Chapter 9: Light and Dark Clash Part 2

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. "

XXXXX

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.

XXXXX

"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.

XXXXX

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 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 pakced 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 Statue 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.

XXXXX

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.

XXXXX

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.

XXXXX

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 older." 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.

XXXXX

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 his 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.

XXXXX

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.