Chapter 9

Sirius stared at his fleeing godson's back, feeling as if the world had just taken a sharp left turn without warning anyone.

Pettigrew was dead.

The thought was as satisfying as it was horrible.

He hadn't meant for things to go that far, but once Peter had started talking and begging for his miserable life, still making excuses even now, the familiar red haze from twelve years ago had come down. Sirius was actually surprised that he'd limited himself to non-lethal spells, but that was probably more to do with the fact that his mind had been on causing pain and he hadn't been in any state to shift mental gears.

He'd picked up quite a few nasty spells from his family even if he hadn't wanted to and Azkaban had given him a long time to fantasize about using them.

The fact that it would now be much harder to prove his innocence was a distant secondary concern to the fact that Harry had killed someone. Thirteen was way too young to have that hanging over you.

Then was the fact that Harry had cast a lethal spell without his wand. The most wandless magic that Sirius had ever seen had come from Dumbledore, but even that had been just parlor tricks and not really anything too impressive aside from the fact that it was wandless.

But his godson's astonishing achievement wasn't important right now. He needed to go see if Harry was alright.

He found him outside, kneeling in the snow and staring at the night sky with a look that was hard to decipher. It looked like something between shock, awe and a sort of horrified realization.

Harry picked himself up before Sirius could make his way over, his face now hardened into an expression of driven purpose that he'd last seen on Lily's.

"Harry…" He started, not really sure what to say to make this situation better.

"Not now, Sirius." Harry snapped, brushing past him roughly.

Sirius shrank back, incorrectly assuming that his godson was angry at him for losing it with Wormtail.

Not wanting to let things stew, he ran to catch up to the stomping thirteen year old and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Harry, I'm so-"

He made it no further than that. Harry spun around and grabbed him by his robes, actually lifting him off the ground, much to his incredulity.

"What part of 'not now' do you not understand?!" Harry hissed furiously, tossing him aside and sending him stumbling into a couch. "Whatever you have to say, say it later. I have somethig that I have to do. Until then, don't bother me."

And Sirius obeyed, cowed into submission by a boy twenty years younger than him. He obeyed because Harry seemed so much more than just a thirteen-year old wizard in that moment. Too tall and too strong and too powerful. Age didn't mean much when he could feel the unmistakable pressure of a powerful wizard's magic pressing threateningly into his own, daring him to rise up in challenge.

Worse than any of that though, was the sense of something inhuman staring out from Harry's eyes.

Harry regretted blowing up at Sirius like that, but he was still grateful that it kept the man off his back. He'd apologize later. He had no time to talk about the giant fuck up they had to deal with now. He had no time to deal with the fact that he'd killed a man. He had no time to explain to his godfather about the wandless magic and the runes, which he knew that he was now going to have to do.

The only thing he had time for was to finish preparing for the next ritual and he didn't even have as much time for that as he'd have liked.

His soul had stopped cracking and the spread of Dark had slowed, but it was still spreading nonetheless. He expected that it would always be there even if his next ritual managed to balance it out enough to save him.

What the Void took, the Void kept. Of this he was certain. He had made a sacrifice to that entity, giving it a place in his magic in exchange for power. He had done it ignorantly, unknowingly, but he had done it all the same. It would not leave.

So many questions and theories crowded his thoughts, but he had to focus. He had to hurry before the Dark did more than merely ooze through the cracks in his soul, before it started taking things that could never be regained. Because he was afraid that it would do worse than just kill him. If it wanted that, it only needed to wait. Everyone and everything went to the Void in the end. Harry wasn't sure how he knew that, but he knew it.

What he was truly afraid of here wasn't dying, it was the grim certainty that dementors weren't really Non-Beings at all, but the empty shells of wizards who had dabbled with the Void without taking the necessary precautions. Now nothing more than hollow carriers of Dark, their magic turned into a conduit for the Void, existing to take things from a world that was otherwise protected by the Sun.

A day later, the final preparations were complete and the ritual was set to begin.

Harry could feel that the Dark inside him had grown stronger, but not yet so strong that he was too late. It had been getting harder to focus, harder to feel afraid of what was happening to him. The world now seemed just a touch surreal, as if he was looking at it through a dirty pane of glass. As the Dark grew in strength, his sense of self waned.

Harry wasn't oblivious to the rather disturbing similarities that his situation had with the Dark Souls game franchise. He'd never really played it, but he had had quite enjoyed its quite interesting lore, as well as its surprisingly deep and subtle plot.

The fact that he was now intending to link himself to the Sun in order to stave off the Dark amused him and terrified him in equal measure. He remembered all too clearly what happened to the Chosen Undead if he decided to link the fires in the Kiln of the First Flame.

He really hoped that he wasn't going to set himself on fire doing this. It was going to be his last ritual one way or another, because if this worked then he didn't want to risk upsetting the balance with any further additions.

He had originally been intending to perform this ritual in the Potter ritual chamber like all the others, but it just didn't feel right to do this one beneath the ground.

That was why he was now making his way away from the manor in the pre-dawn darkness, moving towards the east. The light covering of snow crunched under his shoes as he walked and the night was cold and black, seeming even colder and darker because the skies were clear. The moon and stars did nothing to counter that feeling when he could feel the Void pressing in around him.

He turned his mind away from that, knowing instinctively that focusing on it would only make things worse. He focused on making a suitable platform for the ritual instead, using the wand he'd retaken from Sirius on his way out to transfigure a flat stone surface and then inscribing the instructions on it that would allow the knife to act independently.

This time, there was no hesitation as he took off his shirt and began the ritual.

" Ca'Daith. "

Grace. Power. Music of the Stars.

A rune to to call on the Light magic that he was now certain was inherent to the stars and also to make sure that he did not rely completely on the Sun. It would be the height of irony to find out that this final rune set only worked during the day. He decided to have it carved just under his left collarbone. It seemed appropriate to have it mirror Arhain .

" Yen'Lui. "

Balance. Harmony. Chaos.

This rune's sole purpose was to ensure that the clash of Light and Dark inside him didn't have explosive results. He feared that the Sun would burn him out if he did not use this rune. There was an uncomfortably high chance of it happening anyway. This one was carved on the lower end of his breastbone, equidistant from both A rhain and Ca'Daith .

" Sol. "

The Sun. The Ever Seeing Eye. Consciousness.

This rune was doubled and carved into his temples. He'd been planning to use it to enhance his eyes and give himself the ability to see magic as well as expand his capacity to feel it. That had now become its secondary purpose, but Harry was still pleased that he was able to sneak in one final enhancement.

Once the carving was done, Harry took a deep breath and waited tensely, knowing that the ritual was not over yet. Of the three runes, only Yen'Lui felt active, which was as he had expected. The other two would become active once they were hit by sunlight, which should be any second now if the brightening sky was any indication.

He grunted in surprised pain as the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon and washed over him. He hadn't expected that magic born in the violence of the Solar Core would be gentle, but its fierceness still surprised him. How had wizards ever gotten the idea into their heads that Light was gentle?

Ca'Daith and Sol burned. Yen'Lui prickled madly as it attempted to temper the violent reaction between Light and Dark.

Harry shut his eyes tighly as Sol executed its purpose. They stung terribly and he felt them bleed from the sudden change. He'd expected that, so it didn't worry him.

At the same time, he felt his perception expand as the rune's power touched his mind. The sensations were jumbled, unfamiliar as they were to him, but what was happening inside him was clear.

Dark gave way before Light as was its nature, but with the understanding that it would still be there, that it could never be pushed out. His other runes broke open and bled as Light burned through them. Where Dark was cold and slow, Light was fire and voraciously consumed all it touched.

Once it had pushed the Dark out of all the runes except A rhain, where a shard of Dark was connected to the infinite Void and could not be burned away, it surged into the cracks in his soul. It didn't hurt in the physical sense, but Harry knew instantly that he had preferred the gentle creep of Dark. Given the slightest opportunity, Light would burn him to nothing.

It was a decidedly uncomfortable experience to feel the Dark slowly relinquishing its grip on the edges of his damaged soul as Light advanced, but there was nothing to do except endure it as Yen'Lui worked to keep things from spiralling out of control.

But there was one chunk of his soul that the Dark had grasped tightly and seemed intent on taking. It had nearly pulled it away from the whole.

No, not my soul. Harry realized, now seeing that the piece did not match the rest of him. It had a dormant quality to it, but it was unquestionably foreign. That isn't mine, it doesn't belong there. How did a piece of someone else's soul attach itself to me?

It must have been with him for a long time, to have gone undetected until he'd cracked his soul enough to expose it. Unlike the rest, this one piece felt as if it been rather haphazardly attached to him and had come loose once his soul was no longer whole.

Voldemort, it has to be. Something of him must have been left inside me when he tried to kill me.

Not really sure what he was doing, but knowing that he definitely did not want that madman's soul latched on to his own, Harry pushed . He focused on that foreign soul shard and began forcing it out. He had been afraid of what would happen if the Dark took any of his soul, but it was more than welcome to the piece of Voldemort.

Its already tenuos grip on him broke once he rejected it so completely and the Dark took it instantly, as it did all unanchored souls.

With that done, the Dark put up no more struggle and allowed Light free reign.

Squinting with painfully stinging eyes, Harry shuffled back towards the manor.

Sirius hadn't been quite sure what to do with himself for the past day. Neither Teeny nor Charlus and Dorea would tell him what Harry was up to, but he was sure that it was something big.

