Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related terms and characters are the property of JK Rowling. The use of copyrighted material is for non-profit entertainment purposes only, and in no way constitutes a challenge to the existing copyright.

A/N: After six billion interruptions, this chapter is ready. Just about 13,000 words as we slip into gear and prepare to play hardball on both sides.

Thanks for the pile of reviews for the last chapter; I always enjoy everyone's comments. Feel free to ask questions, and I'll answer as best as I can.

YEAR 2: Home and Castle, Part 2

With January's mistake came February's caution. The Malfoy's vast fortune certainly helped in this regard. I very quickly learned the hierarchy of magical transportation, as our inability to safely use the Floo system would soon prove as crippling as removing the public subway and bus systems from a muggle city.

The Knight Bus is a privately owned business started by Ernie Prang and Stan Shunpike. Using an old double deck muggle bus, they painstakingly applied the charms to enable site-to-site apparition and spatial distortion charms. The whole thing is monstrously complex, and I seriously doubt that anyone but Ernie Prang himself could drive the thing. Given my complaints so far, they're obviously still working out the kinks in the charms, and the whole business was less than five years old at the time. Naturally, this ranks as the lowest grade of wizarding transportation, in my opinion.

Next we have --or had-- the Floo network, as the major workhorse to get from place to place. Everywhere from private locations to Diagon Alley to Hogwarts (in certain situations) was accessible by the Floo network. The Ministry charges a modest fee to any house with a connected fireplace for the upkeep of the network, and Floo powder is available in Diagon Alley for about 4 Knuts a pound, making this the most common form of travel.

For those with the skill and stamina there is Apparition, which is an internal magic that allows instantaneous travel from point-to-point. If you're a strong wizard, you can even take another person or two with you. If you're good at it, and don't need to leave now, you can slow the Apparition effect to "fade" out rather than just disappear and reappear, which has the much desired effect of avoiding the telltale "crack!" of air rushing in to fill the space that your body just vacated, or the "pop!" of air being displaced by your sudden arrival. Distance is a factor in Apparition, and the larger the load, including passengers, the shorter the distance that can be traveled. A middle-aged adult who's a very experienced Apparitioner can usually make a solo trip from London to Hogsmeade in Scotland so that they can visit their children at Hogwarts, but anything farther than that is sketchy at best. Even Dumbledore prefers Portkeys for longer-distance travel, and for any travel where he's responsible for more than himself; too much can go wrong, including (but not limited to) leaving parts of yourself or your passengers behind, which hurts just as much as getting it sliced off.

Portkeys are items specifically enchanted for single-use or multi-use site-to-site travel; the farther the destination, the stronger the enchantment needed. The average Portkey for local travel takes about ten to twenty minutes to create for the average Ministry-employed item enchanter, and the Ministry keeps a few common locations (Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, etc.) stocked, with a price tag of around 2 galleons -- the cost of convenience. International Portkeys or Portkeys to specific locations are made to order, and the cost is based on the time it takes to layer the enchantments. A Portkey New York from London takes about an hour to make, and costs 25 Galleons -- the Ministry hourly standard for an enchanter's time. Needless to say, any enchanter that could make the Portkey faster would be glad to do so... for a price. Since the enchantments are made to specifications including the number of passengers and the maximum range from its destination it can operate at, it's easy to catch any imperfections during the creation process. Add in a soft landing and no effort from the traveling wizard, and Portkeys are the luxury travel of the wizarding world. If you've got the money, it's the most secure, effortless and comfortable travel publicly available.

Dumbledore is a licensed Ministry enchanter for Portkeys, and his ability to create standard ones in less than five seconds is one of his most envied abilities: Luxury travel at a moment's notice for him and anyone traveling with him. General courtesy prevents most people from approaching Dumbledore to make Portkeys for them, but he's been known to do it on occasion, and he charges the Ministry's going rates to prevent it from becoming a habit.

When it comes to warded sites such as Hogwarts and Grimmauld Place, Floo travel and Portkeys are the only direct methods of entrance to the sites: Floo travel naturally ends with you inside the building in question, and Portkeys can be "keyed" to bypass the wards (the whole point of the name, really). Those people who Apparate need to walk in from the edge of the warded site to their destination. The Knight Bus registers to wards as one gigantic Apparition, so wards will keep it out, too. Floos can be password protected to prevent unauthorized entry, but the network itself is public.

Finishing off, the ultimate form of transport is traveling with the aid of a phoenix. Fawkes can travel anywhere in the world instantly, end of story. Most wards mean absolutely nothing to him, which is a major weapon in Dumbledore's arsenal, and the reason why Voldemort keeps his location very well-hidden. If Dumbledore is your enemy and knows where you live, you're pretty much done for. Add to this the relative immortality of a phoenix and their overall magical strength, and it's not hard to understand why phoenixes have been seen as a manifestation of Divinity.

The Order had the great fortune of having access to not only Dumbledore's Portkeys, but also to Fawkes. Once it had been hammered home that public travel was not to be trusted, Dumbledore went out of his way to supply customized Portkeys, and Fawkes was always quick to volunteer his services. The Malfoy fortune went into the purchasing of several wizarding homes for various Order families, and all of them were warded and secured as quickly as possible. For any family that was willing to forego their dinner parties, security usually included the Fidelius.

Remus explained the charm to me one day while we were sitting by the fire at Grimmauld. "The Fidelius was designed for keeping spoken and written information secret. For every person that already knows the secret that the Fidelius is going to protect, the power drain to cast the spell increases exponentially as the spell places restrictions on every single person who could potentially speak or write the secret. After about a dozen people or so, it's well beyond the average wizard. If it's beyond twenty, even Dumbledore can't do it --so he says, anyways. What's more, everyone who knows the secret needs to be present when the Fidelius is cast or the spell fails.

"Dumbledore and Flitwick spent two stressful years in the early 70's modifying the charm to work on locations as well. In order to meet Dumbledore's power constraints, the charm needed to be used on new, unadvertisedplaces of residence; hiding the secret that "such and such a family can be found at this location" is dead easy if no one currently knows the location. Once the charm is in place, it can filter how that information is dispensed without any further issue.

"There are limitations to this charm, kind of like your mother's protection when you're outside this house. The charm protects against the information spreading by word-of-mouth, writing, and –most importantly-- magical forms of discerning location or direct travel that include anyone other than those who are 'in' on the secret. The designated Secret Keeper is the only person that can use the above methods freely. However, if your enemies search every house on the street, they will eventually find you; you don't just disappear or become physically unreachable, just like Voldemort has no issues attacking you once he's in front of you. The Fidelius masks everything else about the location though, including magical signatures and wards, so for anyone who doesn't know the secret it could take weeks or months of drudge work to ferret out someone's location, and then you have to deal with defenses that you can't analyze even when you're right inside them. Both the Ministry and Voldemort have better things to be doing than finding armored needles in haystacks."

"Okay, I get it. You know, the only sure-fire way I can think of for someone to penetrate a Fidelius-covered wizarding home would be to drop a nuke on the area and see which houses are still standing." I smirked at Remus' look of horror. "Any undamaged house that registers as completely non-magical and empty will be protected by Dumbledore's custom Fidelius. Then you have to attack each house, and try to disable an unknown series of wards that you know are there, but have to guess blindly at, all while the occupants of the house are attacking you while enjoying the protection that their wards afford them. Repeat until you find the right set of occupants, and you're done."

"Right…" he said, shaking his head. "Well, since the wizarding community in general takes a dim view of muggle technology and considers their weapons anathema, annihilating a city to expose wizarding homes using a muggle weapon isn't going to happen anytime soon, and especially not from Voldemort and the Ministry.

