Chapter 29

February 7th.

Meetings with Penny and Narcissa had become a regular occurrence over time, one kept him informed of his finances and anything related to them while the other made sure that the public view of him didn't become problematic. It was a good arrangement and Harry made sure to listen to both women even if he sometimes wanted to fall asleep.

At the moment, Penny was telling him about the steady profits being made, but Harry's mind was elsewhere.

The planned trip to North America was coming up very soon now and his concern over Voldemort was nagging at him. He had no intention of putting his life on hold because of the Dark Lord, but he really did not want the bastard resurrecting himself while he was abroad. Or at all preferably.

Fucking Horcruxes.

"Harry, are you listening to me?" Penny asked, sounding quite exasperated.

"Sorry, I've got something else on my mind." He apologised. "Can we do this a bit later? I need to talk to Narcissa about something."

Penny frowned but nodded, leaving the room to give him and the older witch some privacy.

"What did you want to talk about?" Narcissa asked curiously.

Over the past few days, Harry had run through everything he knew about Voldemort, his Horcuxes and the Death Eaters forwards and backwards in an attempt to see if there were any loose ends in his knowledge that could lead to finding another soul anchor.

There was one little loose end that he'd never received an answer for. It was a bit of a long shot, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"Does the name 'Dobby' mean anything to you?"

Narcissa gaped at him and Harry knew that he had struck gold.

"He used to be the Malfoy house-elf. How do you know about him?" She asked, very shocked.

"I see." That meant that Lucius was the most likely culprit for the diary being in Hogwarts back during his second year. Interesting. "What happened to him?"

"Lucius killed him for some reason, he never told me why."

Ah, his oh-so-clever plan for the house-elf to get himself free had backfired then. That actually did make him feel a little bit guilty. He remembered how hopeful the abused elf had been when Harry had shared his idea.

"Harry, how do you know about Dobby?" Narcissa asked again.

"I met him a few years ago, he helped me out with something." And it was the truth. Without Dobby, he wouldn't have been able to confirm that Voldemort had entrusted a Horcux to at least one of his servants. And if he had done it once, he might have done it again.

"What could he have possibly helped you out with?" The blonde witch asked incredulously.

He gave her an intense stare that made her flush all the way down to her neck. A look like that almost inevitably preceded a hard fucking and they had never done it in Potter Manor before.

But Harry didn't have sex in mind this time. Rather, he was thinking of how deeply he had bent Narcissa to his will.

She had been a vile woman at the beginning. Her mask of politeness had been impeccable, but there had been a rot on the inside. Only the rush of dominating her had kept him at it instead of washing his hands of her.

Once her fear and desperation had been replaced by genuine respect and affection for him, other things had followed. She could no longer despise things that he liked, nor could she glorify things that he held in contempt. She was still a woman born into privilege and possessed of a certain snobbery because of it, but Harry actually found himself liking her these days.

Now he could be sure that she was truly loyal to him rather than merely seeing him as the least terrible option.

"Narcissa, are there any reasonably high ranked Death Eaters in Britain that nobody would miss too much?"

The blonde woman's eyes widened at the question before settling into calculation. She could tell that this was no idle question and that whoever she named may mysteriously vanish. Rather than frightening her, the trust that this gesture demonstrated made her back straighten with pride.

And she had just the man in mind, someone that she had always hated. "There is someone, but I don't know exactly where he lives…"

"That's alright. As long as you know the general area, I'll find him."

A few days later.

Harry, Fleur and Luna were taking a walk in the forest near Potter Manor when a raven unexpectedly decided to perch on Harry's shoulder.

"What does it want?" Fleur huffed. The black birds listened to Harry and didn't shit all over the house, but she still didn't like them much. They were creepy.

The raven croaked something that only Harry understood.

"He just wanted to tell me about a juicy bit of carrion he found." Harry said, smiling at his private joke.

"Oh, that's so wonderful for him!" Luna exclaimed happily, clapping her hands. "And so nice that he wants to share with you."

Fleur merely shuddered in disgust at that mental image.

Walden Macnair was a simple wizard. A pureblood though not a noble one, he liked to kill things and had become a Death Eater for that purpose, with the occasional episode of rape helping to spice things up. When the Dark Lord had fallen, he'd become the Ministry's executioner on the Comittee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. It wasn't a bad job, though a bit slow.

Macnair actually didn't care too much about mudbloods, though he did consider himself superior to them. Mostly, he just liked killing them for the sake of killing rather than because of any more sophisticated reason.

He lived alone in a cottage in the hills and spent most of his free time hunting in the surrounding forests. Sometimes, he treated himself to hunting a muggle that he'd kidnapped off the streets. Those were good days.

Walden Macnair was also really starting to fucking hate ravens, crows and every bird that looked like them.

He hadn't noticed it at first, but the bloody birds had been showing up around him a lot lately. It had been only a few at first, but their numbers had suddenly multiplied until it seemed like there was no end to them.

It wasn't like they were a strange sight to him. They were carrion eaters after all and had picked up on the fact that a lot of corpses turned up around him. Thing was, they generally stayed with his kills instead of around him. The change was unnerving.

Today was especially bad. There were hundreds of ravens around his house now, all of them staring at him in creepy silence.

Macnair's nerves could only take so much of this before he snapped, and snap he did, screaming at the birds in an effort to scare them off.

They weren't scared. In fact, they didn't budge at all. They stayed quiet except for a few soft croaks.

Macnair pulled out his wand, intent of firing a blasting curse at the nearest grouping of them.

He never got the chance. Something hard crashed into the back of his head and sent him spiralling into unconsciousness.

Harry put away the heavy oaken club he'd made earlier, ignoring the small bloodstain on it. A stunner would have been simpler, but he didn't want to leave any magical traces behind. Heh, maybe he should give the club a name?

The Muggle Stunner, legendary club, +5 vs. Death Eaters, special ability: Concussive Blow.

He left the Death Eater lying in the snow and went to the man's cottage, trusting that he would stay unconscious.

Harry was almost disappointed with what he found inside. Given the picture Narcissa had painted of Macnair, he'd half-expected to find shelves filled with the bleached skulls of his victims in the basement or something. Maybe a set of Death Eater robes at least. Instead of that he found a fairly non-descript living space, though there were some large axes hanging on the walls that he'd been told the man was fond of.

Ah well, he supposed it would be stupid to keep something like that around. Time to go then.

Grimmauld Place basement.

Harry finished securing Macnair to a chair with sturdy ropes and then drew his kukri, slicing upen the man's left sleeve.

The Dark Mark was there as expected, but it was a faint outline instead of the black tattoo-like thing it was supposed to be. It looked like yet another variation of the Protean Charm, a type that could apparently be applied to people. Interesting adaptation. The magic in it was as faded as the color though, so Voldemort's current weakness must be reflected in his mark. That was also kind of interesting.

Having nothing better to do while he waited for his captive to wake up, Harry took the man's wand and sat at a table he'd had Kreacher bring down here a couple of days ago. Then he carefully cracked it open and began studying it.

For all his distaste of them, Harry had to admit that wands were incredibly sophisticated items. The core was somehow connected to the wood, which was what gave the wand its ability to tap into the user's magic. Exactly how this was done, Harry had no idea, nor did he have any clue why wood type was important or how different ways of waving it around could help in spellcasting.

Something had been done to the wood obviously, since the dragon heartstring core in Macnair's wand didn't seem tampered with. Miniature runes? Some kind of super secret invisible wandmaker technique that only they knew? Snorkacks? It could be anything and his Magesight wasn't of any help. It certainly wasn't a mystery that he would be able to unravel in ten minutes.

But that wasn't the mystery he was here to unravel. That one was currently waking up with a pained groan.

"Welcome back to the land of the conscious." Harry greeted.

Macnair squinted until the blur reshaped itself into something recognisable. "Potter?"

"The one and only."

Macnair noticed the state of his wand at that point and growled low in his throat. "What the fuck did you do to my wand?!"

"I was studying it." Harry answered conversationally. "Fascinating things really, even if I don't like them. Kind of amazing how refined they've become, the greatest achievement of our kind… and also the worst."

That didn't make the bound wizard any happier. "When I get out of here I'm going to skin you alive."

"When you get out of here?" Harry echoed, darkly amused. "What makes you think you're getting out of here?"

The words pierced through Macnair's concussed mind like a spear of pure ice and he swallowed thickly, suddenly afraid. For a minute there, he had forgotten that Potter was actually nothing at all like those silly stories of him.

"What do you want?" He asked, hating the feeling of helplessness.

"Information." Harry said, stood up from the desk and circled around until he was standing behind the bound man, hands on his shoulders.

"What kind of information?" Macnair asked warily, even more unnderved now that he couldn't see his captor. He noticed the distinctive scratching sounds of a dictation quill somewhere to the side for the first time… this really was an interrogation.

"Did Voldemort ever entrust you with an important object?" Harry asked.

"No." Confusion, but no lie.

"Do you know if Voldemort ever entrusted someone else with such an object?"

"No." Still no lie .

"If Voldemort were to entrust such an object to someone, who would it be? Name both the living and those that died after him."