His godson had locked himself in the study and hadn't left it since. His wand was still in Sirius' possession, apparently being considered unimportant, which was an attitude that Sirius had never expected to see from any witch or wizard. Then again, he hadn't expected to see this level of wandless magic either.

In the absence of anything else to do, he had put Wormtail's gruesome remains into stasis and stuffed them into an unused trunk. He was quite unrecognizable, but there were magical ways to determine a dead wizard's identity by his blood as long as they had his magical signature on file, which the Ministry should have. The corpse could still be useful.

Finally, after he had nearly paced a hole into the floor in fruitless worry, Harry had come out of the study.

Unfortunately, all he had done was grab his wand from Sirius possession with a terse warning to stay inside. He'd tried to get some answers out of Charlus and Dorea again, but they merely looked uncomfortable and still refused to speak. The only thing they would say was that it was Harry's secret to tell and that he should leave him alone to do what he was going to do.

Finally, Harry came back, but Sirius couldn't feel anything besides stunned horror at the sight of him.

His godson was only wearing a pair of pants and streaked with blood from head to toe. Even more disturbing were the twin trails of bloody tears coming from his eyes, eyes that were so bloodshot that the sclera had effectively turned completely red and whose green color now gleamed visibly with magic.

"Harry?" Sirius asked cautiously.

"Not yet, Sirius." Harry replied with weary clam. "Let me get cleaned up first, then we'll talk.

Sirius looked worried, but nodded all the same. His godson had been up to something obviously dangerous and quite probably illegal, but it seemed like the worst was over. He could wait a little longer to get answers.

"… and here we are." Harry finished, slouched in an armchair.

Sirius looked at his godson, looking less like some kind of eldritch abomination and more like a human being now that the blood had been cleaned off, his sclera had gone back to white and he was dressed in a comfortable bathrobe. He could almost convince himself that nothing had changed, if only it wasn't for the rune that he could plainly see carved into his godson's forehead now that he'd been told it was there and the shimmer of magic in his eyes that made them a touch brighter than they'd been before.

It had been quite a tale and Sirius wasn't sure whether to be impressed or horrified.

"Harry, don't take this the wrong way, but what the hell is wrong with you?" He asked in a deadpan tone of voice. "What kind of eleven year old is introduced to magic and thinks 'I think I'll ritualistically mutilate myself'?"

"The kind that grew up thinking of all the cool enhancement rituals he could do?" Harry asked rhetorically.

Sirius went on as if he hadn't said anything. "And then, when you figured out that your first set was giving you the urge to shag your foster mother, you didn't think that it might have been a good idea to rethink things?"

Harry didn't know it yet, but this was mildly hypocritical of Sirius. It wouldn't have stopped him either. Well, it would have if it had made him lust after his own mother, who had been a hag in every sense of the word except the literal one, but being attracted to a fine piece of ass like Katherine Shaw would not have bothered him in the slightest, no matter his relation to her.

"It seemed like a fair trade." Harry shrugged. "An overactive libido and a bad temper in exchange for a stronger body and faster maturation? I regret nothing."

"And your second set, the one that nearly turned you into a dementor just now?" Sirius demanded. That had been an unwelcome revelation and he wasn't sure if he believed his godson's claim of dementors being the leftovers of wizards who'd carelessly dabbled with Dark. It was just too creepy for words.

"That one I might have done differently if I knew what was going to happen." Harry admitted.

"Might have?!"

"Despite the close shave, I'm actually pretty happy with the way things turned out. You have no idea about all the things I see and know now." He could see the magic in the manor and in Sirius and he could feel the Sun in the sky. There were so many things that he had been blind to before.

"And Wormtail?" Sirius challenged, becoming frustrated with his godson's recklesness. He'd thought that Harry was a lot like Remus; quiet, studious, thoughtful and he was, but when it came to magic he was a hundred times as reckless as all the Marauders put together.

Harry sobered instantly. He'd been trying not to think of that.

"We might still be able to use him to clear your name, we'll just have to be creative about the cause of his death."

"That's not what I meant, Harry." Sirius said gently.

"I know."

"You don't have to feel guilty. I probably would have killed him myself if you hadn't done it."

"Sirius, I killed a man because I lost my temper. Don't patronize me." And he couldn't even feel too sorry about it for any reason but for the fact that it would make proving Sirius' innocence harder. Yes, he wished that he hadn't done it, but he was not as broken up about it as he felt that he should be.

The worst part was that he didn't know if that was yet another side-effect of his runes or if it was something about him. Were the runes or his exposure to Light and Dark meddling with his sense of morality, or was he simply somewhat lacking in that department to begin with? Either way it was a disturbing thought.

He could feel the potential to cast the Killing Curse within him now. It was such a terribly simple spell, as simple as Lumos. Nothing but raw killing intent given power through magic. No shield could block it because it was so pure in its intent that only something equally pure could block it. Something like a mother's willing sacrifice for her child. It wasn't an Unforgivable because the spell was Dark or evil, it was an Unforgivable because you had to be a killer already to cast it.

That evening found Harry on the highest balcony of the manor, looking to the west.

He and Sirius hadn't managed to work out a viable solution to his fugitive status just yet. They had tentative plans, but nothing that they were in a hurry to implement at this point for fear of it backfiring spectacularly. Wormtail's death made things complicated. They'd have to spin it in a way that didn't make it look like murder.

Now Harry was waiting for the sunset, running his hands over his invisibility cloak and wondering at the piece of Dark he could see and sense in it now. Such a strange thing that he'd carried it around for years and never known it.

He'd read that invisibility cloaks tended to degrade into uselessness after a few years, but this one had by all accounts been around for decades at the least. Harry knew that this was due to it being infused with Dark. It had to be one of a kind, as he doubted that the secrets to this kind of craft had been shared beyond the original maker. Maybe Sirius would know about any legendary invisibility cloaks or similar artefacts.

When the Sun began to set, Harry observed it with a rapturous smile. He'd never paid much attention to sunsets before, but now he found them impossible to ignore.

How could he, when he could feel the Sun's blinding presence recede to make way for the Dark and the stars? The Sun was too close and too powerful. It blotted out so much. Now that it had set, he could see and feel the distant Light of uncountable billions of stars against the backdrop of Dark. He'd never thought that something so beautiful could exist. Even more, it was echoed inside his own soul. The Light inside him waned with the Sun, making way for Dark, speckled with the Light of the distant stars.

If given the choice to redo things with the knowledge he now had, he wouldn't change this. The risk of death and hollowing had been worth it to be able to see magic as he saw it now. He would have done it in a more controlled manner, but he would have done it anyway.

"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will long to return." He murmured to himself, recalling the old quote from Da Vinci that he'd come across years ago. It fit the situation perfectly.

Now that he'd seen past the tiny perspective of wizards, he could never again confine himself to that world. Wizards who learned spells but did not know them, who used magic but did not know it, who's best explanation boiled down to 'it just was'. It would drive him mad as surely as having to pretend that he was a toddler again.

"Legendary invisibility cloaks?" Sirius said in surprise. "Why would you want to know about that?"

"There's something special about this one." Harry answered, holding up his father's cloak but not elaborating further.

"I don't really know the story behind it." Sirius said with a shrug. "I know that it's a Potter family heirloom, but that's all."

"And that doesn't strike you as strange?" Harry asked pointedly. "Invisibility cloaks aren't supposed to last that long."

"A lot of old magical artefacts are pretty extraordinary by today's standards. To quote a muggle, 'they don't make 'em like they used to'."

"I'm surprised that you can actually quote a muggle." Harry snorted.

"I'll have you know that I'm actually very knowledgeable about muggles." Sirius protested indignantly. "My family hated them, so I made sure to be as muggle as possible. I even got myself a motorcycle, though I did enchant it to fly. That's actually where I heard that particular saying."

"Riiiight." Harry drawled laconically, deciding not to ask whether Sirius had a license. "But back to the point, legendary invisibility cloaks?"

"Nothing really comes to mind." Sirius admitted. "The only thing I can think off is the tale of the Deathly Hallows, but that's just a children's story."

"Tell it to me."

"Aren't you a bit old for bedtime stories?" The dog Animagus teased.

Harry just rolled his eyes and waved at him, silently telling him to get on with it.

"I'll tell it to you if you tell me how your night with those two lovely ladies of yours went." Sirius bargained. He and James had always swapped details about these things, but Harry was proving to be a more secretive fellow. James hadn't become like that until he'd gotten together with Lily.

Harry rolled his eyes again. "What's there to tell? We met up somewhere private, we got naked, we had sex, we fell asleep."

"You can't cheapen your first sexual experience like that, especially since it was a threesome!" Sirius protested.

"I lost my virginity back in July." Harry replied blandly.

"Damn!" Sirius cursed.

"What?"

"That means you were twelve at the time."

"So?"

"That means you ditched your virginity two years sooner than me."

"So?"

"How am I supposed to be a rolemodel if you outperform me in everything?"

"You can stick around and provide a morale boost by showing me how great I am in comparison."

"That's harsh, Harry."

"So is life, now get to the bedtime story."

Sirius grinned at the banter, fondly remembering similar verbal spars with James. His best friend might be gone, but something of him had survived in his son.

"Alright, fine. It goes like this…"

House elves were weird.

That was Harry's conclusion as he watched Teeny use some magic with his new magesight, as he'd requested. The small house elf's magic looked like nothing he'd ever seen. He had admittedly not seen much since he'd only just acquired the ability to see magic, but it just looked… weird, almost like human magic, but so warped.

