Chapter 5: Er, I don't think he meant that as a challenge part 2

Alone in his room, Harry frowned as he worked on his laptop, thinking. Charles' dream is great, and he doesn't seem as controlling or as willing to sacrifice other people as Dumb-as-door, but he is still keeping secrets when there is no need to. I think Jean would be able to handle it easily, and his insistence on keeping Scott as the leader . . . that doesn't seem right to me. And if he's willing to keep a secret like what's in Jean's head from the person who is housing this strange entity, what else is he hiding? Yes, it's past time to see what I can do to become independent as possible.

First he tried to find videos or pictures of places in various American cities where Logan had mentioned he could go and sell his gold galleons and other things without any questions asked (and certainly none answered if authorities came calling). After a while, he was unsurprised to look up and see Hedwig watching him from the bedpost. "You always seem to know when I need you don't you girl?" He asked, raising a hand for her to light upon. "I'm going to need to ask you to go to each of these places, okay?"

The owl's head twirled in place, then she ruffled her feathers with her beak. "Preck, Preck preeck."

He smiled a little. "Three pieces of bacon per city."

The owl replied, "Preck," then moved her head up and down firmly.

"Five pieces is highway robbery Hedwig!" he exclaimed, stroking her plumage softly. "And what in the world do you want one of those for? I don't think it would have any effect, it's meant for a different species you know."

The owl's reply this time took longer and involved a bit more body language and in the end, Harry was forced to concede a least a few of her points. "Well, that is true—I don't exactly pay for the groceries around here. Fine; five pieces it is for each city, but in terms of bait, you'll have to wait until we're done." Hedwig closed her eyes for a moment ruminating then nodded firmly, accepting the deal. "Deal then. You know the drill: go to all of them in turn, find places where I can teleport to without anyone seeing me. But only go to three each night, I don't want you to tire yourself out." Hedwig nodded complacently and then within a second she was gone.

Next, Harry cast a sensor spell that flashed out from his present position to find anyone that was interested in him or his present domicile. He found one soon enough, in a house well away from the mansion. He didn't think anyone from there could see anything, but he wanted to make certain later. Hmm, an intent-based ward that confounds those looking at the house with ill intent, or too much interest? Hmm, well that will be simpler than trying to sneak up on whoever is out there. He swiftly put together a few rune stones to mark down the area that this new ward would cover then pulled on his invisibility cloak. It was a little warmer than usual for some reason, but he ignored that, and walked out of the mansion and around the property. Each time he put down a ward, he touched it with his wand, anchoring the ward to himself for now. Another ward was a mild protective ward, this one was purely against those with ill intent, who would suddenly be either confounded or turned aside if their will was not strong enough to push further.

The rest of the night, Harry stayed up working on his various projects. For the first time since he had escaped the Negative Zone, he allowed his magic to sustain him rather than sleep and it answered his call with ease. It was worth it. By the end of the night, he had made designs for weapons for Rogue and Kurt, and even a small ranged weapon for Kitty. Kitty would have wristbands—something that was on her body could be phased out with her and wristbands didn't add much to her overall weight—that were able to shoot darts filled with paralyzing agents. Rogue got the same thing, while Kurt got a small needle that could be attached to his finger and filled with a paralytic or anything else. It would take Harry a while to actually create them, but none of the parts he would need were anything that would cause concern if Charles bought them.

He also finished designing the runic array for Storm's emotional shield from the weather pattern around her. Or at least the hoped so—it would take her actually trying it out to see what it would do. At the moment he wasn't certain, and he would need to figure out a way to power it, much like the kind of runic array Kitty wanted to use. If it did, though, he would start work on something similar for Rogue, although that would be much harder.

Looking up, he saw the sunlight streaming into his room and he got up and made his way over to Storm's arboretum for their daily time together. There wasn't anything sexual or overtly romantic about it, despite Storm going around in her birthday suit. Storm hadn't grown up with any kind of nudity taboos, so rather than being naked, she was simply undressed. It was all a state of mind, and Harry, despite not being nearly at home nudity as she was, had grown accustomed to it. More, the slightly flirtatious nature of some of their conversations often times took more of his attention than the view itself. He also felt as if Storm were getting as much out of this as he was, being around someone she could relax with completely, letting her hair down and her shields as well, because he understood some of her mental scars and had the same ones himself.

