The Dragon Mage

by ElMarquis

After a duel with Tom Riddle, Harry is sent late into the founder's period by Chronos' Watch. Does he actually want to return and who are the Black Knights?

1. A tale of an ancient warrior

Harry spent two days in Diagon Alley where he purchased three custom-crafted wands, each one of Yew with cores of Manticore and Chimera hair in one, Pegasus feather and the feather of the Morrigan. The final wand core was of Griffin's mane and werewolf fur. Each core had been soaked in a solution of Phoenix Tears and Basilisk Venom.

He'd managed to move the contents of his vault, 687, to a portable vault, otherwise known as a 'Gringotts Secure Money Bag' which allowed him to carry his money with him without the risks of it being stolen. Now, the soft leather purse made of the shed underbelly-skin of a Hebridian Black Dragon rested against his chest, concealed and held on by a sticking charm, and with it, five hundred thousand galleons.

After the return of Voldemort, Harry also commissioned several battlerobes made from the scavenged hide of the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, while the rest of the cadaver was in a compartment of his shrunken trunk along with the contents of the Potter Heirloom vault, notably weapons, jewels and most importantly, the library of the Potter Family. This incredible trunk was currently a tiny facet peeking out from behind the black stone of the Potter family ring, ready to be removed at the owner's wish.

During Voldemort's resurrection, he'd been subjected to a pain beyond any cruciatus curse. The Dark Lord had attempted to possess him and failed. During a mental counter-attack, Harry tore into the 'knowledge' core of Riddle's mind and for the weeks since the event, he had been slowly assimilating Riddle's extensive knowledge.

Unlike the popular perception, Tom Riddle was both a Light Wizard and a Dark Wizard. Most magic was completely neutral while few spells, such as the Patronus and Unforgivable curses are true Light and Dark magic. Light magic was a branch long lost with very little known about it, however, the budding Dark Lord knew almost as much about the ancient Light magic as he did about Dark magic. In fact, the Patronus was amongst the darkest of magics simply because of the enormous emotional input.

A week later and the Dursley household was almost completely deserted, save for one teenager. The Dursleys themselves had left for a holiday in Majorca while just an hour before, Harry had sensed a fluctuation in the wards as the Order guard disapparated. Now he sensed a second, much more powerful fluctuation as a dozen black-robed men appeared in a burst of pops. Behind them was the skeletal visage of Tom Marvolo Riddle, Dark Lord extraordinaire and general homicidal genocidal maniac.

Harry sighed and switched on his battlerobes and put all of his possessions into the shrunken trunk attached to his signet ring before slowly striding out of the room, his first wand in his left hand and one of his newer wands in his right.

Halfway down the staircase and he encountered a Death Eater as he climbed around the corner of the staircase, likely in search of Harry. Absently charging the 'Gladio' sword curse into both wands, Harry slashed them across his torso, watching dispassionately as the Death Eater keeled over, two horizontal slashes in his lower torso.

'Hopefully that might have the Ministry on it's way' he mused, stepping around the body.

Knowing that one way or another, he couldn't avoid battle, Harry stepped into the hallway and slowly strode toward the front door and the Death Eaters who encircled it. Should he die now, he would do so in a blaze of fire and death with as many of Voldemort's men as he could take with him.

Discarding his glasses, he used a spell which applied a momentary burst of pain and fixed his eyesight, Harry stepped forward and obliterated the door with another curse.

A bludgeoning hex sent an advancing Death Eater reeling while another fell to a twin slash with the gladio curse. Separating the Death Eaters into two lines and standing opposite Riddle, Harry bowed slightly, not taking his eyes off the Dark Lord. Surprisingly, Riddle returned the bow before settling back into a duelling stance. A silent agreement between the two opponents occurred and Riddle threw a cutting curse his way.

Swaying to one side, Harry avoided the spell and sent a chain of reductor curses interspersed with cutting and piercing spells. Raising his holly wand, he created a large serpent and banished it toward the Dark Lord and summoned a magus shield to deflect a burst of pure magic as the serpent was atomized.

Riddle flicked his wand and a translucent globe enveloped the two duellers as they circled one another, occasionally firing a spell to test their opponent's defences. Eventually, Harry released a burst of Fiendfyre which washed toward the Dark Lord who simply separated it with a wedge-shaped shield which redirected the flame around him.

"Harry Potter..." he hissed sibilantly during a lull; "Dark Arts, I am impressed, what would Dumbledore say?"

"Ah, now, Captain Lemon-drop is misguided." Harry replied; "He believes in light and dark while I believe that it is more to do with the intent behind a spell. I could bludgeon someone to death with a levitated rock or I could use the Imperius to prevent someone committing suicide."

He once again went on the attack, leading with a heart attack curse and a bone-shattering curse followed by a bolt of lightning. Riddle once again created a translucent convex shield and absorbed the spells before firing off a shredding hex and a series of organ liquefying curses at Harry who once again dodged them.

By now, Aurors and members of Dumbledore's Order surrounded the translucent sphere under which the boy saviour and the Dark Lord duelled. They looked on in horror as the snake-like man fired curse after curse at the boy-who-lived and gasped as each one was dodged gracefully.

Harry upped the attack, firing a disembowelling hex, a decapitation curse and a blood boiling curse in the midst of a stream of high powered obliteration curses and gouging spells. Once again he used his holly wand to create an inferno of the cursed Fiendfyre. Its basilisk form lashed toward the Dark Lord before retreating back in a whip-like fashion several times. Unfortunately at this point, steam began to emerge from the wand as it overheated, unused to being used for spells so powerful.

As Harry cancelled the Fiendfyre and slide back into his wrist holster, he cursed for having both of his new wands in the same holster, so the one which remained was inaccessible as that hand was already occupied. Harry reversed a bolt of black magic back toward it's caster as he mused over what to do next.

Silently disappearing, he appeared behind the Dark Lord and fired an unblockable explosive castration curse straight into his back before disapparating again.

"POTTER!" screamed Voldemort in agony.

"Yes oh Dark Lord?" mocked Harry as he dodged a stream of spells; "Don't you like the explosive castration curse?"

Apparating again, the young man flickered around the circular arena, firing curses from everywhere. A trident-piercing curse gouged Riddle's shoulders while the central prong of the three piercing curses was deflected and a bolt of lightning seared his head. However, to Harry's annoyance, he found himself unable to apparate as an anti-apparition jinx went up around them. He rolled out of the way of a disembowelling curse and replied with the sickly green vortex of the killing curse.

Riddle froze momentarily before slamming up a block of black granite to absorb the curse and fired a cutting curse back. Harry was too slow dodging and the very edge of the curse slashed a long scar into his left cheek just as he called a bolt of lightning fell from the sky and impacted just feet from Riddle.

The two continued to duel, Dark Arts spells exchanged at a rate and level of skill rarely seen before. However, twenty minutes of flashes and blasts later and Harry was sent flying as the ground itself rose, his wand flying into the air and vanishing. Despite the fact it returned to its holster, he could do nothing as Riddle bound him in ropes.

Amplifying his voice, Harry rasped; "So Tom Marvolo Riddle, two half-bloods, both the most powerful wizards of their generations face off. Both were muggle raised. Think of Ollivander, Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore, of Gellert Grindlewald, Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape. All half-bloods. Of my mother, Lily Potter whose blood rituals were responsible for your first downfall, Filius Flitwick, the part-goblin."

"Your point, Potter?" asked Riddle, genuinely curious.

"How is it that Crabbe, Goyle can be truly superior to those I have mentioned? If you are a true champion of wizard-kind, it is the rampant discrimination and needless, unexplained hatred of lesser blooded and those with non-human blood that should be stamped out. Where you can simply hand over a sack of galleons and you have committed no crime." Harry responded hoarsely; "This world is corrupted and the pureblood cause is of no help to it, instead, it leads the wizarding world closer to implosion, where purebloods marry their cousins, then their immediate families and the ancient houses inter-breed into extinction and slaughter the muggleborn for their situation of birth. What would you think if you were truly a muggleborn Tom? Would you want a wizard to appear out of nowhere and kill you for something you cannot help or would you fight against that wizard and end up dead anyway?"

Riddle slowly raised his wand and brought it to bear on Harry, a bright green light pulsing at the end. He barely dodged the wandless cutting curse that slashed into his side, creating a shallow cut. He didn't know why, but when that silver hourglass came flying from the pocket in an arc toward him, Harry flexed an arm through the binding ropes and grabbed it. Then, his magical core imploded, as planned. He didn't intend or believe that he could survive the fight and thus constricted the centre of his magical core, blasting away everything close in a burst of white light, the sound covering the screeching from within the ball of light, which itself covered the wraith-like black smoke escaping from one teenager's scar moments before he vanished.

Riddle raised an incredibly powerful shield and turned into black smoke, vanishing into the night, followed by his Death Eaters save one, rat-like coward who had been blasted by a redirected bludgeoning hex early in the duel.

Harry slammed into the muddy ground of a worn track. After a minute of listening to the silence surrounding him in the leaf-canopy covered road, he slowly stood and stretched, absently healing the single scar across his cheek which Riddle had inflicted. When a location-mapping charm put him at exactly where Privet Drive should have been, he tried several other charms. Finally, a Tempus charm brought unexpected results which had him swearing in a mixture of parseltongue and bastardized Arabic.

'JULY 995 AD'

Still unaware of the fact he was swearing in a both bastardized Arabic and parsel, or where he picked that habit up from, Harry slowly considered the facts as he had them.

His core was no longer in a state of impending implosion. Two, he was feeling much more powerful, much more focused, like a veil had been lifted from his mind. Three, he was a thousand years in the past with no way back. Four, he had enough money to buy a moderate estate and had several sets of robes and his wands. He also had access to a library of magic and heirlooms including blades and wands.

"Fate! Majdoube ibn himaar!" he swore, muttering moments later; "Fate, stupid son of a donkey."

For another minute, Harry continued randomly spitting invectives in parsel and Arabic before his mind caught up and he began to work out what to do. With the knowledge of Riddle, he had a good grip of both the written and spoken languages of tenth century Britain, including Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, some Gaelic and Nordic as well as some of the continental languages.

Also from Riddle's knowledge, he could easily get masteries in Dark Arts, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Transfiguration and Charms. Harry's first inclination was to get to Diagon Alley, but then he had a realisation. Within the last decade, Hogwarts school had been founded. It would be an excellent base for his research into temporal magic.

Surprisingly, Riddle also could have applied for a muggle doctorate in chemistry. Apparently it was a necessary study for setting up gas explosion 'accidents'. Not that that was the only muggle practice he had experience in, but was also a master swordsman and an expert in the saddle.

A moment of contemplation later and Harry swept his wand across his head and slicked back his hair into a lengthened state and tied it back with a piece of black ribbon. A second swipe cleaned the general muck off him and his black battlerobes. Creating a mirror, he examined himself for a moment before pulling a sapphire adorned longsword from the trunk vault and placed it in a sheath which he hung on his left hip while a second, slightly larger and unadorned sword hung on his back, hilt and tip protruding from opposite sides and ends of his cloak. A quick charm cleaned the pink scar on his left cheek to a clean, pale horizontal line.

Quickly returning the trunk to his ring, Harry apparated to Hogsmeade where he bought a horse for a single sickle. The black charger enhanced the appearance he wanted to cultivate. From his black basilisk hide boots, battlerobes, billowing cloak and a gleaming black warhorse all contributed to the man who would be known as Arlyss Chronos Wulfric.

Pulling out of his musings, Harry nodded to the stable boy and dug his heels into the horse's flank and rode elegantly out of Hogsmeade, headed for the castle which had been his home for four years.

Twenty minutes in the saddle later and Harry rode through the open gates, trotting up the lawns, his sword conspicuously glinting in the morning sunlight as he stood and sat in the saddle as he rode up toward the stable and front doors to the main keep of the castle.

It was virtually unrecognisable, with two square towers at one end of a massive cruciform building, a circular tower at the opposite end and a fourth, much taller, square tower on one side of the cross. The whole thing was encircled by a low curtain wall with cuboid gatehouses on each side and a bridge across a ravine beyond the circular tower.

Harry was on high alert as both of the main doors were hanging off their hinges and a few bodies were strewn across the courtyard. Sighing, he decided that he wasn't born to live in peace but to serve in war before drawing a wand and a dagger.

Striding in, he caught the attention of a rough looking man who accosted him;

"You one of Ravenclaw's mudblood lovers?" he asked.

Harry paused for a moment, sniffed contemptuously before slamming his dagger into the thug's chest and then stabbed it into the back of his spine as he fell before striding onward into the central hall. Bound in the centre were four people, one an aged, greying man with long hair and a beard, the rest were female. Absently, he noted that the youngest was mildly attractive and looked somewhat like the elder. They both had dark hair and similar features. The fourth was a blonde haired young woman, dressed in glaring canary-yellow robes.

'Looks like Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff with Ravenclaw junior' Harry mused; 'Hufflepuff doesn't look like the mumsy woman depicted in the stories, Gryffindor looks old and Ravenclaw senior isn't as young as we were told...'

"Who are you and where's the guard?" called the man that Harry assumed was the leader by his position on the raised dais.

"Arlyss Wulfric." Harry replied; "And your guard fell on my dagger. Twice. Once in the chest, once in the back."

Two thugs rushed him, one from each side. The first was disembowelled by the keen blade while the second died as the steel pierced his heart. Withdrawing the dagger, Harry drew it back and hurled it the length of the hall. It turned hilt over tip several times before burying it's full length in the leader's throat.

Harry leaned on the hilt of his sword, standing back slightly with an infuriatingly smug look adorning his face which naturally provoked his opponents into rushing him. The first died as Harry summoned the dagger back towards him, timed just to cross paths with the assailant who collapsed, blood spurting from the back of his throat.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of borderline Dark Arts spells as Harry went on the offensive. A spell-chain of powerful cutting curses, bone-shattering curses, constrictor spells and gouging curses sprayed around the hall with heart-stopping accuracy and heart-destroying lethality.

A couple of bodies were transformed into massive bears and set on their former colleagues as they were animated. A bundle of spears were conjured and banished at a group who tried to sneak out of the doors as a statue was charmed to attack the closest enemy.

Harry could almost say he was enjoying the chance to creatively apply his newfound skills in such an environment while still being able to be on the moral high ground as he was saving lives. Transfiguration, conjuration, charms and curses were employed with creativity and a certain enthusiasm. Eventually, he ceased playing around and simply began firing heart attack curses which brought down all the invaders in the Hall.

Striding across the body-strewn room, Harry quickly retrieved his dagger again and released the four prisoners. Gryffindor was a tall, thickset man wearing simple, woollen-spun robes, a moderate beard and quite long hair adorning a scarred face. Hufflepuff was younger than both, if he had to guess, she would be in her mid-twenties with white-blonde hair and a thin frame. Ravenclaw was, despite obvious signs of ageing, a beautiful woman, though quite haughty and regal. Her daughter was similar to her, mother having black hair, while daughter had dark brown. They both had sapphire eyes and wore similar black dresses.

"Any more of the scum?" Harry asked as he vanished the ropes.