"And you need to stop casually referring to nuclear weapons," he warned. "Hiroshima caused widespread panic. Not only was the entire city devastated, but wizards in and around the city took it just as badly as muggles; it was the first time an ages that so many wizards had been killed or horribly injured by muggles. Some fast research on Einstein's work was done, as well as closely monitoring the radiation in Hiroshima and the nuclear tests done by various countries afterwards.

"In only a handful of years, a low-powered ward designed to repel excess heat, moving air and matter beyond a certain speed, and radiation outside of the normal spectrum was developed, and wizards around the world erected it as fast as they could around communities and isolated homes."

If only the muggle leaders knew that: The five-year rise and fall of nuclear supremacy.

"Part of the reason that Death Eaters existed in the first place was the inability of muggles to harm wizards, so nuclear weapons came as a real shock." Remus said. "The defeat of the nuclear threat was followed by a huge surge of Death Eater activity as a sort of revenge against muggles for causing such panic amongst wizarding communities. It was actually that wave of Death Eater activity that Voldemort capitalized on."

"Yeah, Sirius told me about that," I said. "Is the nuclear thing the reason that the Ministry was so tolerant of Death Eaters?"

Remus nodded. "It's part of it. Death Eaters were around way before nuclear weapons, but it certainly helped their cause."

"Is there anything that muggles have that works against wizards?" I asked, interested.

"Well, you've seen that guns work if the wizard isn't prepared, and knives and swords work about the same, but other than that, not really. Our spells and wards can stop their vehicles, their wired and broadcast communications, their weapons, and very easily affect their minds."

"Maybe I'm going to get in trouble with this one, but aren't the Death Eaters pretty much right, then?"

Remus looked away and scratched his chin, frowning. After a moment, he looked as though he had found his words, and turned back to me. "Alright, Harry, let's take that viewpoint. At the very worst, muggles could be viewed as pack animals: We could harness them for work, sort of like muggles do to animals. But in that case, they'd still be cattle. I know that none of us would bat an eye at a cow's death, but would you go around killing them just for fun? What would be the point?"

"Okay, I get it: No reason to hurt them."

"Exactly," Remus said, nodding. "We've sectioned off entire parts of the world from them; parts that they can't see or map, even with their satellites. You might even go as far as to say we took the best parts of the world –all the mystical places of power and beauty—and abandoned the rest to the muggles. There's absolutely no reason not to stay in our private world and live our lives and let the muggles live theirs. It's not like they can hurt us anyways."

Now that made complete and perfect sense. For the first time, I had a logical justification for the war besides a general feeling of "we're good, they're bad." It suddenly made so much sense why pureblood families would actually bother to help the muggles: They weren't helping muggles so much as trying to purge what they saw as an immoral and unnecessary part of wizarding society. To hurt muggles in the name of 'superiority' was sort of like watching street kids torturing animals in downtown muggle London: Disgusting and completely unjustified.

"You know, in a way I'm glad that my parents are dead," Hermione said after told her about my discussion with Remus. "It would be ten times harder to be a witch when I'd have to watch my parents get treated like cripples around most wizards and like … insects around the purebloods."

"They'd have had people who'd respect them," I said, gesturing to the rest of the house. Hermione smiled sadly and cupped my cheek in her hand.

"You're sweet, Harry, but even the Order doesn't have a problem with leaving muggles on the other side of their wards."

That also made complete and perfect sense, though the thought was depressing.

"Speaking of my parents, are you done with my dad's gun, Harry?"

"Actually, yes," I said, pulling the gun out of my bag. "Here's the gun." I then pulled a reasonable sized box out. "That's about a hundred bullets, give or take." Then I pulled out another identical pistol, and another box of bullets. "These ones are for me. I want you to teach me how to shoot properly."

"Where did you get another gun?" Hermione asked, her eyes going quite wide. "They're illegal; there's no way to just buy them."

"You're absolutely right," I said, grinning and twirling my wand. "I didn't buy anything. I haven't been anywhere that I could have, anyways."

"You made that?" she said, catching on right away. "That's amazing! It looks just like Dad's!"

"It's the bullets that took more time," I said, indicating the boxes. "Not so much for the number as trying to duplicate gunpowder; that took forever. Once I figured out the gunpowder, I spent a whole bunch of time working the Universals to make the stuff. There are a couple of good charms that give floating visual displays for the composition and dimensions of objects, and I just kept adjusting the Transfigurations until the readouts were exactly the same. I did that for the gun, and again for each of the bullets.

"I think I can safely call myself a master of .38 caliber ammo."

"Your permanent conjury is probably the thing I'm the most jealous of," Hermione said as she inspected my gun. The revolver was an exact duplicate of Hermione's gun, with the exception of the serial number, which I replaced with my name. "I like the idea of being able to make whatever I want, whenever I want."

"Yeah, well, it's not easy; most of the stuff I try to make looks like shit, and complicated substances like say, gunpowder, take forever to get right. If I could have just bought a gun, I would have."

-----

As with all of my problems, I eventually took my moral dilemma to my sessions with Dumbledore, who produced the same sad smile as Hermione.

"Let's concentrate on ridding ourselves of Voldemort first," he said. "Then, should we still have the energy, we can try to change the world. God knows it needs changing."

That's three people who made complete and perfect sense, and none of it made me feel any better for the future.

Depressing lessons like these were easy to learn that month; after the Battle of the Burrow, the entire Order suddenly became very cynical and security-conscious. Moody's cries of "Constant Vigilance" suddenly weren't so annoying, as he would likely have been the only person that the Malfoy's couldn't have caught using the Floo network. Even he was lenient on the incident at the Burrow, though.

"There's only ever been one case 'sides Voldemort on possession," he said while we waited in Dumbledore's office one day. "Took nearly a year for a victim to come to us, and another three months to catch the slippery bastard. Longest 36 hours of my life: Took 'em to trial right away, got him sentenced to death, and didn't leave him alone 'till the Dementor sucked out his soul, the son of a bitch.

"You did well with the Weasley girl," he said clapping my shoulder. "Only way to kill a possessor is to kill the possessed body. You did the right thing -- don't give me that look, Potter! Listen -- I know she's your friend, but there were lives at stake. Besides, even though you didn't pull it off, you're what, 12? The fact that the curse actually hit him must've scared him shitless.

"What you told Voldemort with that curse is that he can't pull that shit around you again, or he's takin' a one-way trip to Hell. The next time you catch him in someone else's body, you get that curse right, and end this war for good."

Spoken with the callousness of a veteran soldier; still, Moody's little rant had me thinking. If I had managed to kill Ginny, would this all be over? Was Voldemort truly that vulnerable when in someone else's body? I brought it up with Hermione while when we met later that day to do our rounds of the castle and grounds.

"Voldemort seemed to be able to control the basilisk and another person at the same time," Hermione said as we walked down a fourth floor corridor. "If he's mostly in the basilisk, then I don't think he's really vulnerable."

"It's possible that he's actually both places at once," I said, Dumbledore's theories cycling through my head. "With advanced Occlumency, he's likely able to have two completely different trains of thought going. If he's present in the possessed body at all, it might be a window straight to him through the basilisk's natural resistances."

Hermione shrugged, waving her wand to repair minor scuffs on a suit of display armor. "Maybe, but if he's attached to the basilisk in any way, I still don't think a single Killing Curse would do it."