Harry found her already awake and moving around, her body as usual uncovered, but Harry took merely a second to glance at her appreciatively, then shook it off as he removed his own clothing, save for his boxers. He murmured a greeting to her as he prepared some morning tea for the two of them to share while she went around watering her plants however she finished much more quickly than normal, and came over to sit and look at Harry in question.

"What?" he asked, looking up at her.

Storm shook her head, smiling a little. "You may think you're good at hiding things from the people around you, Harry, but you're really not. Not from someone who knows you anyway, and I am happy to count myself among that number." Harry blushed a little at that, but smiled back, amused and amazed that this woman had grown to know him so well in so short a time, though the opposite was also true. "So what is the cause of this argument you are having with Charles that has you so concerned?"

Harry scratched his chin for a moment and shook his head regretfully. "It's really not my story to tell. Suffice to say that he's keeping secrets when he really doesn't have any reason to do so. His reasons against still keeping it just did not sit well with me, and I well know the consequences of what he did, to put it as vaguely as possible, and I think he doesn't. Moreover, I'm not exactly satisfied with his approval of Scott's leadership."

Storm sighed a little. "I think you are being over hard on the young man. While I do not think that he is doing himself any favors by mooning over Jean, it is obvious why her deaths in those sessions caused him to overreact. He has time to learn and get over it. I think because the 'school' you learned in was so harsh, you don't realize that you don't have to be so harsh on them.

Harry leaned back thoughtfully and nodded, conceding the point. "I suppose I don't. It's just that I want them to be prepared for anything, you know; I've been looking online at the news—anti-mutant sentiment is on the rise and mutants themselves are appearing more and more often. Other nations seem to be dealing with it in their own way, but America is being its usual slow-arse, schizophrenic self and it will become more and more dangerous for both it and its enemies." Not that other countries were dealing with it very well yet, but the wait-and-see attitude in most of them was a far cry from having no official line yet like in America, which seemed to be waiting for public sentiment to form a consensus, then jump ahead of whatever that choice was. Charles seemed to think that the main threats would come from other mutants, but Harry knew it would come from both other mutants, like a grown-up version of this Brotherhood, and the public at large.

Storm reached forward, taking one of his hands and squeezing. "I realize that, and I cannot express how thankful I am that you are willing to help them learn. You can reach these kids far better and more easily then Logan or I could. Logan can help train their bodies, but not their minds, and I, myself . . . I think they all see me as some kind of stuffy tutor, helpful in battle, but not someone they need to listen to out of class."

"I think you're selling yourself short, Ororo." Harry replied, gently tracing her hand with a finger, causing her to shiver a little. "I think once we figure out how to disconnect your emotions from the local weather patterns, you'll see that you'll have a much easier time relating to them. I think they could all do with a big sister in their lives, but Logan . . . yeah, you're right. He's too gruff and too old to be anything but an authority figure to them, whereas I can be both."

"Regardless," Ororo said, squeezing his hand again, thankful the shiver from his touch on her hand had no other visible effects, "I think that in many ways, you can step back a little. You've come up with a good exercise regimen for them, let them go forward and learn at their own paces from now on."

Harry sighed again and nodded. The crisis wasn't just around the corner after all, though he could see it coming. Storm went on, "And while I do not know what you speak of, I do know that Charles does tend to keep secrets. He even knew Mystique from before, and knows where she is hiding now, but refuses to do anything about it. I agree with some of his reasons for that, but I did not agree with his reasons for keeping it a secret at the time."

Harry frowned suddenly. "He knows where the leader of the opposition is, and isn't doing anything about it?"

Ororo wiggled one of her hands indicating yes and no. "She's not really opposition per-se her beliefs are opposite our own, but it's not as if she is some kind of violent maniac intent on killing everyone who disagrees with her. More the Brotherhood is just like our own students for the most part. They are simply kids with bad backgrounds and sometimes even broken families, who see their powers as the ticket to a better life. We can't really fault them for thinking like that, only stop them when they cross the line and actually start attacking civilians."

