Harry Potter - the Power Unknown

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Chapter – 1

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Albus Dumbledore was very happy.

His life was one of hardship from the beginning, struggle in the middle and finally it was fulfillment time now, and thankfully before he could reach the end of his life. His family had been on the poor side and he and his brother had had to compromise their wants and desires to a very great extent.

His mother had been a squib and his father was almost one. It was very fortunate his brother and himself had strong Magic in them. He specially had an impressive magical core. His brother had been content to test his own Magic by experimenting on rather unfortunate and inappropriate charms on various animals and his specialty was goats.

But he, Albus was very ambitious, calculative and extremely cunning. He was manipulative and would do anything to get his way, anything.

He had to wait for almost an eternity for amassing true power though. Not that he had been waiting in the wings, though for all these years. He had by his sixth year as a Ravenclaw (Slytherin had been a close second according to the hat) realized his full magical strength and he had complimented that by increasing his magical core by blood rituals that were extremely dark in nature.

He had been very, very careful about those rituals and had made sure no one was aware. He passed out from Hogwarts, passing his NEWTS with sixteen 'outstandings', taking care no one would ever read the real Albus Dumbledore.

He joined Flourish and Blotts and devoured books on various magical subjects, like Occlumency, Legilimency, spell crafting, Ancient Magic. His strength had always been Transfiguration and in the next year and a half he took his Master's in Transfiguration and passed it with honours.

On the side he had delved into the Dark Arts and gathered a double masters degree's worth of knowledge in it. Among the rituals he had performed one of the darker rituals had consisted of adding special magical talents. He had after much effort succeeded in becoming a partial metomorphagus. He could change his eye colour, hair colour and length, nose and lips.

He used that to create an alternate identity. He became a young man who would go around in anonymity into Knockturn Alley often and became very knowledgeable about the shops dealing in the Dark Arts, like Borgin and Burkes, Aberfonty Arts, Windell's Place and the like.

He made friends with all the owners of these shops by working part time in the evenings in all of them, and managed to steal a huge amount of valuable books, using his Transfiguration skills to create identical copies, that he used to palm off as the originals.

He collected a vast library of books in this fashion in the next five years he worked in Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. He waited for an opportunity patiently all this while, to realize his life's ambition.

POWER. MONEY. POSITION. A VERY LONG LIFE TO ENJOY IT ALL. That was all, he wanted from life, wanted in his life, for his happy living.

Power he decided was in Hogwarts. That was the seat of real power, from where he could slowly extend his influence to the Ministry and the entire Wizarding world with the students he would cultivate.

He was by nature careful and the moment he started his forays into the Dark Arts he had been exceptionally good-natured on the outside till it became second nature to him.

Money, he was obsessed by it as he had not the good fortune to have it in plenty. He was a genius in stealing money. He used yet another identity to create his first hundred thousand galleons by dint of fraud and malpractice and from there he made many more millions legally, until he never had to ever worry about money for the next few hundred years.

Position, was the Head master's post in Hogwarts, supreme Mugwump and chief of the Wizengamot and many other positions of respectability and responsibility in the Ministry, so that he would be the real power in his world without seeming to aspire for it.

A very long life to enjoy it all, this was the toughest of them all, he planned carefully for a long time building credentials and respectability, before approaching Nicholas Flammel.

Albus always felt his friendship with one of the greatest wizards was his single greatest achievement for, from him he learned about the Philosopher's Stone and while Flammel had been careful, he could not keep anything from the great swindler that Albus had become by that time.

From Flammel he learnt the way to make the Stone himself. He made it in large quantities and stocked it in his vault. He then waited patiently for a chance to cash in.

His chance came with Grindelwald. Thanks to his multiple identities, no one associated him with the powerful assistant of Grindelwald, Joseph Heifer the assassin who helped Grindelwald with many of his more insane ideas.

Dumbledore by then had accepted a junior position in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was an apprentice to the current Transfiguration Master there and before very little time had passed, he was a certainty to take the Head of Transfiguration post as well as Head of Griffindor.

Soon he became Head of Griffindor and also Head of Transfiguration. He also became very respectable in society and he rapidly built up on that respectability by his first forays into the Ministry as a member of the Wizengamot.

He made sure to have as many contacts around the world by doing little favours for as many people as he could, making sure he would have a lot of strings to pull if he needed to do so.

Joseph Heifer was a release for Albus. He indulged in that role, relaxing immensely, with carefree abandon. In that role he had no need to pretend and no need act contrary. It was a role he cherished and it was a role he performed to the best of his ability.

He enjoyed a great rapport with Grindelwald, sharing ideas, learning, learning not only from his brilliance in the Dark Arts but also learning about the most effective ways to kill, magnificent mind magic, more than he ever hoped to know on all this.