He'd tried to enlist her help in figuring out wandless magic soon after he'd first come to the manor, but that had been a dead end. House elves had no idea how they used magic, they just did. That had been quite frustrating to hear at the time. How can you use something if you didn't know how you used it? His persistent questioning had nearly driven Teeny to tears when she had been unable to answer him, so he'd let it go.

House elves also couldn't use spells in the same fashion as wizards. In fact, they couldn't cast spells at all. The closest aproximation they could make was a blast of force that could pass for a banishing or bludgening spell. Pretty much everything else they could do revolved around their duties as servants, which made sense in light of the fact that house elves would literally die if they weren't bonded to a master or a powerful magical location for an extended period.

Which of course made not a lick of sense if you took it out of the Wizarding World sandbox and looked at it from a broader perspective. There was simply no conceivable situation in which an entire sapient species would evolve to be slaves to another, no matter how special witches and wizards thought they were.

Conclusion? House elves weren't natural.

Admittedly it was a conclusion based mostly on conjecture, but it made more sense to him than the alternative, especially when the feel of their magic was taken into account.

"Teeny, do house elves eat?" He asked.

"Sir?" She asked, confused.

"Do you need food the way that I do?"

"No sir, house elves only be needing a master's magic." She answered with a shake of her head, sending her big ears flopping everywhere.

Definitely unnatural. Harry was betting on some kind of sophisticated homunculi that had over time developed sapience. He certainly wouldn't put it past some wizard to have gotten the idea to create a servant race because he couldn't be bothered to fluff his own pillows.

Probably best to keep that bit of conjecture to himself. He couldn't think of a single positive outcome if he started spread that around. At least not right now.

"You know that this is illegal, right?" Sirius asked wryly.

"Sirius, you are a fugitive from the law and I am harboring you, not to mention the mangled carcass we have stashed in a trunk. I hardly think that the legalities of you teaching me to apparate four years ahead of schedule are noteworthy."

"Alright, just checking." He'd tried. If Harry didn't want to be a responsible citizen, then far be it from Sirius to try and make him one.

With a noisy crack, Sirius apparated about three feet to the left.

"Huh, that's interesting." Harry commented.

"What is?" The past few days with his godson had shown Sirius that Harry sometimes noticed things about magic that most people missed. Lily had that quality too, though not quite the same. Maybe it was due to them having a muggle upbringing.

"I wonder how it works?" Harry mused, apparently to himself.

"The way it was explained to me is that you have to keep the three D's in mind. Destination, Determination and Deliberation. You need to keep the destination fixed firmly in your mind, you have to be utterly determined to reach it, and you have to be very deliberate but unhurried about it. Once you've got all that, you just kind of… will yourself to wherever you want to go."

"Yes, that's how you do it, but how does it work ?"

Sirius blinked. "What?"

Harry sighed. Honestly.

Sirius frowned. Lily had sighed exactly like that whenever someone said something especially stupid to her. James had gotten sighed at like that a lot.

"Do it again."

Sirius shrugged to himself and apparated again.

"Again."

Crack.

"Again."

Crack.

"Again."

"Harry, why am I apparating back and forth like this?"

"Because I'm trying to figure out how exactly you're using your magic to create a pathway through space without killing yourself."

"Such a bloody Ravenclaw." Sirius complained. "Just try it already. I'm pretty sure that I can fix you if you end up splinching yourself."

"I'd rather not test that belief, now do it again."

"Fine." Crack.

"Again."

Crack.

"Again."

Sigh. Crack.

"What does it feel like to apparate?"

"Kind of like being squeezed through a tube actually. Pretty unpleasant until you get used to it."

"Hmm, do it again."

An even more dramatic sigh. Crack.

"What's with the crack?"

"No idea, but it happens every time someone apparates?"

"Probably just violently displaced air then, but better safe than sorry. Do it again."

Sigh with eyeroll. Crack.

"Ah, I see."

"What are you seeing, oh wise one?" Sirius asked dryly.

"You're forming a narrow pathway through space and then forcing yourself through it. The interesting part is that the 'exit' side of this little magical wormhole has to be anchored in some way to the planet for it to be safe. That must be why rushing it leads to splinching, you don't anchor yourself properly and come out wrong. How you're managing to do it subconsciously escapes me though, probably lucky chance. Maybe… hmm… Apparating into the air doesn't work, does it? "

"No. In fact, apparating onto anything at all that isn't solid ground is a good way to get splinched, sometimes even killed and there's even stories of people vanishing altogether, never to be seen again." Sirius said, a bit confused as to how Harry had guessed that. And what the hell was a wormhole anyway?

"A quirk of thought then. You automatically associate solid ground with the planet and that's apparently enough to keep you safe. Rather amusing how close to messy death you are every time you apparate."

"There you go, scaring me with all these theories like a typical Ravenclaw." Sirius said. "I really need to teach you a few Gryffindor qualities."

"Blockheaded stupidity isn't a quality, Sirius."

"Your mother said that a lot, but I never gave in to her peer pressure."

"Obviously."

"Well then smarty pants, why don't you show me how it's done?"

Harry honestly thought apparition to be a rather insane mode of travel, but instantaneus teleportation was entirely too useful a skill to not learn simply because it was crazy. Occlumency helped him fix the image of his destination in his mind and then he simply willed himself to pass through the intervening space in a wormhole made of his own magic, making sure that the exit was latched on to the planet to prevent any mishaps. Earth wasn't a stationery object in space after all and he had a feeling that those people who had disappeared had ended up drifting through vacuum.

Crack.

Sirius hadn't been kidding, that really was unpleasant.

"Showoff."

Harry smirked at his godfather, openly gloating at one upping him.

"So, is there any other illegal bit of magic that you'd like to learn today?" Sirius asked sarcastically.

Harry considered it for a moment and then nodded. He could practice apparating later.

"The Animagus transformation."

Sirius was surprised for a moment and then chuckled gleefully.

"Ah, a new Marauder in the making!"

"Hate to break it to you, Sirius, but I'm not much of a prankster." Harry pointed out.

"I'm sure we can turn you into one." Sirius said with authority and then affected a pensive look. "But I think we might want to wait until the summer to start teaching you that. It's not something that you can do in a few days."

For one thing, the Animagus transformation could be dangerous and Harry had demonstrated a disturbingly large amount of recklessness with dangerous magic. For another, if he tried to finish it on his own and screwed up, he'd have to go to McGonagall to fix it and that would expose the secret. Being an Animagus was way more fun if nobody knew it.

In the end, Sirius and Harry decided to deal with the Pettigrew situation over the summer. Neither one of them had any faith in the fairness of the government, one from bitter experience and the other from a deliberately cultivated sense of cynicism, so making hasty decision was a no-no. They would communicate through letters for the rest of the school year and hammer out a plan to be executed during the summer. Harry would have the free time to deal with it then and this was something that his fame would actually be useful for. Besides getting laid that was.

Harry sighed in his train compartment, alone for now. Hogwarts was starting to become a nuisance. He still loved to learn about magic, but other things were starting to pile up and he couldn't keep putting them off until the summer all the time. Not to mention that he was outpacing the curriculum and starting to become quite bored in a number of classes.

"Hello again, Harry." A dreamy voice greeted as the door slid open.

Of course, there were upsides to Hogwarts, Harry conceded with a smile.

"Hey Luna."

"How was your Christmas?" She asked as she sat down.

"It was interesting." He replied, barely managing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"I suppose it must have been." Luna agreed, peering at his eyes.

Harry knew that they were too bright. His green eyes had always been vibrant, but now they verged on the point of glowing. No doubt a side effect of the Sol runes constantly keeping a bit of Light in them.

Mercifully, Luna apparently decided not to ask questions. "I had a visit from Ginny."

"Oh?" Harry questioned, more out of a desire to move past the topic of his eyes than any real curiousity. Luna's 'go with the flow' attitude was something that he'd always liked.

"Yes, she wanted to wish me a merry Christmas and speculate about how many girls you're sleeping with."

"Really?" Ginny had drifted off into acquaintance status this year, apparently unable to deal with the fact that he was nothing at all like she'd imagined. She clearly wasn't above gossiping though.

"Ginny thinks there's only Bryanna, but I'm pretty sure that you've also got one in Slytherin."

Harry was normally very reticent with information of any kind, he hadn't even told Luna about his invisibility cloak, but right at that moment he felt like being honest. Maybe keeping quiet about this just didn't seem important anymore after what had happened recently, or maybe Sirius was a bad influence on him.

"I actually have three. There's also this muggle girl that I meet up with during the summer."

Luna clapped her hands excitedly at the news. "Oh, that's wonderful! It makes my Christmas present even more appropriate!"

"How so?" Harry asked, bemused.

Instead of answering, Luna went for her trunk and dug out a book.

"' The Lovegood Guide on how to Love Very Good' ?" Harry read the title, even more bemused.

"My great-great-grandmother was making a study of sex magic and preparing to publish that book before the European Ministries unanimously classed sex magic as a Dark Art in 1870. She wasn't able to publish it after that, but she still finished it." Luna explained without being prompted.

"How in the world could sex magic be classed as a Dark Art?" Harry demanded irritably. Of all the stupid things to classify as a Dark Art…

"It was first used by the Succubi and the Ministry deemed that anything used by them had to be a Dark Art."

"Succubi are real?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Not any more. The last of them was killed in 1637." Luna answered mournfully.