Harry frowned a little but nodded. There had been a few young, junior corpse munchers who had been able to turn away. Not many, but some. There were just some lines that couldn't be crossed without truly changing the person doing the crossing. Draco had crossed a line, and had enjoyed doing it, but Theodore Nott had seen the line coming and ran away rather than try to cross it. He still believed in pureblood supremacy, but he wasn't a killer. Millicent Bulstrode had turned away from it too, forsaking both her parents for pretty much the same reason. A few others in other houses, both older and younger had done the same, or planned to if it came to that, before the war ended so abruptly. "So you're saying that these kids are just troubled teens at this point? That's all right for now, but sooner or later troubled teens become troubled adults, and eventually they do cross a line. I'm just concerned that I don't really know how Charles will react— or how he wants the kids to react—when that time comes. I've seen too many fools who believe that sacrificing the innocent to redeem the evil makes sense." Dumbledore and his entire order of the fried crow come rather forcibly to mind.

The Nubian goddess squeezed his hand again, saying nothing. In a way, she agreed with Harry; the dream Charles had of the future was grand, and she agreed with it just as strongly as he did else she would not be here, but Ororo had grown up on the streets of one of the toughest, nastiest cities in the world, and then reached her teenage years on the Serengeti plains, where life was always chancy and often brutal. She knew well that there was a time for talking, a time for forgiveness, and a time for killing.

She womanfully made an attempt to change the subject, and the two of them talked about his project to help her, as well as the project he would soon begin to help Rogue. The problem with Rogue was he could already figure out a way of cutting off her powers, after all they were based on touch which was much easier than an emotional connection you wanted to cut off at will, but any easy solution he could create right away would effectively cut her off further then she was already. So he needed to think of a way to cancel out her powers, but not make it permanent or something that couldn't be easily reversible.

That would take quite a lot of time and trial and error. He hoped to be finished within three weeks, however, that way he could leave if Charles ordered Harry out after Harry went through with his ultimatum to speak to Jean about the entity in her head if Charles didn't.

After that, Harry and Ororo left to get dressed, meeting up again before going downstairs to prepare breakfast. It was only as the kids came down, groaning in the knowledge that Logan would be training them most of the day, that both of them realized they were holding hands again and reluctantly let go before anyone could see them.

OOOOOOO

Sunday was filled with exercise and language lessons, interspersed with one-on-one meetings with Harry about their AAR reports and how they did in the team exercises the day before.

Most of these were easy. Kurt, Evan, Rogue, and Jean all knew what they did wrong, accurately pointing out how they had gotten better and where they could still improve. In Kurt's case, it was endurance and speed, never staying in one place for long and getting stronger so he would be able to perform more teleportations before becoming tired. Harry talked to Evan about new uses of his powers as well as being less arrogant, something Evan was already correcting, and Ororo's nephew was ecstatic to find out he might become the team's tank with some effort and imagination (well, after he got over the irritated feeling of talking to the man whom even he was beginning to see as his auntie's boyfriend. That was just wrong on so many levels) and a bit more effort.

Jean, too, felt power and its application was the answer and wanted to continue the one-on-one sessions with Harry to learn new and more interesting ways to use her powers, rather than the brute force applications she had been using. That she was able to recreate some of his spells gave her hope she could do more, and he agreed.

Rogue was a little tougher. She was a more prickly personality and didn't like being seen as weak. But she knew how vulnerable she was at range and was willing to do anything she could to counteract that weakness. She willingly agreed to be trained with a rifle for now, providing long range support until she could get close.

Scott was even tougher. He was another prickly personality, and he didn't want to admit he was wrong at all on a personal level. He kept trying to bring up what the team did wrong, rather than admit that he went to pieces when Jean went down—only what the team as a whole did wrong, never himself. His AAR was well written and thoughtful on a team level, but it was useless as a personal review. Harry rather grimly brought him to task on that and his numerous personal mistakes, and pointed out his biggest weakness, well biggest physical weakness anyway: that he was next to useless without his goggles/glasses, something any reasonably competent enemy could take advantage of. When Harry brought this up, Scott's resultant 'pity me' party disgusted Harry so much he backed off.