Macnair hesitated. Confusion, unwillingness to betray, fear of retribution.

Harry drew his enchanted kukri and placed it against the death eater's right ear. "Do I really have to start cutting pieces off you?"

Walden Macnair was not a brave man by any means, but he was a pureblood with certain preconceptions. To him, torture was done with magic, not with knives, which meant that this was a bluff. So he sneered. "You don't have the guts."

In different circumstances, He might even have been right. Harry didn't really have the right temperament for torture, brief urge to cut an ear off from Bole and Flint aside. But he did have a need for information and the soul deep chill of the Dark that stole away all emotion.

Macnair's brief confidence faltered when he felt the cold. It was like a great black abyss had opened up behind him, eager to swallow him whole. And then came the slash of the knife that took his ear off and made him howl in pain.

Harry waited patiently for his captive to settle down before he started speaking, his voice now cold, flat and filled with a terrible inevitability. "I don't have the disposition required to cast the Cruciatus. Legilimency is clumsy and imprecise. I don't know if you can fight off Veritaserum. You will tell me what I want to know or I will keep cutting pieces off you until there's nothing left to cut and I will know if you lie."

And Macnair believed it. Potter really would keep carving until there was nothing left of him. He had been on the wrong end of the Dark Lord's Cruciatus once and it had hurt far worse than losing an ear, but at least it left you whole. So he talked.

"Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood, Evan Rosier."

Harry hummed thoughtfully. Nothing really new there, just a confirmation of some very well educated guesses. Those were all Inner Circle Death Eaters, Voldemort's favorites, of which only Evan Rosier and Malfoy were dead and the rest were in Azkaban. There were others that Harry knew of or at least suspected, but Macnair may not necessarily be aware of them. The Dark Mark on his arm indicated that he was one of Voldemort's more favored minions, but clearly not that favored. Useless, in other words.

"Give me the names of every Death Eater you know."

"I don't really know of any others for certain… we operated in secrecy and only the Dark Lord knew all of us."

"Then make some educated guesses."

Macnair struggled with himself for a few moments, a sense of indebtedness warring with fear and self-preservation. Self-preservation won. "Robert Mulciber Sr., Maxwell Avery Sr., Thaddeus Nott."

The lords of their Houses. Narcissa had already informed him of where their sympathies lay, not that it was hard to guess since Mulciber and Avery had sons that were 'Imperiused', but he hadn't thought they'd be reckless enough to pledge themselves to a Dark Lord directly. "How certain are you that they're Death Eaters?"

"Nott, Mulciber, Avery and Malfoy vouched on my behalf after the Dark Lord fell to keep me out of Azkaban and hinted at old friendships later, so I'm pretty sure."

Ah, so they'd kept Macnair out of Azkaban and used that debt to control him, though why they would want control of the Ministry's executioner he couldn't fathom. Maybe they were just being thorough.

More to the point, Macnair thought he was being clever by naming those that had him by the balls. Perhaps hoping that he'd get rid of them for him?

"Who else?"

"Nobody, those are the only ones I know." Lie.

"Do you want to lose the other ear that badly?"

Macnair was a solitary man that didn't really have friends, but he remembered a few raids where he and a pair of curiously synchronised Death Eaters had some fun together with the mudbloods or muggles they had targeted. Still, that wasn't enough for him to endure maiming at Potter's hands and he was deeply frightened by his inability to sneak even this small attempt at deception past him. "Alecto and Amycus Carrow. They're twins that do everything together."

Another family sympathetic to Voldemort, but Narcissa hadn't been able to give him any names. "And you knew a pair of Death Eaters that did everything together?" Harry guessed.

"Yes."

"Interesting. Alecto and Amycus are only cousins to the main line Carrows if I recall correctly. Do they live in the family manor?"

"No, they have their own place somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, I don't know where exactly." Macnair admitted in defeat, knowing that the Carrow twins would likely end up in the same position as him before long.

"Friends of yours?" Harry asked, his voice tinged with amusement.

Macnair didn't rise to the bait.

"Moving on, tell me how Voldemort acts, how he leads, how are raids organised, how he got his funds, where in the Ministry he had supporters and are they still in place, where did you conduct your meetings…" Harry asked all of this and more.

To Macnair, it sounded like Potter was planning to fight a war that was already over. He didn't want to talk, but the threat of further maiming gave him no choice. He didn't have answers for every question, but he spilled the beans everything he did know.

"Did Voldemort have any noteworthy non-Death Eater allies?"

"A few giants, the dementors, Fenrir Greyback's werewolf pack."

All of which would be problematic if he ever returned, but would almost certainly not be entrusted with a piece of his soul to guard.

"Where is Greyback right now?"

"I don't know."

"Very well, I have no more questions." Harry said and walked back to face his captive.

Macnair licked his lips nervously, trying to ignore the wetness on the right side of his head and the continuing throb of pain from his shorn ear. "Now what?"

Harry didn't answer at first, choosing instead to walk back to his chair and sit down. The knife was still in his hand and he stared at the bloodstains on it contemplatively for a while before speaking. "You're a pureblood, yes?"

Macnair was utterly baffled, but saw no reason to lie. "Yes."

"And I'm a halfblood?"

Macnair was still baffled, but also becoming wary. "Yes."

"And my mother was a mudblood?"

Macnair now swallowed nervously, feeling as if he was standing on very thin ice. Still, the question had been framed in such a way that there wasn't much he could do besides agree. "Yes?"

"Such a curious thing, blood." Harry said musingly, still turning the knife over. "I completely understand where the belief in blood purity comes from. The idea of legacy has been floating around humanity's collective consciousness since the dawn of our species, the notion that some blood is purer than others is a natural evolution of that. It's terribly dumb, but then so are people."

"Where are you going with this?" Macnair asked.

"I've heard it said that Voldemort and his Death Eaters championed the 'old ways'. Is that true?"

"Yes…"

"Old ways, the established order of things, carrying a weight of history and tradition. It has a certain prestigious ring to it, doesn't it?"

"I guess?" Macnair said uncertainly.

"Did you know that the first magics all dealt with blood? Blood oaths, blood sacrifices, blood this and blood that. It was all about the blood and little wonder, without this " Harry said, pointing the kukri at the ruined wand that was still on the table. "bloodletting was one of the few ways magic could be performed that didn't require decades and decades of training. Volatile, dangerous magic, often backfiring on the user, but magic all the same. Those were the good old days, weren't they? The times when mighty wizards built their power on the blood and bones of their enemies. The real o ld ways."

Macnair had been growing steadily paler as the monologue went on, but that last sentence had him trying to struggle out of his bonds. "No!"

"Don't fret, I'm not going to use you in some kind of blood ritual." Harry said with a scoff.

Macnair sighed in relief.

"I'm still going to kill you though."

"But I told you everything you wanted to know!" Macnair yelled furiously.

"And I told you that you wouldn't be leaving here." Harry pointed out reasonably, standing up and moving to the side to pick up a bit of leftover rope, firmly gripping the ends and pulling it taut a few times.

"Wait! I can help you!" Macnair said desperately.

"You have helped me, not as much as I'd hoped, but some. Your usefulness is at an end though."

"But you'll need servants, won't you?"

"What for?" Harry asked, honestly perplexed.

"Aren't you looking to become a Dark Lord and take the country for yourself like Voldemort?" Macnair knew full well that Potter had a different set of ideals than Voldemort and seemed fond of mudbloods, but that didn't matter to him much. He was a killer and killing was killing. He'd gladly switch allegiances if he got to kill again. Plus, he really didn't want to die.

The question broke through the emotionless cold Harry had submerged himself in and made him laugh.

"That's a good one." Harry said with a final chuckle. "I mean, I understand how you could think that, but it's still ridiculous. Not only is taking over a country the last thing I'd want, but you and Voldemort and all the other morons parading around in masks don't know anything about True Dark. All you are is a liability and I have no use for you."

Seeing his would-be executioner moving towards him with grim intent had Macnair panicking. "No! Stop!"

"This is my first time murdering someone like this, so please excuse any clumsiness." Harry said as he moved behind the man, feeling very cold inside.

A few minutes later, he felt the Void snatch away Macnair's soul and he let go of the rope with a deep exhale. A knife would have been simpler, but he didn't want a bloody mess all over the floor.

Harry felt no prickles of a guilty conscience over what he'd just done, just like he hadn't felt any for killing Malfoy. How could he, when the Void's hunger for life was part of him? Or maybe it was because both men had been pretty evil even from an objective standpoint. It was hard to tell sometimes with the way his humanity had become a balancing scale between Light and Dark, neither of which really lent themselves to such tender emotions as guilt or regret.

He had contemplated using Macnair's death for a particular purpose, but then the man had mentioned the Carrow twins. The whole thing would require some adjustment, but he could do that while his ravens scoured the Scottish highlands for the Carrows. It would be cutting things a bit close since they were scheduled to leave for America at the end of February, but there should be time. It would be much more powerful too…

He tried to cast a Vanishing Spell on Macnair's body, scowling when the lingering magic in the corpse resisted it. He hadn't been aware that there was a waiting period before it could be disposed of. How inconvenient, yet also interesting.

"Kreacher."

