Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Harco Empire	By : Toddy Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 34430 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or films. I do not make any money from the writing of this story, just enjoyment.

Chapter List
- 251
- 252
- 253
[Note: “x-x” = speech & ‘x-x’ = thoughts & *x-x* = telepathy & #x-x# Parseltongue]
~~~ CELEBRATION ~~~
The Family sat down for breakfast a little later than normal.
“We thought we’d give you a lie in, after all that ruckus yesterday,” observed Mama: “Papa’s already in the fields and he’s expecting me and the children to go out to help him once the meal is over.”
“Can’t we stay with Harry and Draco?”
Mama glanced at Harry who shook his head imperceptibly. “No Leonid, both of you have been off gallivanting enough this week. Come Wednesday and you’ll be going to Taros’s farm with him to help out there.”
“But Mama …”
“… You have responsibilities to your family, boys. We have work to do as well,” put in Draco: “If we hear a good report of your work, we’ll continue your magical education after dinner.”
Leonid looked crestfallen: “Okay Draco.”
Auntie winked at Harry and made a purse-lipped smile at the boys.
Oxana went with the rest of the family; leaving Trephine and the two seers at the farm. The seers had promised to clean out the cow byre and the stables. With the family out of the way it was but a five-minute job, and soon the manure heap was steaming with fresh dung. Aquamenti had the floors clean and they joined Auntie in gathering fresh eggs, a job not easily done except by hand. Farm jobs over, the trio wandered into the village and found the council members just arrived from their fields for a mid-morning pint.
“I have the priest and a choir laid on,” reported Harry: “But we’re going to have a problem getting them down from the Cabin on the top of the cliff over there.”
“Can they not fly?”
“Most of them aren’t magical. They are like the inhabitants here; they know of us but do not have the Fluence.”
“We could set up ropes and abseil them down into boats, I suppose,” mused one of the elders.
“We do have a solution,” suggested Draco: “But we’ll need your permission, and maybe that of some of the other councils.”
“Say on.”
“I take it you have seen pictures of the Swiss Alps and the ski-lifts?”
Most of the council had; and the others explained to those who did not. Explanation over, they looked at Draco expectantly.
“Well … A couple of our mechanical boffins have come up with an equivalent. It’s in the form of an open gondola-cabin to hold four people, with a counterbalance which would ride up and down the cliff.”
One old man drew a triangle in beer on the table. “It wouldn’t work; the hypotenuse line would be longer than the upright.”
“They propose pulleys on the counterbalance so that the cable is anchored at the top, passes round the counterbalance pulleys, back to the top before being attached to the cabin. Thus, for every foot the counterbalance moves, the cabin moves two.”
Bits of string came out of pockets and fingers moved in the wet diagram – proving Harry’s point.
“That’d work,” the old man agreed: “S’ long as the hypotenuse was no longer than double the fall.”
“What my friends would like to do is make a survey with one or two of you advising. They thought to anchor it on the lake side.”
“Vulture’s Rock is ours; it’s a real hard granite outcrop. It marks the shore boundary with St. Prestos. We all have water rights over the lake, so you’d only need our permission.”
They chewed over the ideas for a few more minutes and the leader plus the old man were voted as advisors. They would meet at lunchtime by Raven’s Rock.
Draco went with one of the others to open up the church, where an army of housewives were waiting to commence cleaning. Harry walked to St Prestos’ grotto and took a phaeton to the Cabin. He arrived just before the choir party plus Selwyn and Griswold entered from the portals.
“Are you happy apparating, Griswold?”
“Not done any since you saved me, but yes.”
“Could you side-along one of the muggle choirboys?”
“I think I’d rather not, Harry.”
“Okay. Better be safe.” Harry looked up at the assembly; he reckoned one mage per two-and-a-bit muggles: “Right … I’ve set up a homing-beacon on the shore-line. To be safe we’ll side-along one muggle at a time. Hamish and I will take two second time round; that should have everyone on St Illanon’s territory. Now come through this door and I’ll show you where you are going.”