Albus also followed the muggle news and he also learned about guns and bombs and acquired a proficiency in firing bullets with deadly accuracy.

The only thing he did not create was horcruxes. With the Stone, he felt he had enough to prolong his life for ever. Besides, with all the Dark Arts he was doing, he felt the creation of horcruxes with intent to increase his life span would cause a big strain on him to perform as a genial man, who had the well being of the Wizarding world in his heart.

It was a juggle to play so many roles, but Albus was a master at it. He reveled in it and regarded as a personal achievement to succeed at it as well.

He sadly relinquished his role as Joseph Heifer when he killed Grindelwald in cold blood, standing by his side as they were chatting and laughing together over drinks as they contemplated their next insane idea.

Albus morphed into himself, and then removed all the books and artifacts from Grindelwald's, library and his vault key. Grindelwald had been very clever. He had a vault in the name of Bob Smithy in which he had stored all of his most important documents, money and dark artifacts.

The vault in the name of Grindelwald had only a hundred galleons in it and was no loss when it was freezed by the Ministry. The popular theory when that had come to light was that he had a huge dungeon under his headquarters where he had stashed all of his wealth.

After removing these, he destroyed the hideout of his 'dead Master' totally and with many cuts, abrasions and wounds he left for Hogwarts, where he made sure to put everything he had pilfered away before emerging tired, worn-out and fatigued but triumphant.

He became a hero overnight. Albus Dumbledore had finally arrived. It had taken him over a hundred years but he was right there. It was not as if he had to worry about his life (Thanks to the Stone) or anything else for that matter.

He had the power, the position (an Order of Merlin, First Class), money, name and fame. And he reveled in it.

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About twenty years before he had his eye on a young boy called Tom Riddle. He was a classical case of abuse, neglect and frustration put together.

He watched, amused as the boy delved into the Dark Arts, sometimes even itching to help and mentor him. He admired when he killed Myrtle with the basilisk, though he shuddered when he thought of such a creature in the control of this boy.

It was after the basilisk incident he decided to oppose the boy as Riddle had now control over a beast that could harm him, if Riddle so desired.

It was irony that Riddle came to Grindelwald to be trained. As Joseph heifer, Albus took special effort to know what the boy was all about and was pleasantly surprised to find a mind so devious and twisted.

But that mind would also rebel at having to follow Albus's schemes as Riddle wanted only revenge against a world that treated him unfairly. Albus never saw the desire for immortality or the deep want for world domination as Riddle had hidden it so cleverly from the dreaded two.

Both Grindelwald and Heifer trained Riddle for a little time, before he left for Albania to delve deeper into the Dark Arts. Albus would regret letting him go and would forever curse himself for not seeing the potential or the ability of that young man who would give him such a headache in the future.

Albus was now getting on in his years and it was after the defeat of Grindelwald that he first started taking the Stone. He had already made enough to make him live for more than a thousand years. He had a huge part of his vault filled with it.

Fame had its disadvantages as well. Albus was now always in the public eye and it was no longer possible for him to do the many things that the public would definitely look upon with a jaundiced eye.

He started scouting for apprentices, persons like him who were not leaders, but followers. He found two of them after a very long search that had to be conducted with great secrecy and extremely cautiously.

Arthur Weasley was a man after his own heart. A man with so good-natured an exterior, it would be hard to read him as anything else. He joined Albus by being his contact in the Ministry initially. Later he kept his unimaginative position as the perfect cover for his dubious activities for Albus.

He had a vault in another name that he had filled with money for services rendered. He used a little of this money when things were a bit too tight in his family budget.

Not even his wife, a lovely lady with exemplary morals was aware of his dual role and indeed his dual personality. Arthur's one weakness was his family. Albus did not like it, but then you could not have it all. Arthur was fiercely protective of his wife and later on his many children, who fortunately followed his wife's high morals and sense of propriety rather than his loose ones.

He knew his wife would be devastated if she ever came to know of his dark side, but the attraction of money caused by the demon of poverty and his lack of standing in his world that urged him not to let this pass him by.

The other apprentice that Albus chose was Peter Pettigrew. By the time Peter came to Hogwarts, Voldemort had already happened. The Houses were sharply divided and there was a lot of politics inside and outside.

Peter was known to him from before of Hogwarts, by means of a small help he rendered to his father. Mr. Pettigrew was a decent man who lived on the same street as his own father. His father had asked him to help Mr. Pettigrew and Albus had complied. He had initially greeted Peter as a son of his father's very young friend, but the eagerness and the admiration he received had made him pause and review.

He had carefully groomed him from his first year so that by the time his seventh year rolled Pettigrew was a man who would kill, plunder, destroy, rape and maim for his mentor. He was already rich beyond his means and by his fifth year he was the eyes and ears of the school, especially after he became animagus.