Kitty was last, and met with Harry after dinner. She was already yawning, exhausted from Logan's all-day lessons and Harry smirked a little at her as she joined him in the back yard. Kitty glared at him, but the glare flowed off him like water. "Like, I already know that I've got to work on my endurance, and learn a distance weapon so I'm useful at range, got anything else to tell me teach?"

Harry nodded. "Two ideas actually. Have you ever tried to phase someone into a solid object and leave them there? And have you done the same for objects into other objects?"

Kitty grimaced. "Yeah, I have done the first. They're stuck like that until I let them go, but it like, looks so gross, and takes a lot out of me for some reason. But not for objects."

Harry nodded and picked up a few pebbles, handing them to her. "Let's find out then."

It turned out that if she just left something in something else, they interpolated somehow without any damage done. Yet if she put even a bit of impetus into the object left behind, well . . . The two of them stared at the tree that had just exploded. Kitty's eyes were still wide, while Harry had a large grin on his face and a second after the tree settled, he began to laugh. "Ha,haha,ahahahahah, mwhahahahahhaha!"

Kitty looked at him askance as he laughed diabolically and then reached over slapping him on the back to snap him out of it. "Bad teacher! No maniacal laughter for you."

Harry shook off his odd mood and smirked at her, noticing how tired she was. It looked as if trying to impart that bit of momentum to her rock while her hand was in the tree had taken a bit out of her, adding to her already pretty exhausted state. "Alright kid, that was all, I thought you showed the most improvement in your team exercises yesterday. Keep it up. And if you want to help me with a little project, get up early tomorrow and we'll see if we can get a certain runic array to work okay?" Kitty nodded, too tired to get his hint, and went off to be immediately thereafter.

OOOOOOO

After a Sunday filled with Logan running them into the ground and interspersed with Ororo's language lesson as well as Harry's more cerebral discussions (for some for others as mentioned it was more of a dressing down), most of the kids were actually looking forwards to school. Jean, however, was not. She was slowly going insane with worry over the physics test she was taking later that day.

Thankfully, she had taken some of Mr. Potter's advice and changed her mental defenses around a little. Rather than being, well, unimaginative about things, she had decided to be a little more proactive. While she had stuck to the idea of a circular defense, that was where the similarity ended. Her defenses were built to keep things both in and out, and had the tools to do so.

Despite her confidence in her new mental defenses to keep out errant thoughts, she was still freaking out a little, so she was rereading her physics notes as she walked down the stairs. Her studying was interrupted by laughter and whoops in front of her in the main hall. She looked up and gaped at what she saw.

Harry and Kitty, who had indeed woken up early and joined Harry (who had bowed out early from his time with Ororo that morning) to study runes, were sitting on a carpet. It was one of those that all their rooms had come with, some kind of bulk-purchased, ugly thing with 70's era colors that Jean had replaced as soon as she could, and she knew all the others did as well. The odd thing about it was, of course, that it was floating in the air in the middle of the hall.

Kitty grinned and waved as Rogue and Jean came down the steps. "Heh, we got the flying runes to work! Like, this is so amazing! I bet we could put them on our uniforms soon!"

Harry wagged his hand in the air noncommittally. "Remember, a runic array works along the same principle as a ward, they both need to have a power source. I need to figure out a way for the power source to be something that won't run out of juice after one use once or when it's a certain distance away from me. Also," he pushed her lightly, making her giggle a little, "what's this 'we' thing, Curly-cat?"

Jean scowled a little as the others all chattered gleefully about the idea. Scott in particular was taken by the idea of them having that much mobility. Flying like that would take Fred's and Lance's powers out of the equation.

