Chapter 99: Golden Boy Comes Looking For Answers (1/2)

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The link is also in the synopsis.

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[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]

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People came into the room with their problems. They sat in the chairs, talked about what troubled them, opened up, and poured their worries onto the man behind the table. When they were done, the young man behind the table would give a solution, and the people would leave happier than when they entered.

Not all problems were memorable, and the man behind the table encountered the same types of problems every day. So when people came with unique questions, the man became happy because it made his job fun and interesting.

And it turned out that today was the day that he was going to get to talk to a person with quite the memorable issue.

...

Quinn was standing in front of a potion cauldron watching the Fanta orange liquid simmering slowly over medium heat.

There was a sheet of paper floating with a clip on it. A pen was levitating above the paper, which was controlled by Quinn. Its purpose was to write notes about the potion.

Walking over to a nearby wall side table, Quinn looked down at a long brown worm with red veins all over its body.

”Braid Wigglers. My god, these things are gross,” said Quinn, disgust clear in his voice.

Nonetheless, despite the heavy disgust in his voice, Quinn put on himself a thin white cloth glove. And without hesitation, he picked a very thin scalpel and started to cut the body of the worm.

Blood spilled onto the wooden board. But because of charms on the wood beneath, the blood beaded up on the surface of the wooden board. Quinn had charmed the surface of the wood to be hydrophobic. Any liquid that made contact with the wood wouldn't get absorbed but would end up beading on the top.

The beaded up blood slid to the side of the board and drained out the board through a small outlet pipe built into the wood board into a container for later experimentation.

'Uwaa, gross, so gross,' thought Quinn, even though he was enthusiastically cutting the worm and poking the magical worm's internal organs.

'Yuck, to think that something this gross worm would grow inside a person and at maturity would try to escape through the rectum,' gagged Quinn and recalled what he learned about the Braid Wigglers. 'Holy crap, look at these claws; these would surely rupture the inner lining of the colon as it wriggles out of the anus. Haha, so gross~.'

The Braid Wigglers was just one of the many parasitic creatures that used a magical human's body as the host. Quinn had been reading about all kinds of these creatures as a part of his Healing magic education.

The Fanta orange-colored liquid brewing inside the cauldron was a potion that killed the Braid Wiggler and dissolved its remains into something more suitable for passing out of the body naturally.

”I would like even more to operate on a person who has a fully matured Braid Wiggler inside their body, though. Those need to be taken out through surgery,” muttered Quinn as he beckoned the clipboard and operated the pen through magic to take notes on the dissected Braid Wiggler.

As Quinn continued to take biological observations on the dissected Briad Wiggler and kept an eye on the cauldron brewing potion, he heard the door chime ring.

”Now?” groaned Quinn as he looked at the glass wall as if trying to look through it before looking at the bloody Braid Wiggler. ”I'll be back; you wait here.” A tender green pyramid-shaped ward manifested around the bloody carcass of the centipede-like creature for temporary preservation purposes.

He walked towards the workshop door and gave a cursory glance to the potion, checking the progress.

'Hmm... another half hour of simmering before I need to touch it. That would be enough,' noted Quinn as he walked past the cauldron.

Quinn was about to put a hand on the door's handle when he noticed that he was still wearing the bloody gloves.

”Oops,” blinked Quinn. He removed the gloves and tossed them into the cleaning hamper with other dirty gloves. 'That would've been bad. If I went out wearing those.'

Just before opening the door, in a second, Quinn fixed his clothes with magic. He opened the door and entered his office with what he called a 'TV host's' smile on his face.

”Pardon the wait,” Quinn said, greeting the person that was in the room as he closed the door to the workshop. When he looked up at the client, he trailed off, ”Thank you for your patience...”

In his office stood Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One, The-One-With-The-Scar, and other titles that people use to refer to the boy who had been credited with vanquishing the latest Dark Lord.

”Mr. Potter, welcome to A.I.D.,” said Quinn as he sat down on his barstool, turning into 'the man behind the table'. ”How may I help you today? Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable.”

Harry silently sat down on the chair while keeping his gaze on Quinn.

Ever since he could remember, Harry recalled the way people looked at him. Anyone who wasn't a friend or family would immediately look at his forehead to glance at the infamous scar. And, because of that, Harry had been conscious of how people looked at him.

Over time, he had come to judge people depending on where their eyes went while talking to him. Harry was fine with people glancing at the scar once and had become used to it; to Harry, it was the norm. If they glanced at the scar from time to time during their talk, Harry's view of that person would drop considerably. But if they spend their entire time looking at the scar, Harry would deem them as someone who wasn't worth talking to.

In the very few meetings Harry had with Quinn West, he had noticed that Quinn hadn't looked at his scar even once. Not a single time had Harry seen Quinn look at his scar. He didn't show any interest whatsoever.

Even now, Quinn hadn't looked at his forehead scar once. And that only happened with family members or the people whom he had spent a lot of time with. When he entered the room. Quinn gave him a look over him before maintaining firm eye contact.

So even before talking to Quinn West, Harry's impression of him had improved considerably.

”I'm here to get answers to some questions,” started Harry after making himself comfortable in his chair.

