The Alley bustled with the flurry of last minute school shopping. It was a rare year, one of the first times in a while Harry hadn’t spent at least part of the Summer away from Privet Drive and the Dursleys. Perhaps even rarer still, he had been left to do his shopping all by his lonesome. He had taken it as an ill omen, a suspicion that the Order wasn’t equipped for the increasingly frequent Death Eater assaults lodging itself in his psyche. They were focusing increasingly on fear tactics, that much was clear from what the papers were saying.  The general pattern to the attacks seemed to be a sudden attack, specifically with spells meant to maximize gore. It was smart, if a little simple, Harry thought. He could see the lines of worry on passing faces. Everyone was conscious that Diagon Alley was a prime target, perhaps more than anywhere else. Many people, maybe a hundred or more, funneled into a narrow lane of shops. Add on to that the center of Wizarding London and you had a the most logical target in the world. A heavy Auror presence had been maintained, and there were almost certainly many wards.

Pushing his way through the mass of people milling about he made a beeline for the steps of the bank, taking a minute to compose himself and breathe before pushing open the doors to the magnificent building. Money, books, and if he was feeling like it, robes were on today’s agenda. Putting on a diplomatic face as he approached a counter, he withdrew his vault key from his pocket and placed it in front of the attending goblin.

“I’d like to make a withdrawal..” he said, nodding as the goblin directed him to the carts. He kept his face impassive on the ride down, much as he got a thrill out of the up and down joy ride. Once he’d realized the carts had likely been spelled to keep people from falling out, he had found the trips much more enjoyable. The cart pulled to a stop soon enough, the brakes grinding along the rails in a decidedly unpleasant way. Stepping out of the cart and onto the platform, he gave the Goblin a hand getting out as well before producing his key once more. With a nod of acknowledgement the small, gnarled creature pressed a hand to the door of the vault. There was a fleeting feel of magic in the air before the goblin pulled back his hand and opened the door with the key.

Harry thanked him and produced a bag from inside his robes, examining the contents of his vault critically. He still had substantial amounts of galleons, as well as some miscelleanous things bequeathed to him by his parents. It struck him that he hadn’t actually visited his vault in years, leaving the majority of his shopping and banking up to Mrs. Weasley. He scooped a few handfulls of galleons up before looking through the junk. There was some jewerly – rings, necklaces as well as a rather interesting looking book. It was bound in hard black leather, with deep and hard wrinkles marring the surface. The pages were yellowed, but altogether it looked much like thousands of books he’d seen over the years in the library at Hogwarts. The only notable thing about it was the presence in his trust vault, so he resolved to give it a look later, stuffing it in his bag. He closed his vault door, riding the cart back up to the surface and thanking the goblin again as he left.

Once outside the bank the volume picked up substantially, the white noise of the crowds imposing itself on him. The rest of the shopping passed without incident, and an hour later he was set up with fresh potion supplies and his school books. He’d found himself walking through the Leaky Cauldron, laden with bags and trying not to bowl anyone over – no easy task, considering. It took some trickery to get the door, but soon enough he had extracted himself from the pub and had flagged down the Knight Bus. Fifty knuts and some incredibly precarious driving later and he found himself once again at Privet Drive. In just a week he’d be free again, and it steeled him to know it, off and on his way to school for another year. Opening the door to the house he managed to pass up the stairs without incident, his uncle either not seeing or not acknowleding his arrival. In the months since he’d been back they had seemed to adopt a kind of passive, cold shoulder tactic to dealing with ‘it’ which suited him just fine. He plodded up the creaky stairs to his room, depositing his bags on the floor. He stowed the potion supplies and books in the trunk at the foot of his bed, pausing as he went to grab the book he’d taken from his vault. Plopping down on his bed Harry propped his back up against the wall, cracking open the book and flipping through the pages.

It was old, that much was sure. The writing looked like something from the dark ages, though it very clearly wasn’t. Yellowed pages with gothic type, and just from a cursory glance through he could already tell it was fairly nasty stuff. He’d read through books like this before, at Hogwarts. Most definitely restricted section material, but still toeing the line between light and dark. Dark magic, that is magic based primarily on negative human emotions like fear, hatred and misery weren’t kept at Hogwarts but there was plenty of magic that likely could’ve, and probably should have, been kept away from the library as well. Most of the older Arts had been used both for good and bad, but more than a few had been twisted as kind of proto-Dark Arts – all the power, none of the emotion required. Technically though, it wasn’t Dark, and was thus permissable. Made little sense to him, but it was far from his call.

He was jarred from his musing as his eyes caught some interesting sentences and a kind of childlike curiousity swept over him. It would still be another year before the Ministry had to remove the monitoring charms from his wand, another year until he could perform  magic in the muggle world. In theory. The kind of magic in this book held promise of an alternative. He devoured the chapter, his eyes rapidly moving back and forth over the pages. At last he put the tome down, and with a sigh adjusted his glasses. His suspicions had been confirmed as he read, the book was an instructional aid for blood magic and most certainly not the sort of things they taught students. Blood magic wasn’t technically dark, but the uses tended to be and the price for overuse was steep – blood mages who had gone overboard had literally drained themselves to death, both in blood and in magic.

Blood magic revolved around the concept of harnessing the inherent power within blood to fuel magic, but the more magic a blood mage threw behind a spell – so too the more blood that was required. It was obscure, one of many branches of magic that had been neglected and left to die. His impulses getting the better of him, he got up from his bed and retrieved a pen from his desk. Snapping off the metal clip, he placed the pen on the pane of his window. He took a few steps back, and a few breaths to steady himself, before he dug the broken metal into his thumb sharply, hissing as the pain shot through him. Pressing his finger into the cut to stall the bleeding, he extended his hand to the pen and willed it to come to him. Nothing happened as he strained, and he began to write it all off as a failed experiment. The moment he stopped straining he felt the sensation of blood being sucked out of his veins, a chill shooting straight down his spine and making every muscle in his body clench in panic. A flash erupted from his thumb as the pen soared into his hand. As he clenched it in his fist, he felt a wave of triumph roll over him. He had found his alternative, magical freedom and freedom to use his magic.