The old elf appeared, took in the scene and pinned Harry with eyes full of admiration.

"Does Master want Kreacher to dispose of the body?" He asked hopefully.

"I was going to tell you to just clean up the blood and that ear… You've disposed of bodies before?"

"Kreacher has." The old elf said proudly.

"Why am I not surprised?" Harry said wryly.

"If Master wishes, Kreacher could feed the body to Master's birds." Kreacher offered.

Harry opened his mouth to refuse, only to close it and seriously consider the idea instead. The thought of having Macnair's body butchered and turned into bird food elicited no emotional reaction whatsoever and it had been only reflex that had made refusal his initial impulse. Besides various nuts, seeds and whatnot, he was currently feeding them pork and beef. Macnair was already dead and had certainly been far less congenial than a cow or pig. Why not?

Well he'd be thought of as a monster by anyone that learned of it(except Luna), because the world was full of sentimental wimps.

Fuck it. Nobody aside from him, Luna and the house-elves went up to the ravenry anyway. "Go ahead, just don't let anyone see you and remember to get rid of the bones once you're done." The magic in the remains should fade soon enough and the house-elf would be able to Vanish them easily enough once that happened.

Kreacher eagerly popped away with Macnair's body, leaving Harry alone to contemplate his own blasé attitude to what he'd just done.

While he didn't feel guilty about it and knew that it was better to start killing now than when Voldie came back, the ever growing issue was going to be the people close to him. How was he supposed to tell his playful godfather that he was planning a murder spree? Sirius might have been born into the Black family, but he had a rather large amount of scruples. Still, Harry was fairly confident he could convince Sirius that it was necessary if it came down to it.

But what about Penny? Kind, helpful and oh-so-sheltered Penny. She'd been unsettled for weeks after he'd killed Lucius and that had been both pretty justified and someone she'd hated. Well maybe not hated, but definitely resented. Convincing her that preemptively murdering Voldemort's support base was the best thing to do was just not going to happen. Even if he told her about the Horcruxes. Penny hadn't lived through the last war and wasn't cynical enough to really understand how bad things could and would get if the Dark Lord came back with things as they were now.

If only they were more like Luna… Luna would understand. Or at least not care

Fleur was different issue. She had already seen him kill more than once and the Joining would tell her that he was not exactly Mahatma Gandhi. She was a harder person than her beauty would make one think and the feelings she had for him should sway her, but he still worried about her reaction. He'd become very fond of her and didn't want her to leave.

Macnair may have been useless as far as the Horcruxes were concerned, but it had lodged a couple of ideas in Harry's mind all the same. One of them he was currently getting a start on.

"Narcissa, I'm giving you a project to work on while I'm in North America."

"What kind of project?" Narcissa didn't look too surprised. Penny must have told her that he liked to hand out assignments.

"I want you to draft a new werewolf legislation for me to propose in the Wizengamot. Something more sensible than what we have in place now."

"More sensible?" She repeated, brows furrowed. "The only thing more that we could do would be to round them up and kill them, but Dumbledore and his supporters have blocked that in the past."

Harry shook his head. Narcissa was coming along, but she was still casually bigoted in many ways. "By 'more sensible' I meant more lenient. The werewolf laws are ridiculous right now and are practically designed to turn them into a problem. Draft a proposal to provide free Wolfsbane so that they don't go on rampages every month or something. Work with Penny on it and I'll have Sirius get in touch with Remus Lupin so that you can get the input of an actual werewolf."

Harry may not like the self-pitying attitude of the man, but he would make use of him all the same.

"But-" Narcissa protested, clearly not wanting to have anything to do with making the lives of werewolves easier.

"Do you trust me, Cissy?" He cut her off.

"Of course." She answered without hesitation.

"Then trust me when I tell you that this is important. I need you to do this for me."

Narcissa visibly put aside her distaste for werewolves and looked at him shrewdly. "Does it have anything to do with our talk from the other day and the sudden disappearance of Walden Macnair?"

"It does."

That seemed to be enough for her and she nodded. "Alright then, I will do my best, but you know that the Wizengamot won't be eager to give werewolves more rights."

"That doesn't actually matter too much." Harry smirked. "What matters is that I'm seen to support a peaceful werewolf integration into the rest of magical society."

Given the type of man he'd heard Greyback was, the notion of peaceful werewolves should get him frothing and draw him into the open. The vicious werewolf might not have any political power or even be a marked Death Eater, but he was a weapon of terror for Voldemort and provided other werewolves as fighters for him. He needed to die in the event of the Dark Lord's resurrection.

February 12th.

"Come on, Remus, lighten up." Sirius said as they approached Potter Manor on foot after having apparated in some distance away.

"Easy for you to say, you're not the one Harry has a grudge against." Remus muttered.

Sirius had come to fetch him from the German countryside where he'd been living, saying that Harry had a job for him if he wanted it. Remus would have thought it was charity if he was on better terms with Harry. Still, he couldn't have refused even if there wasn't some much needed money involved. He'd screwed up badly after James and Lily were killed and didn't feel like he had any right to refuse a request from their son.

"Harry isn't holding a grudge against you." Sirius replied, exasperated. "He's just a bit… prickly. Besides, he's cooled off quite a bit since you last saw him. Must be Fleur's doing."

Ah yes, Harry's veela paramour. Remus had kept in touch with Sirius and knew about that development. James would be so proud.

"Luna's too."

And there was the other girl that Harry was sleeping with, the very young one. Lily would have been very displeased. Actually, Lily would have been very displeased that her fifteen-year-old son was sexually active at all. More so that he had been since he was thirteen.

"Hells, for all I know he's fucking Narcissa too. I wouldn't put it past the bugger even if he denies it."

Remus nearly tripped over his own feet. Harry and Narcissa Malfoy, or Black as the case may be? He couldn't picture it even if he knew that Lucius' widow now worked for the new Lord Black, who was coincidentally also the one that had widowed her.

"You can't be serius?!" He said incredulously.

"I'm always Sirius."

Remus merely sighed. He'd walked right into that one. Best to just change the subject instead of encouraging his old friend. "Lots of ravens around here, crows too."

"You can blame Harry for that." Sirius said with an odd little grin.

"What do you mean?"

"He's got a thing for these birds. Creeps the shite out of everyone besides him and Luna though, which probably just encourages him now that I think about it."

Remus wasn't sure what to make of that, but he did agree that the great mass of birds turning the manor and everything around it black with their feathers was damned creepy.

The two Marauders made their way into the manor and then into the sitting room where Harry and Narcissa were waiting for them.

Remus had only seen Narcissa up close a few times when she had come to sneer at Sirius about how much of a disgrace he was to the Black family, and that had been when they were still in Hogwarts. She was older and more refined now, but she still had that cold beauty that she had once been known for.

Harry was the bigger surprise. Tall, with thick black hair held in a neat ponytail that reached down to his shoulder blades, eyes that were somehow even more vibrant than Remus remembered Lily's being, a face that was at once so much like James' yet also had many hints of his mother in it and looked sharper without the glasses, a lean sort of muscle definition that was almost unheard of in a wizard… Fifteen years old and he looked like a full grown man. When he'd last seen him, Remus had thought his early blooming would slow down. Apparently not.

"Lupin." Even his voice sounded adult, with none of the awkward cracking that puberty should have given it.

"Harry, It's good to see you again." Remus replied warmly, shaking the offered hand. So far so good. There was certainly less tension between them than there had been at their last meeting. Maybe Sirius had been right.

"You know Narcissa?" Harry asked, gesturing to the elegantly robed blonde witch.

"We've met." Said blonde witch said stiffly. She did not offer her hand for him to shake, but Remus hadn't expected her to. Known werewolves generally didn't get that courtesy, if they got any at all.

While Remus had accepted the slight with familiar resignation, Harry didn't seem willing to do so. The look he gave Narcissa put a visible crack into her composed air before she stiffly offered her hand.

Remus shook it, wondering what had gotten his inner wolf's hackles up just then.

"Let's get to the point then." Harry said, obviously ignoring what had just occured. "Lupin, I asked Sirius to get you because Narcissa will be putting together a revised werewolf legislation for me to propose in the Wizengamot and I figured that having the opinion of an actual werewolf would be for the best. You will of course be compensated for your time."

"There's no need for that." Remus said, despite knowing with painful clarity how little money he actually had. He was still a wizard and didn't need much to make do.

"Remus." Sirius hissed at him with clear exasperation.

"Do you make a habit of working for free?" Harry asked sardonically.

"Well, no." Remus was forced to admit.

"Then stop being difficult. I need a reasonably intelligent werewolf and I figured you were one since you managed to teach at Hogwarts."

What had Sirius called Harry? Prickly? Yes, prickly was a good word to describe James and Lily's son. Not so much in the 'easily offended' way, but rather in a terse, abrupt way.

"Alright." Remus conceded. He still felt uncomfortable being paid to do something that he would gladly do for free, but Harry seemed determined to keep their interaction professional. Saddening, but not really surprising.

"Good." Harry said with a decisive nod. "Sirius, Luna, Fleur and I will be going to America soon, but we can get started on the outline now so that you and Narcissa will be able to work out the specifics while we're gone."