I nodded, and went back to scouring the floor with an area effect version of Scourgify, watching as the hall regained color and luster about five feet in front of me as I walked. Hermione was easily caught up to me in overall magical theory. Her natural ability to absorb information and crunch numbers was staggering, and I had long since accepted that she'd be another Dumbledore when she was older. I was still teaching her the things I learned from Dumbledore, but that would change soon. Hermione's ability with fourth-year material was almost to the point where she could consistently cast everything, and I expected her to test out of her practical classes by Easter break. Once Dumbledore started teaching her directly, she'd be leaps and bounds beyond me in understanding, and then it would be her teaching me.

-----

Speaking of teaching, my first 'lesson' teaching the others how to duel taught me a couple of lessons about how fast information travels. After securing permission from Dumbledore and a spare classroom to use, I gathered Fred, George, Ginny, Hermione, Pansy, and Luna for dueling practice. Pansy I included because she was family; Luna I included because Hermione and I liked her, and I wanted her to be able to take care of herself.

I was nervous as hell to be teaching, even just my friends. Still, Dumbledore's words were only a mental nudge away, so I began to talk the way he started with me.

"Alright, then, let's see what I can teach you about dueling. The first thing that you need to know about a duel is that it starts way before you close up with your opponent. Dumbledore taught me there are three stages to dueling of any kind: Setup, midrange, and rapid exchange.

During setup you're a large distance from your opponent or goal, so you have time to get ready. If you're using enhancement potions, take them; if you're going to put on or activate enchanted equipment, do it; if you've got a few protective charms to layer, cast them. This sounds like what you do before a duel, but it's a lot better to think about it as if you're already in the duel. It keeps your attention on your opponent, and it hammers into your head that unless you're caught completely by surprise, you should prepare for any duel. You never go in half-arsed."

The twins and girls followed my movements as I paced around the front of the classroom. I was very caught up in my speech, so I wasn't paying as much attention to the room as I should have been.

"Midrange is inside casting range, but still well apart from each other. This is where you use any of the slow heavy-hitting curses, as well as anything that's debilitating. At this range, you should be using Impedimenta to slow your enemies down. That curse is easy to deflect or shield against, but you can adjust it to affect an area, which is where you want to pin your enemy. Once they're slowed up, use the nonliving-nonliving Universal Transfiguration on the ground to spike it up and keep them inside that area, leaving just enough opening for you to keep firing spells at them.

"You see, the goal is to keep all your opponents at midrange, where the most powerful part of anyone's arsenal can be used: Transfiguration on the surrounding area, conjuring and animating objects to assist you, or complex combinations of spells that produce devastating effects that no single spell could."

I stopped and waved my wand, conjuring a dozen temporary spinning silver discs. I quickly levitated them and shaped them into blades, and set them to whirling around my body. Using my wand, I quickly demonstrated that I could control how close they flew, and sent them flying into the door, quivering in a fairly accurate five-point star shape.

I still wasn't looking at my audience.

"I can manage that in a little over two seconds now, and it's a real deterrent to anyone who likes to get up close. Finite Incantatem won't work on that orbital charm and there are five different variations to the spell, so unless you're willing to play a guessing game with counter spells, you're stuck with destroying my objects or staying out of range.

"Since we're talking about real opponents, midrange is where the Avada Kedavra gets used, too. Without getting too into this, you have to use the incantation if you want the curse to work, and six syllables is way too long to be using when you're close to opponents. Out at midrange, you basically use it like muggle artillery or like the twins use Bludgers, to keep your opponent from getting too comfortable behind any of their set defenses. Area-effect Stunners and other high-powered, high-syllable vocal spells should be used out here. In other words, all the fun stuff happens at midrange."

Everyone was still quiet, and I could see them out of the corner of my eye as I paced. The room felt a little different now, though, but I pushed the distraction away, needing to finish this and get onto spells.

"Once you close up with your opponent, you're in rapid exchange. The only spells that you'll have time to pull here are direct attacks, deflectors, and shields. Like the examples you saw last week, duelists are likely to choose one attacking spell and stick with it. For a standard duel Petrificus and Expelliarmus are more than enough; once you hit with it, your opponent's done. If it's a real fight, then you'd follow up with Stupefy. I recommend using either the Bind or Disarm before the Stunner, though; they're a lot easier to fire off quickly.

"For any practicing we do in here, it'll all be Expelliarmus. If it were a real fight, you'd likely be using Reducto, the fastest and strongest offensive curse Hogwarts teaches."

I paused for a moment to demonstrate the Disarm, Bind, Stunner, and Reductor against the wall, showing the difference in speed of my casting. The wall was in pretty poor condition after the Reductors, but nothing I couldn't repair on the way out. "A strong Reducto will bleed through shielding charms, so you'll be hurting your opponent even if they're blocking. Hermione, you got very lucky in your fight against Draco –his Reductors aren't so hot; Pansy, Draco wasn't so lucky against you, and you can bet that's why his shields started to slip. Reducto can be counter-cursed and deflected, however, so don't rely on it solely. It's better to use the bind and disarm rapidly to force your opponent to use shields, and then punish them with Reductors for doing it. Rinse and repeat until your opponent gets slow, and then end the duel with Stupefy.

"Shields are your last resort; it's what you put up when you absolutely cannot dodge or deflect. Protego's the most common, since its advanced form will reflect some spells back at the caster. There are other shields that are useful in rapid exchange, though; there are three or four others I want to cover with you. Anti-shield spells like Reducto and especially Crucio will make you wish you'd never heard of shields, though, so be careful.

"Knowing how to roll and dodge around in close quarters is your most powerful defense, and deflector charms become your best friends. Which one you use depends on where you want the spell to deflect, how wide you need to deflect it, and the relative power of the spell that's coming in. Hermione can tell you all about having Quirrel reverse her Binding hex right back at her; that was a strong deflector charm.

"Area-effect spells can't be deflected, but shields work against those. Spells that pass through shields can generally be deflected. There are only a couple of deflectors that work against Crucio, though, so you have to be on your toes for that one. Remember: They have to say it to cast it, so you'll get some warning.

"Only one deflector charm out there can deflect the Avada Kedavra, and by 'deflect' I mean 'nudge over a little,' so it's still mostly up to your dodging ability, but against that spell, every little bit helps. It's pretty high-powered, so we're going to skip it until way later.

"Okay, that's pretty much everything there is to say about dueling. Now, let's get some practice in on how to actually do it, so that all of this starts to make sense." Clapping my hands with finality, I turned to look at my audience... and nearly fainted.

The room was packed solid with more than a hundred students from every house, and more than a few teachers. Once I was done, everyone erupted into applause, especially Hermione and Pansy up front. I viciously forced my surprise down and pulled up a sense of calm. I must not show weakness. Not in front of the school.

"Professors, is there any place that we can use that's open enough for this many students? This room's obviously too small."

Of all the professors present, including McGonagall, the only one who wasn't shocked at my request was Snape. He smirked at me and tilted his head, looking like he wanted to laugh.

"Certainly," he said. "I think that the Great Hall should suffice, once we move the tables. Shall we?" He turned and strode out the back door of the classroom, leaving it to the rest of the professors to organize the students to follow.

-----

It's amazing what chaos can come from Expelliarmus, Protego, and Declino -- the easiest deflector charm. With just those three spells, the Great Hall was a horrible mess. Over a hundred students learned or reviewed those three spells, and then used them against a partner.

Can't you just imagine the horror? People getting disarmed from across the room from a hex that was deflected three different times; younger students cowering behind their shield instead of practicing the deflect-and-evade movement that I was demonstrating for them; If the professors hadn't been there, I would've died from frustration. As it was, the student body was so scared of Snape and McGonagall that the incidents were kept to a minimum, and people generally did what they were told –and still it was chaos.