"Shouldn't be." Gryffindor replied, massaging his wrists; "Salazar took the students down into his chamber and sealed it when they breached the gates. I'm thankful you arrived stranger, I have no doubt that in short order, we'd be killed and the women raped."

Harry nodded in acknowledgement before striding off, heading for the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Dashing up several flights of stairs, he came to what would one day be Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom. Now, it was an airy, circular chamber with a fountain-like construction in the centre.

Idly hissing at the fountain, Harry put impervious charms all over himself before jumping down the chute to the Chamber. He quickly strode through the entrance cave having slid down before coming to the circular vault door which swung open on his order.

Smartly stepping aside to avoid the decapitation curse which scythed toward him, Harry strode into the central chamber. Unlike the slime-coated room of nightmares, it was made of a light green granite with just two serpent statues, guarding the entrance to the basilisk's layer.

"Too slow!" Harry called out smugly, sidestepping a second decapitation curse; "Your little problem has been dealt with."

"Dealt with?" asked Slytherin, a tall wizard with a silver goatee and grey hair pulled into a short ponytail.

"Humiliatingly, painfully and very fatally." Harry confirmed happily as he blocked a cutting curse and flung back a stream of organ liquefying curses bracketed by muscle ripping hexes.

"You are an interesting wizard..." Slytherin mused; "May I ask how you got down here." as he slammed up a powerful shield to block Harry's curses before sending off a blood-boiling curse.

Harry laughed for a moment before switching to parseltongue; §Oh, that would be telling...§

He swivelled about and strode out of the chamber, ignoring the lines of shocked students and the mildly interested looking founder blocking the brain-exploding hex thrown over his shoulder as he swept out, using the cloak-billowing effect to its fullest.

A simple matter of unshrinking his Firebolt and Harry was on the surface again, having hurtled up the pipe at a breakneck speed. Once again striding through the corridors of the castle, he made his way to the Great Hall.

Apart from half a dozen of the invaders who were trying to sneak down a staircase, the hallways were deserted. By the time Harry had passed, one invader had fallen off the stairs, falling two floors. Repeatedly. The second had tripped over the edge of a tapestry and through an open window, plummeting onto the rocks below. The third and fourth accidentally ran one another through with their swords, the fifth was killed as a lump of stonework fell from the wall and hit his head and the sixth and final attacker was set on fire as a nearby torch fell from its bracket and hit him, having coincidentally been soaked in lamp oil. All done with banishing spells, levitation spells, a trip jinx, an unlocking charm, a confundus charm, a summoning spell, a vanishing charm and an oil-conjuration spell.

He was smirking smugly as he strode into the Great Hall, hand still holding the vicious blade of his prized stiletto. A simple raised eyebrow and a glare from the elder Ravenclaw nearly had him spilling every secret he had. Instead, he hastily elaborated on his smirk;

"I encountered a small group trying to escape. They all had accidents, one fell down two floors, one fell out of a window, two ran each other through, the fifth was hit by a falling stone and one of the torches set the sixth on fire."

"They are easily replaced..." hissed a voice from behind him.

Harry swivelled around to see a tall, pale man with short silvery-grey hair, dressed in loose black robes, a sword hung at his side.

"Morcar..." hissed Godric.

"You know one another?" Harry enquired curiously.

"Aye, Godric here doesn't like me much." commented Morcar; "See, I don't like the way that these four sit in their castle like gods atop a mountain."

"Morcar is a dark wizard who revels in bloodshed, death and sorrow." Godric spat; "You kill a child simply to spite the founders of a school."

"Gryffindor, don't equate dark with evil. Frankly I'm the former. Now, are you anything of a swordsman Morcar?" asked Harry, eyeing his blade.

"The best..." responded the dark wizard, licking his lips.

Harry smirked and cast aside his heavier sword and his cloak before removing his lighter longsword and threw aside its sheathe before raising it blade vertical to his forehead.

"To the death?" he asked.

Moments later, he brought the sword horizontally above his head to block a blow before rolling backwards as he slashed horizontally. Extending his sword with both hands at the same level as his shoulder, he encircled Morcar's blade and jabbed forward, cutting into the back of the dark wizard's hand before backing away.

He lowered his blade momentarily, a confident smirk adorning his face as Morcar hissed in pain. Harry then slashed heavily downward toward Morcar's head, but quickly redirected it to his flank. The feint worked perfectly as the keen blade sliced deeply into his opponent's flank. He repeated it, this time going from the feint to the head to the other flank, once again cutting deeply.

Morcar hissed, enraged and charged, sword raised in both hands above his head. The downward blow was easily blocked and he found himself gasping on the floor from a firm kick in the stomach from a basilisk hide boot.

"Get up!" ordered Harry, stepping back a few paces.

A downward sword-cut was easily dodged as Harry swayed to one side and jabbed the tip of his sword into Morcar's gut and slapped him across his back with the flat of his blade, instinctively parrying the horizontal slice and placing another jab into his opponent's gut. A very light slash laid open Morcar's back and Harry stepped back briefly before brutally smashing away his sword and slamming the pommel of his sword into his assailant's face before sending him to the floor with a single kick.

"Get out. Be pleased I spare your life and never return." Harry ordered coldly as he picked up Morcar's sword and smashed into into two jagged pieces on the stones of the wall before placing the hilt of the shattered sword into his hands.

He watched as the subdued Dark Wizard slowly left, bleeding from multiple wounds, his black robes shredded and blood streaming down his bruised face.

"I hope that killing him is unnecessary, I hope that humiliation will discourage any evil tendencies." Harry commented as Godric stepped up to him.

"Aye, I hope that too. What, may I ask, is our saviours name?"

"Arlyss Chronos Wulfric." Harry replied, musing to himself; 'Means honourable, could be shortened to Harry. Chronos, a reference to time and wolf power. Nice name.'

In Dumbledore's office, a small group met, including the remaining members of the Golden Trio, Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley along with much of the Order of the Phoenix. Before them were dozens of sheets of parchment scribbled with arithmantic calculations while books were strewn across the room.

"Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley;" Dumbledore sighed; "We're looking for Harry in a slightly unusual way..."

"Basically, as the Headmaster was saying, Harry engaged Voldemort in a duel in which he did fairly well..." Moody began with his very rare approval; "Eventually, Voldemort had him bound in ropes but something happened, like a flood of magic which was heavily tainted with temporal magic."

"What do you think Harry would do should he be subjected to temporal marooning?"

"If I was in his place, I'd make my way to Hogwarts to seek help." Ron commented.

"Indeed..." mused Dumbledore, stroking his beard.

Two months after his initial visit to Hogwarts, Harry was to be found striding through the ruins of a Gaulish settlement, in search of a ruined Roman temple, dedicated to Saturn, amongst others, the God of Time.

Brutally cutting a swathe through the jungle of trees and shrubs surrounding the site with ribbon-cutting curses, he came up to the edge of the wards and created a triangle of runes out of blue fire, which faded backward into the small patch of a misty, translucent sphere.

An hour of slowly picking apart and re-linking the wards before the trio of runes spun for a moment and opened into a triangular gap in the small patch of the sphere visible.

Stepping through, he found an idyllic patch of land with a white marble Greco-Roman style temple sat in the centre, a long, square lake down one side and elegant gardens all around it. Still on the alert, Harry threw detection charms all around him, but except for mild repellent wards and standard- if very powerful- household stasis and control wards, nothing came up on his scans.

Slowly advancing into the central building, he found dozens of busts set into small alcoves looking towards a waist-height column. On it were four scrolls, their ends held by wooden cylinders. The four scrolls surrounded a smoky-grey, egg-like diamond.

Unconsciously and inexplicably drawn to it, Harry slowly laid his hand on the gem.

Well, what do we have here? mused a voice; The Black Sorcerer rises again – how... interesting

What? Harry yelled mentally, trying to locate, contain and remove the source of the voice.

That won't work boyo! the voice commented cheerfully; Basically, I was one of three sparks from a dying Oriental Soul Serpent, a dragon if you will. Each of the three sparks became gems like me. One became the possession of a soldier called Sun Tzu, the second became the possession of a line of great Japanese warriors. I am the final and most powerful, passing across Chinese Generals, Mongol Khans, Indian Emperors and finally I served for Sparta for centuries before falling into the hands of the Romans.

So why do you exist, what is your purpose? Harry enquired.

I am the master of the trio, though now, the only left in existence. I had a link to the other two and was given any knowledge that they learnt. You are worthy, pick me up and take me from my prison and bring those scrolls.

Gathering up the contents, he left the Temple, though not before powering up the maintenance wards and stasis charms. His last act was to place the entire site under a powerful enchantment called the Fidelius Charm, with himself as Secret Keeper. Having the Temple as a personal retreat/holiday home wouldn't go amiss.

Harry spent another month at the Manor he'd bought, deciphering, translating and understanding the contents of the scrolls. Two of them related to Alchemy and the pursuit of turning base metals into gold, while the other two were of more interest to Harry. They both were on the subject of temporal magic, including setting time stasis wards on sites, time stasis charms on people and how to reverse time itself.

The first thing he did was to set up the wards around the manor and begin fortifying it to his liking, with a low, thick curtain wall surrounding the site. The manor house itself was incorporated into a large cruciform building set within a square wall, leaving a keep with four courtyards and gardens, one at each corner, with the cruciform building separating them.

Harry then warded the fortress heavily and installed various muggle-style traps around it, including patches of land which he could cause to temporarily vanish, leaving a gaping void below with dozens of metal spikes at the bottom. Others could be turned into swamps to swallow attackers while the trees themselves where cross-bred with the Whomping Willow, though until activated, they were simply trees. Once activated, they were brutal weapons of war, flailing around their branches like massive whips.

Having fortified the castle, Harry unpacked his library and spent an unknown amount of time simply reading and practicing until he was proficient in the Potter Familial Magic and most areas that Tom Riddle hadn't mastered.

He spent an immense amount of time travelling the world, either in time stasis or simply rolling back time for his own uses. Returning to the continent, he learnt a great deal about wand-crafting in Italy, living for a year with the main branch of the Ollivander family.

He now had another wand with the core of a powdered Manticore's fang soaked in Dragon's blood, Basilisk's venom, fed into the hollow part of a Phoenix feather, all wrapped in the hairs of a Griffin. The wand itself was made from a Roman Stone Pine immersed in Nundu blood and Phoenix tears. Finally, the Soul Dragon gem was set on the rear of the wand as a focus and charging stone, rendering the wand the most powerful in existence. Unfortunately, the gem had picked up his sarcastic sense of humour and could be distracting at times.

While in Greece, he mastered his Animagus form of a gigantic black dragon, the Roman Imperial Dragon. Sailing to Egypt, he went on a curse-breaking rampage, robbing hundreds of tombs, always leaving his signature behind, carved into the walls. His Animagus form, the black dragon, perched on a horizontal battle-staff, clutching a sword, tip down, in one clawed appendage and a wand in his second.

Harry eventually made his way East, stopping in the Arab lands where he learnt from the earliest form of the Assassin's Order, part of the Nizari Ismaeli denomination of Islam. His last stop before returning to Europe was a temple in the mountains of Nepal where he learnt much about wandless magic through the use of complicated hand-movements. He was also taught their martial arts, both unarmed combat and the Eastern sword-styles.

When Harry returned to England, he hadn't aged at all, he suspected, due to the hourglass Riddle had used on him. He was now an expert in stealth, curse-breaking and fighting in his Animagus form, giving him the title of the 'Dragon Mage'. Harry now also had expertise in hand-to-hand martial arts, archery, various forms of swordsmanship and manipulation of his body with magic.

Unusually, he'd even learnt music. He'd decided that he needed a hobby and learning various forms of music was as good as any. The lute was the most prevalent instrument throughout the world save for the voice and thus he had become an excellent lutanist.

Despite Harry's extensive use of temporal magic, upon his return to Britain, a full year had passed since he'd left Hogwarts after his first visit. Other than being in much better health and wearing numerous extra blades, the Harry who rode up to the gates of Hogwarts was not particularly different.

Harry broke out of the tree-canopy, his black charger trotting lightly up the track toward Hogwarts. However, something was wrong, a pall of smoke hung over the castle and an acrid smell wafted to his nostrils.

Though he'd taken to almost permanently having his eyes and senses in his Dragon form, it was unnecessary to work out something was not right. Tying up his horse and line-of-sight apparating a little distance away, he transformed into the elegant form of the midnight-black winged serpent.

Flapping awkwardly, Harry rose into the air and soared toward the castle. Folding in his wings, Harry dived toward the gates where lines of black-robed figures were firing spells toward the keep of the castle.

With a blast of fire, Harry slammed into the ground, the dragon's body absorbing the impact easily, though those trapped beneath were less lucky. And those caught in the fire were even less lucky.

Transforming back into human form, though leaving his eyes and sixth sense in the Dragon form. Dao drawn in moments, he quickly began tearing into the attackers with alacrity. Pulling out a horn made from the fang of a basilisk he'd killed, Harry blew deeply three times before returning it to a pocket and engaging in combat once again.

His Dao was quickly replaced by the Soul Dragon gem wand, dark curses flowing like a river from the one-man army. He mostly employed battle spells for wide-area damage, Fiendfyre lashing around him from a second wand while roots burst from the ground, crushing dark wizards, hailstorms of arrowheads flying through the air. Finally, he used a spell, one so dangerous that only the most powerful mages could use it.

"APERI TARTARUS!" he thundered.

Slowly, a swirling black void opened up, sucking the surrounding wizards into it until Harry closed it, leaving just a dozen men standing. All but one who he recognised were quickly brought down with killing curses.

"Morcar! My old friend, I believe we have a duel to finish?" Harry said, spreading his arms wide.

Moments later his longsword was drawn and he charged Morcar, bashing aside his blade and lashing him across the back, leaving a long cut. Blocking several more blows, Harry lashed the dark wizard's hand with the blade and kicked his sword away, thrusting his own into Morcar's heart.

Quickly modifying the anti-apparition wards to allow him access, Harry vanished and returned moments later with his horse. He jumped into the saddle and galloped up the long lawns toward the locked doors of the castle which swung open as he leapt off his horse.

"Godric!" he called happily as the founder stepped out.

"Arlyss, I was wondering if we'd see you again!" replied Godric.

"Aye, I've been overseas for the last year. I was coming to visit you and once again found you under attack. Otherwise, how's life?" Harry asked.

"Not good, Rowena passed on, her elder daughter, Philippa is now my ward as Regent Ravenclaw and young Helena and Baron Oswald are dead. Salazar was forcibly fed mind-controlling potions by his apprentice and forced him to try and get rid of all non purebloods before feeding him a slow-acting poison. It's just me and Helga left of the four of us." Godric said sadly; "Morcar isn't the biggest problem, he was only a pawn, Caradoc of Mercia is. Periodically he attacks wizarding centres like Diagon Alley, I fought him once and he's too powerful, I may be the Lion Warlock, but first and foremost, I'm a swordsman. That isn't all though, the Wizen Council have been trying to take over the castle and school, going as far as slandering myself and Helga."