Ever since Jean had learned about her telekinetic powers, she had hoped to fly. But so far she just couldn't sustain it. She could slow a fall or boost a jump a bit, but actual, useful flight eluded her. Hopefully the ongoing lessons with Harry will get my strength and control up enough to do it.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Harry dropped down in front of her, his place immediately taken by Evan. "Are you alright? I know you said you had a major test today and that you were having problems with keeping out people's thoughts and emotions in stressful situations."

Jean shrugged. "I revamped my defenses like you suggested, so hopefully I won't be hearing anyone else's thoughts today, we'll see."

"Would you like me to check on them Jean?" The Professor asked, wheeling up after smiling indulgently at the flying-carpet duo. Harry stiffened a little and moved away slightly to keep Charles in his sight, but didn't say anything, hoping that this was a segue to Charles telling Jean about the foreign entity in her head.

Jean noticed the tension between the two men, but didn't make the connection that it had anything to do with her. "Yes please, Professor; I really don't want to be distracted while I'm taking my test today."

Charles nodded agreeably and sent out a feeler toward her mind. He also hoped to see evidence that would prove his sealing away the alien mind inside Jean had not had any effect on her. Yet after a second he recoiled in shock. "What in the world was that!?"

"How do you like my new mental defenses professor?" The redhead smirked a bit. If her little pets could keep a real telepath out when he was trying to get in then they would certainly block out stray thoughts.

I-I . . . yes, Jean, they-they're very nice. Now, if you'll excuse me?" Charles wheeled himself off, looking quite disturbed about something.

Harry watched him go and then turned back to the younger girl, a small smirk of his own on his face. "You used one of the examples I told you about that came from Luna, didn't you?"

Jean giggled a little, her normal anxiety gone at the Professor's reaction. "Yep, but I added some of my own tweaks. I think my little Belsham-trees will do nicely to keep my powers to myself, and anyone else's thoughts out of my head." Harry grinned, getting the reference and easily able to picture what she was talking about in his head. He clapped her on the back lightly, laughing with her before going in to bring out breakfast.

Ororo came down at that point with Logan, smiling happily at seeing the carpet flying, images of going out on flights with Harry rather than Hedwig (something the two of them had done on and off of at night which they both enjoyed, well, if she was interpreting Hedwig's precks correctly anyway) which she thought would be an extremely romantic thing to do. Logan merely looked and shook his head. Everyone but Jean stayed to take their turns flying on the carpet before breakfast until it ran out of power a few minutes after Harry left.

Jean had a few minutes to look down at her notes before a plate arrived in front of her and she looked up, her frown of concentration disappearing into surprise. Harry always served a fruit cup along with whatever else he was making for breakfast, but this time rather than a random mix, her bowl was filled with cherries, blueberries, and passionfruit—not a single strawberry, pineapple or cantaloupe in sight. How on earth does he know that these are my favorite fruits, or that I don't like the others? In point of fact, she hated strawberries or raspberries; they simply were tasteless to her. She looked at the main serving plates and her eyes widened a little further as her mouth began to water, seeing that the one in front of her, Rogue, and Evan, who was sitting across from them with Logan, had pancakes rather than the waffles on the other two servers she could see on the table. Or that blueberry pancakes are my absolute favorite?

She looked around, and saw that Storm and Kitty both had their own specially prepared fruit bowls as well, and Kitty even had chocolate chip waffles in front of her, something that made her and Kurt, who was sitting across from her very happy indeed.

This must be to reward her for learning something about runes, and, well, why he did it for Ms. Munroe need not be said, and for me . . . I guess he wants to cheer me up before my test. She took a bite from her fruit bowl and nearly moaned aloud at the taste. It worked, too. For knowing me for only a few weeks, that man knows my tastes entirely too well.

The food was so good Jean almost completely forgot her desire to diet until she was about to start the second pancake she had put on her plate. When she did she firmly put her fork down and tried to get up, only to find herself once more stuck to her chair. She frowned, searching her place for the telltale rune that was holding her here. Harry hadn't yet used an active spell, and she thought he wouldn't in their little breakfast battle. He would consider it unsporting, not giving her a chance to get away.