"Let me guess, they weren't the soul sucking demons of myth but just a misunderstood race of gorgerous women?" Harry ventured. He wouldn't put it past wizards, or in this case more likely witches, to wipe out another species out of some misplaced sense of righteousness.

"Its never been proven that they sucked out souls." Luna chirped, causing Harry to blink at the implications of the statement. "There's a short exposition on Succubi at the beginning of the book if you're interested."

Harry was indeed interested and would be reading the book cover to cover as soon as he got the chance, but first he had his own gift to give.

"I've got something for you as well." He told Luna and went for his own trunk.

"He's so cute!" Luna squeed, looking at the hamster that Harry had just handed her.

"He's more than just cute," Harry said sternly, putting herculean effort into keeping a grin off his face. "this is Boo and he's a miniature giant space hamster."

"Really?" Luna asked in awe.

"Really." Harry confirmed. "He will smite evil and gouge out its eyeballs whenever he sees it."

Perhaps playing on Luna's eccentricies was a bit mean, but he hadn't been able to resist. The mental imagery had simply been too hilarious and the girl certainly seemed to be happy with her new pet. Hamsters and rangers everywhere were surely rejoicing.

The return to Hogwarts was a bit distracting to Harry. The thestrals were touched by Dark. He hadn't expected that, though perhaps he should have. The realization distracted him thorougly and made him poor company on the ride back as he considered the implications.

Was that state natural or had some overly curious wizard wanted to see what would happen if he infused a winged horse with Dark? He was going to need to investigate that eventually.

So preoccupied was he that he barely noticed the speculative looks several people gave his eyes, wondering if their memory was playing tricks on them or if they had always been that bright.

His thoughts were still on the thestrals when he felt yet another presence of Dark, this time as Dumbledore rose from the staff table to make a speech.

"I have at long last been able to prevail upon Minister Fudge to recall the dementors back to Azkaban, as it seems clear that Sirius Black has no intention of coming to Hogwarts." The old wizard was saying.

Harry registered the words, but only barely. He'd noted the absence of dementors on their approach to the school, so that answered that little mystery, but most of his focus was on the wand he could sense in Dumbledore's sleeve.

It radiated Dark, just like his invisibility cloak. It was the only wand in the Great Hall that did so. The phoenix feather wands were like a tiny spark of sunlight to his senses, well suited to explosive bursts of magic. The unicorn hair wands felt like a gentle stream of moonlight and were probably better off used for calmer magics. The dragon heartstring ones strangely did not give off a feeling of fire as he had expected, but of a more robust and enduring strength.

Dumbledore's wand though… it could only be the Elder Wand. Sirius had been disparaging of the tale of the brothers Peverell, and Harry had to agree that them meeting an anthropomorphic manifestation of Death and getting it to give them super powerful magical doodads for no easily explicable reason was unlikely, but he had been willing to give the story the benefit of the doubt in some measure. He may not be prepared to believe that Death was a person, but he was more than ready to believe that the three brothers had dabbled with Dark and learned how to use it to enchant certain items.

Now that he'd lain eyes on the wand, that belief was all but confirmed. He had to wonder where the Resurrection Stone was.

As soon as he was alone in his room, Harry cracked open the book Luna had given him and started reading.

Sex magic is something that has long been thought of as the domain of certain non-human magical beings. Given the recent thrust by the Veela Covenant to be recognized as equals under wizard law, I decided to research it myself and publish my findings so that we may better understand the Veela and their magics.

The decision of the European Ministries of Magic to classify all sex magic as a Dark Art the previous year and prohibit its use has put an end to this intention, but I will still finish this book if only for my own purposes.

The first mention of sex magic dates back to Ancient Sumeria and the sorceress that would later become most widely known as Lilith, the Queen of the Succubi.

Little is known of Lilith's origins, but it is known that she was born human. Her transformation into a Succubus has long been an unanswered mystery and will likely remain so. The other thing that is known of Lilith is her mastery of sex magic.

After her transformation, Lilith spent a millenium ensnaring the minds of wizards and witches alike and consuming their magic to sustain her life and power. For this reason, she eventually became revered as a fertility goddess and feared as a voracious demon.

This was a time long before wands and magic schools, meaning that trained magic users were few and far between and none of them very powerful. Lilith's Succubus transformation had among other things granted her immense control over fire and her ability to enthrall the minds of near any magical being made her unassailable by magical means. She was eventually slain by the hand of the muggle Hero-King Gilgamesh, who was immune to Lilith's enthrallment ability due to his lack of magic.

But Lilith had spawned a legion of Succubi daughters during her long life and they continued to prey on wizardkind, learning from the death of their mother and adopting a more subtle approach by targeting mostly those who were young, untrained, easily seduced or otherwise vulnerable.

Though popular muggle folklore portrays the Succubi as horned and bat winged demons, they were in fact indistinguishable from human women, save for their beauty, allure, intrinsic control of fire and the ability to partially transform into a hybrid bird creature at need. This made it easy for them to hide amongst human populations if they were careful and fed on the unwary or ignorant.

Their fortunes turned with the establishment of Hogwarts and similar magic schools later on. With fewer and fewer victims going untrained and unguarded, they were forced to go after more risky prey. The increased danger and lack of sustenance took a great toll on their numbers.

Unlike their mother, Lilith's daughters were unable to breed more Succubi and the last was eventually killed in 1637.

One among their number, the Succubus Velana, did however learn to spawn more children that were not Succubi. These came to be called Veela. They are possessed of similar powers as the Succubi, but much weaker. However, Veela also do not need to prey on magicals for survival and have been able able to endure despite the stigma of their origins.

After centuries of being hunted, Veela have now successfully won their acceptance in the majority of Europe, though their innate ability to use sex magic has been classified as a Dark Art in a rather transparent attempt to limit their influence.

Harry kept on reading long after he would have usually gone to bed, completely absorbed in the book. Much of the writing done by Luna's ancestor was theory and speculation, in no small part due to the fact that sex magic could not be done with a wand.

Which was exactly why Harry found it so fascinating in the first place, even beyond the subject matter.

It was well into the wee hours of the morning when something occured to him.

"How the hells did Luna know that I wouldn't give a shit about the Ministry prohibition, or that I would like the wandless aspect?" He wondered, baffled. " Did she know, or was it just a coincidence?"

He pondered the vagaries of his friend for another half hour before metaphorically tossing his hands into the air in frustration and going to bed.

Harry sighed in his Charms class.

They were currently going over the Freezing spell, which Harry had known for some time. Even if he hadn't known it, he could have gotten the hang of it within minutes. Even watching the energy flow with his newly acquired magesight had gotten old already.

Flitwick was a good teacher, but Harry was bored out of his skull in his classes these days. Now that he could see magic as well as feel it, it seemed like he had an easier time mastering wandlessly what his classmates struggled to master with a wand.

Transfiguration was an interesting subject that was quickly becoming as dull as Charms.

While doing it wandlessly had always been a problem, doing it with a wand was simple enough, even if a dragon heartstring wand would have been better suited for the task.

Now that he could observe the process happenning, he was starting to figure out the nuances that would let him do it without a wand.

This had the unfortunate side-effect of making the class itself mostly superfluous. He spent almost the entire time ignoring McGonagall and doing his own thing.

"Potter, stop staring at your cauldron and start brewing!" Snape shouted.

Harry jerked in surprise, having gotten caught up in watching the magic of the ingredients interacting in his cauldron.

"Sorry, sir." He apologized and went to complete the potion.

Half an hour later, he was once again staring at his unfinished potion in fascination, wondering at the strange swirls and eddies that his stirring was making in it. He had no idea what any of it meant, but it was mesmerizing. All that 'stir clockwise six times and counter clockwise four times' crap was finally making some sense.

"POTTER!"

"Harry, please stay after class."

Harry raised an eyebrow. Looks like Lupin was finally done waffling. His indecisive shuffling had been getting beyond obvious in the lead up to the Christmas holidays.

When they were alone, Harry decided to ask the obvious question.

"Was there something you wanted, Professor?"

"Harry, the Headmaster tells me that you are aware of my relationship with your parents." Lupin stated after taking a bracingly deep breath.

"Yes."

Cue uncomfortable silence.

"I'm going to be late for Herbology." Not that he cared too much about that particular class, but standing here and waiting for the werewolf to get to the point was pretty tedious.

"I was wondering if you'd like to hear a few stories about them sometime." Lupin offered hopefully.

"Not really, I think I've got a general idea of the kind of people they were." It wasn't likely that he had anything new to add to what he'd already learned from Sirius, Charlus and Dorea.

"Harry, I'm sorry." Lupin suddenly said.

"What for?" Harry asked, puzzled.

"For never checking up on you, for not getting in touch when you started Hogwarts."

"Whatever your relationship with my parents, you don't and didn't owe me anything." Harry pointed out.

Remus winced at the even response. Perhaps he hadn't owed James, Lily or Harry anything, but it was a poor friend that didn't check up on the orphaned son of his friends.

"I still should have checked up on you. I couldn't take you in because of a medical condition I have, but I should have checked up on you."

"I did well enough without you." Harry replied, not deigning to inquire about the oblique reference to lycanthropy.

Remus winced again. That was another way of saying that he'd do well enough without him from here on out as well. Harry was being decidedly lukewarm about getting to know him, and Remus couldn't blame him. He wasn't upset about the absence, but he wasn't eager to get to know him either. It would've been easier if Harry was angry at him. That at least would have been clear.