It surprised me that Snape let me keep control of the session. It was obvious that I hadn't expected more than my immediate friends to show up, and I was perpetually confused at how so many other students had shown up.

Even though it started completely unorganized, by the time we called it a day --more than two hours later-- every student in the hall knew those three spells, and some could even use them fast enough to count. Leaving in groups, the students went off to their afternoon activities, leaving me and my friends alone and exhausted.

"One of the most important lessons known to man," Snape said to me as he passed me and my friends, "Is learning to surround yourself with people who know how to keep their overactive mouths shut. It avoids needless complications such as this was. Good day, Potter."

Snape walked off, engaging Flitwick in a conversation about the students' performance. I, on the other hand, looked back at my friends. Fred and George were as red as their hair, so that's two. Pansy and Hermione were normal looking, but I didn't need confirmation to know that those two could keep things to themselves. Ginny looked angry at her brothers, and I imagined that she wouldn't be one to advertise, if only to keep from answering questions about why she was interested in dueling.

Luna, on the other hand, was staring at Snape's retreating back, as though he had said something odd.

"Luna, did you tell anyone about my lessons?" I asked, drawing her attention back to me.

"Only the girls in my year in Ravenclaw," she said. "They were very interested to know what Harry Potter might be teaching, so naturally they asked me all about it. It was very nice of them, it's the first time they were interested in anything I said. It was--"

"-- the stupidest, most air-headed thing you could have done," Pansy finished for her. "Are you still six that you have to tell everyone around you exactly what you're doing? You're supposed to be damned smart, Lovegood! Did what Professor Snape said make sense to you, or do we have to explain to you one syllable at a time how idiotic you are?"

"Pansy, please," I said, trying to head her off.

"Come on, Harry! She doesn't need defending! This could have been a great session on dueling; did you know that, Luna? We could have learned tons, had plenty of spells to practice with. Now, because of you, we were stuck with the disarming charm, the weakest shield, and the most useless deflector, just to watch a whole bunch of first and second years stuff it up!"

"Hey, now--" George started, but Pansy talked right over him.

"You two weren't a problem! You two brought third and fourth years, and the Quidditch teams! She brought babies!"

"We're first and second years, too," Ginny said quietly.

"But we're better than they are!" Pansy shouted. "They don't even know how to clean themselves yet!"

"They have just as much a right to learn as any," Luna said unperturbed.

"But I am not a professor, and am not obligated to teach them." My voice was low, meant only to carry to Luna, but the edge in my voice caught everyone's attention. "This was only meant to be for my friends, so that they could defend themselves."

"And if danger came to the school, what then?" she asked, her unblinking eyes staring at me intently.

"I would be with my friends and family, protecting them."

"And you'd leave the others to suffer?" Fuck you and your logical guilt trip, I thought angrily.

"I would protect my friends and family. If everyone was doing the same thing, they'd all be fine."

"Some of us don't know how," she whispered. "Are we to be punished for that?"

"That's why I invited you. You want to teach your friends, go right ahead. But the people with me right now are the only people I'm teaching."

"I'm sorry," she said, her large, glassy eyes filling with tears. "I—I just thought… I'll leave if you want." Women's avoidance tactic number two: Offer to leave to appeal to their loyalty.

She tried to walk past me and I stepped over, pulling her into a hug. "No," I said. "You belong here."

Luna stood in my embrace, arms at her sides. I could feel her shivering, and a sense of deja vu came over me. I looked over at Pansy and Hermione, only to see them looking back. Hermione looked curious, while Pansy looked annoyed. But I had held each girl similarly, and this small, shaking Ravenclaw had obviously lost someone that she cared for. Well, I wasn't waiting all year like I did for Hermione, and I had just the ace up my sleeve necessary to cut through all the drama.

I moved Luna back a step and took my glasses off, holding them up to Luna. "Look at my glasses, Luna. Tell me what you see."

There was a heavy silence as she stared at the glasses, and her tears began to flow like rivers. "Mum!" Luna said with a strangled cry, and she grabbed my glasses from me. "Mum, oh mum..." I closed my arms around her as her legs gave out, and I held her up as she cried. It wasn't the sniffles of Hermione, whose pain had passed and was now behind barriers of mental magic. It wasn't the prideful trail of tears that Pansy kept as she convinced herself that grieving –or even mentioning a name-- was pointless. It was the painful, wracking sobs of someone who had never properly healed and whose emotional walls had been blown apart entirely.

Fred and George had miserable looks on their faces, and Ginny looked devastated. Hermione had the blank look of Occlumency-use, and was still looking at me. I motioned to the Weasleys with my head, and she nodded and turned to whisper words of encouragement to her adopted family, who gathered around her.

Pansy slowly came up to Luna, and took her from me, handing me back me glasses. She knelt in front of the crying young witch, and began to whisper in her ear.

Thank you, Pansy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, and sat down at one of the tables, fumbling with my glasses. My mother and father looked up at me with smiles on their faces, and I smiled back. My blackened palms itched as they touched the lenses, feeling a trace of the power they had once channeled into Voldemort.

They looked hilarious in a way: If you saw my hands from a distance, you might think that I needed to clean them badly. If you saw them up close, then the black flickers of flame trailing up the sides of my palms, fingers, and forearms made it look like I had decided to outdo muggle Goths and tattooed the entire bottoms of my hands.

More than any muggle church exorcist ever would, I had held the face of the Devil in my hands, and burned it with purity beyond comprehension. It hadn't occurred to me until just then how profound it was that my mother's sacrifice gave me that power. As Pansy comforted Luna, and Hermione comforted her siblings, I stared at my hands with a look of wonder on my face.

"Deep thoughts, Harry?" said a voice from beside me. Professor Dumbledore sat down at my left; Fawkes alighting on the bench on Dumbledore's other side, trilling happily.

"Contemplating the existence of God," I said, holding up my hands.

"Isn't it amazing what something as simple as a mother's love can become?" Dumbledore said, smiling as he looked at my hands.

"Yeah… Professor, you don't expect me to keep teaching the entire school, do you?"

Dumbledore chuckled deeply. "Of course not, Harry. I'll talk with Gilderoy, and see if we can't get some dueling taught in Defense this year. You may need to show up now and again, but I would think that you're free to teach your friends in peace." His face became serious again, and he looked down at my hands. "Is there anything on your mind that I can help you with?"

"I… I don't know," I said, trying to form my thoughts into words. "After the Burrow I feel… I feel like I'm on the streets in Little Whinging again. Open, I guess; exposed."

"Vulnerable, afraid, powerless." Dumbledore's eyes found mine, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the tremendous pain that hid behind his impenetrable mental barriers.

Every time I make a mistake, people die, he had told me. Every time…

"Yeah, exactly."

"This is the true damage that Voldemort causes," Dumbledore said, squeezing my shoulder firmly. "Not the death and destruction itself, but the fear and despair that comes of it. For those who are weak, he is too powerful to confront. For those who are strong, why raise your voice or fist when those you would fight for perish regardless?

"You are merely human, Harry. You said to Miss Lovegood that you would defend your loved ones. If the people you love are dead, will you fight on? To avenge them, perhaps, or for others that still survive? Or, as most people do, will you simply hang your head low, and walk away?"

"That's not what I said." I was still staring at my hands, but I could feel both Dumbledore and Fawkes gazing at me. "Maybe it's how it came out, though."

"What did you mean, Harry?"

I took a deep breath, trying to re-phrase the words in my head. "If… everyone, and I mean everyone… fights for their … err, loved ones, then everyone's fighting, right? If everyone's fighting, then nobody's running, and no one's afraid."

