entry-level clerk, attempted to interfere, and vanished in the Phoenix fire. She wasn't seen for several weeks while her hair regrew. Other ministry workers fled the building, citing headaches and upset stomachs. Many of these individuals never returned to the building. Minister Cornelius Fudge was forced to accept a new cadre of Aurors as his security force as the four previous Aurors were among the people to flee the building in tears.

During the attempt to save the ministry Dementors, Albus Dumbledore was summoned from Hogwarts to tame his phoenix, but the magical bird flew over the headmaster's head to splatter him with chalk. Then, the glittering stag charged along the passageway knocked the headmaster, minister and Aurors into the wall, with Fawkes swooping back again in a ball of flames to burn the tips of the headmaster's beard and moustache while completely removing the wizard's eyebrows.

Later that same day, Prongs and Fawkes descended on Azkaban, where they destroyed every Dementor in the prison. The doors and windows of the prison were sealed by Patronus and Phoenix magic to prevent any Dementor from escaping. The pair cleared the prison from top to bottom and then ventured into the underground caverns created when the prison was lifted from the earth. Not a single Dementor survived in the whole of Magical Britain. An unexpected side effect of the visit by the Patronus and Phoenix to Azkaban was that every Death Eaters imprisoned within the walls of the stone fortress fell unconscious. Without medical care, they died over the next two weeks.

In the sky over Hogwarts, two shooting stars fell on the castle, and the inhabitants of Hogsmeade watched with some excitement – the hunters had returned to Hogwarts. Fearful of being attacked, Dumbledore hid in his office with his wand in his hand and waited for the 'creatures' to arrive. He confessed many of his sins to the portraits in his office, hopeful they would absolve him of those sins. The headmaster watched without comment while the elves removed every object from his office that was not an actual personal belonging of Albus Dumbledore. Impulsively, the headmaster rushed up the stairs to his sleeping chamber, where he changed into his flashiest robes before returning to sit on his throne behind his desk and wait.

The evening passed quietly, and when the phoenix and Patronus did not rampage into his office, the headmaster began to feel hopeful and glanced out his window toward the Forbidden Forest. There, he could see bright lights and fires as the phoenix, and the Patronus stag destroyed the colony of giant spiders. Once the spiders were extinct around Hogwarts, Fawkes sang a song of thanksgiving and bowed toward Prongs, who slowly faded from sight.

That following day, Fawkes moved into the owl tower and always took her meals in the kitchens that summer. She sat beside different students in the Great Hall at breakfast and supper each day the next school year. The children enjoyed the stories the Phoenix sang and were glad to feed her the grapes and other fruits placed on the table in a large bowl by the elves. That was the closest she ever got to Albus Dumbledore again. (Even after Dumbledore's death, years later, Fawkes never visited his statue that was erected on the castle grounds by some admirers. However, the postal owls seemed to make continual flights over the marble statue and mark it with their chalk.)

CHANGE SCENE

Waking in the infirmary that night, Harry reached for his glasses as Madam Pomphrey appeared at the door to her quarters.

"Harry Potter! For months, you don't come to visit but then turn up the very last night!" she complained in a good-natured tone. "Your bed was ready for you, but you wait until the last day to visit?"

"Sorry, Madam Pomphrey," he replied bashfully.

"Don't be," she replied with a smile. "This means you've been safe all year – well, relatively safe. And the only problem tonight was a case of using too much magic at once."

The medi-witch cast several spells and frowned before saying, "Your core seems to have already refilled itself. I know that elf pops in every five minutes to check on you…like he expected you to wake up before the sun came up."

"What happened?"

"Professors Flitwick, Sprout, Young McGonagall, and Babbage went looking for you while Percy Weasley called for Aurors. That aggravated the headmaster and minister for magic, but who cares?" Pomphrey explained. "Young Weasley appeared first, and then Flitwick brought you to me to be treated for your injuries. Ron's broken leg was set, and I dosed him with skele-grow quick to shut up his whining. That pesky elf appeared and cast a strong notice-me-not charm around you when Lord and Lady Old Weasley appeared through the floo to retrieve their son."

"Who?"

Smiling, Pomphrey explained, "Arthur was awarded the title of Lord Old Weasley because of a ring the goblins found this spring. It goes to the youngest son in the family and makes them a Lord in the Wizengamot. Arthur's the youngest in his family. And now Ronald Weasley is Heir Old Weasley."

"Yeah, I heard and I'm happy for Ron," Harry replied honestly, but then he saw the smirk on the medi-witch's face.