Within a month, Harry had gained audience with both the English and Scottish kings and was granted, in perpetuity, rights of autonomy for Hogwarts with titles of nobility for himself, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff as Ravenclaw already held title and Slytherin had no child.

Finally, three months of tense skirmishing and the battle with Caradoc came to a head when he attacked Diagon Alley as Harry was purchasing some supplies from the Apothecary.

Hundreds of black-robed figures flooded the Alley, some shoppers dropped glamours which concealed the typical dark wizard uniform. Everywhere, carnage reigned as shops were burnt and the citizens killed.

Harry blasted apart a dark wizard with an infuriated swipe of his wand, blocking a killing curse with a conjured slab of marble. It was when he saw a young girl, not much more than a toddler, writhing under the cruciatus curse that Harry was enraged beyond anything seen before.

Firing a Blood Eagle curse straight at the torturer, he leapt aside, letting a killing curse hurtle past and slam into another wizard. Harry exploded into a burst of the darkest, most lethal and most painful spells he knew. Bloodfire curses took out a small group as he began tracking another wizard with his wand, the sickly yellow organ liquefying curse rocketing across the war-torn alley.

Using a gravity curse, he crushed another trio, continuing to unleash spell after spell, bone-exploding curses, blood boiling curses, bloodfire curses, intestinal regurgitation spells, eye liquefying spells, impaling curses and death-lighting curses erupting across the alley.

Suppressing all emotion, he tracked another wizard as he ran and unleashed a killing curse which sent him flying in the swirling vortex of sickly green light. Finally, out of the carnage stepped a man, incredibly pale, scarred and with silvery-grey hair running down to his shoulders.

"You would do well to join me, a powerful dark wizard..." he hissed.

"Caradoc I presume. Aye, I am a Dark Wizard, but I am not evil. I do not torture children for personal amusement." Harry replied.

"Shame."

What came next would be remembered for decades as the two wizards faced off, Harry holding no bars as his most lethal spells, killing curses, heart attack curses, decapitation curses, impaling hexes, lightning bolts and blasts of cursed fire including Fiendfyre interspersed with all of the Greater Elemental curses.

Finally, Harry tore through his magus shield by firing three shield-shattering spells followed by a series of organ-destroying curses with a killing curse.

He watched with hatred as the Dark Lord slid into the mud, eyes glazed over in death. For a man he had never met, Harry harboured an immense amount of hatred for him, torturing, murdering and raping his way across England hadn't engendered him to the Dragon Mage.

Harry's cloak and his gleaming armless steel breastplate both bore the symbol he had begun using while in Egypt, leaving nobody in any doubt to the identity of the sorcerer who had killed the scourge of the wizarding world.

He pulled out of his hate-fuelled musings directed at the late Dark Lord to hear the cheering of the remaining survivors of the Diagon Alley attack and any who had come to the Alley.

"Draco magus! Draco magus! Draco magus the Dark's bane" they chanted.

"For Myrddin's sake!" Harry exclaimed under his breath.

"Come come Arlyss, you are a hero." replied a voice he recognised.

"Godric?"

"Aye, now they will celebrate." Godric commented, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"They will celebrate what they should have done, formed ranks and fired blasting curses instead of running like a chicken from a meat-cleaver." Harry spat scathingly before asking; "I don't suppose you need any staff at Hogwarts?"

"I'm sure we could find you a job if you know any spells which aren't so utterly lethal." replied Godric jokingly; "Now I believe young Philippa Ravenclaw has been asking after you since you've made two rather impressive visits to us. After the first time, her mother wanted to arrange a betrothal... Unfortunately you'd left by then. Now, I think it is a time for exchanging stories and relaxing."

Harry raised an eyebrow and failed to prevent the barest tinge of red from adorning his cheeks at the betrothal comment before grabbing Godric's arm and apparating them to the entrance hall of Dragon Hall, his much developed manor.

"Welcome to my home Godric, Dragon Hall." Harry said, beckoning him in.

Striding through the halls with the Lion Warlock behind him, he made his way to the 'Pharaoh's Citadel'. It was one of the courtyards, adorned with the proceeds of his curse-breaking ventures.

"Godric, one of my areas of expertise is temporal manipulation, I spent the last year for you, I have no idea how long for me, travelling. I went to Rome, Athens and continued east into the Holy Land and onto the borders of the Orient. This is from the land of Egypt, a barren country of desert surrounding a single great river running from the south into the Mediterranean in the north. Much of the contents of this courtyard is from lost treasure caches of the land of sand."

The courtyard was a cloister-like building with sand scattered across it, statues and furniture from Egypt, often made from the most precious gold and painted with expensive dyes, cats carved into the arms of the long sofas and bejewelled emblems stuck to the sandstone columns.

"About that betrothal contract..." Godric began after gaping around him for a moment before dodging out of the way of a bludgeoning hex and bursting out into laughter.

Once again assembled in the Headmaster's office were several members of the Order of the Phoenix, the remainder of the Golden Trio and the retired Dark Lord.

"Do we have any progress?" Dumbledore asked hopefully.

"We've been unable to find anyone of Harry's description in any of the history books." moaned Hermione.

"'Mione and I have examined every book on the history of Hogwarts available." Ron added.

"Indeed, well done, though it is a shame nothing has come of your research." Dumbledore commented; "What of the device Tom?"

"There was device flying through the air toward Potter when he used a wandless cutter, Granger here says that it matches an object called 'Chronos' Watch' or 'Myrddin's Hourglass', no idea if that's of any use." Moody said grumpily.

"Interesting, I must admit to have only ever heard myths of such a device going by a different name, that of the Dragon Mage's pendant." Dumbledore said contemplatively.

Harry spent the rest of the summer holiday or 'Annual Rest' as Godric called it reading through the contents of his newly acquired literary works from across Europe, Northern Africa, Arabia and Asia. Amongst the most interesting was from Italy and contained a ritual which gave the subject the power of the 'shifter'. It required a pentagram carved into marble with the subject's blood mixed with that of a dragon and an immense amount of power, enough that only the most powerful wizards could perform it without dying.

It took two long weeks of non-stop meditation with nutrient potions being spelled into his system until Harry was ready for the ritual. He combined the magical core still residing within his scar and that of the dragon Animagus form with his own. Though he'd come close to magical overload, Harry now had full control of his magic for casting the most delicate engraving spells to the most brutal battlefield magic.

According to the modern magical rankings as known by Tom Riddle, he was a British Grand Sorcerer twice over for the defeats of Morcar and Caradoc or thrice over for defeating Morcar twice, the second occasion being fatal. A Grand Sorcerer was someone who has defeated a Dark Lord in an act of 'Grand Sorcery'. He was also a High Magus in terms of power, it being the highest power level known of. Finally, his control level would give him the title of Master Warlock.

The ritual left Harry unconscious for three days, but afterward, he found himself able to transform into any animal he had seen in person, which after his travels and a trip to London Zoo in 1991, equated to quite a lot.

Shortly afterward, Harry received an owl from one of his contacts in Central Italy. It pleaded for help as they'd had another Dark Wizard rampaging around the countryside.

He transformed into an identical copy of Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix and vanished from his home to a back Alley of Rome. It was a short time of flying south toward Naples when he found the Italian Dark Lord's army attacking a walled town.

Circling twice, the flame-coloured raptor went into a steep dive, transforming into a human between the main gates and drawing a wand in one fluid movement.

Tiring of the constant fighting, Harry began throwing killing curses and heart attack curses every-which way instead of his usual massive range of curses. Eventually, a small force left the town itself and engaged the enemy, leaving Harry to fight his way through a lesser group toward their leader.

Despite his best efforts, three very powerful men attacked Harry simultaneously, one clipping him with a bludgeoning hex which sent him spinning into the air and impacting roughly into the ground. A piercing hex slammed into the earth as Harry rolled out of the way and got back onto his feet and resumed casting.

One screamed as his internal organs were turned into goo as he stepped back from a powerful cutting curse, simultaneously firing an organ liquefying curse. A conjured serpent intercepted the next spell that came at him, exploding into a red mist. Harry's wand flashed like a coloured sabre as it whipped, slashed and thrust through the air, a mixture of spells crossing the battlefield.

Unfortunately, that was when the earth rocked beneath him, putting him off-balance, allowing a sword-cut to lash into his upper leg. A very powerful blasting curse hit his gleaming steel cuirass, buckling it heavily and finally being stopped by his basilisk hide armour. However, the shockwave wasn't absorbed, sending him rocketing into a small earthwork, causing a horrific cracking sound from his ribs.

As his attackers came over, he slowly opened his eyes and squinted against the darkness around the edges of his vision. Pouring his magic into his body, Harry stood up unsteadily and drew a dagger. Fast as lightning, he slashed it across the nearest one's throat before repeatedly stabbing it into the stomach of the second before spinning him around and thrusting it into the wizard's spine.

With barely enough focus, Harry ignored the two corpses and pushed himself to Hogwarts, apparating away with a loud crack, unlike his usual silent apparition.

Reappearing in the Great Hall, he ignored the students sat around the room and called out through a mouthful of blood;

"GODRIC! Here!"

The last thing he saw was his blood-covered dagger reflecting his own image up into his eyes as the darkness closed in. His cuirass was torn, the very metal buckled and shredded, revealing the basilisk hide beneath, a spray of crimson coating what was left of the silvery metal.

An unknown amount of time unconscious and Harry finally awoke in the horribly familiar surroundings of the Dark Hideout and Evil Paradise of the School Nurse. The Hospital Wing.

Swearing long and loud in a diatribe of mixed Parseltongue and Arabic, Harry slowly slid out of the bed, noting that his favoured green battlerobes, the basilisk hide vambraces, chestpiece and boots were missing. Further inspection revealed that only his wands in their irremovable holsters on his forearms were there along with his loose tunic and trousers. His numerous swords, daggers, poisons collection and other normal items were missing.

It took a moment of searching to find them on the bed next to him, giving him the opportunity to dress in the moonlight which soaked the room. Once again, Harry was dressed in his forest-green velvet battlerobes over the similarly-coloured trousers and plain linen tunic.

He had just slipped on his cloak with all the hidden weapons over his basilisk hide vest and vambraces when he heard someone walking in. Twisting around, he flickered slightly with a light crack in a failed attempt to apparate out.

"You don't think Madam Helga has her own anti-apparition wards around this room with the number of times Godric tried to escape...?" commented an unseen person in a distinctly amused tone.

Harry ceased cursing in his personal mix of bastardized Arabic and Parsel before responding dryly;

"I could just turn into a dragon and demolish a wall..."

"Between facing down a dragon and Madam Helga, I'd take the dragon any day." replied the female voice.

"Hmmph. Doesn't matter, I was in the middle of disposing of an Italian Dark Lord and got injured. They're far more powerful and dangerous than the common or garden Albion Dark Lords. Frankly, I need to go back to Rome, I have to make sure I finished the job properly." Harry replied disgruntled as he dipped a curved dagger into a vial of viscous silvery-black liquid.

"And what exactly is that?" asked the woman curiously.

"Basilisk venom mixed with Nundu's blood." Harry replied shortly as a single spilled drop bored a hole into the stone.

He quickly stoppered the vial and placed it somewhere within his cloak before striding out into the darkness of the halls, robes billowing behind him. Once out of sight, he transformed into a Griffin and took off down the corridors until he came to the tower staircase and simply dived over the rails, spreading his wings and gliding into the entrance hall.

Out of the range of the hospital wing anti-apparition wards, Harry transformed and vanished silently, returning to the site of the battle. It took less than an hour of discussion with a local barman to find out that the Dark Lord and his henchmen were all dead with most of his minions dead or injured and captured. Already tired, he quickly bought a room for what was left of the night and collapsed into the rough warmth of the bed.

He was awake earlier the next morning, despite aching limbs and a splitting headache. Knowing the leach on his magic that trans-continental apparition was, he once more took the form of Fawkes and vanished in a burst of flame, appearing in the Entrance Hall.

After adjusting his appearance slightly by tying back his hair and applying a very powerful cleaning charm to his armour and clothes, Harry strode into the Great Hall, a pair of swords on his hip, a single dagger visibly protruding from his right boot and several more in sheaths on his waist with a small belt of throwing knives on the edge of his cloak where it was clasped to his left chest.

"Arlyss!" Godric called out happily; "You finally see fit to grace us with your presence!"

Harry glared at him for a moment with enough venom to petrify a basilisk before sighing slightly and visibly tiring before his eyes;

"I've been a bit unavailable Godric. You're lucky I was still alive enough to apparate here." he commented as he went round the head table and sank into an offered chair.

"Do you mind telling me why you came in with strong traces of dark magic, a sword wound, many broken ribs, both front and back and other internal injuries, a dislocated shoulder, cut muscles in your left leg and a blood-coated dagger clutched in your hand?" he enquired of Harry.

"The first is simple Godric. I use dark magic as it is the strongest branch of magic and best for using on evil wizards. Differentiate between dark and evil. The rest are also fairly easy to answer, the sword wound resulted in the cut muscles and a powerful blasting curse sent me into a hillock rather firmly, probably causing the broken ribs, dislocated shoulder and internal injuries." Harry replied as he reached for a pitcher of mead.

"And the dagger?" prodded Godric.

"I got myself a Dark Lord and his minions. Mind though, the Italian Dark Lords are far more powerful than the weak ones you get over here in Britain." Harry continued after he took a gulp of the honey liquor.

"Indeed... You up to teaching today?" Godric asked.

Half an hour later and Harry was sat at the back of a vaulted room with a slightly raised stage at one end and a duelling piste down the centre. He watched from under a disillusionment charm as the students filed in. Godric was sat with him, also concealed from the eyes of the students.

Once they had all arrived, Harry dropped lightly to the floor and removed his disillusionment charm. Almost immediately, a fan of crimson stunning spells hurtled across the classroom, each spell carefully moderated as not to cause internal injuries or act as a cross between a stunning spell and a bludgeoning hex. Within five seconds, all of the students were slumped on their desks, unconscious.

Harry smirked as he made his way to the stage and conjured himself a training dummy and then cloned it until there were dozens lined up against the wall. He then cast a room-wide rennervate spell to awake the students.

"Okay, completely useless. I was simply sat at the back under a disillusionment charm which leaves a very slight shimmer in the air, always keep a look out for that spell as it is both extremely useful and somewhat flawed." Harry commented; "I am Professor Arlyss Wulfric, or as I would prefer, simply Professor Arlyss. I've been asked to teach you to defend yourselves, so if I ever hear of you using the spells I teach to do anything save defend yourselves, I will personally hunt you down and kill you."

He then demonstrated the disarming, binding, petrification and stunning spells along with the bludgeoning and piercing hexes and the moderate cutting, fire and blasting curses on the training dummies.

Over the next few years, Harry became a beloved teacher, due to the fact that half of the students remember the two occasions he fought at Hogwarts. He was also well-liked due to his sarcastic sense of humour, biting comments and dislike of the resident school snobs.