She frowned a little as she didn't find one, then felt underneath her seat and underneath her place at table. Nothing there. She then felt the back of her chair and didn't feel anything there. She frowned a little then sighed as the smell of the pancake on her plate hit her. She sighed again and picked up her fork again. After eating the last bite she looked over at Harry, a frown on her face. "Alright I give, how did you do it this time Potter?"

Harry smirked a little, remembering times in his home dimension when that exact phrase had been used by irate students in his fifth year after he had taken up pranking to relieve tension. "You checked everywhere but your own back. Surprising really, I would have thought it would be one of the first places you would look."

Jean grimaced, then reached behind her and felt around. After a series of comical contortions, she was at last able to reach the center of her back. Her hand came back holding a sticky note on her back. The runic array wasn't one of his normal Egyptian or Norse runes, it was Japanese, and one of the few of that language he was happy with using, but it was the only language that could be used on paper; the others were a little too powerful to be contained on something so flimsy. Japanese didn't have the power, but could achieve a few more effects (exorcism was just one of them, but the variety made him glad he had brought along a few books to study when he could) and their power lasted for quite a bit longer.

"Huh, you slapped this on my back when we were laughing together before breakfast?" Harry nodded and Jean shook her head, a small smile on his face. "Well played, Potter; you may have won this round, but I will win the war."

The others all laughed, even Scott, and Ororo smiled.

"But you're not so nervous about your test, are you?" replied Harry.

Jean blinked, realizing this was true, and went outside to meet her boyfriend with a much lighter heart.

OOOOOOO

That night, after Harry spent most of his day on his various projects,and building his knowledge of the technology in this new world, Hedwig returned with the first five of their teleportation points around the US. The two stared into one another's eyes as Hedwig imprinted the location into Harry's mind. This was something they had done a few times back in their home dimension. Hedwig would scout out an area around their target, then imprint a place on Harry's mind. He would apparate to that location, often taking other people with him. Most of the time, the image had been of a clearing in the woods somewhere, but this time it was of a flat rooftop in a city in Texas, at least that was what he thought. It really didn't matter—Hedwig would be the one guiding him to each successive stop. After about ten minutes he was able to picture the rooftop well enough and he nodded, breaking their connection. Harry picked up a large sack of galleons and several gold bracelets and things made from melting galleons down, gathered his magic around him, and a moment later was somewhere else.

The sun was still high in the sky here, and Harry found himself on top of roof, maybe five stories in the air, with a few shorter building around him and a few taller but none with windows facing him. Hedwig appeared in the air a moment later and Harry walked over to the edge of the building down the exterior fire escape, a Notice-Me-Not spell already in place on both of them. As soon as he touched down on the street, he cancelled the spells. Harry didn't have anything he particularly wanted to hide, and Hedwig would probably garner much more attention than he would.

About five minutes later, he walked into a pawn shop that specialized in buying gold for cash, a small smile on his face. He swiftly moved up to the register at the back of the store and greeted the worker, a large, heavily muscled man with numerous visible tattoos. "Hello, I have some gold coins and other heirlooms that I would like to sell." Later, he walked out with $110,000 in cash. It wasn't quite as much as he would have gotten at a more reputable place, but this store was not part of a chain and was locally owned, so wasn't connected to any other store elsewhere. The owner might be, but probably not; pawn shops tended to be a little shady, and this one had been recommended for just that fact by Logan in any case.

Harry hit up two other places that night with similar results, ending the night with a little under $400,000 U.S. Two more nights of this and a few gold bars and that should be enough to get a bank account started, hopefully in Switzerland. Or somewhere else they don't allow foreign interference.

OOOOOOO

The following few days fell into a new pattern for everyone at the institute. The kids were working almost exclusively with Logan again on physical exercises, but Harry had also assigned Scott and the rest some research to do on small-unit tactics and strategies. He was hoping that one of the others would step up and challenge Scott for his leadership position, but that wasn't happening just yet. Evan was willing to challenge him physically, but it became apparent he wasn't willing to do the mental work needed to really become the leader of the group. Say what you would about Scott, he was a hard worker and he ate up the work.

