1 September 1995
The crowds parted as Harry walked towards the Hogwarts Express. All conversation dropped to a whisper as the parents and students assembled there watched him. It was worse than his first three years back in the magical world combined.
Harry maintained a stoic expression for the most part until he climbed onto the train. He did break that to smile and nod at the sight of a few friends. Harry tried to ignore the combined looks of hope, fear, adoration, and hatred he saw as he walked through the crowd. He knew that would happen and had tried to get permission to Floo to the school but Dumbledore refused.
"Taking the Express is an important tradition, Harry" Dumbledore explained. "By skipping that tradition, you provide excuse for your political enemies to deride you. And make no mistake, my boy, you have political enemies that have nothing to do with Tom Riddle. Change makes many people uncomfortable and as many people that support the changes there are that many that hate you for them. Taking the Express will not make them hate you less, but removes a wand from their grasp."
"Well, that was funny, Harry," Ron said as he came in behind Harry. "I don't know how you bloody stand it."
"Language, Ron," Hermione admonished as she entered with Ernie, Padma, and Daphne following right behind.
Padma sank down onto the bench seat next to Harry and wrapped her arms around him. Harry responded by wrapping his own arms around her and leaning down into her shoulder.
"It's okay, Harry. This will pass too."
Part of Harry was sure she was right but it had been three days since the attack and the magical world was still in a hysterical state. It was one thing for the witches and wizards to be told about how strong Harry was, both magically and as the Beast, but it was another for them to see it for themselves. Between what was seen on the Magical Mirrors and the stories in the Daily Prophet half the Wizarding World was convinced Harry was a psychopathic killer while the rest saw him as their greatest weapon.
And the sad part was the exposure was mostly the Marauders own fault.
Three days prior…
Harry was enjoying his time in the workshop they had built above the showroom of Marauders Magical Entertainment. The Mirrors were stored in the basement but charmed in a separate workroom behind the showroom. This area was for new product development or, as Kalina called it, the Playroom. In any case, Harry was enjoying a rare bit of time alone.
Sirius and Kalina had made today a 'Healer' day. They took little Cassie see her pedia-healer and were then off to see Kalina's own Healer for some diagnostic tests for her pregnancy. Remus had gone to a small electronics show fishing for some new ideas. This left Harry alone and free to play. Right now he was working on a magical version of a paint-ball gun. Small summoning runes pulled the completely non-magical paint ball down a tube accelerating it like a rail gun would use magnetics. Compared to the top-shelf gun he'd picked up in a shop in London, Harry estimated it had fifty percent more muzzle velocity than a mundane paint-ball gun. And there was no compressed air to run out or moving parts to break. Even if it wasn't a great seller, it was still a whole lot of fun to make. Now he'd just have to work on a storage and feeding system and then put it all together into one package.
An explosion rocked the building and Harry heard screams coming from below him. Harry immediately sprinted out of the room and down the stairs leaving his invention behind.
The showroom was destroyed with shattered glass everywhere. The front window was gone along with most of the Mirrors that had been on display. The two male clerks that had been working the store lay on the ground a bloody mess; their bodies slashed to ribbons by the exploding glass. Harry could hear the sound of additional spell fire coming from outside even as he cast a quick spell to see if either had a chance of survival. Both were already gone.
The crunch of glass under a footstep warned Harry that someone else had entered the shop. The Death Eater had hoisted himself up through the remains of the front window frame only to catch an overpowered Bludgeoning Curse to the head.
"There's someone still alive in there!"
Harry glanced up and saw one of the Mirrors was still functioning and was showing the Alley outside. It was a smaller Mirror but enough to show several Death Eaters outside with a few civilian bodies lying around the outside of the showroom.
A swish of his wand created a whirling cyclone that quickly picked up much of the glass shards littering the show. With a little push Harry sent it out into the Alley straight into the oncoming Death Eaters.
The cyclone of glass enveloped four of the advancing Death Eaters along with their groaning comrade trying to recover from the Bludgeoning Curse to the chest he'd just taken. The spinning glass shards ripped the screaming wizards to shreds in seconds before the spell energy gave out dropping their bodies and the glass to the Alley pavement stones.
The five remaining Death Eaters were shocked by the sudden loss of half their numbers but instantly started casting Dark Curses of all types into the remains of the shop. Their spell energies destroyed what their initial explosive curse had not. It wasn't much different than mundane killers spraying machine-gun fire into a building trying to kill one person.
The Death Eaters had just paused their spell casting convinced there was no way their target had survived their barrage of spells. The sudden explosion of the upper window out into the alley put that assumption away. But what came out the window wasn't a desperate wizard trying to escape, but a very large, very pissed-off werewolf.
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