At the bottom of the steps there were gasps of surprise at the hidden view of Ozero Endryu, and even more when Harry pointed out Draco’s fair hair by the beacon.
“Why couldn’t we see this from the windows of the Cabin, Harry?”
“Well Wash, it’s because the Cabin is above the occluding tholus and this gallery is beneath it. You’ve seen that kind of thing before.”
“Oh yes! Can we swim in the lake?”
“The camp site is there, so I imagine you can. However, I will ask the village council just to make sure.”
Needless to say, the muggles hugged their transporting mages very tightly as they went down. Dolores was the first one down with Hamish, and Harry had the tent packs as well as his first muggle.
All safe and sound, the two seers left the beacon on because Veronica and the Smiling Ones were arriving later.
Draco stayed to supervise camp making whilst Harry took three mages and a muggle to meet the elders. Griswold and Selwyn he left with the practical pair and a twenty-minute walk had the rest inside St. Illanon’s church.
“Oh Harry! Isn’t it beautiful,” remarked Dolores: “I’ve read about these painted churches, but experiencing it is quite something else. Now where is the organ?”
Harry smiled: “Sorry Dolores, they don’t use organs.”
“Oh dear!”
“Dear Dolores, you forget that when we do the Tchaikovsky liturgy you only give us the notes and then conduct,” Hamish reminded her: “I’ve set up these pipes to give us the notes. They’re a Griswold machine so be careful.”
“I hadn’t really forgotten, Dear One, I was just eager to find out what it sounded like. And to experiment with the stops, oh well. We need to test the acoustics so that the sound carries.”
Hamish and Dolores moved around the church, with Hamish singing and Dolores wandering around listening. A number of the cleaners stopped and listened also.
One of them detached herself and came over to Harry: “Magister, the old choir used to sing in that apse, if that’s any help?”
Harry thanked her and conveyed the message to the musicians. Hamish nodded to the lady and went over to stand centrally in the apse. He hummed a quiet arpeggio and the whole church filled with harmony. Dolores’s eyes widened and she rushed over to hug the lady. Neither could understand the other until Hamish brought his St George into play and an animated discussion took place. Harry, meanwhile, had gone to guide the straggling choristers into the church and towards the apse.
Hamish handed out the music and Dolores set up her stand. The pipes gave the chord and the choir set off with the Gloria. All the cleaning-work stopped, and the ladies listened raptly to the music. When they stopped the same lady stepped forward.
“Vidma, that was very beautiful, but some of your pronunciation is not quite accurate.”
“I’m not a vidma; I’m Dolores and a muggle just like you. In my village I am the school teacher. Now what words were we not getting right?”
“I’m Michaela, may I show you, please.”
“Of course.” Hamish handed over a copy of the music.
“Oh dear … This is not in our writing … I do not understand it.” Michaela sang the tune to la.
“Were you in the old church choir, Michaela?”
“Yes, Dolores.”
“I gather you know the setting. Do you have music whose words you can read?”
“There was a cupboard somewhere. Now let me see. It’s in the presbytery.”
Dolores and Hamish accompanied Michaela into the priest’s sanctum there was a brief ‘Alohomra’ and the creaking of some disused hinges. They returned with a couple of dozen scores with the words written the Cyrillic script.
“There are two others here who used to sing too.”
“Well, let’s invite them as well.”
“Erm … we could find five men too, one of them has a fine basso-profundo voice.”
“Just what we need, do you think someone could fetch them.”
Three ladies volunteered once Michaela had explained; meanwhile the original three ladies went through the Gloria correcting the glaring mispronunciations.
As the practice went on - the men drifted in, picked up copies and joined the music; Hamish and the deep base adding contra harmonies in the lower registers. Not only had the cleaners downed tools, but the workers in the fields drifted in, many with tears in their eyes, no doubt remembering happier times.
One of the choir-men came over to Hamish and took hold of his St George: “What we need is a call to prayer.”
“I take it that you have one in mind?”