And so they did.

It was a bit of an odd discussion, with Sirius occasionally having something to add but mostly just interjecting the occasional joke, Narcissa's stiff demeanor and his own slight awkwardness.

Harry was the biggest oddity though. While he was unmistakably the one whose presence was keeping Narcissa compliant, he was also obviously wishing to be somewhere else. It wasn't long after they started that he wandlessly conjured up a small ball of flame and started moving it around. After a while he progressed to two flames and then three.

It was distracting to have that impressive display happening right in front of him, but Sirius had warned him that Harry could get like this. Whenever he wasn't focused on something else, he would practice his magic. That actually made Harry's sudden decision to support werewolf rights more than a bit strange. If Sirius was to be believed, Harry was mostly indifferent to the world and would barely leave his room if it wasn't for the women in his life. Remus hoped he would get to meet this veela that Harry had taken a shine to.

As it turned out, he did get to meet her, though not quite in the way he expected. Then again, the instigator of that meeting had always been unpredictable.

The conversation about the new werewolf legislation had been going on for about an hour when his most baffling former student skipped into the room, made a beeline for Harry, pushed him into an armchair and plopped herself into his lap with a wiggle.

"Hello, Professor Lupin." Luna Lovegood chirped.

"Hello, Ms. Lovegood." Remus said back, bemused. He wasn't even going to ask why she was wearing a hamster themed onesie. And were those…? Yes, those were socks with individual toes, each a different color.

"Nice outfit." Sirius commented, grinning like a loon.

"Thank you!" Luna beamed. "Now Boo won't be so lonely."

"Boo?" Remus asked.

"My miniature giant space hamster."

Remus blinked. What in the world was a miniature giant space hamster?

He was given no time to puzzle it out as a vision of beauty walked into the room. The silver-blonde hair and unnaturally flawless face betrayed her nature as a veela. Oh yes, James would be proud.

"Luna, I told you not to bother 'Arry right now." What he presumed was Fleur Delacour scolded with exasperation.

"It's alright, Fleur, we were just finishing up anyway." Harry said, poking his fingers into Luna's sides and making her jump out of his lap with a squeal. "Did you have fun with your shopping trip?"

" Oui, it may not be up to French standards, but we made do." Fleur answered.

"Fleur was showing me how to crush the spirits of annoying men who think they're good with women." Luna piped up again.

Fleur preened proudly.

Sirius snickered and Remus felt a smile pulling at his own lips. He could easily imagine a woman as beautiful as Fleur being constantly approached by hopeful men and boys. He could also imagine her destroying their egos.

"Good for you, Luna." Harry said indulgently. "Right, introductions. Fleur, Remus Lupin. Lupin, Fleur Delacour."

"Ah, the loup-garou you mentioned. Enchanté ." Fleur said, offering her hand without hesitation.

"My pleasure." And Remus meant it too. He had been prepared for a negative reaction when she had opened up with his werewolf status, but was pleasantly surprised by her frank acceptance. Harry had chosen well.

The beautiful veela then turned back to Harry. "Come up to the bedroom when you finish 'ere. I 'ave something to show you."

If the blatant promise in her tone wasn't enough indication of what she had to show him, then the steamy kiss that had Remus feeling like a dirty voyeur certainly did the trick. Harry had definitely chosen well.

"Will do." Harry said with a smirk. Remus had no idea how he could even think straight after a kiss like that.

Luna took that opportunity to jump into Harry's arms and extract a kiss of her own, skipping off after the veela with a giggle immediately after. What a strange pair they made.

"Right, I'll let you two arrange your schedules between yourselves." Harry said, looking between Remus and Narcissa. "I've already arranged for your pay and a supply of Wolfsbane with Penny, but don't hesitate to talk to her if you need additional spending money for this project. I want it done by the time we get back from America, understand?"

The former was aimed more at Remus and he was both grateful for the care and embarrassed that it was coming from someone that should by all rights still be taken care of himself. The latter was aimed at Narcissa and had the beast within getting agitated again for some reason.

They both murmured their agreement and Harry left, leaving just him, Sirius and Narcissa in the room.

Remus looked at the blonde witch with a strained smile. "So, how do you want to do this?"

Judging by the look in her eyes, she didn't want to do it at all, but was going to anyway because Harry had ordered it. Remus never thought he'd see the day that proud, haughty Narcissa Black would take orders from a halfblood, yet here it was.

February 19th.

Harry weaved a subtle enchantment over Fleur and Luna, ensuring that they wouldn't wake up as he extricated himself from the bed. They probably wouldn't have anyway as he had quite deliberately exhausted them earlier and then made sure that they went to bed in such a way that he was spooning Fleur and Fleur was spooning Luna to make it easier to get away, but no point in taking chances. He had places to be.

Huginn and Muninn had reported that they'd finally found the Carrow twins. The Scottish highlands were not exactly a small area and tracking them down had been a pain even for birds.

After quickly getting dressed and flying out a short distance from the manor in his raven form, Harry transformed back into a human, apparated to Scotland and resumed his flight.

The Sun had long since set and it was the New Moon, leaving the dark highlands illuminated only by the stars. It was so beautiful that Harry was momentarily tempted to abandon his plans and just spend a few hours flying aimlessly over the countryside. But no, he hadn't gotten everything ready just to abandon his plans in a fit of whimsy.

He had apparated in quite far, so it took him just under an hour to reach the house that Amycus and Alecto Carrow had built for themselves.

It was a well built but rather modest-looking construction of stone. The only wards on it were the ones that kept muggles away. No surprise there, only the old family manors tended to have serious wards installed.

Harry walked up to the door and let himself in. It wasn't even locked.

The house was predictably bigger on the inside. The furniture was comfortable and good quality, very cozy. Maybe he could send Kreacher to steal it all later and make it look like they'd simply moved off without telling anyone? House-elf magic was very 'quiet' and hard to detect…

Harry had chosen this late hour with the intention of snatching the Carrows from their beds. That's when he beheld something that made a wry grin grow on his face.

There was only one bed, with both Alecto and Amycus sleeping in it. Naked.

Incest, there was a shocker. Not.

It had been one possible explanation for why brother and sister would choose to live alone in the arse end of nowhere. Harry didn't really have anything against incest he supposed, except if it produced… results. There were too many bacon sniffing sycophants in the world already.

Other than that, he was actually happy about this development. It would make what came later that much more potent.

Harry Kept his magic tightly leashed as he took two very thin hypodermic needles filled with a powerful sleeping potion from where they were holstered on his belt. Ironically, sleeping wizards and witches were more likely to detect a foreign presence than awake ones. No conscious mind to get in the way of what they were sensing.

Injecting both of the Carrows at once would be a bit tricky, but there was no help for it. He could hardly just club them over the head like he'd done to Macnair, nor could he make them drink the potion.

Luckily, the potion worked even faster when injected directly into the bloodstream and neither of the Carrows even woke up before they fell into the potion induced slumber.

That done, Harry took a shrunken trunk from his pocket and unshrunk it, unceremoniously stuffing the two sleeping beauties into it. Since that bit of magic was in the trunk itself, it wouldn't leave any traces for the Aurors to find. Probably an unnecessary precaution since their disappearance might not even be noted before all the traces faded.

Amycus Carrow woke up feeling cold and uncomfortable, which was certainly not normal.

Waking up with his arms and legs bound spread eagle in stone shackles that looked to be growing out of the floor was even less normal.

Catching sight of his sister tied to a chair off to the side, just as naked as him, was downright alarming.

Noting that there seemed to be a ritual circle inscribed in blood around his bound form and a bone-handled dagger hovering in the air a few feet above his heart was good cause for panic.

"Alecto!" He hissed, wanting to scream yet also wanting to whisper, as if that would keep the attention of whoever had done this away. "Alecto, wake up!"

To his surprise, she actually did.

"Amycus?" She said groggily. "Where are we? What's going on?"

Amycus would have liked to know that himself. "I don't know, I just woke up."

"Good morning." A third voice said, sending a chill of fear up Amycus' spine.

He couldn't see who it was from his position, but Alecto could. "Potter?!"

"Potter?!" Amycus echoed his twin sister's incredulity.

"The one and only." The bastard sounded amused.

Amycus exchanged an uneasy glance with his sister, not sure how to react or what to say. Their current situation didn't portend anything good.

"I'm sure you're wondering why you're here." Potter said after a moment. "Firstly, you're here to answer a few questions."

"What kind of questions?" Alecto asked, trying to be strong, but Amycus could hear the fear in her voice. He was pretty afraid himself actually. It was hard to be anything else when you were naked and restrained, especially with that knife hanging ominously above his chest…

Potter stepped behind Alecto and gripped her shoulders. Amycus could see the way his sister stiffened and felt a surge of protective jealousy rise up inside him.

"Keep your hands off her!" He snarled.

"Or else what? You'll pelt me with harsh language?" The bastard taunted.

"I'll kill you!" Amycus swore and he meant it. As soon as he got free, he would kill Potter. Nobody touched his sister except him, nobody.

"Amycus!" Alecto hissed warningly.