It was Albus who asked him to become a death eater and infiltrate Voldemort's camp and also become a member of the Order of the Phoenix that he started, to bring down what was proving to be a very real threat to his existence.

Fawkes was the one unknown commodity in Albus's life. He had just appeared the moment Albus had become Headmaster. From where he had come and who had owned him before was something Albus did not know before. He was forced to accept him as the phoenix would simply not leave.

Albus was initially very cautious and also slightly scared as he alone knew how unnatural it was that a phoenix of all creatures would befriend him, who had been Grindelwald's closest associate, who had participated in gruesome murders and terrible orgies.

But as days and even months went by, he relaxed, as Fawkes, did not do anything out of the ordinary. He even flashed Albus wherever he would need to go.

Besides Fawkes gave him a prestige, a standing in society as the true Leader of the Light and it was beneficial in so many ways that after some time Albus let go fully in front of this phoenix and even developed a mild feeling of affection for him.

All things came to a head when he finally found a way to get rid of Riddle who was now going under a ridiculous name of Voldemort. He had been to interview a divination Professor, not that he meant to give her the job, but well, it was his evening's relaxation.

He had conducted the interview at his brother's bar The Hog's Head and was trying his best to breach the huge chasm that had come between them. If only Aberforth would agree, it would mean a wonderful spy at Hogsmeade for him. But Aberforth was uncaring.

Trelawney had sprouted the Prophecy about the child who would be born as the seventh month dies. Another person had unfortunately heard one half of the Prophecy, but had been found out before the most important part.

Albus was thrilled. He waited and watched. Harry Potter was born on the thirty-first day of July and Neville Longbottom was born a day before.

While Longbottom was the pure blood, Potter, though a half blood was the more powerful as his family was said to have been descended from the Founders' themselves. Old Harrison Potter was tight lipped about any thing concerned with heritage and ancestry.

Albus salivated as he thought of the vast treasures that the Potter vaults would hold the power that he would get if he had control over them. He started planning to acquire just that.

Peter killed the elderly potters in their own home and started sowing seeds of distrust among the firm friends of James Potter, Remus Lupin and Sirius black.

He also came to know that Snape a Slytherin, who studied with Peter and the others, had been the one to hear half the Prophecy and had informed Voldemort about it.

He made sure that Voldemort would go after the Potters with a few hints from Peter. The day Voldemort had decided to go after the Potters was the day Snape had come extremely bedraggled to see him and offer his services as a spy as he wanted to get out from Voldemort's service.

Albus wondered. Snape had stiffly told him he was disappointed and disillusioned by Voldemort and he would do practically anything to get away from him. Even swear on his magic to protect the child of his most hated enemy.

Albus was aching with the need to laugh at this puny, silly, standoffish, stupid, ugly boy who was in reality was not even able to protect himself from the pranks of two immature classmates was here wanting to swear on his magic to protect Harry Potter.

Snape had also told him that Voldemort wanted to try for the post of Professor and to spy on Albus. Albus indulged his need to laugh by emitting a gentle smile.

He thought for a while and realized Snape could prove to be a valuable ally in the future, especially for finding the horcruxes that the idiot Riddle had gone and created.

He smiled gently at the boy and asked for his oath on his magic and life to protect the child Harry Potter as his own, ahead of not only his life but also others as well.

That one mistake would cost Albus everything in the future.

Snape gave it and went away with the post of potions Professor that he would start serving from that September.

Albus also had told the Prophecy to the Potters and warned them to be careful and advised them to go under the fidelus charm. In the times of such uncertainties, he masterminded Peter to sow the seeds of distrust and had cleverly manipulated the Potters to ask Peter take the place of secret keeper from Black, without the knowledge of anyone, even him.

Exactly a week later the Potters were killed. Voldemort had come there with Peter and had killed James; he was ripped from his body by Albus who killed him from behind. Albus then went upstairs, where Lily was holding Harry and crying in horror and terror, whispering all the time, begging, he really did not know whom, to please let go of Harry.

He smiled at her and killed her. Still smiling he cast a dark curse in the shape of a lightning bolt, using the blood from Voldemort's body to link the curse to Voldemort, when he would come back to his own body, using a horcrux.

He then went away and everything went beautifully according to plan. He placed Potter with his relatives and placed a mild hating charm on them. Potter would look upon him as an angel from heaven when he would come to Hogwarts. Black had been sent to Azkaban for good without trial.

Harry Potter would be his completely and his usefulness would come to an end when he became seventeen years of age, when he would receive his inheritance.

Albus had waited for more than a century to attain power and prestige. He could wait another sixteen years easily.

End of Chapter – 1

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