“Yes, by Rachmaninov, it’s from his Vespers.”
“Can you remember some of it?”
“Yes, I think so,” he started to sing, and a couple of the ladies joined him.
“What do you think, Dolores?”
“It sounds promising! You know I’m always game to learn more stuff.”
Michaela had understood and was rooting around in the music cupboard, emerging from the presbytery two minutes later with a box in her hand and a triumphant look on her face. The local choristers borrowed copies and gave a not too perfect rendition of the first verse. Copies were handed round the other choristers hummed their parts, and a sing-through took place.
“It has possibilities; what we need is a phonetic resemblance written down so we foreigners can sing the words too.”
Harry noticed that a number of villagers had arrived with jugs and covered plates in their hands: “Lunch time guys, why don’t you go and sit together to learn the sounds.”
The cloths were spread under the trees and each local singer took four or five English choristers under their wing. An hour of semi-hilarity took place whilst some resemblances of the sounds were carefully pencilled in on the scores. Of course, there was an intake of the jugs’ contents as well as the bread and slices of spicy sausage provided. Just under another hour had the ‘Call to Worship’ practiced to Dolores’s satisfaction. A halt was called; and the locals dispersed. Harry and the others returned to the lake, where Draco, Griswold and co had been busy.
The first task had been to measure the distances accurately. Broom-flying and long lengths of string satisfied that need. Griswold had also used some of his invented surveying machines. Within three inches the results were the same. The Hypotenuse was one and three-quarters the length of the upright; well within the tolerances. There were to be two cables for each purpose; one pair of heavy ones for supporting the cabin, and two lighter ones for traction.
“We really only need one traction cable,” Griswold explained: “The other is a fail-safe because, unlike the supporters which are fixed, these cables are continually flexing around the pulleys.”
The fixed frame of pulleys at the top station was the next item. Lamellas came out and offered goblin expertise in attaching this and anchoring it very firmly into the rock. The whole process was beginning to draw an audience.
Out came the string, to be passed over an upper pulley. That drew a light cord, which in turn drew a traction cable which Griswold was creating with one of his machines. Selwyn appeared to be conjuring all kinds of metallic scrap to feed it. In fact, it was a transporter beam from the scrap pile in Abdulmuralla’s quarry. The muggles were fascinated with the machine which turned scrap metal into wound steel cable. They even donated old junk. Once the traction cable had been threaded over the top pulley; a counterweight pulley was attached plus a couple of weights. The loose end was anchored into the rock and Selwyn sat astride the weights being slowly lowered down the cliff face. With his fire-stick he chipped off any protruding bits of rock which were likely to hinder the counterbalance’s path. He was hauled up again, by a team of people on the shore by Raven’s Rock.
Once at the top he clambered off the weights and added a few more, this enabled the first of the supporting cables to be drawn up. Again, goblin help was gratefully received in fixing that to an anchor at both ends. The second supporting cable was drawn up and fixed by the same method, although some extra magical titivating had to take place so that both cables had identical catenaries. Bits for the car were ported in and Selwyn assembled them, carefully hooking the wheels over the top of the supporting cables; it was temporarily clipped to the traction cable and, using his broomstick and levitating powers Selwyn balanced the load on the counter weights. The result was that when he sat in the open-sided gondola it was heavier than the counterweights and started to glide down the supporting cables. Once at the bottom; a number of length adjustments were made and Griswold mounted up.
Selwyn flew up the wires and sat on the weights. His weight plus some bags of sand altered the balance and so Griswold was drawn up to the top. Then it was lunch time and work stopped. Well … Nearly. The two boffins spent their eating time with bits of parchment and calculations.