The one occasion that someone had doubted his power and skill, they'd ended up losing a duel after Harry petrified them, painted them pink, stuck them to the ceiling, bound them in ropes and transfigured them into a duck. That had gone down well as the entire student body heard of the event and the antagonist found himself subject to school-wide derision.

Harry had also continued on his disposal of Dark Lords across Europe, gaining himself prestige, money and most valuable of all- knowledge. Numerous hideouts contained both the lowest rubbish and the rarest and most valuable dissertations on magic. Unfortunately, the revelation that he was putting together his own set of personal set of spellbooks had people pounding on his door in an attempt to gain copies when he decided that only Philippa Ravenclaw, Godric and Helga would have access to his spells.

He was sat at the desk in the study of his expansive quarters, scanning yet another demand for control of the school from the Wizard's Council and considering what jinxes to apply to the return message when Philippa walked in, dressed in a simple dress in dark blue with a girdle belt. Instead of the rather adolescent looks she had, the Ravenclaw heiress had grown into a quite beautiful young woman, yet was still continuing to deny the numerous marriage offers pressed on her.

"Morning Pippa." Harry commented, wincing slightly as he stretched and his latest injuries twinged.

"Hello Harry." said Philippa, using the shortened nickname; "Where have you been over the last few days?"

"Hunting." Harry replied simply.

"Do you have to go out there and come back injured so often?" she asked softly;

"I do. Otherwise, who will stop these lunatics massacring the people, who'll save those unable to defend themselves? Most of all, who'll stop the disease spreading?" Harry answered.

He was slightly saddened to see a lone tear sliding down one of Philippa's cheeks as he slowly put down the parchment and gazed into her eyes, begging her to understand as she sat on the edge of the desk next to him.

"Pippa, without my actions continuing, these Dark Lords will have free reign to murder, rape and pillage with impunity. I cannot allow that." he continued softly.

"I'm sorry Harry, I just can't lose you. Uncle Salazar, cousin Oswald, my little sister Helena, my mother have all died. I just don't want you to go out one day and never return." she whispered tensely.

'How could he respond to that. Over two years, he'd grown close to Pippa as she'd dealt with the crippling loss to the founding family, leaving just her, Helga and Godric' Harry asked himself

The next moment, the beautiful Ravenclaw heiress was straddling his lap, arms wrapped around him and lips locked against his own.

'Ye gods I am good. Tears to snogging in one sentence.' Harry thought before returning his mind to the young woman wrapped around him.

Over the next year, Harry and Philippa's relationship flourished, as they already were close, the two were often described as two different manifestations of the same soul. They didn't realise that amongst Harry's rituals was a copy of the soul-bonding ritual which gave them access to the other's magical core, any inherited skills such as parseltongue and even the effects of Riddle's device, the Chronos' Watch were copied. However, great upheaval was just around the horizon.

"Master Arlyss, Milady Philippa, I have been asked to call you to Lord Gryffindor's chambers." came a muffled voice from beyond the heavy oak door.

Harry was lying on a long sofa, eyes closed, his head in Philippa's lap, one of her hands being gently run through his hair.

"Aye, I'll be up soon." Harry called.

Godric had been slowly declining into ill-health over the last half-a-decade and it had become worse over the last winter. Despite the onset and passing of spring, he continued to fall further into ill-health. Helga had left a few months before, saying that she couldn't bear to be the last founder, couldn't have Hogwarts without one of her brothers and sister.

When the couple entered into the Gryffin's Tower chambers which Godric occupied, they could easily see the man was dying. He was pale, almost as pale as his long-turned-grey beard.

"Arlyss... Pippa... Glad you could make it. Arlyss, look after Philippa, she is a daughter to me. Philippa, Arlyss is a hero but also a man, don't hesitate to point out his mistakes, don't worship him but love him." Godric whispered tiredly; "Arlyss, in the top drawer of my desk is are four rings and a set of deeds, giving you and you alone power over Hogwarts and I want you to bear my sword. Now go, the nurse won't let me drink, so I want you two to get drunk for me. Spend the next few days plastered in my honour."

The elderly man then relaxed back and closed his eyes before slowly relaxing into the peaceful embrace of death. Harry, who had been a great friend to Godric simply locked down his emotions, though not before a single tear wound its way down his face. Philippa however, despite incredible mental control, wept for the man who proclaimed her as a daughter to him. Harry pulled her into an embrace, nuzzling her hair as she cried into his shoulder.

Eventually the couple made their way down to the Great Hall where the staff and students were assembled, Harry having taken the four founders' rings. They silently swept to the Head Table. Harry conjured a black sheet over Godric's throne-like chair before standing up on the raised dais, alongside the great owl lectern, a goblet of mead in one hand.

"A toast, to the late Godric Gryffindor!" he called out.

After a moment, the toast was taken in a resounding manner, nearly every student and staff-member standing and drinking in honour of the founder.

Despite the fact that he held control over Hogwarts Castle itself and its wards, Harry held a staff meeting to elect a headmaster. However, the result was the same, after Philippa refused nomination for the position, Harry was unanimously elected as the first Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Over the period of several years, he ruthlessly stamped out any discrimination, bullying and pureblood superiority in the school while at the same time encouraging practical knowledge. Under him, often the muggleborn who were hated in their own homes were brought to Hogwarts early. Indeed, an entire wing of the school was constructed and staff employed to take care of and teach those not old enough to participate in regular Hogwarts life.

The few attacks by both muggle mobs and dark wizards on Hogwarts were foiled with brutality, the Dragon Mage tearing a bloody swathe through any attacking army in such a way that they were dissuaded from ever attacking again should any survive to tell the tale of their defeat.

Shortly after Gryffindor's death, Harry and Philippa were 'officially' married as the soul-bonding ritual was an unrecognised form of marriage. During the decade since the soul-bonding ritual, neither grew old, though Harry had used the Chronos' Watch to age himself to around twenty so as not to appear as a 'pubescent teenager'.

Unfortunately, all was not well on the political front.

A man in the grey and red robes of the Albion Wizard's Council, with a very short cape over his shoulders, a chain of office and a justiciar's hat strode into the Entrance Hall of Hogwarts Castle.

"Can we help you?" asked a teacher.

"Yes, I'm here to inform the Headmaster that this school has come under the jurisdiction of the Wizard's Council and we'll be taking over in the next week, so he'll no longer be needed." pompously stated the councillor.

"I think not." came a soft voice from behind them.

The two wheeled around to see a young man wearing a long, hooded doublet, breeches, basilisk hide boots, vambraces and a gleaming steel cuirass striding down the staircase, a beautiful woman on his arm.

"You have no option." replied the politician.

"Do I have an option Pippa love?" Harry asked, turning to his wife.

"My dear husband, you were left this land by Gryffindor and have complete control over the wards and as you have done for a decade. I'll stand by your side and defend this castle with my life." Pippa replied.

"Any attempt to compromise the autonomy of these lands is an attack on me. As Lord of the land, I am well within my rights and happy to exterminate any attacking force before reprising with equal force." Harry continued softly; "I doubt you want a Grand Sorcerer, Master Warlock and High Magus coming down on your ancestral lands. As the Dragon Mage, I have killed more Dark Lords than most people have seen Dark Lords."

"N-n-no Lord Wulfric." stammered the politician.

"Excellent, we have an accord." Harry commented just as softly; "I will take any more attacks on Hogwarts' autonomy as an attack on myself and my wife and there is a reason I am called the Dragon Mage. Now go before I have Slytherin's basilisk run you out of the castle and let it be recorded that the first and last attempt to take over Hogwarts by the Council was in 1005 Anno Domini."

"Yes my Lord." nodded the scribe.

"Now get out!" Harry ordered.

Then, the viewers were thrown out of the Pensieve and into the circular Headmaster's office.

"Where did you find this memory Miss Granger?" asked Dumbledore.

"In the Chamber of Secrets;" Hermione replied; "I conjured a snake and confounded it to hiss 'open'. It was under a millennium Fidelius if the residue is anything to go by."

"Someone wanted it to be hidden or found at a specific time..." mused Dumbledore.

"I also found in Slytherin's workshop the instructions for a temporal ritual. It requires an energy crystal be charged for exactly the same number of minutes as years you want to go back. It also requires pure intentions, so if Voldemort were to want to go back and restart his reign of terror, it wouldn't work. It's a fairly simple ritual which requires the symbolic sacrifice of blood mixed and burning heather." Hermione continued.

A quick Patronus message had the rest of the New Golden Trio, the two youngest Weasleys in the office.

"Sir, you've found something?" asked Ron the moment he entered, followed by and Ginny.

They were silently directed to the Pensieve by Dumbledore. A minute later they emerged, Ron grinning in pride and Ginny looked disappointed, likely because the boy-who-lived was unavailable.

"What did those titles mean?" asked Hermione.

"The titles my dear... A Grand Sorcerer is someone who has defeated a Dark Lord, as I did with Gellert Grindelwald, a High Magus is the highest echelon of magical power, that was last known to have been occupied by Myrddin Emrys. A Master Warlock is someone who has complete and perfect control over their magic and can fine tune spells and the amount of power in them. I believe that the title of Lord Wulfric is either that of a peer of the realm or a self-given title." Dumbledore replied.

"We also found a copy of a temporal ritual which carries someone into the past." added Hermione, passing round the sheet of parchment specifying the requirements for the ritual.

None noticed as she applied a Geminio charm and took her own copy of the ritual specifications.

Harry was once more simply relaxing in the embrace of his wife when the Floo in his sitting room burst into green flames and a head appeared in the grate.

"Attack on Diagon Alley my Lord!" called out the person on the Floo.

Harry scrambled up from his place with his head in Philippa's lap and summoned his basilisk hide armour, the hide-lined cuirass and a great helmet.

"Take care love." whispered Philippa.

"You know I will Pippa." Harry said as he kissed her.

A switching spell later and Harry was clad in a black, hooded tunic with his steel and basilisk hide cuirass on top, basilisk hide boots and vambraces visible. The hood of his tunic rested over the silvery metal of his great helmet.

A moment later, he disapparated to Diagon Alley to find it swamped in crimson-robed wizards firing bolts of black-tinged red lightning around.

"Blood mages." Harry hissed angrily.

Vaulting over a collapsed stand, he threw a trident-piercing curse straight ahead into the mob of blood mages. Summoning one of the supporting beams of a derelict shop, he collapsed the frontage into the alley as a chainsaw curse tore through another dark wizard.

Harry quickly turned a patch of the Alley into quicksand and fired a powerful lightning bolt into the semi-liquid substance before transfiguring it back into it's original state, entombing dozens of electrocuted blood mages.

Just as he was stepping forward, a person stepped up to his side, wearing his spare set of basilisk hide armour, coppery-brown hair peeking out from the hood.

"Pippa! If you get hurt..." Harry called.

She simply fired off a blasting curse into the centre of a group, sending them flying from the fountain of mud and stone. Acting as a single unit, the couple strode forward in a blaze of curses, not withholding any lethality. Harry drew a second wand and charged the 'Gladio' spell, creating an invisible sword on each wand.

A vicious horizontal slash left a wizard writhing on the ground, two deep cuts carved into his abdomen. Continuing forward, Philippa fired off obliteration curses at a speed that nobody save her husband could rival. Harry continued dispatching opponents with the sword curses.

"Heroes in our midst..." called the leader of the blood mages.

"Nay, not heroes;" Harry replied; "People who fight where others can't or won't."

Cancelling the sword curse, he countered a cutting curse and replied with a much more powerful cutting curse before stepping back a few feet and lowering his wand from the en garde. Moments later it was up again in a blur, sending off three cutting curses and a bone-exploding curse.

He watched in satisfaction as his target's left arm was reduced to a bloody mess of bone-shards and flayed flesh at the elbow. Turning away for a moment, Harry fired off a pair of killing curses before wheeling around and countering a bloodfire curse and responding with a conjured spear which was quickly vanished.

A jet of green flames of Greek Fire splashed across the battlefield from Harry, the oily fire burning everywhere it landed. Unfortunately, the flames were redirected around his target. The two began to trade blows with sword curses, sometimes channelling spells through the invisible blades, rendering them momentarily visible.

Eventually, Harry used a shredding hex on the blood mage's wand and reduced it into sawdust before removing his head with a decapitation curse followed by a gouging curse to the chest and as the leader died in a spray of blood, the few remaining blood mages collapsed limply to the ground.

Pushing back his hood, Harry pulled off his helmet and shrank it to the size of a thimble before putting it in one of the pouches hanging from his belt. Stepping over the numerous bodies, Harry made his way to his wife and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a brief but passionate kiss.

"You okay love?" he whispered.

"I'm fine Harry, I've learnt as much as I can from you and can hold my own in a fight." Pippa replied as Harry wrapped an arm around her waist.

Around them, the crowds had begun to gather and were once again chanting loudly;

"Draco magus! Draco magus!"

"For heaven's sake, if they just lined up and fired blasting curses at anyone who tried attacking, life would be some much easier for me." Harry whispered venomously.

As they turned to make their way to the apparition point, three people broke ranks from the crowd and rushed toward them. Harry erected an invisible shield before disapparating with Philippa.

Half an hour later, Harry was sat in his study when someone tapped on the door.

"Yes?" he barked.

"Lord Wulfric, three visitors who speak a dialect I don't recognise or understand. What little I could understand was that they wish to speak to you." called the voice on the other side of the door.

"Send them in..."

The deputy headmaster, Athelstan of Grimsby held the door open and three people entered. Three very unexpected people. However, Harry merely raised an eyebrow in surprise before noting his Deputy was still there awaiting dismissal.

"You may go Athelstan." Harry said, waiting until he'd left. Switching to slightly clipped, lilting modern English, he continued; "Well, I must say this is rather unexpected."

Arrayed before his desk like students being reprimanded were his old friends Hermione and Ron along with the latter's sister.

"I was unaware there were any Temporal Mages capable of millennium travel with any level of accuracy..." Harry commented.

"We found a simple ritual requiring an energy crystal charged for the same number of minutes as years we wanted to travel back. It then required mixing blood with burning heather and the travellers to be sat within a pentagram." Hermione replied hesitantly.

Harry froze in horror. That ritual had some nasty side effects which was why he'd locked away the copies in Salazar's workshop off the Chamber of Secrets. He then swore briefly in Hebrew as he dropped his head into his hands.

"I locked away the only copy of that ritual's instructions because you had one chance in every fifty of it going right. You then had forty nine in every fifty of it going wrong either by dismemberment or organ liquefying. You then had twenty-four chances in every fifty of both being dismembered or having your organs liquefied. With three of you, I am immensely surprised that you are all still alive." Harry deadpanned; "Not that it's bad to see you."

He rose from his chair and pulled each of them into a firm hug, making eye contact and quickly sliding into their minds. It was the work of a moment to insert the current language of most of Britain. It would be necessary if they were intending on staying.

"Wulfric!"

A house elf appeared, dressed in a chainmail hauberk with a throwing axe strapped to his back like it was a great Dane Axe.

"Master Arlyss calls?"

"Could you bring supper for five to my dining room please Wulfric." Harry said, reverting to Anglo-Saxon.

The elf vanished with a slight pop leaving Harry shaking his head in amusement.