"Wise words, Harry; unity is indeed an enviable goal. But consider the war we now face, where families are divided, and the man behind the mask may be your own brother. What then?"

I had no answers, and so I kept looking down at my hands and my glasses, to my smiling parents and my itching palms.

-----

"Damn, my head hurts," I moaned as I dropped into a seat in the Ravenclaw common room. As I sat, I quickly cast a mild repulsion charm that Professor Dumbledore had helped me alter. The charm was keyed so that Hermione and Luna --the only two Ravenclaws I would never turn away-- could approach me. Everyone else would find me intimidating, suddenly remember important things to do or people to see, or however else their brain processed the subliminal message of "go away." I set the perimeter of the charm to just larger than the common room itself, so that anyone who chose to stay in the room would leave me alone.

The other Ravenclaws tromped into the room after me, and just as I had wanted, everyone dispersed to do their homework or talk with friends, leaving me alone in my corner.

"I would think that some of these people would thank you for that lesson," Hermione said as she came over to me, squishing in beside me on the oversized chair. "It's kind of rude to just ignore you."

"Repulsion charm," I mumbled, indicating the room with my finger.

"Oh. OH! Harry, that's horrible!" she said, smacking my arm. "Some of them must be going insane trying to find you."

"They can find me later," I said, running my hand through Hermione's hair. Any further protests were silenced as she pressed her head against my hand, not unlike an attention-seeking Mrs. Norris.

"More," she said. "Mmm... You don't do this often enough."

"If you say so," I said with a smirk, running both hands through her hair. Last year, this would have been impossible to do; I'd have caught 3000 snags on the way through, and Hermione would be screaming in pain. This year, I have yet to see Hermione without her hair nicely combed, and usually done in a basic French braid to keep it out of the way. Even braided as it was, her hair was loose enough to run my fingers through, scratching her scalp lightly, and eliciting murmurs of pleasure from my normally reserved girlfriend.

Braided hair was an accepted norm amongst witches in the wizarding world. Every witch was expected to have long hair, and unlike muggles with long hair, it was very easy to keep your hair thick and healthy. There was a charm for nearly every hairstyle known, and quite a few styles that I don't think would be possible without magic.

A witch will generally keep her hair braided or in a bun to keep it out of the way. On formal nights out, a witch will minimize the braiding to let her hair fall down naturally, or use some outlandishly complex style designed to gain maximum attention. A witch like Pansy, who kept her hair in a short bob, was a rebel in the wizarding world in the same manner a muggle girl would be with a dozen facial piercings and tattoos.

Wizards were expected to keep their hair above the shoulders. Dumbledore's long-hair look is only acceptable if you grow the beard to match the mane. I could never see myself with a beard like that, so I imagined that my hair would stay pretty short.

Our moment lasted until Luna came over sat down in front of the chair. I let Hermione sit up, and she waved her wand to tighten the braid. I wondered if we would have a continuation of our near argument, but Luna started in on one of her fictitious creatures, and the evening passed in peaceful perplexity.

-----

"We may as well finish off the deep history of this entire mess," Dumbledore said as we sat in his office. "Wizards have always been a somewhat 'superior' form of human. Mythological characters such as Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus, Siegfried and the like were all based off of wizards, though they performed few, if any, rituals."

"But they were stronger, faster… I get it." Dumbledore nodded, and continued.

"Internal magics were well known for thousands of years, and those with rare gifts, such as the Sight, became Oracles to the masses. Extremely gifted wizards might have managed accidental magics as you have, or perhaps even greater. That kind of power is very rare, however; there were few wizards of my caliber, or Voldemort's, in history, and none would have had the background necessary to produce the complex effects that you might expect of me. Magic was a far simpler thing back then.

"As the ages progressed and rituals became more and more common and complex, the notion of a wizard as a manipulator of elements arose, and the job of warfare was left to the muggles as the one time champions of war turned to more mystical pursuits.

"By the middle ages, any wizard born to wizards was trained in mystic arts and rituals and would either make their own way, assist their master, or perhaps advise powerful muggles. Only the rare few muggleborn ever became true champions to muggle causes."

"Okay, so wizards went from being super-soldiers to advisors to kings." I said. "Seems fairly straight forward; muggles get most of their ideas about wizards from this time, then."

"I agree. By the time Hogwarts was founded, only a rare few wizards, such as Merlin, were trusted by muggle kingdoms. Gryffindor was another; his bloodline reached as far back as the Greeks, perhaps intertwining with stories of Achilles and his Myrmidons, and Leonidas and his Spartans. He embraced the concept of the warrior-wizards of old, and sought their return. Unlike any other pureblooded wizard of the time, he wore the plate armor, shield, and arming sword of a muggle knight, and won the love and respect of all muggles in his travels. He carried none of the accepted apparel of a pure-blooded wizard of high standing, and so his reception amongst wizards was mixed."

"Wouldn't that have left him a little under-prepared for a duel?" I asked, deeply interested in this very candid history lesson.

"There weren't wands in that time period, remember." Dumbledore motioned to the sword sitting above the mantle in Dumbledore's office. The look on my face as I put two and two together and realized that the sword on Dumbledore's wall was actually Gryffindor's sword must have been priceless. "It was a most unorthodox choice, but the sword was etched with the necessary runes and made for a reasonable staff, and so Godric was as well-equipped as any wizard was."

"Right," I said stupidly, still getting over the implied identity of the sword. "No wands."

"Here, Harry: Bring your wand closer, and I'll show you something." Dumbledore tapped the tip of my wand with his, and I watched in wonder as my wand split apart from the top of the handle to the tip in four even quarters and spread back like a lily. At the center of the wand was a thin wooden column running up from the handle to where the tip should be. That column again separated into four even thinner circular strands of wood running evenly spaced in a diamond formation around the center hollow and merging into a column again just before the tip. Tightly rolled and secured in the hollow was the phoenix-feather core, magical power pulsing up and down in red and gold colors.

The space between the core column and the outer shell was filled with wide paper-thin strips of wood layered around each other like long petals of a flower, each covered in various runes of power. Bands of gold connected the runes in odd formations, making each wood strip look like a chaotic mystical circuit board. These strips bent gracefully away from the core, so that as I held my wand vertically, it looked like a wooden replica of a giant flower in full bloom.

"You see, there is a little more your wand than a stick and a feather."

"Wow," I said, amazed. It reminded me very much of a computer: A central processor, circuit boards, and the ability to take input and generate a different kind of output. All of a sudden, the difficulty of Arithmancy and Runes made a hell of a lot more sense.

Dumbledore laughed out loud at my comparison when I told him. "Only you would compare wand-craft to muggle technology, Harry. I see your point, though; the only difference is that you are supplying the power as well as the input.

"A wand is a complex ritual matrix that routes your magical power along preset channels as directed by your movements, effectively enacting a full ritual inside the wand in a fraction of a second and channeling the resulting effect though the tip and toward the specified target.

"We speak very highly of the accomplishments of the Founders, but with that wand you can do in seconds what would have taken even the ingenious Rowena Ravenclaw minutes or even hours to accomplish through Old Ritual."

"That's amazing. I thought that my wand was solid wood except for a feather in the center."

"It is, Harry."

"But how?"

Dumbledore waved his wand at the chair beside me, shattering it into splinters. "How is it that we can make that chair whole again, Harry?" Right. Magic. Duh.

"So, a wand is a specific type of wood with various runes and gold pathways layered all the way through it, surrounding a core that's taken from a magical creature, all sealed back up into a solid stick and then carved to look nice. Is that about right?" Dumbledore nodded, and I blinked a few times, still processing the information.