"I'm going to need a note for Professor Sprout." Harry prompted.

Remus wrote him a note and spent the next twenty minutes brooding over past regrets. He'd really dropped the quaffle with Harry and there wasn't much he could do about it now.

Aside from Potions, the only class that had actually become more interesting since his little Christmas adventure was Astronomy.

He still thought that the telescopes could do with replacing. The enchantments on them made them substantially more powerful than they should be, but that just meant that the newer models would be even better.

That being said, it was hard not to develop an appreciation for the night sky when he could practically feel the stars singing in his magic.

"Have you got it, Harry?" Professor Sinistra asked, nudging him over so that she could take a look herself.

"Almost." He replied and let her do it, taking a private enjoyment at the feel of her breasts brushing against his back when she leaned over him.

And that was the other reason why he liked Astronomy. He was terribly tempted to flirt with the beautiful dark skinned Professor sometimes. He didn't, because that could turn out very problematic, but he was seriously tempted.

How ironic. Ginny had asked him earlier in the year whether he liked older women and he'd said yes mostly to get her off his back, but now it was turning out to be true. Women thirty-plus years in age did more for him than girls in their teens.

Sinistra was thirty-three. Vector was forty. Both of them were hot. He couldn't show even a hint of his attraction without making things very, very awkward. He didn't even know if they were in a relationship. Sometimes, life was just plain unfair.

Harry vowed to himself that he would try to sleep with at least one of them before he left Hogwarts.

Back at Potter Manor.

Sirius put down the glass of firewhiskey that he'd been about to drink and put a hand to his chest, wondering about the fierce burst of pride he'd just felt for his godson.

Harry returned to his room in a state of mild sexual frustration, which was pretty much normal for these late night Astronomy classes.

To the sight of Bryanna lounging on his bed, wearing what appeared to be a set of chocolate underwear, obviously enchanted to behave as it if were fabric.

"Hey lover."

Life might be unfair sometimes, but it could also be very good at other times. He'd been wanting to give some of the stuff he'd read in Luna's book a try for a while now, but he had needed a partner to do so. Luna's great-great grandmother had postulated a lot of theories, but only practice would determine whether they held any weight.

"I thought you could use a snack before bed."

Lots and lots of practice.

"I am feeling rather peckish." Harry admitted, quickly divesting himself of his clothes and firing a contraceptive charm at his midnight visitor.

Bryanna rolled her eyes t his paranoia. He still didn't trust the potion to do the job.

Harry paid her exasperation no mind as he climbed on the bed, zeroing in on her chocolate covered nipples.

Harry had no real idea how to implement the techniques described in the book, but he figured that he couldn't go far wrong if he started out by licking the chocolate off her breasts. He had magesight now, so enough experimentation was sure to yield results.

Bryanna let out a shuddering gasp as she rode Harry to her third orgasm, coincidentally triggering his fourth. She had no idea what he was doing, but his member felt even better in her than that vibration spell that Tiana had taught her at the end of last year.

Harry smirked to himself as Bryanna collapsed on top of him and nuzzled his neck, taking deep breaths all the while. Being able to see her magic reacting to his efforts was proving inordinately useful in figuring out how to please her. The book was written from the perspective of a woman, but it hadn't been too hard to adapt the knowledge.

"Mmm, what have you been doing over the holidays?" Bryanna nearly purred out, feeling deliciously satisfied. Harry had definitely been improving.

"Oh, this and that." He replied mysteriously, rubbing circles on her lower back and seeing if he could magically stimulate the nerves that were supposed to be there.

"Well keep at it." She instructed, mashing her chest into his and already feeling a slow heat returning to her groin despite her recent orgasm. The fact that she still had him sheathed inside her and was leaking a slow trickle of sperm from her opening was only making it better.

"Yes ma'am." Harry chuckled, slowly refining his technique based on the feedback feel he was getting from her own magic.

They stayed that way for a while, content to take a short break and let the desire build before they jumped back into the sex.

"What do you think about having a meeting with all four of us girls soon?" Bryanna asked out of the blue, raising her head to look him in the eye.

Harry raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You mean…" He finished by pressing her down more firmly on his once again erect member.

Bryanna laughed lightly, realizing what she'd just implied. "You wish, Potter. No, that's not what I meant."

"Pity." He grinned. He could already imagine how jealous Sirius would be.

"Isabel drafted up a contract and we'd like you to take a look at it." She elaborated

"Sure." He agreed, starting to press kisses to her neck. "But I'm not interested in contracts right now."

"What are you interested then?" She asked huskily.

His hands went to cup her rear end and then he quickly spun them around so that he was the one on top.

"Oh, I could think of a thing or two." He said and kissed her, thrusting his hips forward in the same movement and delighting in her grunt of pleasure.

Harry wasn't sure if he liked Isabel and Jade.

They weren't rude or anything of the sort, but he was getting the distinct impression that they held a mild resentment for him because he was sleeping with their friends.

Harry could appreciate what the situation looked like from an outside perspective, but he was also quite sure that Bryanna and Tiana didn't find keeping him company at night to be distasteful. Tiana's unsubtle complaint earlier that he was neglecting her was a good indicator of that, as was Bryanna's shameless abuse of their shared House status to get more solo nights with him.

Either they were enjoying the situation as much as him or else they should abandon the clothes store idea and go to Hollywood.

Isabel came off as being rather starchy in addition to the slight social awkwardness that seemed normal for Ravenclaws. She'd presented him with the contract with the kind of stiff backed poise he'd expect from McGonagall. She obviously wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.

The Gryffindor of the group was a somewhat different matter. She looked like she was just waiting for an excuse to get mad at him.

Harry couldn't be 100% sure, but he thought that they were both magically weaker than Bryanna and Tiana. He had no hard evidence to support this as his magesight and magic sensing only told him whether something was magical or not and didn't quantify it, but a gut feeling told him that Isabel and Jade were simply weaker people.

This same gut feeling had been giving him impressions of the people around him ever since his return to Hogwarts.

It told him that Luna was a generally flighty person who drifted through life without much concern, but there was something broken in her that paradoxically made her stronger than she seemed.

Ginny; an insecure little girl wrapped up in a mixture of sulky resentment and longing. That's what she felt like around him at any rate. He didn't know if there was more to her or not.

Malfoy; a front of arrogance shoring up a brittle core, not nearly as strong as he liked to portray himself as. He felt as if he would shatter if the illusion of superiority was taken from him.

Lupin; the inner wildness of his wolf wrapped in walls of fear and self-loathing. There was steel in him, but it seemed to be turned inward, as if he was most afraid of himself.

Snape; bitter and hateful with a core of guilt and self-loathing even stronger than Lupin. There was a fatalistic sense of determination too, as if he was dead set on finishing something and cared little for the aftermath.

These were all just vague impressions that only got marginally clearer the more time he spent around the people in question. It was also clearer with some people than others. Harry suspected that it was clearer with the more powerful wizards and witches.

Dumbledore was for example a pillar of calm over a deep well of grief and regret. There was an unshakable determination in him to accomplish something, at any cost. It made feel very dangerous.

By contrast, people like Isabel Morris and Jade Dawson were much less noticeable. Their souls did not shine as bright and would have faded into the background if there were more people present. As it was, Bryanna and Tiana nearly eclipsed them. His pretty bedwarmers were far more self-assured than their friends, more driven and just… more .

Harry couldn't quite help himself from labeling people like them as NPCs.

But he wasn't here to woolgather, he was here to inspect the contract.

"I'm sorry, but I can't sign this." He finally said, not needing to watch to know that all four girls had tensed.

"You said you would!" Jade snapped peevishly.

Tiana kicked her in the shin, muttering something about Gryffindors all the while.

"Is there something wrong with it?" She asked lightly.

"Yes." He responded bluntly. "Its way too simplistic."

"It covers the terms that we agreed on." Bryanna pointed out.

And hadn't that been a bitch to explain to Isabel and Jade. They hadn't been too pleased at the fact that they would be minority owners in the future no matter what, as the original plan had been for equal shares. They were especially displeased that Harry had decided this based on the fact that they hadn't participated in the seduction plan.

Bryanna and Tiana were secretly pleased about reaping greater rewards for the gamble they took, not to mention that Harry had become very enjoyable night time company lately.

"Which was talked over a period of about five to ten minutes." Harry pointed out. "This contract works well enough if you aren't planning to turn a profit. The use of the Potter family name will protect your business from being shut down by a made up reason by some uppity pureblood, but it does nothing to protect you from anyone that might want to muscle in on it for themselves later on. At the very least I want a clause included that forbids any of you from selling your share to anyone except me."

"What business is it of yours who we would sell it to?" Jade demanded, earning herself another kick from Tiana.

"I suspect that the Potter family lost its vineyards and pottery business to the Parkinsons exactly because of something like this." Harry retorted. "Trusted managers given emergency authorization because the owner was unreachable or dead, then in comes Lord Parkinson making veiled threats of what might happen to those same managers and their families if they don't sell. I still need to investigate if that's what really happened, but after what I've learned from Bryanna and Tiana and my own research it seems like a likely scenario. The point being that if you can't sell to anyone except me, then that means that you can't be threatened, bribed or blackmailed into it either."

Jade and Isabel paled at that, obviously having never considered it. Even Bryanna and Tiana were a bit perturbed.

"Wouldn't that make you a target then?" Isabel ventured.