Plumbing was next on the agenda, this included a tank to be fitted to the counterweights and a cord operated outlet attached to it. The Cabin had a water-feed system rather like the one at the Blake’s hermitage on the Scilly Isles, only this one had a much greater volume of throughput; forming a high waterfall into Ozero Endryu. Piping was added to the Cabin’s plumbing and made to feed a sluice at the upper station; one that would fill the tank as necessary. Selwyn flew down to the counter weights, removing enough sand bags to make the gondola slightly heavier than the weights and empty tank combined. Brake released, the gondola sank to Raven’s Rock. Water was allowed into the tank until the gondola started to move upwards; the flow was then turned off. Once at the top the brake was applied and Selwyn got into the gondola. This was now heavier than the counterweight and, once the brake was released took Selwyn down to Raven’s rock. They tried a few more experiments using more volunteers until the boffins had worked out proper water levels in the tank and adjusted the cords which operated the system of sluices. The last job was to draw up the second ‘fail safe’ traction cable and readjust the weights. By the time they had finished there was a sizable audience drawn from all the other villages.
Harry’s group arrived to find and almost fairground atmosphere, with people queuing up to have a ride. Once the initial four had been taken up; the gondola returned empty. From then on; fours swapped at the top, and very little water was used to make the system work.
There was a break for dinner, but nobody went home. That was not quite true, because family members were dispatched home to bring the food back to the lakeshore. Quite soon an impromptu festival was taking place. There was music and dancing, although of quite a different type to the Godric’s Hollow dances. National costumes saw the light of day after many years in storage. The seven villages were brought together as one community, vying good-naturedly with each other to put on the best show. Harry took a little time out to mind-chat with Ginevra, the result being the arrival of George and Percy with a boxful of fireworks. That display set the seal on the day and people walked wearily away to their own beds.
After the revellers had departed, the camp site was almost as neat as when the fun had begun; everyone had taken away their rubbish, and the choir-members went happily to bed. Although nearly three hours earlier than normal, the absolute darkness induced early slumbers.
~~~ REASSURANCE ~~~
Two seers and two apprentices went up to the attic bedroom.
“I promise on my magic I will not interfere with either of you.” Taros knelt unbidden and made his oath; followed immediately by Leonid.
The seers accepted the oaths and all four indulged in a shower. That did not stop some philandering within the pairs though, and the fairies received the results.
Sunday morning was bright. The choir members plus local-singers knelt on the foreshore and sang one verse of the call to prayer. The smooth water of the lake transmitted this to the cliffs behind which, being curved, amplified the harmonies and fed them back to the whole Okruh. In silent enrobed procession the musicians and Veronica walked slowly to the church. Before entering, the Smiling ones played a fanfare, and then led the way playing one verse of the call to prayer. Now in their proper positions the choir reprised the first verse and completed the call triumphantly.
Veronica had spent the time with Vasil and had the ritual off pat. Versicles and responses were as though the rite had never been interrupted by years of neglect. Those villagers whose churches were still closed came and those who could not enter the crowded church stood outside. Harry and Draco realised what was happening and made a modified sonorous charm so that the music filled the village square.
It took ages to communicate all who wanted to partake. The Smiling ones had a little music to play. When they were considering reprising, Michaela came up with some music and presented it to them. Crass did a quick look-over and nodded, so an impromptu Rachmaninov Hymn to the Virgin began, with the locals singing the words and the other choir members humming their support.
Eleven forty-five had the service over, and the English choir members going back to sing the same service for their ten o’clock at St. Godric’s, but in English. Veronica stayed behind, mainly because people wished to make their confessions. Harry and Draco went to see the other two priests, making sure that there were no ruffled feathers. Not that they needed to have worried, they were received warmly and invited to lunch.
“No need to worry Magisters, Holy Vasil has been in touch. Your Sister Veronica, being in communion with our church, was very welcome. We do have a problem, though. One of the closed churches was Roman Catholic and there are a number of their flock without a pastor. We try our best, but they are uncomfortable with our rite, to say the least.”
“Do you think,” Draco sounded tentative: “That you two could also celebrate at St. Illanon’s now it has been reopened?”
“We had been considering such an idea, so yes. Each church in turn would have an afternoon service once every three weeks.”
“Which is the Roman Church, Fathers,” Harry asked.
“St. Vladimir’s, in the centre at the foot of the lake. Why do you ask?”