"Who the hell thought of all that?" I asked finally, gesturing at my flower of a wand. "Seriously, someone decided one day to peel a stick like an onion and write all over it, then seal it back up and see if it works?"

"It took a long time to develop," Dumbledore said. "The modern wand has only been in place for the last 300 years or so. Rowena Ravenclaw was one of the pioneers of Arithmantic theory, the entire point of which was the miniaturization and quickening of magical rituals, so that more immediate and effective results could be gained. What you have in your hand is the result of more than 700 years of Arithmantic evolution and some very creative woodworkers."

With a wave from Dumbledore's wand, the 'petals' curled and fused together, and the shell pulled back up, sealing again into a solid stick of wood. Red and gold sparks shot from the rounded tip, and I imagined that the wand was 'rebooting' itself. I was a little puzzled as to why Dumbledore stopped to show me this. I knew I was supposed to be getting something here, but I wasn't sure what. Well, when in doubt...

"Okay, so wands are hand-held microsecond multi-purpose Rituals that we base all of our modern magical theory around. I understand better than before, but I think I always kind of got that. Why did you show me that, and why don't we learn that in school?"

"Students learn about it in the Spell Creation NEWT; it's really pointless trivia before then. I've shown you that for a completely different reason, though. I want you to remember that the very most basic tool that all wizards rely on is itself a complex construct whose design required an immense amount of more traditional ritual knowledge and ability. Those rituals in turn were based off of trial and error, the astronomy and mathematics of the time, as well as a good strong dose of the local religions."

"Right..."

"So all the flaws and inaccuracies of those old techniques are built right into the modern system of magic that we practice." he said, gesturing around him. "Our magic is just as egocentric and flawed as the muggle sciences, and our foremost scholars are as biased as most muggle researchers as well: We assume that our system is flawless and absolute.

"Just as muggles learned from Newton's Law of Gravity, so too should wizards learn from our limitations: Just because the math works, doesn't make the theory right."

"So all our magic could be... wrong? I don't get it." I really didn't. The level of philosophy that Dumbledore was talking at was more suited to his peers, not a 12 year old. It didn't help that I only had a passing knowledge of Newton's work, as Astronomy focused on the practical application of the math, not its proofs.

"Not wrong, Harry." Dumbledore said, becoming more and more animated as his excitement showed through. "It works, I admit. But the fact that it works makes us assume that it's universally correct, which means that we don't check for or correct inaccuracies in the system before moving on. We allow this to happen again and again and again, and the minor problems that we couldn't see before quickly become larger and more annoying magical quirks that we try to ignore or just accept. Some become immense blocks in magical ability that we have to find ways to work around.

"Why can't I conjure wood directly, Harry? Why must I start with that indescribable substance and work from there? That type of conjury is a workaround.

"Why can't I shield against some spells? What prevents it from working? I have to use deflector charms to avoid those; another workaround.

"Why, for all my abundant magical power, can I not directly kill someone without uttering the words 'Avada Kedavra'?

"Why, if it's so easy to kill, am I then barred from reversing the process? Why is the Avada Kedavra absolute?"

"There are so many limitations to the system, Harry; so many things that we might have been able to fix by being more open in our approach and research. It's the reason I study the Old Ways so thoroughly, Harry: I want to overcome as many of the limitations to modern-day magic as I can." For a moment, Dumbledore looked like a spry 20-year old alive with potential and vigor. I memorized this new face, the face of the real Dumbledore. Not the Headmaster; not the Politician; not the General. This was the face of Albus.

"A completely different wand matrix," he said reverently. "A set of entirely restructured spells; one charm, one hex at a time. For the last fifty years, I've been working on this, Harry: A system of wand-based magic with more possibilities than ever before!"

"You've created a new system of magic?!" I breathed, my eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. Slowly, with an air of deepest conspiracy, Dumbledore removed a second wand from his robes, looking thicker and rougher than his first one.

With a flourish of his new wand, a chair appeared beside me. Unlike Dumbledore's normal chairs, this one was crudely formed, but that crudeness only underlined the implication. The chair was directly conjured straight out of Dumbledore's imagination into reality with no Transfiguration involved.

"The power of God, Harry," Dumbledore said quietly. "True creation."

There was a moment of profound silence between us, with only the flicker of firelight to illuminate our faces. Dumbledore slowly came down from his excitement, and with a slightly embarrassed look, he stowed his experimental wand. In that entire time, my expression never changed: Eyes wide, jaw on the floor, utterly stupefied by Dumbledore's revelation.

Dumbledore cleared his throat to get my attention. "To finish what I started, Rowena Ravenclaw was interested in promoting and evolving magical ritual into being more practical, which had the approval of all three other Founders. Helga Hufflepuff was the pioneering force in ritual development to assist in households as well as general healing and welfare; again, a noble cause supported by all, and the basis of our current potions and understanding of our magical cores.

"Salazar Slytherin wished to create barriers between muggles and wizards, and create great wizarding cities of magnificent power. Though this ambition was somewhat far-fetched, the idea of a world apart from muggles appealed to all wizards, including the other three Founders. As you can tell by the current state of things, Slytherin succeeded in this marvelously.

"Godric Gryffindor was what muggles would term a technocrat: He believed that the rulers of nations both muggle and wizarding should be the most skilled and qualified, rather than those with political and economical power. Naturally, this meant that wizards should rule over muggles, and the wisest, most capable wizards should rule over wizards. This, too, was seen as largely acceptable, and there was an initial push to place wizards in positions of power amongst muggles, as well as the formation of governing wizarding bodies that would eventually become the various world Ministries, Republics and Circles."

"So all four Founders were cool with each other," I said with a nod. "Why the split, then?"

"The status of muggleborn became the largest issue," Dumbledore said, holding up his hands. "On one side, Slytherin proclaimed that the tainted blood of muggles was utterly unnecessary, and that they could champion the muggle race in peace, apart from true wizards. Should they master the mysteries and prove worthy of entrance, then and only then should they be allowed to join with wizarding society.

"On the other side, Gryffindor argued that the muggleborn had the same right and need to prove themselves as any wizard did, and that those with high potential, and the benefits they might provide to wizarding society, would be lost if muggleborn were simply turned away.

"Neither Hufflepuff nor Ravenclaw could stand the thought of missing out on something to advance their magics, so they supported Gryffindor. Slytherin abided by their decision, though he seethed with loathing for those that he viewed as lesser beings, and in need of far too much remedial tutoring to be worth the effort."

"But he split off eventually, right…?"

"The myth," Dumbledore said, indicating the sword, "Is that Slytherin left avowing eternal war against muggles and muggleborn until such time as their kind was extinguished."

"… and the fact?" I asked.

"Is unknown, but I have come to believe that Gryffindor and Slytherin came to blows largely over the hand of Rowena Ravenclaw. In their duel, Gryffindor was so overcome with rage that he simply barreled through Slytherin's magic, using his augmented muggle armor to shield himself, and slew his opponent with a thrust of his sword.

"When he realized what he had done, Godric wept bitterly, and preserved Salazar's memory and house in Hogwarts to the best of his abilities, though Slytherin's family never truly forgave him. The grudge became mostly about the tainting of the Gryffindor line with muggle technologies, and how a simple and relatively non-lethal wizard's duel had become a bloodbath because Gryffindor had worn his sword and armor into the duel."

"You can't tell me that all this hatred extends from that one fight," I said incredulously.

"No, Harry, it is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reasoning of Death Eaters and pro-purebloods. It isn't even in documented history, and my evidence for that scenario is reasonable, but far from compelling. But it is a start, at least for Britain's rather bloody history between wizards and muggles."