"Well that tells me who the brains is between the two of you." Potter smirked. "And you don't have to worry your tiny little brain over it. Amusing as it would be to fuck your sister and make you watch, she's far too ugly for me, even if it would be poetic justice given the taint I can sense on your souls."

Amycus wasn't sure whether to be relieved or infuriated by that. Yes, he knew that neither he nor his sister were classically good looking. Their noses were somewhat flat and their eyes too far apart, which had earned them more than a few unflattering comparisons to pigs when they were growing up. They were also shorter than the norm, with stooped shoulders and unattractive body shapes.

Was it any wonder that they'd found comfort in each other?

"Taint?" Alecto asked nervously.

"Oh yes, didn't you know? Every action committed leaves a mark on one's soul for good or ill, the more impactful the action, the greater the mark. It took me a long time before I was able to make some sense of it and much of it still eludes me, but some things are easy enough to puzzle out. I can tell that both of you are sadists, murderers and rapists."

Amycus didn't know about this soul sensing business… it all sounded like some twaddle that Dumbledore might say. Still, Potter was right. Both he and his sister were all of that and more, you had to be to make it as part of the Dark Lord's Inner Circle.

And it had felt so good to show the damn mudbloods what being a pureblood meant and where they could stuff their lectures on the dangers of inbreeding. As if the sub-human scum could know better than a pureblood.

"You two are even worse than Macnair in fact. He at least was more interested in killing than torture."

"Macnair?" Amycus repeated numbly. Hadn't he gone missing about a week ago?

"What did you do to him?" Alecto asked fearfully.

Potter took out a strange, inward curving knife with a broad, almost axe-like tip and placed it on behind his sister's ear. "The same thing I'll do to you if you don't answer my questions honestly."

He wasn't smirking or taunting now. He wasn't amused anymore. There was only a grim determination in his face and that was somehow even more chilling than the amusement.

"You bastard, let her go!" Amycus shouted.

"I wonder how many people said that to you?" Potter said musingly, seeming almost academic about it. "Well no matter, I guess you get to experience the other side of things this time. Aren't you happy that I'm willing to stoop to your level and broaden your horizons?"

"Alright, I'll tell you whatever you want, just don't hurt her." Amycus pleaded.

Potter nodded, set up a dictation quill and started asking his questions. Strange questions, about Voldemort and whether they knew anyone he had entrusted with an object to guard. Amycus had no idea what Potter was after, but he answered honestly that he didn't know anything about that.

"Well that was a bust." Potter muttered, but didn't seem surprised or upset. "I suppose if I ask you who would be entrusted to guard something of his, you'd tell me it would be Bellatrix, Lucius Malfoy or Antonin Dolohov?"

"Yes…" Amycus said slowly. Those were known to be some of the Dark Lord's highest ranked Death Eaters, so if anyone was entrusted with something to guard it would be them.

"Alright, let's move on then. Give me the names of every Death Eater you know."

Amycus tensed and he could see his sister doing the same. Betraying fellow Death Eaters was never a good idea. They tended to take exception to that.

But Potter took exception to their silence and sliced down with the knife, making his sister shriek in pain as her ear was severed.

Amycus struggled furiously in his stone bonds and shouted abuse, but Potter looked neither impressed nor threatened. For the first time, he truly understood how hard it was to watch someone you loved suffer, much harder than suffering yourself. He didn't appreciate the lesson.

"Names, or we see if Alecto's droopy tits look any better without nipples." The bastard Potter said over his sister's pained whimpers once Amycus had exhausted himself with his ineffectual struggles.

Amycus glared furiously, but started talking at Potter's raised eyebrow, not wanting Alecto to suffer any more. He gave every name he knew or suspected; Avery, Nott, Mulciber, Crabbe, Goyle, Rowle, Jugson, Gibbon. At the end of it, Potter merely nodded thoughtfully and moved on to a new subject.

"You know more than Macnair did, good." Potter said, sounding grimly satisfied. "Now let's talk about Voldemort…"

Amycus had no idea why Potter wanted to know what the Dark Lord was like as a man and how he led, nor did he know why he wanted to know about the organisation of the Death Eaters and how they had interacted with the Ministry during the war and a dozen other things. Still, he talked to keep his sister from being maimed any further. Alecto also contributed sometimes, but mostly just tried to keep her pained whimpers quiet.

Finally, that line of questioning ended and Potter moved on to something else.

"What of Lord Alexius Carrow, did he know about you two being Death Eaters? Did he approve?"

Amycus hesitated again, causing Potter to sigh and move the blade towards his sister's nipples.

"Yes! He knew!" Amycus quickly shouted. "He was proud of us for taking up such a noble cause."

"Was he now? We've already established that he paid a tribute to the Dark Lord, but did he give you anything since he was so proud? Rare books? Magical artifacts?"

"No." Amycus spat.

"You are lying to me." Potter said coldly, ignoring Amycus' shouted protestations, threats and pleas as he cut off Alecto's remaining ear.

"He didn't give us anything!" Amycus screamed at their captor, enraged by his sister's pain. "All he did was give us access to some of the books that only the main line Carrows are supposed to see. We didn't even get much use out of them."

Potter snorted in disgust at that. Why, Amycus had no idea, nor was he in the mood to care.

"Why are you doing this?" Alecto sobbed, blood now trickling down her body from both sides of her head. "We never did anything to you!"

"You never did anything to me?" Potter echoed, something dangerous in his tone. "You think that matters? I would have been happy to keep to myself, but Lucius Malfoy showed me how that wasn't an option. I would have left the country and let Britain drown in its own juices, but Voldemort will never leave me alone because of that fucking prophecy. I won't wait for him to come back before I start acting. I won't wait for you to be ready to restart the war. I won't have him or you or any of the other sneering, inbred monsters infesting this country killing my family like you killed so many others, even if I have to personally put every last one of you into the ground."

Amycus didn't have time to think about this prophecy or about the implication that the Dark Lord still lived or even to appreciate what a right bastard Potter was before Alecto's hair was pulled on harshly and the knife placed on her throat.

"NO!" He screamed over her terrified and pained shriek.

Then Potter opened up her throat and his sweet sister's blood sprayed from the massive wound, drenching him in red.

Amycus snapped and roared unintelligibly with grief and rage and hate. His sister had been the only person in the world that mattered to him, the only one that had really loved him and seeing her murdered like this was more than he could take.

The ritual circle glowed and the bone-handled dagger that he'd tried to ignore shivered in the air. Amycus' magic slipped away from his control and shook the room.

Then the dagger shot downward like a crossbow bolt, slipped throught his ribs and impaled him through the heart.

Amycus' last thought was not even a thought, but rather an all-consuming hatred.

Harry stood on his bedroom's balcony, looking towards the still dark eastern horizon.

He looked down at the sheathed bone-handled dagger in his hands and drew it. The ten inches of once bright steel was now blackened, but the feel of it was blacker still.

Amycus Carrow's last moments lived on in the dagger, his hate and his rage and his need to kill to avenge the murder of his sister. The wounds caused by it would never heal and even a small cut would be a dire wound because of the poisonous hatred it carried.

It was a weapon of surpassing enchantment against which there was no defense.

It was a dark artifact of the highest order, the mere possesion of which would get a person into eyeballs deep shit with the Ministry. For its creation, the shit was so deep that even a submarine wouldn't be able to reach the bottom.

It was an older form of enchantment, one that the Ministries of Magic all over the world had tried hard to stamp out, with admittedly good reason. No Arithmancy or runework here, just blood and sacrifice.

It had been a huge, bloody mess. Kreacher had looked at him like he was some kind of blood drenched god when he'd been called for the clean up, the silly bugger.

"I'll call you Blackrazor." Harry muttered to his new weapon and sheathed it again.

The ritual circle had been drawn in his blood and the dagger bound into his service before he'd even gone to fetch the Carrows. He alone could safely handle Blackrazor, he alone was safe from its hate. Ironic, since it was him that the hate was aimed at most of all.

He knew it was an evil thing and something that he would have to be extremely careful with, but it might come in handy. Plus, he'd really wanted to try out this kind of ritual and the world would not mourn the loss of the Carrow twins.

But he really needed to find somewhere other than Grimmauld Place for this kind of thing. The old residence of the Black family might be abandoned at the moment, but it was still a bit too well known for his tastes. It had good containment and masking wards to prevent magical leakage from being detected, that was true, but those could be set up elsewhere just as well.

Harry continued to stand there for some time, staring towards the slowly brightening east. Wherever this theoretical hidden sanctum would be, it would need a proper wizard's tower. Or maybe it could be all tower. A balcony or a porch just didn't have the same gravitas and his inner raven liked high places.

The Sun rose and Harry breathed in deep, filling himself with its power. The familiar burn and restless agitation was as uncomfortable as ever, but it chased away the last vestiges of the clinging Dark, which was always especially bad during the nights of the New Moon.

The Dark was terribly useful for silencing emotional reluctance in order to do what needed doing, but Harry did not allow himself to forget that the soothing sense of peace was dangerous. The balance was more important.