"I'd be Lord Potter by then." Harry replied with a self-deprecating grin. "I checked the laws. I can legally kill people for stuff like that, among other things."

"And we can't." Tiana stated with a small sneer, getting another clue as to how exactly it was possible for the purebloods to keep a deathgrip on the economy. She'd missed that nugget of information in her earlier research.

"Nope, only Lords can issue honor duels." Harry confirmed wryly. Not that it was done much anymore as that was a rather extreme course of action, but there were non-violent alternatives. That was no doubt the main reason that the Noble Houses generally stayed out of each other's business.

"Alright, we definitely need to add that." Bryanna stated firmly.

"We probably need to add a lot of other things." He said. "I'm not a lawyer and there's probably a thousand other loopholes that I'm not seeing. I'd suggest that we meet over the summer and get a professional opinion on this, both muggle and magical."

"Why muggle?" Tiana asked curiously. "We're not really planning to have too much contact with the Muggle World. As soon as we get good enough at making our own clothes, we might cut contact with them entirely aside from buying some materials."

"Because my dear, while the muggle side of business might not have any of this Noble garbage involved - or perhaps because of it -, it is ten times as cutthroat. "

Harry grinned as he tossed a compact fireball at the target that the Room of Requirement provided for him.

Moving on to the next thing, he carefully began crafting a blasting curse between his hands, infusing the raw magical energy with his intent, all the while keeping it controlled. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled it at another target, demolishing that one as well.

He moved on to other spells after that. Stunners, disarming hexes, various transfigurations and more.

Now that he could clearly see and sense what was going on, wandless magic was no longer such an impenetrable mystery. It was slow, far too slow for combat purposes at this point, but also far more controlled than anything he could do with a wand and no less powerful.

Wands allowed a wizard to skip the difficult process of learning to manipulate magic with their minds alone. Some wands were better suited to certain things than others, but they could all be used for more or less everything. The interaction between core, wood and whatever else a wandcrafter did made sure of this.

Truly, whoever had figured out modern wands had been a genius with few equals, but in allowing magic users to skip the journey, so much had been lost.

For example, Modern wizards and witches used the Tempus charm to find out what time it was, but they never once considered what was involved with such a spell.

If Harry wanted to cast that particular spell wandlessly, he had to take into account the position of the Sun in the sky, the Earth's axial tilt, the form that he wanted the information to take and several other things. It took him half an hour to craft the spell and his results were very far from accurate.

With a wand, you just had to give it a little wave and something in the stick and the movements allowed you to bypass all the nuances and skip right ahead to the results. It was rather disturbing how sophisticated wands actually were, but he supposed that they would be after two thousand years of refinement.

The problem was that they had made wizardkind lazy . Obscenely so. Wands had sucked all the wonder and mystery out of magic by reducing it to a bunch of swishing and flicking. It was no wonder that modern day wizards were so unimpressive when they didn't really have to exert any kind of real thought to cast spells. Oh sure, you needed a certain level of focus to use magic with a wand(though even that was drastically reduced through the use of wand motions), but it was not even close to the mental dexterity required to weave a spell with only one's mind and will.

Harry moved on to the Patronus. It took him fifteen minutes to shape the spell and work his desire to protect into it, but he could change the size of his raven at will, increase its power to blinding luminance or reduce it to formless mist.

So what if it took an age to cast right now? With enough practice, the mental process would eventually become so familiar that he would be able to do it in an instant.

A quick check of the time told him that he was going to be late for his Charms class. Again.

With an aggravated sigh, Harry restarted the process of forming his Patronus. Charms class was a waste of time anyway.

"Has anyone noticed anything… strange about Mr. Potter's behavior lately?" Minerva asked.

"He's sometimes taken to staring at his cauldron like a confounded troll ever since Christmas." Snape replied with dry derision.

"Severus!" She said sharply, but the Potions Master was undaunted by her warning.

"While I wouldn't phrase it in the way that Severus did, he has been acting a bit erratic." Flitwick added. "His practical work is as good as ever, but his written work of late has been subpar to say the least. His homework has the feel of being rushed to completion without care for the quality."

"It is the same with me." The Transfiguration teacher said with her brow furrowed in thought.

"Me too." Remus added quietly.

"He actually turns in passable essays to me." Snape admitted grudgingly. The quality of Potter's potions had also been steadily increasing, but he wasn't going to admit that unless he absolutely had to.

"He is diligent enough with me as well, though obviously not interested." Sprout chimed in.

"Still, this is a worrying trend." Minerva continued. "And the sudden drop in his work quality isn't even the worst of it, he actually skipped one of my classes the other day and then refused to come to the detention I assigned him!"

"Err, Minerva." Flitwick said with an embarrassed cough. "He's skipped three of mine already."

"And you just let him do it?" She asked, mildly scandalized. No wonder he'd refused to come to detention if his Head of House was letting him get away with it.

"I talked to him about it and he admitted to being bored stiff in my classroom." The half-goblin Professor admitted. "He was easily able to demonstrate mastery of what we covered in those classes, to a degree that made it obvious that he'd known the spells for some time already. The curriculum is simply moving too slowly for him. I suspect that might also be the reason for his poorly done homework, he probably doesn't want to waste time on things that he already knows."

That had the deputy Headmistress looking thoughtful. She still didn't appreciate the boy outright ignoring the punishment she'd set for him, but this shed some light on his behavior.

"Surely you cannot be thinking of allowing the brat to skip a year or, Merlin forbid, allowing him free reign to decide which classes to attend?" Snape questioned, his opinion on the matter clear.

"Well there is hardly any point in forcing him to attend lessons that he has no use for." She retorted huffily.

"What do you think, Albus? You've been awfully quiet." Flitwick asked.

Dumbledore had indeed been quiet, listening to the conversation and turning things over in his mind.

"Professors Vector and Babbling tell me that they believe that Harry may be able to take his OWLs for Arithmancy and Ancient Runes over the summer if he continues to progress at the current pace." He said.

"That's quite impressive, I had no idea he was so far along." Flitwick said, ignoring the soft snort from Snape.

"Indeed, Septima and Bathsheda have nothing but praise for the boy." Dumbledore chuckled. "I think that they enjoy having a student take such interest in their subjects, which are often considered to be quite onerous."

"So what is to be done about Potter?" Minerva pressed.

"I will talk to him first and then determine what to do." Dumbledore decided.

Ever since his last ritual, Harry found that he could no longer sleep through sunrise or sunset. The change in his magic as the sun rose and set would always wake him.

Because of this, he often made his way to the top of the Astronomy Tower to watch as it happened. At the very least on the days when it wasn't cloudy.

These trips had also been an opportunity to spend some time just thinking, mostly about the fact that he had killed someone. He'd turned the event over in his mind countless times, but he simply could not bring himself to feel particularly bad about the killing itself. Wormtail had been a loathsome human being, a coward, traitor, murderer and who knows what else. His death would go unmourned by those who knew the truth and only the fact that it made things more difficult for Sirius made it regrettable.

Eventually he'd simply gotten fed up of attempting to dredge up some kind guilt or horror at the act. He just didn't feel it and apparently wouldn't no matter that society didn't approve of killers.

Remarkably, the cracks in his soul seemed to heal a bit once he stopped wrestling with himself over it.

"Back again, Harry?" Dumbledore asked as he walked up to stand beside the tall but young teenager.

He hadn't been able to divine the reason for Harry's quick growth, but he was by now certain that it wasn't natural. It didn't seem to be affecting him aside from that though, so he let it go despite his curiousity. The answer may yet come to him later.

"It's a nice morning." Harry replied noncommittally, having sensed the old wizard's approach. "It'll be a beautiful sunrise."

"You have been coming up here frequently of late." Dumbledore commented. "May I ask what prompted this sudden fascination with the Sun?"

Harry's lips twitched into a small smile. Anyone would be fascinated by the Sun if they knew what he knew and owed their continued existence to the ball of fiery gas.

"There is something special about seeing the world bathed in Light." He said instead, leaving out the fact that if forced to choose, he would have to say that he preferred the Dark and the stars.

"There is indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "but I had not thought that a boy your age would be able to appreciate it."

"You might be surprised by the things I can appreciate." Harry retorted, mildly irritated by the mention of his age. He'd once felt thirteen despite the size of his body, but he didn't anymore. Too much had happened for him to stay a child.

"Such as the lovely female company you keep?" Dumbledore chuckled.

"Hm, I guess it was too much to hope for that the rumor mill wouldn't catch wind of that." Harry grumbled.

"Alas, the Hogwarts rumor mill rarely fails to spread about uncomfortable secrets."

They lapsed into silence as dawn approached, an unspoken agreement passing between them to watch the sunrise in silence.

They had a surprise late arrival in the form of the Headmaster's phoenix, who arrived on Dumbledore's shoulder in a burst of flame just a minute before the event.

"Have you come to watch the sunrise as well, Fawkes?" Dumbledore asked with a smile, reaching up to ruffle the firebird's chest feathers.

Fawkes trilled in agreement, shooting a look towards Harry that he would swear was distrustful.

Harry felt a shiver of discomfort go through him, but ignored it. The phoenix was a creature of Light, so it was only natural for its song to be mildly unpleasant to him now that he was full of Dark.

The small discomfort passed as the Sun rose over the eastern mountains and pushed back the Dark. Harry was always slightly sad to see it happen. The Sun's overpowering presence was simply not as beautiful as the multitude of distant stars.