"Before anyone complains about elven enslavement, they require a master or will die of magic deprivation." Harry commented as Hermione opened her mouth; "I'll be back in a minute."

He then stood up and vanished in a swirl of magic. It took only a few moments of standing with his hand on the central wardstone for him to find Pippa in his private library. He apparated up to the library and updated her on the unusual visitors before walking through from the library to the dining room as a bell rang.

"Come through!" Harry called, wandlessly banishing the door to his study open.

As the three trooped through, they gaped at the room, with a glossy varnished table in the centre, a huge stone fireplace in one o the walls and an opening onto a balcony overlooking the grounds down to the gates. Finally, there were a few swords hung on the walls and a tapestry on the wall around the door to his library.

"Hermione, Ginny, Ron, meet my wife of around a decade, Philippa Wulfric, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw. Pippa, old friends of mine from a time long vacated, Hermione Granger, Ron and Ginny Weasley."

Partway through supper, the Floo in Harry's study roared to life. A minute later, he returned to the table, this time dressed in his battlerobes and basilisk lined cuirass.

"Hogsmeade has been razed to the ground, the Black Order is marching on the castle." he said softly.

"What are you going to do? The Order is much more powerful and has numbers beyond anything we have fought before." Pippa whispered in horror.

"I'm going to show them why this castle is more than a palatial building but a fortress in it's own right. I'm going to kill every last member of that Order that I can and if I die, so be it." he replied, not realising that he was speaking in Arabic.

As he drew one of the swords off the wall and swung it experimentally before conjuring a sheath, Hermione asked;

"What's going on Harry?"

He sighed before replying; "You came in the middle of a war which has been raging for decades. The Black Order are responsible for every Dark Lord I have killed in the last decade. They were simply powerful pawns for a much worse and far more powerful group. Now I'm going to activate the war wards, siege wards, reactive defences, standard defences. I'll probably let the basilisk loose in the castle as well. Then I may use the offensive wards under my control."

As he spoke, a suit of armour in one of the corners held a mirror out at torso-level, displaying the grounds from a point high above the castle.

"We've got half-an-hour. Pippa, I want you to get the students, these three and anyone else useless in combat to the Chamber and while you're at it, release the basilisk. I'm going to call in a few favours I'm owed."

"We'll fight!" said Ron.

"Very well. If you can use the Greater Elemental Curses, basic Dark Arts or if you are proficient in Battle Magic then you may stay and fight. Otherwise you will obey my orders as commander of a besieged fortress." Harry said in a steely tone.

"At least let us stay up here and observe!" begged Hermione; "I've got nothing to loose, my parents were killed by Greyback just days ago."

"Against my better judgement you may stay here." Harry conceded before vanishing in a blast of flames.

Ten minutes later, he appeared in the room with a group of people in the room which quickly expanded itself to fit them. Gesturing forward a tall man with battleship-grey hair in a ponytail and a goatee, Harry introduced them;

"This is Myrddin Emrys, one of my former pupils, a Slytherin and founder of the Order of the Merlin. He's brought a dozen of his best Battle Mages to assist us. Myrddin, you remember Philippa Ravenclaw, now my wife. Speaking of wives, how's your love life?"

"Good to see you too Professor Wulfric. Both of you. In response to your question Arlyss, Morgana's fine, though when she's at that time of the month, she puts most Dark Lords to shame." replied the man good-naturedly; "You still writing those books?"

"Yep. Got five on Dark Arts, two on Defence Against the Dark Arts, one on Temporal Magic, five on swordsmanship from around the world, one on Battle Magic, two on Battle Transfiguration, two on Wards and Enchantments. They are in the library, I'll show you them at some point." Harry replied.

He nodded to each of Myrddin's Battle Mages before striding out onto his balcony, placing the mirror showing the Hogwarts grounds on the balustrade of the balcony. Harry then enlarged his great helmet and pulled it over his head before sticking the hood of his tunic to it with a sticking charm.

"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus eh?" commented Myrddin.

"You know as well as I do what these people are responsible for and capable of Myrddin. This dragon is not just tickled but extraordinarily enraged. Especially when the Black Order is attacking his home." Harry responded from under his helmet.

Swiping his wand down the mirror, Harry deactivated several modified Fidelius charms, revealing low, thick curtain walls with circular towers a long way below the seventh floor that they occupied. As he rapidly tapped the mirror, a spherical shield began to appear around the fortress, enveloping the entire grounds. Then raising his wand to the heavens, Harry began to push pure magic into the wards, channelling it from the ley lines.

After a few minutes, he lowered his wand and holstered it, simply laying his gauntleted hands on the balustrade and looking out over the grounds as the evening mists encompassed them.

"Why didn't you try to return to us?" asked Hermione as she walked up behind him.

"Hermione, several reasons. Were any of you in the position of being stuck in the past, how would you try to escape the situation?" Harry responded with a question.

"Ask your equivalent of Professor Dumbledore of course!" stated Ron as he walked over; "It's obvious isn't it?"

"And Ron, who is the Dumbledore of this day and age?" replied Harry exasperatedly; "Hint, he is married to Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter Philippa."

"Oh..."

"Secondly, I am probably the most knowledgeable time mage but frankly, travelling to the future is far harder than travelling to the past. I've done so many experiments on the subject. Thirdly, after a while I gave up. I have a life, a nym-... a beautiful wife, a job. Then there are all the Dark Lords in Europe. I'm doing them in at a usual rate of one per month." Harry commented, turning to gaze and his old friends.

Hermione gasped upon seeing the glossy full-helm with gold edgings on the eye-slits and a long diagonal scar gouged into the metal.

"That was you in the alley earlier." she stated.

Harry simply nodded before returning his gaze to the land immediately in front of him.

"I'm the one known as the Dragon Mage. Frankly I wish you hadn't been there as it was a pretty bloody fight. Not as bad as some I've been through. One occasion I nearly submitted to the Dark Arts when I was fighting in the Alley. Seeing a young girl, less than ten years old being tortured nearly sent me over the edge." he sighed.

After nearly ten minutes of silence, Harry called out;

"Mindy!"

A small elf dressed in a forest-green dress appeared.

"Yes Lord Wulfric?" she asked.

"Run my battle standard up on all the towers. I want these bastards to know who killed them." Harry ordered in a soft but deadly voice; "No quarter. No mercy. Either they fall or we fall."

The mage looking over the maps of the lands around them called out;

"They're in range my lord."

"One volley. Fire!" Harry barked.

The castle shook as clouds of smoke billowed from many of the towers and ramparts.

"Just because the muggle world don't gain cannon artillery for centuries doesn't mean I don't use it." Harry commented to Hermione.

Flashes of light and soft thundering noises pierced the veil of the mists that concealed their attackers, a veil their eyes could not penetrate.

"Ships coming in by the lake my lord!" called out the map-watching mage.

"Release the kraken!" Harry ordered; "Bombards in range yet?"

"Aye my lord."

"Begin continuous volleying. Other artillery hold fire and stop calling me 'my lord', Wulfric will do." Harry replied.

"Their longboats have been sunk and the bombards are hitting their lines."

"Excellent. When they get over the pits, drop them in them. Is the pulse device ready?" he asked.

"It's charging. A group having entered the first inactive ward-scheme sir."

"The moment it's charged, I want it on offence." responded Harry; "Activate the shredder ward!" he looked on in grim satisfaction as the people within the shredder ward looked like they were forced through a blender.

Five minutes later and despite the continuous thunder of the bombards, the quiet was eerie. It was then that Harry saw a massive group approaching the southern curtain wall.

"South wall artillery volley FIRE!" Harry barked; "South Eastern and South Western Tower fire-projecters fire!"

The thick southern wall was encased in smoke as cannon upon cannon fired while two massive lances of cursed fire streaked from the two towers. Then massive bolts of lightning started pulsing from the highest tower, viciously arcing down into the misty and smoky battlefield. After an hour of this, finally they had something to cheer over.

"They are withdrawing my lord!" called the mage pouring over the maps.

"It's not permanent. Continue bombardment until they are out of range." Harry spat; "Are any within range of the fire curtain?"

"Two groups, one on the south side, one approaching the south-western tower." he reported.

"Activate southern fire curtain! Activate ward-scheme five lightning ward!" ordered Harry.

A wall of fire sprang up, those trapped in it burnt to death as it closed in on them, or if they were lucky, fried by dozens of crackling bolts of lightning blasting out of the wards into the ground.

For two weeks, though there were few outright assaults on the castle as there had been on the first day of the siege, the inhabitants of Hogwarts were becoming restless. Harry and Pippa were taking command over the fortress in twelve hour shifts, something that immensely annoyed them both no end as they enjoyed having time together without the other being asleep.

Harry lead numerous sorties outside the walls with Myrddin's mages and inflicted heavy damage on the Black Order, who despite having many immensely powerful dark wizards, also were made up of lots of thuggish cannon-fodder.

Collapsing into a chair at his table opposite Myrddin, Harry didn't even spare a glance for the food but simply dropped his head in his arms.

"If we get through this, you, my old mentor, are going to join the Order. Nobody has done as much for the fight against darkness than you." Myrddin commented.

"I'm not old." Harry protested; "Anyway, bit hypocritical, I'm a darker wizard than most dark wizards you kill. Though I've always taught my students to differentiate between dark and evil."

"Hmmph. You got that message across in your first lesson by levitating that conjured puppy and beating it to death against the wall then using the dark slicing curse to cut up your lunch." Myrddin agreed; "Have you seen your young friend Hermione?"

"I have indeed. She's rather taken with one of your mages, Lance du Lac." answered Harry snappily; "Now shut up."

Within moments, Harry was asleep at the table, his scarred armour sat on the chair next to him, wand still clutched in one hand and his head resting on his folded arms.

A few hours later, the castle was rocked with a huge explosion as the Black Order launched an all-out assault, breaching the south wall. Harry leapt from his chair and used a switching spell to armour himself, a sobering charm to wake himself up properly and a cleaning charm to clean his body, his clothes and armour.

Suddenly, he had an epiphany.

"Pippa, get Ron and Ginny in here!" he yelled as he began carving a rune-series in the clean walls of an empty chamber off the war room.

Summoning a magically-charged crystal, he drew a small amount of power off it so that a specific quantity remained.

"You wanted to see us headmaster?" said Ginny who had got used to Harry being the headmaster of Hogwarts.

"Aye, Hermione wants to stay... forgive me... and tell them my last stand was worthy of the Spartans." he said sorrowfully before activating the runes and smashing the crystal on the floor and slamming the door shut behind him.

Chuckling sadly, Harry strode through his rooms, packing everything he could take should he survive Hogwarts' fall, though hopefully someone would re-found the school, a phoenix from the ashes... after all, Hogwarts, albeit a very different one, existed in his former home time.

Picking up a hand-and-a-half sword, his favoured war-sword, he twirled it easily in one hand. The basilisk-venom imbued blade with a double-fuller, alchemical steel crossguard, dragon-leather grip and elder and Chimera hair, fur and scale wand hidden in the grip swung end over end with remarkable balance for such a large blade.

Still chuckling, he directed the few remaining wards to transport Hermione to the Chamber of Secrets just as Pippa strode in. Her beautiful features were a mask of steel, emotionless. A scarred cuirass over her torso and patches of basilisk hide and chainmail all over her body, having dispensed with their robes, it was now just armour, even going so far as to be wearing a pair of shrunken trousers taken from Harry. On a second thought, Harry mentally activated the Portkeys he'd planted on Lance and Hermione, sending them to a manor in the south where they'd be safe before locking Myrddin in the Chamber of Secrets with a copy of the hourglass and Helga's ring.

Slung at her side was Godric's sword and Rowena's dagger while Salazar's hair ring held her hair back in a ponytail. Helga's black sash was strapped around her waist as they walked through the door, ready to make their last stand.

Swearing loudly, Ron plummeted onto the grass outside Hogwarts, a quick cushioning charm combined with to decelerating charms taught to them by Harry stopped himself and his sister from significant injury.

Lying on the grass momentarily fuming over his former best friend's actions, he heard sobbing from next to him.

"What is it Gin?" he asked.

"Did you hear Harry's last sentence?" she sobbed.

"Something about Spartans." Ron replied confusedly.

"Hermione once told me of a time when three hundred Spartan warriors fought hundreds of thousands of Persian soldiers and killed thousands before being overwhelmed." Ginny continued sobbing; "Harry didn't expect to survive the fight, which is why he sent us away."

Suddenly, Ron's throat felt very constricted as he stood up and moved toward the castle in a dazed manner, not really noting the differences from the war-torn fortress to the somewhat palatial castle which stood there now.

There was a rush of flames and Dumbledore was stood between them and the castle, Fawkes on his shoulder.

"Miss and Mister Weasley, you've been missing for a week." he said sternly.

"I think we need to speak in your office." said Ginny, chocking back the sobs.

Looking at her strangely, Dumbledore nodded and had Fawkes flame them up to his office where they sat down in conjured armchairs.

"Do you want to talk or shall I ask questions and you answer them?"

"We got a copy of the time ritual... and performed it. It worked, though according to its maker, we had a forty-nine in fifty chance of organ liquification or dismemberment. We managed to find Harry but the school was under siege by an army called the 'Black Order'. I'll be having nightmares about it, the battles were brutal, bloody, the wards frying and ripping people to shreds. Harry, Pippa and Myrddin led attacks out of the castle, decimating the order. In the end, Hogwarts was breached and Harry surprised us and forcibly sent us forward in time informing us that Hermione wanted to stay and telling us to tell you that his last stand was 'worthy of the Spartans'." Ginny said sadly, tears rolling down her cheeks as she went over two weeks of memories.

Sweeping through the corridors, Harry and Pippa cursed every entrance, enchanted every stone, each one bearing a spell fatal to a dark wizard. The students had been Portkeyed to Grimsby Manor, Athelstan's home, now, Hogwarts was bare of the usual trappings of books and blades.

Under disillusionment charms, they climbed out of a secret passage and hit the rear of the enemy. Harry's massively overpowered piercing hex took five wizards out, drilling a fist-sized hole through their torsos. Pippa slit the back of ones' neck with her mother's dagger, embedded it in the lower spine of a second before hurling it through the throat of a third before summoning it back, through the chest of a fourth.

Melting back into the stone, Harry's eyes glinted slightly as they utilised one of the greatest magics they knew. The wardstone of Hogwarts drew off the ley lines below the school, hidden in a hidden vault, secreted beyond the hidden chambers off the Chamber of Secrets. As both of them held access to the wards, they could briefly become at one with the castle, melting into the walls and emerging elsewhere.

They found another squad, quickly sealing them into a room. Placing his wand through the lock, Pippa whispered;

"Ater Ignis!"

The Fiendfyre poured through the lock and engulfed the room for thirty seconds before she pulled back the magic and walked onward. The vaulted ceiling came crashing down into the Great Hall as hundreds of dark wizards swarmed in, crushed beneath the rock and beams.

For three days running, neither Harry nor his wife slept as they constantly harried the enemy through the castle. The well was poisoned, the cloister burnt to the ground, rocks flew through windows, teams sometimes simply vanished, fed to Salazar's basilisk. Others were found mutilated with blades and dark magic in the corridors where blood ran across the stones.