He felt another miniature sunrise happening behind him as well and smiled slightly. Fleur could put a rooster to shame with her morning routine. Right now, she would be smiling slightly, then frowning when she realised he wasn't there, looking around, noticing him on the balcony, getting out of bed, putting on her favorite fuzzy blue robe and slippers, walking towards him and…

"'Arry?"

"Good morning." He greeted without turning around.

"How long 'ave you been up?" She asked as she stepped to his side. He could hear the slight pout in her voice.

"Twenty-four hours." Harry replied honestly. It was time to come clean on a few things and see what came of it. He wouldn't be able to hide what he was doing for long either way.

"But you went to bed with us! Are you telling me that you slipped away after Luna and I fell asleep?"

"Yes."

"I must be a failure as a veela if you still felt the need to visit another woman's bed after last night." Fleur joked. He did like that about her, this lack of jealousy. It made life much less stressful.

"Your sexual prowess is beyond reproach, ma chérie. It was not more sex I was after." He told her with a grin, deliberately using her native French to butter her up a bit more.

"What was it then?"

Here it was, the moment of truth.

"I made this." He said and drew Blackrazor from its sheath.

Fleur recoiled from the dagger as if it was a rattlesnake, undoubtedly able to sense its foul magic.

"'Arry…" She began, swallowing nervously. "Why? And 'ow?"

"Mostly to see if I could." He admitted honestly, resheathing the blade. "As for the how… I kidnapped two people from their bed and used their murder to power a blood ritual."

Fleur inhaled sharply and Harry could see that she was visibly struggling put this new information into the context of what she knew.

"Explain." She ordered curtly.

Harry was happy to do so. He told her everything about his recent actions, including Macnair.

"Good riddance then." Fleur declared unsympathetically once she learned they had been Death Eaters. Veela had a bad history with people like that. "But I don't understand, why are you 'unting them now?"

"Voldemort isn't quite dead yet." He sighed.

"What?" She exclaimed in shock. "' Ow ?"

"Long story, I'll tell you when Luna wakes up. She needs to hear this too. For now, I just want you to realise that I'm going to keep killing his followers and that being around me will get very dangerous in the future."

Fleur gave him a look that was pure exasperation'. "What is that supposed to be? A chance for me to leave?"

"I hear it's the noble thing to do before bringing danger upon one's loved ones." Harry replied with a cheeky grin.

"You should 'ave done it before I fell in love with you then, stupid man."

"Well I didn't want you to actually leave."

"Hmph, I should 'ave expected this to be the extent of English nobility."

"What are you talking about? I am the perfect English noble! I kept up the appearance of decency while actually being a hypocritical arsehole."

"Well I suppose you are at least a passable lover even if the rest of you is disgustingly English." Fleur said in a tone of resignation. "I might even be able to teach you to be a proper Frenchman after a few years of work."

That demanded retribution and Harry used his day's worth of scratchy stubble to enact it, making the veela shriek protests about unshaved barbarians and delicate skin.

That woke up Luna and all three of them moved their fun into the shower.

February 24th.

Tonks watched with envious eyes as Luna and Fleur stared at the black feathers floating in front of them, a material that was plentiful around Potter Manor these days given Harry's strange fondness for croaking corvids.

Luna's feather shook, dipped and often fell, but she could float it without a wand. Fleur's magic had a tilt towards the incendiary and she frequently set her feathers on fire, but she could float them without a wand.

Tonks could stare at feathers all day and they wouldn't budge.

An irritating finger snap pulled her attention away from her fellow students in wandless magic, or real magic as Harry called it.

"Come on, Dora." The man himself said. "Stop pouting and pay attention."

"I'm not pouting." Tonks pouted.

"Sure." Harry didn't sound like he agreed with her. In fact, he sounded amused. The bastard. "Don't worry, you'll get there too."

"I know, it's just…" Tonks trailed off, struggling to find the right words to convey her frustration without sounding ungrateful for the time he was investing in teaching her. She knew that there were people who would kill to be in her shoes, but it was hard not to feel at least a little mopey after several months of no visible improvement.

"I understand. Tell you what, why don't we have a duel?"

"You want to duel? Now?" Tonks asked incredulously. Harry didn't allow any disruptions when he was teaching, certainly not duels.

"Sort of." Harry sounded amused again. "Stunners only."

Tonks could do stunners only. She'd give him a proper pasting too. Powerful he may be, but he wasn't unbeatable.

They took positions, she with a wand and he empty-handed and smirking like he knew some funny secret.

Fleur took a break from her own practice to act as a referee and do the countdown. When she reached zero, Tonks flung herself to the side, throwing a stunner at her ex-boyfriend/teacher.

Harry didn't move. He stood there and let the stunner hit him center-mass. It splashed across his chest and did absolutely nothing.

"What the fuck?!" Tonks demanded, mouth hanging open in pure shock. Fleur giggled at her expression and went back to her own practice.

"What's wrong, Grasshopper?"

"Why are you not unconscious?!" She ignored the Kung Fu reference. If Harry was immune to stunners now, Tonks was pretty sure that she was going to slap him simply for being too fucking bullshit.

"Because I don't want to be."

That didn't explain a damn thing.

"Why does it matter what you want? It's a stunner, it's supposed to stun you!"

"You finally ask the right questions, Grasshopper. Why does it matter what I want?"

Tonks should have figured he was up to something when he proposed that they duel.

"You can't be telling me that you could ignore my spell just because you didn't want it to affect you." That would be, as previously noted, bullshit.

Harry adopted a particular expression, the very same one that always made her think that he needed to grow some wispy white facial hair and squint his eyes to complete the image of a kooky Chinese mystic.

"Describe a rock to me."

Aaaand there it was. Kooky Chinese mystic mode.

"What kind of rock?" She asked with a sigh.

"Any kind."

"Hard, grey, um, cold? Stony?" Who knew that describing a rock would be so difficult?

"So the rock is hard, how would you make it soft?"

"I'd transfigure it into a cushion or something."

"And why would the rock change according to your whims? It's existed in the same state for millions of years, why should the rock give a single fuck about what you want?"

"It's a rock ." Tonks said slowly, trying not to let her exasperation show. "It doesn't want anything."

"True, the rock is at your mercy if you decide that you need a cushion for your pretty arse, but what if there is no rock? What if there is only me and you are in desperate need of butt padding? Could you transfigure me into a cushion?"

"That's different!" She huffed. "Human transfiguration is really hard and you're way too powerful for me to transfigure."

"Is that so?" He said with a grin. "Step closer."

She did so, looking at him quizzically.

"Now punch me in the gut."

"What?" Tonks goggled.

"Punch me in the gut."

With a shrug and a grin, she punched her ex-boyfriend in the gut. He was tensed for it and only grunted slightly at the hit.

"Did you put your all into that punch?" He asked.

"Of course not." Tonks scoffed. He knew damn well that she could morph herself into a hugely muscled amazon or even a guy if she wanted too. "You'd be puking your guts out if I did that."

"Did you put your all into the stunner?"

That made her pause. "No, I expected you to dodge."

Harry smiled. "Your spell had no conviction."

Ah, so he had been prepared and her spell had been weak because she had expected it to miss.

Without letting on to her thoughts, Tonks punched Harry in the gut again. He wasn't ready this time and bent over with an 'oomph'.

"Your gut has no conviction." She said smugly.

"Cute, but at least you get the idea." He said dryly, rubbing his abdomen. "Now cast another stunner at me."

Tonks stepped back so that she was at optimum spell range and cast the most powerful stunner she could muster at him, pouring all her desire to knock him out into it.

Harry didn't dodge like she half-expected him to and instead allowed himself to be hit. Her spell drove him to his knees and he looked like he was barely clinging to consciousness.

"You okay?" She asked after a minute of seeing him struggle shake it off. She was still a bit miffed that he wasn't out cold, but also very impressed. That stunner had been no joke.

"Yeah, I'm good." He huffed, electing to sit crosslegged on the floor instead of getting back up. "Now put the wand away and sit your butt back down."

Tonks very deliberately did not groan or pout as she did so. She had been hoping for something a little more active than usual.

"So, was there a point to that?" She asked instead.

"No, I just love tanking full power spells."

"You should've told me sooner then, because I love casting full power spells at people."

"Great, I'll keep it in mind."

Tonks grinned at the sarcastic banter, but sobered up quickly. "I suppose you want me to explain to you what just happened here?"

"You suppose correctly." Harry nodded.

"Well the punches were obviously metaphors for the stunners." She began.

"For any spell." He corrected "Your body is easier to control than your magic, but a punch and a spell are not that different in their basic nature. Both are an action taken, spells just happen to be far more complex."

"Right. And you're implying that I could force a transfiguration on you if I caught you by surprise?"

"Any spell is easier if the victim is taken by surprise."

"Uh huh, and you resisted my stunners by, uh, tensing your magic?"

"Not exactly. Why do most magical creatures have some level of magic resistance?"

Tonks blinked at the abrupt subject change. Damnit, she really should be used to him doing this by now. "I don't know, they just do."

Harry gave her an admonishing look and Tonks found herself ducking her head, knowing how he disliked that answer.

"Their magic is fully invested into their bodies. It gives them all sorts of strange properties that are in defiance of the laws of physics. It's also what gives them their magic resistance and makes them useful as potion ingredients. Do you know why human blood or body parts are almost never used in potions?"