”Of course, if you've questions, we at A.I.D will do everything possible to answer them,” nodded Quinn, internally interested in what Harry Potter had in his mind.

”What can you tell me about Peter Pettigrew?” asked Harry bluntly while watching Quinn's reaction trying to see if he could glean something out of his expression.

But Quinn had been subtly using his occlumency to control his expression. The summer vacation had taught him lots of things, and one of those was to fake facial expressions when he had to detach from real emotions using emotional occlumency.

There were three levels of emotional detachment provided by emotional occlumency: One, detaching emotions from your face. Two, detaching emotions so that they would become a buzz in the back of the head, reducing the bluntness of said emotions in the judgment-making process. The third and last level was to completely cut off emotions from magic.

One had to activate the previous levels to activate the next level. And currently, Quinn was only using level one of emotional detachment. Which he usually did when he was cautious.

Before the sin curse, Quinn wouldn't use level two much. He didn't use level three at all. But, after the sin curse, Quinn had developed a dislike for levels two and three because detaching his emotions didn't feel good. He only proceeded to level two when he was at a heavy disadvantage.

Using emotional occlumency to control facial expressions drained every emotion from the user. And that was just parading the fact that someone was using occlumency to hide their emotions. But that could be bypassed by simply faking the facial expression, which was what Quinn was doing.

It surprised Quinn that Harry asked him about Peter Pettigrew, but he didn't show that surprise on his face.

”You would've to be more precise with your questions, Mr. Potter.”

The first rule that Quinn abided by when giving out information was to not answer vague or broad questions. Quinn wanted the requester to ask precise questions so that they only got the information that they asked for. It was just something Quinn did to make them think they were getting more information because they would ask multiple questions.

There were exceptions to this rule, but currently, those exceptions didn't apply because the inquiry from Harry raised some questions in Quinn's mind.

Harry took a moment in silence to think of a more well-defined question.

He knew that Peter Pettigrew was a Death Eater. The problem was that before returning to Hogwarts this year, he had heard a talk between his father, James Potter, and his godfather, Sirius Black, and from what he was able to eavesdrop, they were having a pretty heated discussion.

At that time, Harry had thought little of that conversation and believed that the two Aurors were talking about a Death Eater's escape.

Then, he would occasionally hear conversations about Peter Pettigrew from multiple individuals across the year: his mother; Lily Potter, uncle/professor Remus Lupin, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Flitwick all had talked about him sometimes.

After hearing so much about that person, Harry got interested in Peter Pettigrew. He asked multiple people about the Death Eater, but no matter who he asked, the people would invariably change the subject without telling him anything.

The only thing he knew about Peter Pettigrew was that the man was a Death Eater. And that had been in Azkaban for twelve years before breaking out this year.

”What did Peter Pettigrew do to end up in Azkaban?” asked Harry.

Quinn, who had been sitting on his barstool, nodded at the question.

The second the words Peter Pettigrew came out of Harry Potter's mouth, Quinn made an executive decision to use Legilimency to infiltrate Harry's mind.

'His shield is weaker than his sister's,' thought Quinn as he broke in without the bespectacled Potter's knowledge.

And as Harry was thinking about what to ask, Quinn snooped around and found the entire backstory about why Harry came asking about the question.

'He doesn't know the details about the night he got the scar. His parents and family haven't told him about Peter Pettigrew's involvement.'

Quinn saw some memories that showed some major decisions from James Potter and Lily Potter or Marauders in general. Quinn was able to make a quick glance of a photo wall in the Potter cottage.

'They erased Pettigrew from all the photos. They erased every evidence that Pettigrew ever existed as their friend while in Hogwarts.'

That didn't surprise Quinn. Given what they lost that day, it's no wonder that they didn't want to have any memories of Peter Pettigrew.

'This Harry Potter is insightful,' thought Quinn when he heard Harry's surface thoughts. 'He knows how most of the Death Eaters escaped imprisonment because of the Imperius curse defense. Not surprising given that his father is an Auror.'

Harry realized that the only Death Eaters who went to Azkaban were outspoken and fanatic supporters of Voldemort.

Twelve Death Eaters had gone to Azkaban after the war; Bellatrix Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange, Barty Crouch Jr., Augustus Rookwood, Antonin Dolohov, Thorfinn Rowle, Gibbon, Jugson, Mulciber, Travers, and, finally, Peter Pettigrew.

'Except Peter Pettigrew, all of those were avid supporters of Voldemort and didn't or couldn't use the Imperius curse defense,' thought Quinn as he stared at Harry. 'He knows that and realizes that Peter Pettigrew must have done something outrageous to end up in Azkaban.'

”Mr. Potter, I know about Peter Pettigrew. But are you sure that you want to know?” asked Quinn. ”You might not like what I'll tell you.”

Harry frowned at the question. He didn't give it a second thought before nodding.

”It's related to you and your family. There is a reason why your parents haven't told you about Peter Pettigrew,” once again asked Quinn, making sure that Harry really wanted to know.

Harry's frown deepened. It surprised him a little that it was related to his family. However, most of the Death Eater-related activities could be connected to his family.