Finally, at the end of the third day, Pippa and Harry found themselves cornered, surrounded by around a thousand dark wizards as they tried to leave the grounds.

"So ends Wulfric. Wolf's power dies as the sun sets." drawled their leader.

Harry pulled off his great helmet and flung it at the leader, tiredness in every movement he made. Underneath, his skin was pale and his eyes no longer had the twinkle usually contained in the emerald orbs, now they were tired, darkened but with a slight undercurrent of fire.

He smiled sadly at Pippa, an expression returned. Drawing her into a kiss, they both simultaneously cascaded the last defences and turned the land into a fireball. The last thing either heard was the peaceful song of a phoenix.

"Where do I recognise that sword..." mused Albus Dumbledore aloud, having seen a memory with Harry wielding a sword he was familiar with.

Suddenly, his face lit up and he raced past the Weasleys and threw a handful of floo powder into the fire.

"Domus Aquila!"

A few minutes later, Dumbledore withdrew from the fireplace and after a moment, two figures stepped out. The first was a man, clad in a Hawaiian t-shirt, shorts and sandals had greying hair pulled back in a short ponytail and a moustache and goatee. The second was a woman with piercing grey eyes and blonde hair, clad in a tank top, tight jeans and sandals.

"What is it Albus, I received an alert from our wards that you were trying to get hold of us. We were on my yacht in Hawaii." complained the woman.

"My apologies Perenelle." said Albus.

"Don't bully young Albus." chided the man; "He's probably scared enough of you... We'll help him with whatever mess he's stuck in this time and head back to the ship."

"What year is it even?" Perenelle asked with a frown.

Nicholas flicked his hand and produced a 'Tempus' spell, displaying the date before sitting down on thin air, a chair materialising below him.

"You're the Flamels?" said Ginny suddenly.

"Amongst other identities." Nicholas replied.

"Oh?" said Albus curiously, looking to his former mentor who was juggling three philosopher's stones with his eyes closed.

"I got the name Nicholas from the fact I often distributed gifts around my village before we moved to Paris." shrugged Nicholas.

"From St. Nicholas, your Father Christmas." explained Perenelle; "The Flamel came from spending most of the thirteenth century obsessing with fire. Pyromaniac."

"I thought you were born in the fourteenth century?" asked Albus.

"Nicholas Flamel as an identity was... I'll require an oath never to share the events during this conversation with anyone or anything without my explicit and willing permission." Nicholas said sternly, offset by the constant juggling of large red gems.

After the oaths were given, Harry and Pippa dropped the glamour charms and returned to their usual appearance of a twenty-year-old couple. One with long black hair lying in waves down to his lower neck and a recognisable facial structure, though with a black goatee and moustache, complete with emerald green eyes that made him look both young and timelessly old. Pippa returned to her appearance, piercing sapphire blue eyes and long coppery-brown hair lying in soft waves to half-way down her back.

"Nicholas Ares Flamel, formerly known as Arlyss Wulfric, formerly known as Harry Potter and my wife, Philippa." Harry introduced himself as Pippa sat down on his lap.

"How- what Harry? Nicholas?" stuttered Dumbledore.

"I'll stick with Nicholas, I've been using the name for six and a half centuries." Harry shrugged; "But essentially, after I sent Ron and Ginny forward in time, Portkeyed Lance and Hermione to one of my manors and locked Myrddin and his little order in the Chamber of Secrets, Pippa and I went on a three-day murderous rampage. We demolished the Great Hall on day one, burnt down the cloister on day two and collapsed the Astronomy Tower on day three as well as annihilating Hogwarts castle down to ground level at the end of day three."

"How did you escape?" asked Ron.

"We didn't exactly... Harry and I were pretty badly injured, magically exhausted and physically exhausted on the end of the third day. We ended up destroying Hogwarts in its entirety, levelled to the ground though the dungeons and Uncle Sal's Chamber survived. It turns out that Harry had a Phoenix familiar that not even he knew about... It took about three years for us to fully heal from blowing up the castle and ourselves and even longer to get over what you call post-traumatic stress nowadays." replied Pippa; "We didn't return to Hogwarts for a few centuries... too many bad memories. Instead we travelled the world a bit, killed a few hundred dark lords and lived our lives."

"Luckily Godric, Salazar and Rowena's graves survived the fall, as did Salazar's basilisk. Unfortunately I believe our pet kraken was killed in the siege." Harry added as he returned the glamour charms over both himself and Pippa, though they both still saw each-other's real appearance.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to teach defence Nicholas, I don't know how much you've taught before..." Albus requested; "The Ministry is trying to press one of their flunkies on us..."

"I've taught transfiguration, history, potions, alchemy, charms, duelling, battle magic, Animagus magic, dark arts, defence, combat magic, astronomy, herbology, enchanting, weapon forging, economics, curse-breaking and warding. All at Hogwarts." Harry replied; "I don't see why not, though I'd like Pippa to hold joint professor-ship. It's what, a week until term starts."

"Yes Nicholas, I assume you can sort out what you're teaching?" said Albus.

"Do you mind me doing what I did in 1527 and bringing a Dementor-in-a-crate into class?" he chuckled.

Dumbledore dropped his head onto his desk.

"You forget 1692 when you used Salazar's basilisk for a demonstration in class." added Pippa.

Harry snorted and extended his arm, a deep red eagle-like phoenix appearing on it and vanishing with them in a column of fire.

"Our defence professor has been unavoidably detained-" began Dumbledore at the opening feast just as a pillar of fire erupted at the bottom end of the Great Hall.

"Not any longer young Albus." chuckled a rich baritone; "The problem was killed and buried."

Harry strode forward in his Nicholas Flamel guise, wearing a red doublet, breeches, green-black basilisk hide boots, his cavalier hat swept with peacock feathers and a long bottle-green cloak was hung from his shoulders. One shoulder was occupied by Arlyss, his Phoenix named after his former persona while his war sword of a thousand years was hung loosely in one hand, blood still coating it while his wand was in his other hand.

On his arm was Pippa with long golden hair cascading down her back in soft waves, piercing grey eyes scanning the students, clad in mid-blue doublet with a belt containing her favoured dagger, beige-brown leggings and boots covered by a long forest-green cloak. As always, she moved lightly on her feet like a hunter. Were there such a person as Alastor Moody around, his senses would be going mad as while Nicholas moved with easy grace and some confidence, his wife moved far stealthier, a predator.

"Former Hogwarts' Headmaster, professor of transfiguration, charms, alchemy, potions, herbology, defence, dark arts, battle magic, history, enchanting, warding and curse-breaking amongst others, I welcome Nicholas Flamel and his wife, Perenelle as co-professors of Defence Against the Dark Arts." Dumbledore boomed.

Harry meanwhile was not even looking at him, but absently cleaning off the blood from his sword with a wandless cleaning charm, before sliding it into the empty sheath on his hip. Glancing up, he pretended to suddenly notice Albus being stood at the head of the hall.

"Sit down young man, this isn't a circus." Harry said with one bushy eyebrow raised as he sat himself in his seat, knowing exactly how to embarrass his ex-student, bringing Dumbledore down from the marble pedestal to remind the students that he was one of them once.

"Thank-you Nicholas." Albus replied sarcastically; "However, I do believe this is the time to say; tuck in!"

Harry very nearly lost it with laughter seeing how Umbridge, the Ministry lackey, was swelling up with indignation. A feather-light Legilimency probe showed that she had intended to use Defence Against the Dark Arts to dumb down the students and control Hogwarts. Dumbledore would be difficult enough to rein in. He, Nicholas Flamel, would be even worse. If they knew his true provenance...

Flashbacks:

Stood deathly still next to their horses by a tall man with short black-hair were two figures. Wearing chainmail under surcoats of plain black, a simple coat of arms consisting of a black dragon wrapped around a sword emblazoned on their cloaks, they were a rather ominous looking ensemble, especially since those cloaks hid their facial features.

"You went too far Harold." muttered one; "Oaths have repercussions... Ones like those that rendered Northern Africa a barren wilderness."

The other was sat on a saddle removed from her horse, happily bouncing a five-year-old girl on her knee, much to the amusement of the surrounding nobles.

A knight, clad in a bare chainmail hauberk and with a nasal-cap helmet rode up.

"Sire, the word is of your death amongst the men, they panic and rout!"

Harry exchanged a glance with Pippa before nodding to the black-haired man stood near them. All three mounted up, Arlyss, his Phoenix watching over Constance. Drawing their swords, there was suddenly a slightly ominous air as the two black-clad figures trotted forward alongside William, Duke of Normandy.

Speeding up to the canter, they bracketed him, riding ever-so-slightly behind William, their black mounts easily keeping up with the white horse of the rightful King of England.

"Behold the king, behold William!" Harry roared as they rode past the slightly disorganized ranks. They picked up an escort of around two hundred cavalry, at which point William cocked his head toward Harry who simply nodded.

Wheeling around, the three leaders raised their swords to head-height and charged. Like a tidal wave, they slammed into the Saxon shield wall, immense momentum shattering the already-fractured defence. With some Saxons having broken ranks to pursue the Norman forces, they were swiftly destroyed in the wake of the charge.

Followed up by infantry and a few volleys of arrows, the shield wall broke, one-on-one fights breaking out between soldiers as Harry, Pippa and William led around twenty knights straight past the Fyrd, rampaging through the Saxon forces to the small contingent of Huscarls surrounding Harold and his brothers.

Harry's sword pierced one through the throat below the helmet's protection but above the chainmail, killing him in less time than it took for the blade to be wrenched out with a sickly sucking noise. Pippa was stood in her stirrups, bringing her sword down viciously, splitting both helmet and skull down half-way to the chin of her opponent before slashing another Huscarl down on her other side. William's horse was prancing, his hooves smashing into men as the man on her back dealt death with a single-handed sword.

Sliding from his horse's back, Harry ducked under an axe-blow, the dealer being disposed of by a thrust from Pippa's blade.

"Which one of them is William!" screamed one Saxon in rage.

Tripping over, Harry arranged for his hood to fall back, his close resemblance to William attracting enemies away from his wife and friend. The one shouting raced at him with an axe raised in a double-handed grip above his head, the downward blow missing as Harry stepped sideways and wandlessly levitated a fallen arrow. The projectile pierced the attacker's eye as he lost his balance and fell on it, followed quickly by a clean thrust into the heart from Harry's sword.

Suddenly, his Legilimency that was running on minimum power was getting a sense of immense panic from around him. Harold Godwinson was struck down by sword and arrow.

"THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!" he roared in Anglo-Saxon before repeating in French; "HAROLD IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING!"

After the conquest, Harry and Pippa had returned to their newly built fortress a little distance from Winchester, not really interacting with the court, though on several occasions Harry went to William and made his displeasure quite clear. Unfortunately, in Harry's view, the ladies of the court tended to be rather infatuated with him, the only one who could scream blue-bloody murder at the king, was known as a vicious swordsman, rich, titled and incredibly handsome. That was probably one of the reasons why he avoided public life.

However, Constance stayed in contact with them, often staying at the castle and learning the way a woman grows from Pippa and learning magic from Harry when she turned out to be magical. When Harry received word of her death not quite three years after William's passing, he flew into a rage. Often, Constance had confided in him and his wife that Alan, Duke of Brittany, her contractually wedded husband was an adulterous rapist, forcing himself on other women, hence her complete refusal to consummate their marriage.

Then he remembered magic. It took a few hours to brew up a draught of living death and a few more to create and activate a short-distance temporal ritual. Over a period of a week, Harry went without sleep or nutrition, instead relying on potions as he kept a weather eye on Constance, and a few magical senses. After a week, he found the poison her husband put in her food and switched it out for the draught of living death. Resisting the urge to kill the duke, he withdrew to the Château he maintained in Brittany.

Two weeks later, after her funeral, during the middle of the night, Harry excavated her coffin and opened it, replacing her body with the polyjuiced corpse of one of his most aged house elves who had passed on just days before. With the grave returned to absolute normality, he apparated across the channel to the castle.

"Harry, is that...?" began Pippa.

"Draught of living death replaced the poison her husband fed her." Harry snarled, still angry over the event. Constance had grown into a beautiful woman with sharp features and golden-blonde hair and a wonderful disposition which had made her at home in the hearts of many, particularly the Wulfrics, (who had abandoned the name in favour of 'Black', the colour they usually wore in public), prompting their fury at the attempted murder.

"I'll get wiggenweld potion to reverse it." Pippa said with a tone which said; 'Having blown up something first'.

Despite Harry's reluctance, the crush that Constance had been harbouring for years became love after six months, having elected to stay 'dead' and stay at the Winchester fortress. It was another six months before they performed the bonding ritual and two became three, Constance finally allowing herself to be taken by a man, having become closed off to all males except Harry after her time with her former husband, becoming nervous even around Harry for a little while.

When the Anarchy came about, they never became involved in what they saw as a civil war, save repelling raids and invasions from the Scots and the Welsh, on occasions leading small armies against them, once again retiring into obscurity when the conflict ended.

Sat astride three of black horses, three figures wearing black robes over surcoats with chainmail cantered into the encampment. Ignoring the calls for them to halt, they finally halted outside the richest tent, one of red with much gold in the trappings.

"Begone Saracen bitch!" barked a voice from inside; "I am expecting visitors."

Chainmail clinking in the heavy heat of the eastern sun, the three loped into the tent with easy grace, once again ignoring the guards on either side of the entrance. Seeing the rather nervous young woman of Arabic descent scurrying around the tent, Harry flicked a couple of gold coins to her.

"For the service you are forced to provide." he said in Arabic.

"You speak the language of the heathen dogs?" asked the somewhat overweight man with a braided beard sat on a chair.

"I speak the language of a rich and diverse culture hated out of the ignorance of a few fanned into the wildfires of war." Harry snapped.

"Do you know who I am?" roared the man.

"Richard of England." replied Pippa bitingly; "A man, one with a lot more responsibility than most others, but the question is, do you know how to hold responsibility. We've seen kings and generals come and go... What makes you unique amongst them?"

"It matters not." Harry cut in; "William Marshal and the Pope sent us here to give you aid in breaking the defences of Acre."

"Who are you that has William's ear and what does he believe you can do save join the men?" asked King Richard with genuine curiosity.

"We go by the name of Black amongst a few we have taken in the past. As for what we can do... Wait and see." chuckled Constance.

Over several weeks, the city was plagued as guards turned up dead, the food and water were poisoned as ever more pressure was placed on both the crusaders and the Saracens, Saladin besieging the crusader camp while the crusaders besieged the city.

Finally, early in the morning of July the eleventh of 1191, the call to arms sounded.

Rushing to pull on layers of compressed basilisk hide, followed by chainmail and sections of plate, Harry made his way his friend Robert FitzWalter's tent.

"So, we storm the city." chuckled a rough voice. Emerging from the tent was a tall, powerfully built man on the cusp of being describable as 'elderly'.