Harry interspersed working on his various projects with playing pranks on all and sundry and getting to know the kids. Jean (or Red, as Harry continued to call her), buoyed by the fact her new defenses had finally blocked out other peoples thoughts from her mind, actually began to prank back, using her powers to shift items in the kitchen a little when Harry reached for them or tripping Harry and planting paint balls in places then exploding them as he neared. He hadn't yet gotten her badly in return yet, but it was an amusing escalation of their breakfast wars, and she enjoyed a day of being a blonde once. Kurt joined in enthusiastically, and he and Harry eventually forced Charles to ask them to tone it down.

Harry learned that Jean, while having normal middle class parents, had been more than happy to leave them behind—not just because of her powers, but because they were not exactly the most loving parents. They were kind and nice, but were also aloof, demanding, and unprepared to deal with their daughter's mutant status. They had known Xavier for a while before her powers awakened, and it had been an easy choice for them to let her go to the institute. Kurt, on the other hand, was an orphan, and had been taken in by a band of gypsies. They had been his family until Charles had found him and brought him to the institute.

Kitty came from a well-to-do family, and she regularly wrote to her parents, preferring to do that rather than phone, as it let her tell them more than she would otherwise without worrying about long-distance fees. They were proud of her, both for her grades in school and choosing to learn how to control her powers, and they were all very close. Evan's parents were regular humans, too; his mother was Ororo's older sister, who had been left behind to finish her school year when their family moved to Cairo. He was close to them, but they had been ill-prepared to handle his powers and trusted Ororo implicitly to watch out for him, so had let him go to the institute far more easily than Kitty's, who had put up a fight before letting her go. Evan had a bit of a problem with authority, but was a good kid nonetheless and, as Harry supposed, the most physically fit of the X-Men thanks to being a basketball player and skater.

Harry got to know Rogue by asking her about music, something she was the acknowledged master of in the household. Harry didn't really care for music one way or another before, but he found he liked some of the hard rock of America and of course the U.K. He had also gotten to know Rogue a little more, finding out how much of a problem her powers were for her. She couldn't even brush against someone else in the hall, lest she drain them of their vitality and memories. It made her aloof and standoffish in most social situations, wary of letting anyone get close physically or emotionally.

Her family, too, was a sore subject. She had been raised by Mystique ever since she was a toddler and didn't know who her real parents were, only that she had been left at an orphanage before Mystique found her. Rogue refused to talk about those years, and Mystique in general was a sore subject. Harry hadn't yet figured out a way to cancel out her powers and still let her have the feeling of touching someone, but he vowed to make it a priority moving forward.

Scott, too, was an orphan, though he remembered his family: his mother, father, and a younger brother named Alex. They had been flying in a private plane, apparently the father was a pilot, and they had been struck by lightning or something and had crashed. It seemed that Scott was the only one to walk away, and when he did, his mutant powers had manifested due to the extreme duress he had been put under. That could have been the reason he was such a, well an emo really, yet it did not really excuse him having as little empathy as he did. After all, he wasn't the only orphan in the group. Yet Scott seemed to think that because his eyes were deadly weapons without his glasses, it should let him get away with his pity party. It almost reminded Harry of Remus Lupin and how he acted; rather than trying to overcome his disability or turn it to his advantage, Scott allowed it to dominate his life, much like the werewolf had.

Of course, all the kids had noticed the tension between Xavier and Harry, which built as the days went on. Most of them had decided they didn't want to know what was causing it, which was rather prudent of them, a path of wisdom that Ororo and Logan also followed. Scott, however, had very obviously taken Xavier's side, and was frosty and unfriendly to Harry, even when Harry was instructing him in small-unit tactics. Kurt took Harry's side, however, and had begun to target Scott even more than usual with his pranks.

The routine of the day had no impact on Harry's nighttime activities, however. Every night, he went out to a few different cities, unloading galleons (which looked almost exactly like Spanish doubloons and so did not cause much comment) and the jewelry he made from melting some of his coins down. Harry figured that if he kept this up for two or three months, he might make a dent in his available gold, but not before then.

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