"Your friend is going to have a miserable summer. He has etiquette lessons, table manners and revision classes every single day ahead of him from now to 1 September when he can escape back to Hogwarts."

Harry snickered but hoped that Lady Longbottom wouldn't invite Ron to the lessons for Neville and himself. He asked, "Can I get out of here?"

"It's the middle of the night," she said, then checked the time and sighed. "Well, it's only an hour before dawn, so you can leave if you promise to go back to the dorm and not get into more trouble."

"How about I go to the classroom I used to study?" he asked. "And I promise to go to breakfast with everyone before the train. All my stuff is packed."

"Where is your trunk?" Poppy asked.

Harry looked around for his robes and reached inside a pocket to find the matchbox-sized trunk that he held up. "Here."

Her eyes narrowing, she asked, "How will you expand it when you get back to the muggles?"

"It's real easy," he said, setting the miniature trunk on the bed and tapping it with one finger. The trunk immediately returned to normal size. "And I can shrink it to hide from my relatives by doing the same thing."

He tapped the full-sized trunk with one finger, and it shrank back down to the size of a matchbox.

"Very good. Just don't tell anyone."

"Why?"

"That's elven magic, and the headmaster would have a fit if he saw that."

Harry didn't tell the medi-witch the magic was a runic array shrunk into a tiny pebble and attached to the inside of the trunk's lid. That was seventh-year level schoolwork which would have given the headmaster even more reason to be unpleasant.

As soon as he stepped beyond the infirmary doors, Harry made sure the figurine of Sirius Black was in his pocket. Glancing at the petrified and shrunken wizard for only a second, he returned it to his pocket. Then he turned invisible, and with silent steps, no scents or breath, Potter made his way to his private classroom where Dobby had the last of the notebooks and experiments packed up. This item was quickly added to his trunk and the figurine of Sirius Black.

Then, standing in the centre of the room, Harry said aloud, "Thank you, Lady Hogwarts. This room has helped me more than you know!"

Dobby popped into the room with a large vase of roses that he handed to his Mr Harry Potter. Taking the vase in his hand that he sat on the desk, Harry continued, "I hope you enjoy the beauty of these flowers, and the ghosts can enjoy the scent."

CHANGE SCENE

The sun was up, and Harry made his way to the Great Hall by this time. After a time, he was joined by his dormmates and the other students. The tales of his adventure the previous night were not known, and while everyone noticed the absence of Ron Weasley, only Justin asked about the missing Gryffindor.

Harry explained, "I understand from Madam Pomphrey that his parents collected him last night. His injuries meant he returned home with them last night."

"Was he severely injured?" asked Justin. "Will he be alright?"

"No, he's not got a bad injury and will make a full recovery. His leg is broke, and that means one night of discomfort from skele-grow."

"Wimp," Justin said. "I'll talk to you on the train."

Then Justin hurried to the Hufflepuff table. Before the headmaster could stand up, the castle's ghostly inhabitants all appeared, each carrying roses and the scent filled the Great Hall as rose petals rained down on the students.

'I think Hogwarts liked my gift,' Harry decided with a secret smile.

Finally, the headmaster stood and awarded the Quidditch cup to Gryffindor and the House cup to Ravenclaw. Frowns at Gryffindor table meant the students realised their head of house was why they'd lost the house cup. When Dumbledore asked for a round of applause to mark the retirement of Professor Minerva McGonagall, there was only a half-hearted attempt by anyone to clap.

The deputy headmistress kept a stony expression on her face – she would leave the castle as soon as the last student stepped through the front gates and never return. Minerva was remembered fondly by many former students, but none of the current students had many – if any – good memories of their head of house.

SCENE CHANGE

Harry settled into a compartment with Neville, Dean, and Seamus on the train. Before the train left the station, Dobby appeared and handed Harry the Marauder's Map with a note from Professor Flitwick to write this summer if he had questions about duelling and fighting. The dirty parchment quickly disappeared inside Harry's pocket, and the four teenagers talked about summer.

Justin and Hermione visited briefly and wished everyone a good summer. Percy Weasley dropped by to thank all four boys for helping to keep Ron in line that year. Ginevra Weasley tried to slip into the compartment on his way out, but Percy pulled her out.

"But I want to talk to Harry!" the girl protested.

"Mum wrote that you're going to have to find a better man – someone from a bigger house to marry now that she is Lady Old Weasley," Percy reminded his sister.

End of Chapter / End of Story

NOTE: Summer 1994 and Fourth Year will be a different story titled 'Birdshot'.