"Aye Robert, once more into the breech." Harry replied, shaking the extended chainmail mitten-clad hand; "Let us pray that we are delivered through the battle and win the city."

The two men loped to the front of the army, under the banner of the Lionheart, Harry having the hinge-mounted visor of his helmet raised under the cloak he was wearing. Soon Constance and Pippa joined him in similar garb, the black surcoat and cloak over carbon-blackened metal chainmail and plates of armour.

"If we make it through this successfully, I'll throw a banquet at my castle, one which will put the Royal Court to shame." Harry muttered, gazing upon the pockmarked walls of the besieged city, his green eyes keenly raking over the defences as volley after volley of arrows clattered against the crenellations, some hitting the defenders, most not.

"If we make it through successfully, I'll attend your banquet." Robert added dryly as they were joined by more knights, introducing them in turn; "Sir James Davenport, Sir Richard of Grimsby, Sir Matthew of Colchester, meet the Knights Black. Ah, Pierre de Fontainebleau, Tiberius Malfoi, Reinhardt of Nuremberg, Charles of Cologne, Dietrich of Aachen and Philip Salvatore."

The three Blacks nodded and returned to watching the walls. They were sheltered behind several barricades consisting of board shields covered with animal skins, soaked in water and stretched taught across them.

"Who's in it for glory!" roared Richard as he pranced up and down the lines on horseback; "For riches, for the Church."

"None of the above." Harry commented snidely.

"Oh?" asked one of the Germans with a raised eyebrow.

"To accelerate an end to this war where far too many from both sides are dying, be they soldiers or the women, children and elderly." replied Harry; "But what kind of man claims to follow a God of mercy, that is both sides, yet condones the massacres of their 'enemies' simply because their god has a different name. I heard a philosopher in Byzantium who thought that the Islamic god, Allah, was simply a different personification of our God."

While there were a few noises of half-hearted anger, those who overheard couldn't help but agree with the point driven into the heart of the topic.

"And what use is a horse in a siege anyway?" asked Constance with thinly-veiled irritation at Richard, who by all observations was a womaniser, consumed more than an abundance of food and wine while not being much more than an adequate swordsman, not caring about fitness or practising his swordsmanship, something that they did.

Harry grinned slightly with a great deal of affection toward her and Pippa.

"And I might ask what use iz a woman in a ziege but I 'ave 'eard tell in the camp zat you do not choose your associates lightly Lord Black." added one of the Frenchmen.

"Indeed, I believe that two men have lost their manhoods, one for insulting condescension and the other for trying to force himself upon my ladies." Harry chuckled, moments before Richard roared; "CHARGE!"

"One does not charge head-on at a city like a wall of cavalry." Pippa sneered; "None-the-less..."

They raced across the barren earth to the massive breach in the wall where it seemed that a group of giants had torn the stones apart, throwing their bodies against it, crushing the mortar, splitting the rock. Harry was as ever completely aware of his surroundings. Acceleration charms and deceleration charms were speeding up and slowing arrows and javelins thrown by the defenders, making them miss him and the other charging knights.

Only when they reached the breach which was plugged by hundreds of Saracen warriors did he draw his sword, one that had served him for so many years. In the space of five seconds, the entire group of thirteen fighters were at the edge of the breach, and at Harry's nod, they raced in.

Applying a great deal of mental power, he split his consciousness between his own body and that of a Saracen soldier who rampaged through his allies with his scimitar, finally being cut down after killing over a dozen of the defenders, Harry's full consciousness returning to his body.

He vaguely noted the Sicilian being hit by five arrows, two of them piercing him, the arterial spray likely fatal. Fighting side-by-side with Pippa, Constance and Robert, they used incredible agility to dodge swords and projectiles, vicious blows dealing death every-which-way. Harry often didn't bother with killing his opponents as the sheath for his sword was lined with cloth soaked in basilisk, Manticore and Chimera venom. It took usually less than ten seconds to kill.

Producing a dagger in his left hand, he often blocked blows only to plunge the sleek blade through the padded cloth and leather armour that the Saracens wore. Occasionally, he was able to bring up the mental concentration to possess another Saracen, disrupting the ranked desert warriors when their own turned on them, or sometimes summoning large rocks from walls, making it look like they naturally fell onto the army below.

Pippa was hacking her way through the Saracens like a rampaging dragon, no mercy, no elegance but sharp, vicious attacks and the elegance of said rampaging dragon. While it was as different as night to day when compared to Constance's predatory grace, both were incredibly effective, leaving a bloody swathe behind them, advancing alongside Robert who was fighting, sword and shield in hand.

Eventually they broke through the forces trying to plug the breach, infantry pouring onto the streets as the remaining knights, the Blacks, FitzWalter, Malfoi, Davenport, Colchester, Aachen and Fontainebleau charged toward the central citadel.

By the time that Acre fell completely, only the three Blacks, a Frenchman and an Englishman, Sir Robert FitzWalter, survived of that spearhead.

"What's this?" asked a weary Robert as Harry split a circular stone into five near-equal pieces.

"The great seal of Acre, a carved image of the equivalent of a crest for the city." Harry replied absent-mindedly as he gestured for Malfoi to come over; "One piece for each of us who led the attack, one for you Tiberius, one for you Robert, one for myself, one for Philippa and one for Constance."

"Oui, it was an honour to fight by your side Seigneur Black." said Malfoi, still as blonde as his descendant but actually quite handsome with his sharp features and platinum hair not tainted with sneers.

"Et tu Seigneur Malfoi." Harry added genuinely.

"One day we can tell our grandchildren how we fought in the breach of Acre, how we stormed the city at the head of an army!" said Robert enthusiastically.

"And how thousands, be they Christian or Muslim died for a cause that a few extremely powerful men declare." Pippa said sharply; "But the sentiment is appreciated."

"I'll remember never to anger your companions Arlyss, I believe it would not be beneficial to my continued good health." Robert chuckled.

"I make a point to remind myself of that every day as I awake." Harry replied in easy banter as he watched Philip of France, Leopold of Austria and Richard... debating.

Harry was highly tempted to pout, sulk and eventually agree when Constance and Philippa added the Saracen woman, Zahrah, who had been used as Richard's maid to their travelling group, and eventually family. She apparently was the captured daughter of one of Saladin's Emirs, one who now held no value as her father was dead, unable therefore to pay a ransom.

They remained with the Crusader Army through the Reconquest of Jaffa before heading westward.

After two years of travelling Europe and Northern Africa, establishing estates in a good few of the countries, they returned to Black Hold where Harry parted company with his wives and rode north for the Yorkshire village estate and manor of the FitzWalter family.

In the late evening, a lone black horse trotted elegantly through the village, rider shrouded in black over dully glinting metal armour clinking lightly in the saddle. The manor was a moderately small building compared to some, two floors of the local stone with a thatched roof and wooden buildings forming a courtyard where they were tacked onto the front of the manor, providing stables and servants' quarters.

A stable boy raced up and caught the horse's reins as Harry halted and slid out of the saddle and dropped his hood, revealing slightly haughty features mainly gained from Sirius Black, his blood-adoptive father and godfather as well as Dorea Black, his paternal grandmother. Along with as the sharp green eyes, long hair tied back and a short black goatee he'd gained while travelling, he couldn't be mistaken as anything but a noble.

"Tell Sir Robert the words 'once more into the breach', he'll understand." Harry ordered, wondering if this was how Dumbledore felt when giving information purposely useless to any but either himself or someone who knew the significance of a point or phrase.

About a minute later, he was led into the torch-lit open hall which was central to the manor, spanning from floor to roof with a gallery at one end from the first floor beyond it. Sat in a high-backed chair was Robert, looking distinctly tired and careworn while another figure waited in the shadows beyond the hearth where a fire crackled merrily.

"Arlyss, I had heard tell that you were killed in Italy by mercenaries!" exclaimed Robert.

"Nay, somebody hired a few condottieri to kill me. I let one go to tell his friends not to come after me." Harry chuckled, shaking hands and embracing briefly before withdrawing a bottle from his cloak; "It's a wine from one of my French vineyards, a rather good one if I do say so myself."

"Thank-you. Marian!" Robert called. A young woman with slightly sharp features, blue-green eyes and light brown hair hung loosely through a braid at the base of her neck; "Marian, my daughter, may I introduce Lord Arlyss Black who fought at Acre."

"Rather young for a leader and knight?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. While some would have taken offence, Harry simply smirked and sat himself at the chair Robert gestured him to and said; "Charmed."

"The one man in the country to willingly confront King Richard and rather forcefully point out his mistakes." Robert snorted slightly; "My dear, never judge a book by its cover, Arlyss is possibly the best swordsman I've ever seen."

"I take a little pride in my skill with a sword." Harry shrugged; "Though I am certain you exaggerate, there are better swordsmen out there, you must remember that I used a poisoned blade in that battle so every cut was fatal, whether it from the wound or from the poison."

"And I am also certain that you always underplayed your skill." countered Robert with a chuckle; "You always tried to minimise your bravery and skill, despite witnesses. On a different topic, where have you been for the last little while, you were expected back in Britain a year ago."

"I consider myself a bit of a scholar and the chance to travel Europe's greatest centres of culture were not to be passed up. After all, you remember what I always said..." Harry replied.

"Stupidity becomes cultural ignorance, breeding narrow-mindedness which festers into hatred." completed Robert.

"Indeed." smirked Harry as he unclasped his cloak and draped it over the arm of his chair.

"Forsooth, he is still wearing chainmail in the home of a friend." Robert exclaimed exasperatedly upon seeing the armour under the cloak; "Such paranoia cannot be good for ones' health, I've never seen you out of armour."

"I prefer the phrase 'perfect awareness' as it more describes someone with reason for paranoia." Harry corrected smoothly; "I once knew a man whose favourite phrase was 'constant vigilance', often yelled suddenly, loudly and in your ear."

Robert continued chuckling, eventually developing into full-blown laughter.

"What, you can't have be unaware of your surroundings when we led the charge on the breach at Acre?" Harry asked with an arched eyebrow.

Mirroring his expression, Marian interjected;

"Father, you informed me that you were simply a minor knight in the siege of Acre."

"Haha! Robert stormed the city as one of thirteen of the best knights in the camp. We led the entire attack, five of us coming out the other side, myself, Robert, Tiberius du Malfoi and two members of my family." Harry barked with laughter; "Minor knight my foot, we fought through the Saracen forces trying to plug the breach and repel the crusader assault."

"Arlyss forgets to mention that he led the assault." protested Robert weakly.

"Never pretended that I didn't, merely failed to mention it." Harry replied innocently; "By the by, I meant to extend an invitation to my manor a few miles from Winchester, as I promised before the fall of Acre, I'm throwing a banquet in a couple of weeks."

"Then my lord, I would be honoured to attend." Robert replied grandly; "But I must insist that you stay the night, though I know how restless you are and, given your own choice, would ride through the night hours."

Harry sighed, chuckled and agreed, staying two nights before riding south. Around two weeks later, he was sat in the mid-bows of an old oak tree at a fork in a road. His horse was concealed behind a patch of dark yew trees a few yards away. In the late morning, two horses halted, their riders dismounting and taking their repast. At around noontide, another two horses came up. The first two riders, were a slightly leonine man and his much younger wife, a brown-haired beauty while the second two riders were Robert and Marian.

Harry slid out of the tree and walked out of the shadows, his horse following behind him. Seeing Robert and Marian glance at him suddenly, he winked at them before clearing his throat.

"Not getting slow in your old age William." he commented blandly as William Marshal drew his sword, stood and angled it at Harry in one smooth movement.

"That ceased being amusing when I was fifteen." William sighed as he sheathed his sword.

"Allow your old mentor his few quirks." Harry said with a snort; "Lady Isabel, as ever a pleasure." he said, bowing and brushing his lips across her knuckles; "May I introduce Sir Robert FitzWalter who fought at the head of the storming of Acre, and his daughter Marian FitzWalter."

After exchanging greetings, Harry climbed into the saddle, leading them for nearly two hours through a forest, full of ancient oaks. The paths meandered, split and occasionally became dead ends, the only way that they could find their way was because Harry had long since memorised the route.

Eventually, the forest broke out into a huge clearing, miles across. It had once had a group of hills, one of which had been occupied by a circular keep. Now that keep was nothing more than one of four identical large corner towers of a huge citadel.

Facing them was a wall of six towers, two identical copies of the original keep and four smaller ones. The gatehouse was another castle in itself, a square keep in a curtain wall, the wall lined with four turrets and huge buttresses running up the sides of the gatehouse-keep.

They were facing the front of the castle, the shorter side of a rectangular outer wall, the longer sides had six towers between the larger corner-towers replicated from the original circular keep. The honey-coloured stone and some of the defensive features were modelled off a Moorish citadel in Spain, while between the outer curtain wall and the inner of the main castle, there were a collection of buildings, enough for a small town. Those included, amongst numerous smaller buildings and several farms, a Byzantine-style domed church in alternating red and white brick, and a Roman-style basilica in white marble on each side and a huge monastic building with three spired towers, a cloister and a cruciform church at the back of the citadel.

"Bloody hell!" swore Robert.

"I don't actually spend a whole lot of time here." Harry said mildly; "It's a bit ostentatious but were I to lose all my overseas estates, I could hole up in here for a few decades."

"How can you justify owning such a large and grand property?" asked Marian coolly.

"There was a time, before any of you were born, save William who was born seven years before the end, when England was in a state of civil war. One perpetrated by the nobles and the soldiery they employed. Where towns and villages were burnt to the ground simply because one man who owned a manor there sided against the marauding forces." Harry replied; "I threw open the gates of every castle I owned to those displaced by civil war. While I generally don't get involved in internal conflicts, I often hunted down those, on both sides, who committed murders in the name of their cause."

Without waiting for further discussion, Harry dug his heels into the horse's flank, stood in the saddle as he cantered across the fields towards the fortress. It had taken him and a thousand house elves nearly a decade to build completely, with every stone enchanted and held together with enchanted mortar and permanent sticking charms. The elves took a dose of a modified Polyjuice once a month which put them in human form, allowing Harry to have enough servants and men-at-arms for the size of property.

As he approached the gatehouse, a drawbridge descended, chains rattling against the stone apertures through which they ran, the bridge spanning the yawning chasm below. The first set of defences, a pair of enormously thick wooden doors backed on both front and back by portcullises opened, the latter ascending into slots in the ceiling of the archway through the gatehouse of the larger gatehouse to the citadel.

After waiting for the other riders to catch up, they clattered across the drawbridge and through the first gateway. A second with similar defences, minus the drawbridge and dry moat opened to admit them into the citadel proper and a further ride of a few hundred yards brought them to the gateway to the inner bailey which contained the castle keep itself.

Eventually, he was forced to explain his background when a few of the tapestries the elves had made and hung around the fortress displayed events he participated in such as the death of Harold at Hastings were noticed. Robert revealed that he only had around a year and a half to live as he had become ill during his return from the Holy Land, sparking something of a one-sided argument between him and Harry on opposite sides and Marian on another when he proposed betrothing the two, despite the knowledge of Harry's actively polygamous relationship.