Fawkes trilled curiously, hopping from Dumbledore's shoulder over to Harry's and poking his beak in the younger wizard's temple. Right into the hidden Sol rune in fact.

"Oi, cut that out." Harry protested, gently pushing the firebird's head away.

"He seems to like you." Dumbledore chuckled. "Or perhaps is confused by you."

Harry figured that the phoenix must have sensed it as the magic present in his soul shifted from Dark to Light. Being strongly aligned with Light, the phoenix was probably naturally sensitive to things like that in ways that wizards generally weren't.

Fawkes continued to make a pest of himself for the next few minutes, much to Dumbledore's amusement. He'd never seen his phoenix act like this around anyone before, but he took heart in it. Phoenixes were generally attracted to good people when they deigned to interact with them at all, so this boded well for the future.

"What do you want?" Harry finally asked in exasperation.

Fawkes trilled a beautiful song that resonated in his magic wonderfully, but was ultimately unhelpful in figuring out what the ostentatious feather duster wanted.

"What, do you want to praise the Sun in jolly cooperation?" Harry asked sarcastically, starting to get annoyed by Dumbledore's chortling.

Fawkes trilled happily.

"Was that a yes?" Harry asked with some incredulity.

Fawkes repeated the same trill.

"O… kay." Harry said dubiously, feeling entirely ridiculous but willing to try it if it would get the feathered menace to stop poking its beak into his head.

I can't believe that I'm doing this. He thought to himself. And with an audience no less.

Staunchly ignoring the embarrassed blush creeping up his face at what he was doing, Harry put his feet together, extended his arms as far as they would go and raised them into the air, as if to embrace the sunlight.

This robbed Fawkes of his shoulder perch of course, but the phoenix solved that problem by jumping on his head and raising his wings in a mimicry of Harry's arms, releasing a song full of nostalgic joy as he did so.

"Happy now?" Harry asked, unable to quite muster any irritation because of the sheer feeling that the phoenix had packed into the song.

Fawkes trilled in the manner that Harry was starting to associate with agreement and flamed away.

"What was that?" Dumbledore asked, intensely curious. "I have never seen Fawkes act so strangely before."

"I think… I think that he might have missed the days when the Sun was worshipped as a deity." Harry said slowly, mostly guessing but it felt right. Obviously, the rituals from those days weren't likely to bear much resemblance to something that he'd taken out of a video game, but the core purpose was the same and that was all that Fawkes seemed to have cared about.

"I suppose that is possible." Dumbledore mused. "The phoenix was revered as a representative of the Sun in many ancient cultures."

"Anyway, did you have some reason for coming up here this early in the morning on a weekend, sir?" Harry asked, wanting to move past this little situation before the old wizard stopped asking 'what?' and started on 'why?'.

"Ah yes, I had nearly forgotten in all the excitement. I was supposed to discuss your education."

"What about my education?" Harry asked warily.

"It has come to our, that being the Professors, attention that you are not feeling sufficiently challenged in some of your classes."

"I was always good at Charms and Transfiguration." Harry said with a nonchalant shrug.

"And the others?" Dumbledore prompted.

"We're mostly doing creatures in defense, so I do still learn new things there, but I would probably be quite far ahead if we were doing spells. I'm not really interested in Herbology, so I'm just slogging through that."

Dumbledore blinked in slight surprise. "How refreshingly honest of you to say so, Harry."

"I've recently discovered a newfound interest in Potions, but I'm no further ahead than anyone else." Nor was it likely to happen any time soon. The kind of experimenting he wanted to try with potions wasn't really something that he could do right now, as it would be very time consuming.

"It's much the same with Astronomy and you already know that I'm taking private lessons in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes."

"Yes, I have heard from Professors Vector and Babbling that you are doing quite well in your electives. So well in fact that they feel you would be able to take your OWLs in those subjects during the summer if you continue to apply yourself as you have."

"Couldn't I take Charms, Transfiguration and maybe Defense too while I'm at it?" Harry asked. He'd already spoken to Vector and Babbling about the possibility.

"I am afraid that the Ministry does not offer early OWLs for core classes." Dumbledore answered.

"Why not?"

"As you may know, getting an OWL in one's core classes represents the minimum required education as decreed by the Ministry of Magic. They ceased offering early OWLs for those classes after an incident some three hundred years ago when a magical prodigy managed to get all of the required OWLs in the summer after her second year and decided to leave Hogwarts to advance her studies further on her own."

"Why was that a problem?"

"Normally it wouldn't be, but you must recall that this was a thirteen-year old girl. She was not the most cautious of people and caused a severe breach in the Statute of Secrecy after an altercation with a belligerent muggle teenager. Incidentally, that was also how the Reasonable Restriction on Underage Sorcery came about."

"Lovely." Harry said dryly. "Was that all?"

"Ah, no. Forgive an old man's digressing, but I actually came to talk to you in order to assess if it would prudent to offer you the opportunity to audit higher year Charms and Transfiguration classes at your own discretion."

Dumbledore would have once hesitated to offer the boy such a thing, but it was obvious by now that Harry was not going to be making friends in his own year. He was cordial with most of them, but not in any way close. Better to use the opportunity to build goodwill with the boy than to hold him back in the vain hope that he would somehow befriend people that he had not for the past two and a half years.

"I'm assuming that this is being offered since you mentioned it?"

"Indeed. If you choose to accept, then Professors Flitwick and McGonagall will periodically test you to make sure that you are keeping up with your studies, but you will otherwise be left alone to study the material on your own."

"I'd like that." Harry said.

"Very well then, I wish you the best of luck." Dumbledore nodded. "But one final bit of advice if I may. Do not get so consumed in your studies that you forget to have fun."

"Oh, I don't think you need to worry about that." Harry replied with a small smirk.

"I am glad to hear it." Dumbledore said with an amused smile of his own and left the Astronomy Tower.

Harry stared after the old wizard, wondering what exactly he was playing at. Either there was no actual plot or it was a seriously subtle one.

Harry winked at Bryanna and Tiana, taking vast amounts of amusement at their wide-eyed stares.

"Mr. Potter, I know that the Headmaster has given you leave to audit any Transfiguration class you wish, but do you not think that a seventh year class is a bit too advanced for you?" McGonagall asked disapprovingly. In truth, she was thinking that he had picked this particular class for the sole purpose of dropping in on his… girlfriends, or whatever they were.

"I'm just trying to get a feel for where exactly I am in terms of ability, Professor." Harry answered calmly.

"Very well." McGonagall conceded grudgingly. "But I do not want you attempting to cast the spells you will see here. Human transfiguration can be dangerous if done improperly and is not something that should be attempted lightly."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Professor." Harry semi-lied. He certainly wouldn't attempt it lightly, but he would eventually attempt it if he felt that he could do it.

McGonagall was somewhat reassured about his seriousness when he did not attempt to communicate with Ms. Torres or Ms. Day in any fashion, but instead kept his eyes fixed firmly on her and listened attentively. His focus was almost unnerving in its intensity in fact, but better that than to have him treating one of the most difficult branches of Transfiguration carelessly.

Harry spent the entire lesson studying how the energy flowed as the other students transfigured each other into various things. He could see why it was considered difficult, as the caster also had to take the magic of his target into account in addition to their own.

This would probably be useful when he and Sirius got started on the Animagus transformation.

The rest of the school year proceeded without any overt excitement from then on. Harry kept up a sporadic attendance of Charms and Transfiguration classes, in an order that nobody could really make sense of, but Flitwick and McGonagall couldn't deny that he was well ahead of where he should be so they couldn't protest much.

Lupin kept up a strange balance between wanting to approach him again and staying away, drowning in self-pity all the while. Harry was honestly not seeing much of the clever werewolf that Sirius sometimes talked about in his letters. Professor Lupin had more in common with an old man waiting to die. It might have helped him to know that Sirius was not a traitor, but blurting out that kind of dangerous secret to make someone feel better was just stupid.

Snape continued to be as unpleasant as possible because of what he saw as the Potter spawn getting special treatment, but his odium had become something of an unremarkable backdrop to Potions by now and failed to really get much of a reaction out of Harry. He took points constantly, he made rants occasionally and he glared ceaselessly, but Harry simply didn't care enough about Snape's personal opinion of him to take it to heart. He had what he wanted and the Potion Master's hissy fits meant exactly bugger-all.

Unbeknownst to Harry, this passive disregard and failure to rise up to the provocation was wearing Snape out. He couldn't really escalate any further in a school setting and there was only so long that you could rail at someone who didn't care before you ran out of steam.

On the more friendly teacher front, Vector and Babbling had decided to double the number of lessons per week they had with him, apparently determined to have him pass the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes OWLs over the summer with a solid O.

Harry could only be thankful that Bryanna and Tiana seemed more than happy to help him out with the tension that the increased amount of time spent with the beautiful Arithmancy teacher was causing him, even if it did nothing for the numerous detention fantasies he was accumulating.

Last weekend before the end of the school year.

"You know, I think I'm actually going to miss these little get-togethers of ours." Tiana said musingly, stretching out in the decadently luxurious bathtub that the Room of Requirement had provided.

"Not as much as me." Harry said mournfully from beside her. "Who's going to keep me company at night when you two graduate?"

"I'm sure you'll find some other girl to seduce." Bryanna snorted from his other side. "Maybe you can even invite Rosmerta or Professor Vector into your bed."

"I should never have told you that I have a thing for older women." Harry sighed with a smile.