-----

Unlike everything else I'd heard so far, I kept Dumbledore's research to myself. I had gotten the distinct impression that what Dumbledore was doing was somehow illegal, or otherwise socially unacceptable. I considered it the ultimate compliment that he would tell me about it, so I resolved to be silent. Dumbledore would tell Hermione if he wanted to once she started to attend his sessions with me.

I did tell Hermione all about the wands, though. Advanced theory like that is what she lives for.

"It's amazingly complex," Hermione said, looking at her opened wand. "I think it's a little disturbing that even though we're studying magic at school, we don't really know what we're doing. We just wave this wand and expect it to work."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." I said with a grin. "So naturally, I brought presents." I fished two thick tomes out of my book bag, and dropped them onto the table beside us. As Hermione ran her hand across the covers, I reversed the spell on her wand, closing it.

"These books cover the theory behind the wand matrix, as well as basic ritual procedure. Every spell we cast runs through what's in these books in a fraction of a second before we get to levitate our feather, or whatever we were doing."

"Can I read these?" she asked eagerly. "I know that you just got them, but--"

"I got them for you, Hermione," I said, cutting her off. "Dumbledore went into as much detail as I could take; I'll skim them later, just to have access to the material up here, but I brought those books for you."

I quickly found myself on the receiving end of a kiss, then a tight hug. "Thanks, Harry. You're very good to me."

"You're welcome."

-----

Lockheart jumped on the chance to run a dueling club for the school, which immediately became the most popular thing to do. I showed up now and then to help Lockheart demonstrate. As one of the few people that knew what I could and couldn't do, he took great pains to draw out our battles into displays of skill, and not beat me down in five seconds.

My own sessions progressed a lot faster once I had my friends alone. Pansy was champing at the bit to learn the different spells, and she and the twins were vicious in their duels together, generally two on one against Pansy, who was competent enough to still be winning.

Hermione was very quick with her wand, and any hesitation about combat had been burned away by Draco and Voldemort. She usually dueled with Luna, who was nearly as nimble with her own spell work. The result, once Luna began to pick up the spells, was a wonderful display of speed and technical skill.

Ginny dueled with me almost exclusively. Her spell work was ... unusually good for a complete novice, and both she and I knew where she had gotten her experience from. So she dueled with me as a precaution, since I'd be able to handle anything that accidentally came at me. The sessions passed with no crescent curses flying though, so we both began to relax.

As the months passed, the Order began to shape up from a rag-tag social group of individuals to a real paramilitary and espionage group with a firm hierarchy. I saw less and less of everyone, and the free-for-all lessons about Death Eaters dried up. Even Dumbledore began to curb how much information he gave me.

"This is the beginning of the new war," he said. "Now, we must be careful who knows what, and how much. Only I will know exactly what everyone is doing, and I would like you not to pry for information. In fact, I may choose to pass incorrect information through you, as your closeness to me is well-known, and it will be more likely to be mistaken for truth."

"I suppose..." I said, worried. "You don't expect me to lie to my friends, do you?"

"If you have to, Harry. With the exception of Hermione, none of them knows any level of Occlumency, so a falsehood may be detected immediately. Hermione will have the necessary skills to uphold the lie, so I will leave that to your discretion."

The Order was well-entrenched in the Department of Law Enforcement, but after two assassination attempts, three nearly successful criminal framing jobs, and no obvious suspects, we had to admit we had lost the Department of Transportation. The other departments were contested, untouched, or unknown.

With the obvious loss of the DT, the Order restricted its movements fully to Apparition and Dumbledore's Portkeys. With no way to ensure when, where and how Death Eaters could move, Ministry workers like Arthur were forced to remain in very public areas and quickly Apparate out when leaving. The fact that the community in general was unaware of the danger only heightened the sense of dread.

The Hogwarts Express still ran, but it was a surprisingly special case. "The wards of Hogwarts extend to the tracks that lead into King's Cross, and to the train itself," Dumbledore told me. "It remains in use largely due to tradition, as Portkeys and the Floo network are undoubtedly faster. But a significant reason for its continued use is that once the students pass onto the train, they are officially under Hogwarts protection, and that helps to ease minds."

Hermione and I continued our job as caretakers, and Dumbledore still saw me everyday, though it was generally reduced to an hour at a time. Near to the end of the year, Hermione finally tested out of the last of her practical courses. I had expected to fall well behind Hermione in theory when she began to attend our sessions, but surprisingly enough it actually became easier to learn with another person to bang ideas off of. Advanced Arithmancy went from impossible to merely very annoying with Hermione's help, and slowly, ever so slowly, the seemingly infinite knowledge of Albus Dumbledore trickled down to us.

Whenever I wasn't doing caretaker duties, learning NEWT material from Dumbledore, or teaching my friends how to duel, I was cloistered in my bedroom pouring over several Dark Arts books I'd "liberated" from the Restricted Section of the library. Though the process was painstakingly slow, I was beginning to work on a new combat spell; one I hoped was every bit as good as Voldemort's crescent curse.

The crescent was perfect in my mind: It was a combination offensive spell and a moderate deflector spell that rolled off your wand as fast as any Reductor could, with a variable release angle that effectively required different wand commands and thus would count as a different variation of the spell for the purposes of counter-cursing. Truly, you couldn't ask for anything more from that curse, and it was exactly that kind of masterpiece that I wanted to create. I had been warned countless times by Dumbledore that the creation process could take more than a year, especially since it was my first attempt at a spell of any great complexity, so I settled in for the long haul, and banished any frustration I had far deeper than conscious thought.

There was a lot of frustration to banish; spell creation is mostly Arithmancy after all, and no matter how much Hermione helped me, I hated Arithmancy. I still do.

-----

The school year ended peacefully with no further direct attempts at Hogwarts or the Order. Fred, George, Ginny and Pansy did their final exams, receiving 'O's for the practical courses and 'A's for everything else -- Pansy is a very corrupting influence. Luna was high E's everywhere. There were no exams for me and Hermione, just a continuation of our time with Dumbledore at Hogwarts before we were released for the summer.

Well, 'released' didn't exactly mean what it used to mean.

What it meant was that the Weasley and Parkinson families were now ensconced in Grimmauld Place along with several Order members quickly discovering that privacy was a difficult thing to obtain. Getting a moment alone with Hermione over the summer would be an exercise in frustration, as Ginny and Pansy demanded a great deal of my attention, and the Order seemed to like at least one adult minding the kids at all times.

Naturally, there were ways to get out of the house for a while, but those required work as well. I'm sure I surprised Hermione when she found me slaving away on a potion barely a week into the holidays.

"What are you working on?" she asked, coming up beside me.

"Polyjuice," I said.

"Why?"

"Like everyone else whose name isn't McGonagall or Dumbledore, I suck at human Transfiguration." Hermione's laughter filled the basement room we were in, making it seem much more welcoming.

"So this is for us when we leave the house?" Hermione asked, making the most logical conclusion possible.

"Mostly for me, but yes: Voldemort and his Death Eaters can't locate me by any means when I'm out and about, and this will minimize the random chance that we just bump into each other."

"Makes sense," Hermione said while she made room for herself at the table. I smiled and kept working; Hermione had developed the habit of just beginning to help me with whatever I'm doing without asking or waiting for be asked, and I found it very comforting.

Unsurprisingly, Pansy took to hanging out with the Weasley twins when she wasn't around me. The twins were notorious pranksters, and that meant that they were great at enchanting items, even if the enchantments were a little unorthodox. Several afternoons passed with me working on Polyjuice while the popping and whirring noises of their experiments came from the next room. Occasionally Fred or George would come into my room smoking from a failed attempt at whatever he was trying to create, and ask for specific materials, since I was generally the only person in the house that could create permanent conjurations. Well, maybe it was that I was the only person that would create permanent conjurations for them.