"Because it's incredibly illegal?"

"The law is irrelevant. Human potion ingredients are rarely used because they generally don't have much effect in the case of muggles, or have very unpredictable effects in the case of wizards and witches. Our magic isn't really invested in our bodies you see, but our minds. That's why we can cast spells and a dragon can't."

"But our blood is magical, and so is the rest of us. That's a known fact." As a Metamorphmagus, Tonks knew that better than most.

"True, but that's a consequence of us inhabiting these bodies rather than our bodies being innately magical. It also makes our base 'magical properties' highly variable from one person to the next."

"What?"

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Tonks burst into surprised laughter. "If you say so, Master Yoda."

"Mock me you will not." Harry said sternly and cast a Stinging Hex at her arm.

"Hey!" She yelped in protest, giving him a pouty sort of glare. It barely even stung, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Joking aside, there is a lot of truth in that quote. Our flesh and blood registers as magical but that fades soon after we die, something that doesn't happen with magical creatures. Why do you think ghosts are possible? Or Legilimency or any other example of mind over matter? Why do you think casting within the aura-space of other magi is a chancy proposition? Our thoughts are not confined to our skulls like a non-magical person's or a magical creature's, they intrude on the world around us-"

"Wait a second!" Tonks interrupted, a thought occuring to her. "How do you explain squibs then? We know they're magical."

Harry pursed his lips, looking quite irritated, though she felt it was by the topic rather than her interruption. "An anomaly I haven't really figured out yet. They have magic in their bodies but can't consciously use it. Using the Ministry's altogether terrible classification system, squibs are closer to magical creatures than mages or any other life form capable of conscious magic use. They could either be the result of some kind of birth defect or a rare, secondary expression of magic in the human race that causes the magic to be invested into the squibs' bodies rather than their minds. I don't have any evidence to suggest one over the other."

"Does that mean that squibs would make good potion ingredients?" The morbid question slipped out of Tonks' mouth before she could think better of it.

Harry seemed pleased though, if the way he grinned at her was any indication. "They do actually. Pelagius Black, a branch member of the Black family back in the 13th century did an extensive study on the topic and discovered that squib parts can be used to make highly effective healing potions and salves, as welll as equally effective poisons. Obviously, the Blacks kept this to themselves."

"Obviously." Tonks muttered in agreement. That kind of thing was of course extremely illegal. There may not have been a Ministry of Magic in the 13th century and the 'magical community' may have been more of a loose collection of families, but she was pretty sure that using people as potions ingredients would be frowned upon by others, even if it was just to avoid setting some very dangerous precedents.

"Right, now as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted - the thoughts of wizards and witches intrude on the world around us, attempting to change it to suit our perceptions when those perceptions clash with reality. The effect is negligible in most cases… a freshly painted wall obviously isn't going to automatically dry itself just because we expect it to be dry for example. Spells are mental constructs however, and far more vulnerable to the intruding thoughts of others."

"Wouldn't that mean that spells shouldn't work at all on other magicals?"

Harry frowned. "I didn't explain that properly. Think of it like this… an unfinished spell is like molten steel, soft and malleable. But you can't shape a sword any further once the steel is cooled. The analogy isn't perfect of course, some spells, such as the ubiquitous Accio, are of a soft type that tend to fail when it reaches another's aura-space. Only in cases of an extreme power mismatch - and by extreme I mean Dumbledore versus your average first year or something like that - can one wizard outright ignore the spells of another."

"How did you ignore my first stunner then? Because I'm pretty sure we aren't that far apart power-wise."

"I didn't ignore it, I was ready for it. A witch or wizard's aura is in a neutral state most of the time and provides only minimal protection against incoming spells. The aura of someone in combat is high-strung and agitated, but still doesn't offer much protection. I've learned to manipulate my aura and prepared myself to resist your stunner. If we go back to the sword analogy from earlier, your first spell was like a blade of glass, its power easily shattered. The second one was steel and took everything I had to stay conscious."

"Seriously?"

That was fucking bullshit.

"Don't give me that look, it's not as if it's combat useful since shielding spells are both far more versatile, efficient and easier to use. Mostly it's just a good mental exercise and a trick to look cool."

"It's still bullshit." Tonks grumbled.

"You want to learn it?"

"Fuck yes I want to learn it."

"Then get to meditating."

This time Tonks did groan. She had done so much meditating since she started learning from Harry that there was a real danger of converting to Buddhism by accident. Still, she was persistent if nothing else and didn't complain more than that.

If nothing else, it was improving her Occlumency.

Harry moved further away and started talking as soon as she was settled in.

"Remember what we talked about just now and what you've learned before this. Your soul is anchored to your body, but not truly part of it. Your mind is a function of your brain, but not restricted to it. Your magic exists in the intersection of mind, body and soul, that is the crux of our existence and the seat of our power. As a Metamorphmagus, you more than anyone are not shackled by the limitations of your flesh. Shut out physical input and turn your focus inward. Blind your eyes, deafen your ears and numb your nerves, they are only distractions and won't help you here. Magic can't be heard, can't be seen, touched, tasted or smelled, it can only be known ."

"You want me to turn myself into a vegetable?" Tonks asked incredulously.

"More like a brain in a jar." He said with an infuriating smirk.

"I'm not really comfortable with that."

"That which takes us far is never comfortable."

"And turning myself into a pickled brain is going to take me far, is it?"

"Hopefully."

"Fine, but if I'm doing that, then I'm lying down." Tonks huffed.

"Sure."

Harry watched the still body of his ex-girlfriend where it was lying on a comfortable couch. Fleur and Luna had long since left.

Dora was doing well, had been doing well for some time. Getting her to stop taking magic for granted had taken a while, but he had managed it and her presence had been steadily gaining strength since then.

It was an odd thing, what magic did to people, how it moved them away from conventional humanity. Most wizards and witches were weak, thinking nothing of their gifts and would not be overly inconvenienced by the loss of them if they knew how to live like normal people.

The powerful were different. It was subtle, but it could be seen if you knew what to look for.

Like he had told Dora. The thoughts of magi are not confined to their skulls and pressed against the world around them. Their auras were constantly seeking to change their immediate area of influence.

Harry had already noted that he could now cause electronics to fail by flaring his aura, which he hadn't been able to do before. The magic versus electricity issue had interested him since he'd first heard of it, but the British had predictably not put much effort into finding out the specifics. Harry theorised that it happened because electronics relied on a very precise application of the laws of physics to work and since he didn't know the minute details of how they worked, his aura ruined them if he flared it. Hogwarts and other magic heavy areas were a bit harder figure out, but he figured that the thick magic concentrations warped the laws of phsysics as well. It was the best explanation he had.

But that was not the most interesting side-effect. No, that distinction belonged to their interaction with other magicals. As he had told Dora months ago, the ordinary, non-magical part of humanity was self-contained and deaf to magic. Even the weakest wizard had enough magical awareness to see spells, but they did not.

But this obliviousness to magic had advantages too. For one thing, they were immune to the effects of raw magic.

The souls of the powerful were weighty things, pulling on those weaker than them like a star's gravity pulled on the planets orbiting it. The Joining was a more refined, focused version of this, one that also bypassed the usual barriers that people put up, but every witch or wizard had an aura of influence. The exceptionally powerful had one strong enough to affect others. It had negligible effects on those that didn't already look up to the one doing the influencing, the aforementioned barriers blocking the worst of it, but it was something to be noted.

Voldemort had done it to his followers, Harry saw that in the way that Parkinson's aura had cowered like a beaten dog when he'd pushed his own against it. Macnair and the Carrows had been similar. The Death Eaters were used to being bullied by someone vastly more powerful than them.

For all the effort he expended to project the ultimate good guy image, Dumbledore did it too, that could be seen in the way his followers trusted him blindly. Harry had seen it himself in McGonagall and gotten second-hand accounts of that kind of behavior from Sirius. Dumbledore wanted people to fall in line with his plans, and the suckers that believed him to be the greatest thing since sliced bread got pulled in even deeper by the old man's aura.

Harry wondered sometimes if they did it on purpose like him as well as passively. Probably both, they were certainly powerful enough that they couldn't fail to be capable of it. He also wondered if this was the root cause of Dumbledore's attempts to present himself as a mentor. Had he wanted Harry to be pulled into his orbit as it were? Or did he simply not think anyone but him was wise enough to have that kind of power? Did he trust even himself with it? Was that the reason why he was so limp-wristed? Or was the truth more sinister, with the Headmaster using Hogwarts to influence every magical child that passed through its halls?

Harry figured he'd probably never know, not with the way Dumbledore hoarded knowledge. Not that he had much room to talk on that score. He was just glad that his grandparents' portraits had instilled a deep distrust of the old man in him. That would have done the trick to keep him from being drawn in while he was still weak.

Dora would soon be able to sense magic. It was the first step in learning how to use it without the crutch of a wand and she was nearly there. It had been a struggle teaching her how to do this without employing the Joining as a tool the way he'd done with Luna and Fleur, but he had finally come upon the idea of using her Metamorph ability to induce physical sensory deprivation and leave her with nothing but her spiritual senses. It might have taken months more or even years without that ability and decades without his teaching.