"I'm still offended by that by the way." Tiana chimed in teasingly. "You have two sexy teens in bed with you and you fantasize about old women."

"They're not old, just old er ." Harry protested. "And do you want me to kiss it and make it better again?"

"Merlin's balls, no." She groaned. "I think my clitoris might revolt if you went anywhere near it again."

Harry said nothing in response, merely smirked with supreme smugness. Nothing like bringing a girl to several screaming orgasms with magically enhanced cunnilingus to boost one's ego. That book of Luna's might be just about the most awesome gift he'd ever received.

"Would you look at that smug look on his face?" Bryanna commented. "He learns how to properly lick pussy and suddenly he thinks he's the king of the world."

Harry reached over and gave her nipple a pinch, enjoying her squeak.

"So, when are we going to meet up during the summer?" Tiana asked a few minutes later.

"I'll contact you when I know." Harry replied. "I'm going to have a lot to do during the summer and setting up meetings with a couple of lawyers is the least of it."

"What else will you be doing?" Bryanna asked curiously.

"I've got to take my Arithmancy and Ancient Runes OWLs at the Ministry, track down the old managers of my family's business and talk to them about why exactly that business now belongs to the Parkinsons and a few other things."

Things like getting Sirius to teach him how to become an Animagus and getting him acquitted.

"What about yout muggle girlfriend?" Bryanna teased. He'd told them about Zoe one day when they asked who'd popped his cherry, because it obviously hadn't been them.

"She's not my girlfriend, she's a friend with benefits." Harry said with dignity. "A lot like you two actually."

"You really should get a muggle girlfriend." Tiana suggested with a smirk. "I can already see the outraged headlines in the Prophet, 'Boy-Who-Lived dates a muggle! How far has our saviour fallen?'."

"Amusing as that would be, I'm not going to get a muggle girlfriend just to spite Wizarding Britain's elite." Harry snorted. "Besides, I doubt they'd be that obvious about their prejudice. The headline would probably be something like 'Boy-Who-Lived dates a muggle! Are Britain's witches not good enough for him?'."

"They just need to set you up with a nice middle aged witch and that'll be that." Bryanna teased.

Harry groaned. He really shouldn't have told them about that.

"How about Molly Weasley?" The Ravenclaw girl continued.

"Don't even joke about that!" Harry retorted sharply, shuddering theatrically. "There's a very big difference between a sexy mature woman and an overbearing broodmother."

He knew that he was probably being overly harsh, especially as he'd personally met the woman for a grand total of thirty seconds, but he'd learned enough from second hand sources to steer well clear of her. Ginny's commentary and the occasional howler she sent had painted a picture of a woman who meant well, but who was also very opinionated and had not the slightest clue when to ease up. That wasn't even mentionning that she wasn't the slightest bit attractive as far as Harry was concerned.

"Well enough about Harry's fetishes." Tiana declared, ignoring his exasperated eyeroll. "Since this is our last night together, I've prepared a little something."

The other two looked at her curiously as she grabbed her wand and gave it a wave, causing three goblets and a bottle of wine to float towards them.

"Goblets for drinking wine? Really?" Harry questioned wryly as she poured him some. "This makes me feel more like Conan the Barbarian than a wizard."

"Who?" The girls asked blankly.

"Right, I forgot that you wizard-raised savages don't know anything about the classics." Harry sighed.

"At least we aren't some muggle-raised bumpkin who thinks that goblets aren't appropriate for drinking wine." Tiana retorted.

"What are we drinking to?" Bryanna asked before the conversation could devolve into a string of playful insults on the differences between a muggle or magical upbringing.

"To profitable partnerships." Tiana suggested, raising her goblet.

"To future successes." Bryanna added, bumping her own goblet against her friend's.

"And fringe benefits." Harry finished with a grin, mirroring their move.

"Cheeky little cunt." Bryanna smirked.

"That is not language fit for a Lady." Harry told her snobbily.

"Ah, but as a mere commoner, I can be as vulgar as I please. If that bothers my Lord, then he should have let himself be duped into a marriage." She retorted coquettishly, batting her eyelashes in an overdone manner.

"I can ruin my life with a serious relationship anytime, but I'm only going to be young once." He countered, grinning. He had been somewhat upset about their plan when he'd first heard of it, but they'd become friends since then and he couldn't fault their ambition or even their reasoning. Prospects for them really weren't great in Britain.

"I'll drink to that." The girls said in unison. They hadn't been enthused about the idea of marriage before hitting twenty either, seeing it only as a means to an end, so this turn of events was actually preferrable to them.

The three of them brought the goblets to their lips and took a large gulp of the wine.

"You know, judging by how fond people are of alcohol, I expected it to taste better." Harry commented, smacking his lips with a distasteful grimace.

"Maybe it's a bad vintage?" Tiana asked weakly, having not been too fond of the flavor either. "I don't know a thing about wine, so I just picked one at random."

"It's not that bad." Bryanna commented, taking another sip.

Harry exchanged a look with Tiana and shrugged. They didn't see what was so 'not bad' about it, but to each their own.

Harry and Luna had a compartment to themselves on the train ride back to King's Cross. Luna had tried to invite Ginny along, but the redhead wasn't as insensitive to social awkwardness as the blonde, so she had declined and gone to sit with her brothers.

Harry was thankful for that. He didn't hate Ginny, but he'd rather not be in prolonged close contact with her anymore. That constant gloom she gave off about the way he lived his life was more than a little off putting.

So the two of them had spent their time discussing what they would be doing over the summer, though Harry had to lie about quite a bit of it.

Luna had been happy to tell him all about the trip to Germany's Black Forest that she had planned with her father. Apparently there was a magical section of it that still remained hidden from muggles to this day. She'd even invited him to come along, but he had had to decline despite his interest in seeing the place. He simply had too much going on this summer to accept.

Of course, the experience wouldn't be quite complete without Draco Malfoy stopping by to visit.

"I'm surprised you don't have those two halfblood whores in here with you, Potter." The poncy Slytherin sneered.

Harry scowled at the interloper, irritated by the insult to Bryanna and Tiana more than anything else. "Get lost, Malfoy."

"What's wrong Potter? Don't like hearing what they are?" Malfoy continued, sneer firmly in place. His omnipresent goons chuckled sycophantically.

It was at this point that Harry noticed that the little shit was using the doorframe for support since the train was currently passing a fairly bumpy area of the tracks.

Carefully hiding a smirk, Harry grabbed hold of the door with his magic and slammed it closed over Malfoy's fingers.

The Slytherin howled in pain and collapsed to the ground, clutching at his smashed-but-luckily-not-broken fingers.

"You alright there, Malfoy?" Harry asked, no longer bothering to hide his amusement. "That looked like it hurt."

"When my father hears about this…" Draco tried to threaten, but it come out as more of a pained sob.

"He'll do what? Have the door executed?" Harry asked sarcastically, making a reference to the hippogriff that had been killed by the Ministry at the end of the school year on Malfoy senior's initiative. Even Harry had noticed how mopey Hagrid had been after that and he didn't even have any real contact with the half-giant.

"I know you did this, Potter!" Draco screeched.

"Sure I did, Malfoy." Harry replied with a practiced deadpan. "Just like I made you trip into that suit of armor a few weeks ago, right? And without a wand in both cases too."

To be fair, that was exactly what he'd done.

Angry, frustrated and in a great deal of pain, Malfoy sulked off. He was sure that Potter was somehow the cause of all these weird accidents that kept happening to him, but the fact that the scarheaded Ravenclaw never had his wand in hand when it happened left him stumped as to how.

The whole thing was made worse by the fact that nobody believed him when he tried to explain that he sometimes felt a spell push him off balance. They just assumed that he was clumsy and trying to cover it up.

He had the same reputation for clumsyness as Longbottom now. Longbottom !

"That wasn't very nice of you, Harry." Luna commented without recrimination.

"It's not my fault that the door slid closed over his fingers." Harry defended.

"Really?" Luna asked in honest puzzlement, lifting up her hamster pet to her face. "But Boo seems so certain that it was."

"Does he now?" Harry murmured, looking at the hamster suspiciously and wondering for just a moment if he hadn't somehow stumbled across something other than a normal rodent. Or maybe extended magical exposure had altered it. "What else does he say?"

"Not much actually, but he is excited to go hunting for snorkacks."

Ah, nevermind. All was well as long as Luna was going on about snorkacks.

Deep in the forests of Albania, the disembodied spirit of a much feared and now thought dead Dark Lord was reduced to possessing animals, mostly snakes out of personal preference.

Had Peter Pettigrew managed to escape from his former friend and the son of those he'd betrayed, he would have eventually followed the clues he was able to glean from the rats with whom he shared a form, seeking protection from the enemies he'd made. Had this happened, Voldemort would have had a servant to help him make a play for a return to physical form.

Alas for the broken Dark Lord, Pettigrew was dead and his other followers had deserted him, even those few who had an inkling that he was not quite dead, finding that they liked it better when they didn't have to grovel before the massively powerful wizard. Political games and economic ploys might be slower and less satisfying than an eradication of mudbloods by force, but it was much safer.

Because of this notable lack of servant, the mildly brain damaged Bertha Jorkins was able to make her way out of Albania without issue and Voldemort never learned that one of his most faithful, Barty Crouch Jr., was kept imprisoned by his father's Imperious instead of in Azkaban.

Instead of that, he continued to stew in his hatred and plot ways that he might use to return.