Brewing actually became my summer job more than anything else. Polyjuice, Skele-Gro, and the general run of healing potions were in high demand by the Order, and Snape and I pulled many an eight-hour day minding a roomful of cauldrons. Every now and then, Snape would scribble down adjustments to potion recipes for me, commenting on the change as he went.

"Potion recipes are published because they work, not because they're perfect," he said. "Most recipes have room to speed the creation process, or adjust the effectiveness of the potion. Potion-making is better described as an art with some strict rules rather than a loose science; science is the purview of muggles, who seem to enjoy dealing in absolutes."

"It's amazing that you know how to do all this," I said. Complimenting Snape was only proper; the man was shaving hours off my potion-making time with his adjustments.

"I hate potions," he said. "I've hated them for the entire twelve years I've been teaching, and if I never had to brew again, it would be too soon."

"Why don't you teach something else?" I asked. Snape gave me the long-suffering look he reserved for his especially stupid students.

"In the real world, Potter, you don't just switch jobs as fancy strikes you," he said with acid in his voice. "In the real world, those of us who aren't Dumbledore or his apprentice are stuck with whatever job we have."

"But-"

"I'm not going to explain the world to you, Potter. Unless you have issues with the notes I've given you, just brew your potions and leave me be."

Okay, so much for that.



The end of the summer saw Grimmauld set up both mundanely and magically as a military complex: War room for planning, twenty rooms set up with four bunk beds and lockers each, a kitchen stocked with enough food for two decades, a fully functional potions lab stocked to the rafters with healing potions of all kinds, Polyjuice potion, Veritaserum, potions to nullify the Imperious, and several others that Snape created whose purpose I had no clue about.

The in-house library was slowly expanded with academic and recreational books, and as much muggle and wizarding entertainment as possible was bought and shipped in, with the idea that some people might end up spending a long time in the manor.

There were several rooms set up for the individuals that were living there permanently: me, Pansy, our parents, Hermione, Ginny, the Twins, Bill, Charlie, Remus and Sirius all had rooms to ourselves. Everyone else who stayed over on occasion slept in the bunk rooms.

There was a huge advantage to knowing every single magical subject halfway into the NEWT levels, and having a girlfriend and sister who go out of their way to learn cool new spells. Adding to my advantages, I had an adopted father who was a Warder, an adopted mother who was an Obliviator, a godfather and near-uncle who were the sneakiest wizards in known history and arguably the most powerful and knowledgeable wizard in the world as my personal mentor, all of whom went out of their way to instruct me. To top it all off, I had enough inherent dueling ability from Voldemort to take apart anyone who wasn't a well-trained combatant.

Thus, it wasn't a newly 13-year-old Harry that Dumbledore invited to Order meetings, but Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived. What I was to Dumbledore the General was a 45-year-old wizard in an abnormally small body, who happened to own his own Invisibility cloak.

Would you leave a resource like that sitting at home? I didn't think so. As of the summer of 1993, Dumbledore began to actively use me as an Order agent, and I attended their frequent meetings and listened to the hints of conspiracy –or worse- that cropped up.

The paranoia wasn't unjustified, either. Moody had been using his magical eye to keep track of the Floo network, and had noticed a staggering difference in the overall structure.

"They're turning it into a bloody labyrinth!" he said one August night at Grimmauld. "That trick they pulled with the Malfoys was nothing compared to this! We're going to start losing people left and right if we can't get into that department. For all we know, they're replacing people or using the Imperius as we speak."

"It gets worse," Arthur said, sitting down beside him. "The Department of Transportation directly controls the licensing of Portkey enchanters. They don't have the power to revoke them, as that's the DMLE's jurisdiction, but they can --and have-- indefinitely suspended any further licensing, claiming that there is no further need for Portkey enchanters."

"Which is more or less the truth," said a woman named Emmeline Vance. "The only people that have been trained and licensed for the last ten years or so have all been for private use, and the Ministry's always been divided on that issue."

"Regardless," Dumbledore cut across, "It needs to be dealt with. Elphias, is Transportation completely lost to us?"

"It is," an old man said from the corner of the room. "I nearly lost two of my friends just for asking questions there, and no one remembers the attacks. In fact, no one even remembers that my friends were there."

"Rookwood," Moody uttered hatefully, and several others murmured in agreement.

"Well the answer's obvious," Sirius said, turning everyone's head to him. "One way or another, we've got to bring the Floo network down."

Silence reigned as everyone considered his statement. Most were incredulous, but Remus and Sirius had the look of Marauders about them, and Dumbledore was thinking. I sat quietly, wondering how Hermione, Pansy, and the others were doing. While there was an air of excitement to be in on the Order meetings, they were held often enough to cut well into the time that I'd rather spend with my sister, my parents, my girlfriend, and her family.

"Is there any way we can do this without exposing ourselves completely?" Dumbledore said, looking around. "The Minister, the entire DMLE, and many, many other people need to be otherwise occupied in order for something of this magnitude to occur with no major ramifications against us."

"And it needs to be permanent," Snape commented. "Anything we do must be done in such a way that the Floo network cannot simply be reinstated; at least not for several years."

Arthur shook his head. "There would be extreme public pressure to restore the network. It would never stay down that long." I sat up a bit as Arthur's words gave me an idea.

"Professor Dumbledore, would you be willing to give Stan Shunpike and Ernie Prang a visit? Their Knight Bus idea would go a long way to keeping the average witch or wizard happy with their travel concerns if their bus was tweaked up a little, and maybe even duplicated."

"That might work..." he said, stroking his beard.

"That's good for afterwards, but is there any immediate way to completely and irreparably disable the Floo?" Snape pressed, bringing people back to the initial problem.

"I think so," Sirius said, his eyes gleaming with mischief. "Give us an hour or so with the control platform, and they'll never be able to use it again."

"An hour is a long time to keep the entire Ministry occupied," Arthur warned.

"I can probably time this with a full Wizengamot session to draw the bulk of the Ministry away," Dumbledore said.

"And the DMLE is easy to sidetrack," Marius Parkinson said, weighing in for the first time.

"Yeah, but the Minister and the Executive branch won't be held up in that meeting," Moody said. "Fudge won't show until near to the end of that session, and neither will his cronies. We need just about everyone important out of their offices for this to work."

"I wonder if the Minister would enjoy meeting me." I asked. Once again there was silence as everyone crunched the social mathematics of the Ministry.

"Maybe, Harry," Dumbledore said eventually. "Just maybe, we can take a shot at this."

"Great!" Sirius said, clapping his hands. "Now, get over here, and let's plan."

-----

Hermione caught the look in my eye as soon as I left the war-room.

"You're going to do something for them, aren't you?" Disapproving.

"Or course I am." Confident.

"Will you have to fight?" Nervous.

"Not if everything goes well, so maybe." Anxious.

"What can I do to help?" Determined.

"Find me a decent combat spell to use that isn't the Reductor and won't get me arrested. If I have to resort to Voldemort's curse, it'll be bad." Pessimistic.

"You can escape from there if it gets bad, right? With a Portkey or Fawkes?" Hopeful.

"That's the going plan." Certain.

"Good. I need you to come home, Harry. Please come home." Affection.

"I will. I promise." Affection.

Nothing more could be said. We both turned and walked into the living room, a handful of lies ready on my lips to pass to my friends; my first of many sacrifices.

Let the war begin.