The following morning Harry had a wash and headed downstairs to find Tom had a message for him.
“Ah, Mr Potter. I have some good news for you and some bad news.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, being careful not to lose his page as he settled at the bar, wand easily to hand in case of a repeat of yesterday’s events.
Tom nodded, “Which would you like first.”
“Good news please.” Harry informed him as he started looking over the menu, enjoying the fact that he wouldn’t have to cook breakfast for anyone for the first time in ages.
“That stray you brought in last night, I found out its name.”
“Oh?” Harry asked, surprised, “How?”
“That’s the bad news. Padfoot’s owner came in last night asking if anyone had found his dog.” Tom said, watching as Harry digested the name. When the pre-teen nodded, the barkeeper continued, “I mentioned that a lodger here had found him and that I’d be more than willing to bring him down if he, Grey he mentioned his name was, would wait just a few minutes. Grey told me not to bother.”
“What?” Harry demanded.
“Apparently Grey was just trying to make sure that the dog had actually found another owner. Apparently Padfoot has been trying to escape from him for the last few weeks and since Padfoot found him in the first place and appeared to be rather intelligent for a dog, he figured that he wanted to move on. Grey said something about ‘your turn’ and left before I could take down a way of getting in contact with him. Sorry.”
Harry just stared at him for a moment. “Wait.” He said, blinking at Tom, “Padfoot’s mine now?”
“Apparently.”
“Great. Just great.” Harry groaned, wondering what he was going to do with the massive canine during the school year. It wasn’t like he could send him back to his Aunt’s. After what the spirit of the Bracer had done, Harry could just see Aunt Petunia trying to poison the mutt. That was, of course, if the dog stayed there. If it was as prone to running away as ‘Grey’, whoever he had been, had told Tom he was, then Harry half expected Padfoot to be gone before Petunia had had the chance to kick him outside.
Of course this did mean that Harry was going to have to ignore the Minster's advice on leaving Diagon Alley if the Magical Menagerie didn't have what he needed. Somehow the subject of dogs as pets had never come up amongst the students at school and he wasn't sure if the pet shop would cater to them.
It was the first thing he checked after breakfast after collecting Padfoot from his room and heading out, heading straight for the shop and trying to ignore the cries around him of 'the Grim!'
No wonder people didn't have dogs if others reacted to them like that. He didn't even know what a Grim was but it was enough to make him nervous.
Once in the shop he found that he had been right in thinking that he wouldn't find what he needed in there. Though they sold collars for cats, they had very little on sale for dogs and Harry found himself wondering where pure bloods got their dog food, if any pure bloods kept dogs at all. Somehow the thought of Lucius Malfoy taking a huge, scruffy dog like Padfoot for a walk seemed like a rather absurd idea. Perhaps one of those little handbag dogs that the rich and famous Muggles were so fond of but not a great big beast like the one that had adopted him.
The lack of ability to purchase what he needed brought up a real problem. He wasn't supposed to leave Diagon Alley, but he needed dog food and to get a collar for the canine. It was his responsibility as Padfoot's owner, however temporarily he might be filling that role. Though he could afford to pay whatever fine was levied against him, he didn't see the point of encouraging one when he could just as easily pick up what he needed.
The only problem with that was getting permission to leave. Since he wasn't apparently any safer in Diagon Alley then he was anywhere else, he was tempted to just leave and apologise later but considering the trouble he had almost been in he figured that he should probably tell someone where he was going first.
As such he informed the next Auror he saw.
Luckily the Auror he spoke to had spoken with one of the ones from the night before and he'd informed his colleague before escorting Harry to Gringotts to change some of his impressive stash of Galleons into Muggle currency, then through the pub, where Harry locked Padfoot in his room for the time being and the man changed into some surprisingly Muggle clothes before entering Muggle London.
Harry had absolutely no clue where to look for what he was looking for and ended up making a complete idiot of himself in front of the Auror, whose name was Andrew Savage, as the pair of them ended up wandering around and getting rather lost, ending up with Harry finally finding a pet store miles from their starting point.
He had, at least, found somewhere to buy the cards Luna had been showing him the previous day. 'Forbidden Planet' had been advertising the game of Duel Monsters in their window. Harry had popped in and picked up a 'starter deck' and a couple of boxes of the 'booster packs', shocking the clerk in the store with the amount he could afford on their way past and figuring that he could probably share the cards with his friends so he had someone to play against other than Luna.
Still it was several hours later when he and Savage finally returned to the Leaky Cauldron, by which point it was time to take Padfoot, who absolutely hated his new collar and lead with a passion, for a walk. Harry didn't enjoy that chore too much, but once he was done he could finally slump onto his bed and read without distraction.
Or that had been the plan before he'd started reading the rule book that had come with his starter deck and then he'd been distracted by that and the cards he'd bought until long after he'd had dinner. When he finally realised how distracted he'd been he pulled his book on the founding of Hogwarts over and started reading that again.
Powel's name came up, intriguing the boy. Apparently the wizard had been picked for his skills in transfigurative magics to teach the students and while the Founders had done most of the work in the school they had still required those with skill sets that were different to their own to teach what they couldn't.
This was fair enough, but Harry could just imagine the conversation that could possibly occur between the spirit of his Bracer and his Head of House. It would be an interesting one to say the least. Shame he wouldn't be aware of it at the time.
There was no mention of him wearing the Serpent Bracer, but there hadn't been a single mention of the golden items anywhere in the text so far which made Harry wonder if they had been omitted for a reason, or if they just hadn't been important enough for someone to put in. Either reason was viable. Things were left out of Muggle text books all the time for such reasons and he could imagine that the Serpent Items weren't as important as the creation of the school.
He changed his mind when he started on the book he'd picked up about Voldemort at the height of his reign.
Apparently before he'd even taken over Wizarding Britain, Voldemort had been a threat to be taken seriously because of his skills in magic, his control over strange shadow creatures and his oft used knack in Shadow Games that would kill, maim or steal the soul or sanity of anyone who dared challenge him and the two latter of that list were skills he had because of an item he had held, claiming that it was destined for him, called the Serpent Dagger.
Just seeing those words together made Harry frown, wondering if, considering that he'd found the Bracer in the Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle could have been searching for the Dagger down there and happened to find the giant snake that had been guarding the Chamber and set it on the other students or whether he'd stumbled across the Dagger in an act of sheer dumb luck, and had opened the Chamber of Secrets later.
A small part of Harry worried that if Powel's spirit was still attached to the Bracer, that Salazar was stuck inside Voldemort's Dagger much the same way. That was a rather terrifying thought.
Harry carried on reading, learning from the text book that Voldemort had used his Serpent Item many times over the years, using the powers it granted him and his ability to rally the purebloods to his side, with his demands for 'Blood Purity' to take over the Wizarding world in a short amount of time and though there had been many assassination attempts during the many years that Voldemort had been in power, and many who had fought against him, it hadn't been until Voldemort had tried to Avada Kedava a small child, aka him, that anyone had been able to stop the insane madman.
None of this was reassuring. He could, however, now see why Luna had wanted him to look up why he had to be so careful with the Bracer before she had told him anymore. The item could be dangerous.
Then he stumbled across something in the book that made him pause and look at the cards he'd left strewn across the table. There was a moving image on the page he'd happened to stop on that showed Voldemort directing an army of the 'shadow creatures' only to recognise one of the beasts he was directing as one of the monsters on one of the cards he'd picked up earlier that day.
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