Was it any wonder that the wizards and witches of old had been grey before they achieved any appreciable power?

Harry became more aware of just how badly he had cheated on this score every day. Bjomolf had spoken the truth, he should be dead or worse. He had gone over his well hidden notes on the rune carving rituals with a more experienced and knowledgeable eye since that meeting and knew that the vampire had been right. He should be dead. Or worse.

The Norse set of runes wasn't a problem. Sometimes inconvenient with the way it messed with his hormone production, but nothing unmanageable once he got used to it. Well worth it to speed his maturation and ensure that his body grew tall and strong. A small inconvenience for a small gain.

The Kanji set was also not a problem. Sometimes inconvenient with the way it flushed even beneficial 'poisons' and foreign magic from his body, but nothing to really complain about. Well worth it to keep him at peak efficiency at all times. Also a small inconvenience for a small gain.

The two Avariel sets though… either one should have killed him. One should have hollowed him out until he was only an empty husk and the other should have burned him from the inside out. Only the most unimaginably absurd luck of circumstance and timing had conspired to keep him alive and mostly whole.

Only luck had kept the true nature of Arhain dormant until he inadvertently sacrificed Pettigrew to the Void and awoke it.

Only luck had kept the hungry Dark focused on the piece of Voldemort's less firmly anchored soul instead of his own.

Only luck saw to it that he had already finished most of his preparation for the next ritual and that it only required minor alteration. More luck that he'd managed to get it right in the little time he'd had to think.

Only luck that his final ritual had allowed him to perceive the soul shard and force it out.

Only luck that it had left enough of a metaphorical hole in his soul that the Sun's burning power had an exit and didn't fry him and more luck that that very same power prevented the Void from consuming the rest of him.

Harry wouldn't soon forget the cold sweat he'd broken into when he'd realised just how thin the razor's edge had been. He would dearly love to know the specifics of the vampire and succubi magics that allowed them to survive making the Dark and Light part of their being, because his method had been nothing short of suicidal.

Valuable, oh so valuable. There were not enough riches or women in the world to entice him into giving up what those runes had given him, but it had still been monumentally stupid to carve them in the first place. Harry doubted there had been a more reckless action done in the entire history of recklessness. A survived reckless action at least, as the graveyard of reckless idiots less lucky than him would probably stretch from horizon to horizon.

Harry wiped a hand down his face to snap himself out of his wool-gathering and focused back on his ex-girlfriend.

Her aura had a more watchful feel to it, so he figured that she had achieved what he had hoped without her physical senses getting in the way. He just had to make sure.

He conjured a pebble, smiling widely when he felt her aura ripple. Conjuration was magically 'loud' and she had clearly sensed it.

Next, he gripped the pebble with a levitation spell and floated it over to her, smile widening at the continued reactions he was sensing from her.

He moved the pebble around for a while and then positioned it above her head, slowly lowering it towards her nose, the wide smile turning into an outright grin when she instinctively snatched it from the air with her hand, coming out of the trance with a start.

"Wha…?" She said, blinking around with confused eyes.

Harry left her to it for a minute. It would take some time for her to get used to physical input again.

"Grasshopper, you have snatched the pebble from my hand." He quipped once she looked to have her wits about her again.

She looked at the conjured pebble in her hand and smiled widely. "I did, didn't I? I felt it moving, it was like…"

Words failed her, but Harry understood. Magic sensing was not an exact science and Dora did not have the advantage of the twin Sol runes that Harry had paid for with blood, pain and very nearly his life. Trying to describe it with words would be like trying to describe color to the blind or the movement of a shadow in the dark.

"Congratulations, you've taken a significant step forward today." He said with a proud smile.

"Damn straight!" She cheered, all but bouncing off the couch.

Harry was almost sorry about what he was going to say next. Almost. "Now you get to spend even more time a day meditating."

Dora groaned, a long, loud and severely exaggerated sound of despair.

"Can't we just skip ahead to the fireballs and lightning?" She whined.

"I tried that with Luna and it didn't work." Harry replied, amused. "Nope, I'm afraid it's going to be meditation for you to refine this new ability and then more meditation until you learn how to sense magic without shutting out your physical senses. Then comes learning how to project your magic onto the mundane world rather than just sensing foreign magic, which will naturally involve quite a bit of meditation as well. After that we might be able to progress towards learning spellweaving, from which will follow the fireballs and lightning."

"Is that going to involve meditation too?" She asked snippily.

"No." Harry smirked. "That's going to involve the rough equivalent of doing complex math in your head while balancing on a tightrope."

Dora stared at him for a moment and then sighed with a slump. "No wonder Sirius gave up on learning this."

"Sirius is also - despite what his energetic personality might lead you to think - a bit lazy. But you aren't like that, are you?"

She feigned offense at his implication. "Bring it on! A Hufflepuff never gives up!"

"That's good to hear, I'd hate to think that all this meditating has been for nothing." He joked.

"I suppose you want me to keep at it while you're gone?" She asked wryly.

"You could come with us." Harry offered. Not only would everyone be happy to have her along, but it would also allow him to keep teaching her. Additionally, it would get her some more life experience, which was an important factor in the power of one's magic. There was only so much that a person could grow while working a regular job, even one as theoretically exciting as being an Auror.

"Scrimgeour has barely gotten out of the snit he was in over the time off I took during the summer and you want me to take even more time off?" She asked, smiling in bemusement.

"Feh, who cares about Scrimgeour?" Harry waved off. "Tell him it's a training trip or something if you must."

"I'm tempted, but I have to decline." She replied with a teasing note in her voice. "I actually like my job, despite all the little annoyances that come with it."

"But who will help me squander my inheritance?" He lamented jokingly, getting a laugh out of her.

"Fleur is more than up to the task, I'm sure. The French are good at spending money, aren't they?" She joked back.

"I don't know if that's a legitimate French stereotype or not, so I couldn't say." Harry mused and decided to change the subject. "If you're not coming with us, then you can at least stay for dinner to celebrate your achievement."

"Well if you're gonna twist my arm like that…"

After dinner was finished, Harry asked Luna, Fleur, Tonks and Sirius to come with him, saying that he had something for them.

"Right, as you know, we're leaving in a few days." Harry began once they reached the empty room he had led them to. "With that in mind, I got you all some gifts."

The gift recipients were a bit bemused by this, being well aware that Harry was the type that would forget it was Christmas if not for all the hype around the season.

They were even more bemused when the gifts turned out to be a pair of daggers for each, one long and one short. The long one looked to be about twelve inches long, while the short one was no more than six. Both had only minimal crossguards and no ornamentation except for a handsome oval hilt made of wood. The blade was plain double edged steel.

"The larger one is meant to sit on your waist while the smaller goes into a boot, but you can switch it up if you want since the sheaths are enchanted to be larger on the inside anyway. There is also an attention redirecting enchantment on the sheaths that will only be active when the blades are in them." Harry explained.

"You know, Harry, girls usually prefer jewelry over knives." Sirius opined.

"Screw that, knives are way better than jewelry." Tonks said happily, inspecting her new daggers.

Harry gave his godfather a smug look.

"Tonks doesn't count, she isn't normal." Sirius defended, ignoring the childish raspberry his shapeshifting cousin blew him in response. "How about you Fleur, wouldn't you rather have had a nice pair of diamond earrings?"

" Non, diamonds wash out my complexion."

"And you can't stab anyone with diamonds." Luna added and then paused. "Not easily at least."

"And on that note, Harry, are you thinking that we'll need to stab someone?" Sirius asked pointedly.

"You never know. We're going to a foreign country and I don't want us taking any chances."

"It's America, not the bloody jungle." Sirius said, exasperated.

"And America is full of people, way more dangerous than a jungle. Either way, I don't want any of us being unarmed."

"We have our wands and you don't even need that." Sirius argued, watching Luna mime stabbing with some nervousness.

"You can't stab someone with a wand." Harry said, channeling Luna with a perfectly straight face. "Besides, if they got close enough for stabbing then your wand will be useless anyway and vice versa."

"Moody would love you." Tonks snorted with an eyeroll. "I'll just assume you got them for me too because of my job?"

"Exactly." Harry confirmed, pleased that she understood. "I enchanted the daggers as well. They have all the usual stuff on them; increased durability and sharpness, a nasty shock if anyone but the owner tries to use them and a little spell that will turn the blade towards the direction you throw it if you ever do that… just put a drop of your blood on the pommel to key them to yourself."

"Harry, I know that Magical Britain has no laws against carrying bladed weaponry, but have you checked if the Americans do?" Tonks asked.

Harry frowned. "No, I didn't. Even if they do, I'm not going to listen to any demands to disarm made by the Americans of all people. If all goes well they'll never know about these anyway."

"Word." Sirius said, making everyone stare at him. "What?"

"Sirius, why are you using weird American slang?" Harry asked patiently.

"You aren't the only one that's been preparing for this trip. I've been brushing up on my American lingo."

Harry sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose before looking back at his godfather. "I'd suggest you forget about everything you 'brushed up on' or you might actually end up needing those daggers."