“Our clergy team is ecumenical; I think one of our Roman Fathers could come to celebrate mass here on most Sundays. They might even pressure the Holy See into finding a priest for you. What happened to the old one?”
“He was a magister with special dispensation to marry – many in the east have that dispensation. As you can imagine he was taken by the Glags. Need I say more?”
“No! You are aware that that is why we are here, to try and find the missing practitioners and restore them.”
“We had heard rumour, yes. It would be lovely if Father Farad was restored to us.”
“Farad … Farad …” Draco thought for a moment: “Oxana’s husband?”
“Yes, quite correct. Wonderful leader of his flock, kindly but firm. We all worked well together. Not that we wouldn’t have done,” the priest shrugged his shoulder, and smiled: “But the vidmas insisted. I’m glad his great-aunt has re-appeared, she was one of the best. Equally as firm though.”
“Yes we know, she’s set us a task of sorting out Vitaly.”
“He’s and imp, always up to something. He didn’t become aggressive until about six years ago. Had a big bust up with his friends – sort of things kids go through – he turned out badly though. We’ll pray for your success, won’t we, Father?”
The other priest agreed and added: “I hope you can make young Leonid into a suitable successor of his Holovny’y Magister father. He needs to overcome the slightly tainted influence of Taros. Taros is not leader material; he gets carried away by too many whims.”
“Yes we know from personal experience,” said Draco: “We caught them, and they paid penance with the fairies. Taros is quite subdued at the moment.”
“With the fairies, you say.” Both Fathers chuckled: “No don’t tell us, we take it that the punishment had to fit the crime.”
“Exactly,” replied Harry: “Why has Leonid to be groomed for Holovny’y status? I didn’t quite understand.”
“That’s because you are not local. For eons now that family has produced some magister or vidma of Holovny’y status. They are regarded as magical royals, if you see what I mean. Not that they would accept that nomenclature. Vidma Trephine was regarded as Holovny’y even before her predecessors died; not that she ever accepted it. She knew what was right and stuck to her guns, even if prudence dictated otherwise. We’ve had to exercise a lot of prudence until recently. It was his failure to bow to the authorities that got her great-grandson taken away by the Glags. For years the authorities had turned a blind eye because this region was quiet and productive.”
“There was another reason as well, Father. The commissars did not want their hinterland in a state of turmoil. They liked to retire to their Cabins and pretend they were white boyars; so the quaint old ways were quietly allowed to proceed and form a pleasant backdrop to their escape from increasingly bloody doings where they worked. Farad used to preach against their excesses, and how their pseudo-royal lifestyles were not in keeping with their equality polemic which he said had a properly Christian origin. Eventually he went too far and they sent the Glags in.”
“When they arrived he drew attention to himself, I think. That gave the family time to hide Trephine. At that time Leonid was too young to show signs, so the snatchers ignored him. I imagine his father had hopes that Trephine would train the boy.”
“She was training both boys secretly, Fathers. She would send them out to keep the tholus in good repair and, we suspect other suitable magely jobs.”
“Tholus?”
“Yes … Um … Imagine a big magical dome covering the whole okruh. It keeps out wicked sorcerers, and hides the reality of what is beneath it. Not that I’ve looked, but I imagine that from above this looks like a patch of wild scrubby country to other Magisters and Vidmas.”
“Mmm … That explains why the boys were always roaming the edges of the Okruh. Most people put it down to wanderlust and inquisitiveness. For youngsters of that age nothing out of the ordinary, others like young Vitaly still do … Mmm … Quite a good camouflage. And then you burst in on the scene and turned our world topsy-turvy.”
“It was not our original intent, Fathers. We were supposed to do a quiet survey. But then the Spirit took over.”
“She blows where she wants, Magisters. Just know that you have our support and prayers at your disposal.”
There was little else to say, so Draco and Harry thanked their hosts and wandered back across the Okruh to see what was going on at St Illanon’s.
- 251
- 252
- 253
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Harco Empire