It took another week before Marian admitted that she was simply rather embarrassed and another week before they signed the betrothal, starting further celebrations.

Over the next few hundred years, Harry was seen fighting on many occasions with the English in the Hundred Years' War and was present at the Fall of Constantinople. Naturally, his natural charm, handsomeness, skill and wealth ended up gaining him a further two women. Constantine the Eleventh entrusted his magical adopted daughter and god-daughter, Georgia to the infamous Black Knight while he gained a very disillusioned Joan d'Arc a few years earlier when he faked her death using a time ritual and a golem which he then possessed using a method which wouldn't have a parasite soul on the back of the head but simply allow him to control the body from within.

It was during the early fourteenth century that he took up the 'Nicholas Flamel' persona, a somewhat eccentric pyromaniac who cared much for the every-day people of the countries in which he was. 'Perenelle Flamel' was a persona which all of his wives took up, rotating it around and using glamours for the for the established image they'd created for each persona.

Much of the sixteenth century was spent trying to keep Ivan the Terrible in check, preventing a Spanish invasion of Britain while balancing the international pressures from the Spanish Netherlands, the French and the Scottish while avoiding being caught up in the Christian denominational civil war rocking Britain. Despite keeping his head down, Harry still was seen around various European courts, though he managed to avoid gaining any more women.

Despite trying to stay out of the denominational civil war, it didn't stop him hiding refugees, particularly priests, on his lands, be they Catholic or Protestant as different monarchs brought about different persecutions. The Reformation brought about opportunities to acquire further buildings, having his elves deconstruct them and move them to his various estates, though he had to leave a few buildings he'd have preferred to remove as ruins.

With a bit of fore-knowledge and a great deal of magic, he built a fleet of five heavily armed ships, each of seventy-four guns on two decks, (plus an upper deck). It took even more magic to tie the transportation spells to move powder and shot to the weapons and the spells to manage the sails into a set of controls. However, it didn't stop Harry and he soon had a quite large island in the Caribbean under various concealment spells. It wasn't as good as his French estate where he had dozens of miles all to himself where he placed the numerous historic buildings that seemed to have been destroyed but were in fact dismantled by his house-elf reactionary deconstruction force.

Luckily, as time went on, the Black family, a name they had fully adopted by the fourteenth century, he ceased gaining women so much and ceased needing to be so active in public and military life. Harry suspected that magic had been pushing women toward him in an attempt to make up for so totally screwing up his life so successfully. His only gain since Georgia of Constantinople was Anglo-Hispanic Alexandra 'Alex' Teach, daughter of one Edward Teach. Piracy was one of the few things that got him active as someone needed to kerb them and the Royal Navy wasn't doing that great a job of it.

Despite the temptation to side with the throne in the Civil War, Harry once again stayed out, his disgust at the current handling of royal affairs outweighing his loyalty to the crown. Over the centuries, he had developed a general set of rules. Don't get involved in offensive wars unless they are dragging on such as the Hundred Years' War. Don't get involved in civil wars. Don't get involved in wars of independence. Admittedly he did occasionally participate in privateering, usually against the French and Spanish.

During both Second and First World Wars, he did what he could to destabilise their enemies as well as fighting on the front lines, mostly with the Royal Air Force as he still very much enjoyed flying and also as a destroyer captain during the Great War.

Thus, Harry returned from his thoughts and memories as he ate. Ten minutes later and he was blazing angry, the only sign of it on his serenely calm façade being the slightest twitch of his right hand on his goblet. As Umbridge croaked on about the great Ministry of Magic, Albus noticed his mentor's tiny sign of irritation and raised an eyebrow.

Shooting Albus a 'later' look, Harry returned his attention to Umbridge and listened with narrowed eyes as she put a thin veil over the Ministry's attempt to control Hogwarts. Too bad that he held the seats of the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Wulfric and the Ancient and Most Noble House of Flamel as well as having Salazar and Godric's rings while Pippa had her mothers and Helga's was passed down through the headmasters of the school. He'd been there when the Wizard's Council was founded, when the Wizengamot was instituted and witnessed the treaty which established the Ministry of Magic.

"Get the Order to your office." he muttered to Albus as the feast broke up and the students made their way out.

About five minutes later, Dumbledore strode into his office to find Nicholas with his boots propped up on his desk, smoking a pipe and reading a book in a language even he didn't understand.

"Nicholas?" he asked, clearly confused.

"Fudge is a fool, but a menace all the same. While between myself, Pippa and yourself, we control the castle, the Ministry needs to be reined in." Harry sighed.

It took around ten minutes before the office was filled up. Present were Arthur and Molly Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, Snape, McGonagall, Emmeline Vance and a few others including Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, representing the Ministry, the Auror Corps, Hogwarts and higher society.

"You called this meeting Nick, the floor's yours." said Dumbledore.

"Headmaster, you can't be thinking of letting someone else run your order?!" shrieked Mrs. Weasley.

"Madam Weasley, firstly I have no desire to usurp control of the order from young Albus, secondly I would ask that you avoid raising your voice, it is unbecoming. Finally, I have been fighting for the good for longer than Albus can trace his family back." Harry said sharply.

"Indeed, Nicholas taught me almost everything I know and I couldn't hope to match him in a fight." Albus added; "Were he to wish to, I would happily hand over control of the order to him but I know him well enough that he would not accept the responsibility."

"I prefer to work lone-wolf." chuckled Harry; "But anyway, there are still remnants of the dark forces out there and Minister Fudge is trying to usurp control of Hogwarts when I know for a fact that Hogwarts, including the village of Hogsmeade was granted autonomy by both England, Scotland and the United Kingdom separately, thus the Ministry has no claim."

"How do you know this?" asked McGonagall.

"Life oaths of non-discretion." Harry ordered.

They all swore never to repeat the contents of the conversation without the explicit and willing consent of the person known as Nicholas Flamel before he began.

"For the first few decades of my life I studied, both travelling the world and from teachers at a school. I visited Hogwarts a few times and became rather good friends with Salazar and Godric, though I didn't interact that much with the ladies at that time. Eventually I semi-retired from actively hunting dark lords at the behest of my wife. Salazar was fed a mind-controlling potion and eventually poisoned, resulting in the myths he hated anyone not pure-blooded- bullshit by the way, we all disliked non-magicals because of their tendency to run after us with pitchforks and torches." Harry began; "Rowena died, her younger daughter Helena died along with Baron Oswald. Helga left eventually, not wanting to be the last founder. I became an unofficial fifth founder and was in charge of defending and teaching after Godric's death. It was about a decade later... I think, I've rather lost count... that Hogwarts was completely destroyed except the Chamber of Secrets which we used as a safe-room during the fall of Hogwarts. My wife and I were badly injured in the fall, we were the last two defenders..."

"We spent a good few years travelling the world after that, returning to help William of Normandy invade after Harold made a sacred oath to hand over the crown... an oath which would have rendered England barren had William's coronation not taken place by the new year." Pippa continued in Harry's stead; "We mostly stayed out of society after that, though we fought at the siege of Acre, through most of the Hundred Years' War, the Fall of Constantinople, the attempted Spanish Invasion in the late sixteenth century and a few other wars. He picked up the name 'Nicholas Flamel' in the mid-fourteenth century and we adapted it as a persona along with my own of 'Perenelle'. Of course whenever a 'dark lord' sprung up, we beat them down, usually fatally. As you may not know, we, along with two other witches fought and killed Grindelwald's twelve top lieutenants as Albus brought Gellert down."

"So if your real names aren't Nicholas and Perenelle, who were you?" asked Snape.

"I went by Arlyss, and used various surnames, the one I used for the longest was that of Black, it was one of our adoptive children who founded the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black." Harry replied.

"Born Philippa Ravenclaw, eldest daughter of Rowena. And whenever you see reference in history to the 'Black Knights', that was us." added Philippa; "I wonder what the Blacks would have thought in recent times if they found the first Black was in fact the muggleborn adoptive child of two half-bloods."

Snape smirked, Sirius snorted and Pippa chuckled lightly.

"Quite a few adventures." Sirius commented.

"You have no idea." Harry snorted.

"Black would probably have used the years to gather himself as many wives as possible." sneered Snape.

Harry winced, something that Albus noted.

"You know Nicholas, though I was distracted with Gellert after the fight, I couldn't help but notice you seemed... familiar... with the other witches fighting by your side. I also remember their wands because they were rather distinct. Now that my mind locked onto that, I remember Perenelle switching wands very often... using the same ones as I saw in that fight." Albus said shrewdly.

"Don't pretend you haven't already realised." Harry huffed as Pippa dropped her glamour, revealing her true form; "I first married Pippa around the turn of the eleventh century. Then we were joined by Constance in the late eleventh century, a muggleborn witch who was the daughter of William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England. I got a bit of a respite until the 1190s when I gained the non-magical daughter of one of Saladin's Emirs. Zara had been kidnapped by the crusaders and Richard used her as a servant girl, we rescued her just before news reached him of her father's death which would have rendered her captive value as zilch and she'd probably have been raped and killed. One of the knights who spearheaded the attack on Acre with myself, Pippa, Constance and about ten others betrothed Marian, his non-magical daughter to me. After that I got about a century and a half of respite then in around two decades ended up with Joan d'Arc whose death I faked and Byzantine Emperor Constantine's adoptive muggleborn daughter Georgia. I gained another wife in the first half of the sixteenth century while the last woman to join us was Alex Teach, daughter of a pirate called Blackbeard and a Hispanic woman.."

"To be fair I was mostly responsible for that." Pippa shrugged without an ounce of guilt; "They were the few people who saw us as we were, I remember Nick's first meeting when they were discussing the betrothal, it ended with Marian slapping him and storming off. Fierce warrior and all, he couldn't say no to the puppy-dog eyes and pout, especially from several women. That was one of the reasons we had so many adoptive children... picking up strays."

"What was it you said to me around 1191, wasn't it 'variety is good for the soul' or something along those lines." added Harry.

"You've got to remember that up until the sixteenth century, polygamy was at least 'acceptable if you don't talk about it', even in the far west of Europe. We spent a lot of time in the Middle East and Byzantine Empire where it was actively practised ." said Pippa unrepentantly; "That and we had the papacy in our debt for several reasons and occasions which we called in whenever someone objected."

"So basically you were taking it in turns to be Perenelle Flamel." said Albus.

"Yep." Pippa chirruped; "I taught you Runes and Transfiguration, Georgia taught you charms and basic alchemy, Marian taught etiquette and how to be famous and look good doing it. Joan did Arithmancy, Zara potions, Constance basic duelling while Alex got you physically fit before Nick, myself, Georgia and Constance took turns in teaching you to duel."

Harry shot an rennervate at Albus before he had a chance to faint.

"I believe the term is 'resistance is futile'." he chuckled.

Once Sirius ceased howling with laughter, he asked sombrely;

"Did you ever encounter Harry Potter?"

"Yes, he was headmaster of Hogwarts for about a decade. Last time I saw him he was happily married, a master alchemist like myself and a war mage." Harry replied, crushing the urge to roll around laughing on the carpeted floor; "However, it is getting late and I would rather like my bed."

"Indeed, meeting dismissed!" said Albus, two seconds before Harry and Pippa were consumed by fire from his phoenix, vanishing from the room.

They appeared in the fortress where the family had relocated. Immediately, Harry was set upon by Georgia, who if he had to admit so, was the most aesthetically beautiful of his wives with long silky, glossy black hair descending to the small of her back, pouty red lips, sharp black eyebrows, slightly olive-hued skin and an hourglass figure displayed beautifully by the mid-blue halter dress which barely went halfway to her knees.

"Good morning to you too."

Did he forget an endearingly acerbic, sarcastic wit along with the accent she still used despite being able to speak English as well as any native.

"Ah, it's morning is it." Harry replied equally sarcastically as he flung his sword, sword belt, cloak and doublet onto a chair; "I'll not bother accompanying you to bed then..."

"Not so fast mister." cut in Joan, grabbing his wrist and engulfing his vision with a cascade of wavy brown hair as her lips latched onto his.

'Resistance is futile' Harry mentally commented, using his catchphrase for near a millennium as he was dragged into the large room which was occupied by nought but a bed which stretched from wall to wall. Despite his protestations every time that he'd been dragged into another marriage, he was quite happy. Ecstatically so sometimes...

It had been great fun to play with Henry the Eighth, one of the few English monarchs he could confess to hate. Faking the deaths of the five men who had been accused wrongly of adulterous activities with Anne Boleyn along with the queen herself had been one of the greatest pranks of the sixteenth century. Doing the same a few years later for Francis Dereham, Jane the Viscountess Rochford, Thomas Culpeper and Catherine Howard a few years later was an even bigger prank.

He'd managed to set up Culpeper and the former Queen Catherine with a very comfortable estate in Spain, move Jane in with her husband who had supposedly been executed several years before and make several other arrangements which culminated in Harry's own marriage to Anne, the former queen.

Harry didn't think of himself as a particularly sadistic, vengeful person but he thought that his last touch, all the monks Henry had had put to death Portkeyed into his bedroom under a notice-me-not charm keyed to not work against the king, was a rather nice job. Certainly hearing him squealing about monks was amusing, as was the heart attack as his 'executed' wives appeared.

"Not fair- a millennium old man is getting more action than me! Sirius Black!" ranted a figure in a dingy London townhouse.

"Shut up Padfoot." sighed a second, world-weary sounding person; "I'm just thinking about something Flamel said... he mentioned Harry was a master alchemist... for many years the sign of a true mastery of alchemy was the creation of the philosopher's stone, hence Flamel being a master alchemist."

"You don't think..." began Sirius.

"Hedwig!" Remus exclaimed as he saw the white figure swoop in the kitchen, having been living in the house's aviary.

"Could she lead us to Harry?" Sirius asked.

"Preck!" barked Hedwig affirmatively.

Remus summoned two brooms and they quickly walked into the back garden, disillusioning themselves as they took off after the owl. It took several hours, long into the dark hours of the night before they descended from the freezing air toward a large, dark shape on a hilltop. They never saw the flash as the wards smashed them from their brooms, shredded the brooms, stunned them, bound them, silenced them and petrified them before dumping them in the dungeons.

When Sirius and Remus awoke, they found themselves in a large vaulted room with a single barred door and a window high in one wall. Sirius immediately tried to transform into Padfoot, all to no avail as the magic-suppression wards did their work.

"Well shit." he said succinctly.

"You said it Sirius." sighed Remus who noted that all magical objects and foci they had were on a table outside the cell, out of reach and beyond powerful wards.

From beyond the walls, there was the sound of pattering footsteps along with the slower, deeper sound of boots pacing along the stone floor.

"Prisoners you say? What time did they come in and what condition?" asked a familiar voice.

"They came in during the small hours of the night Master Harry." replied an elven voice; "The wards didn't rate them as a particular threat because we aren't mopping up the electrocuted ashes of a couple of dismembered bodies with their liquefied organs pouring out of their pores."

"Sadistic elf." muttered the first voice; "I haven't got time to deal with them, Albus is expecting me at Hogwarts, if they don't mean any harm to us, simply wipe their minds and dump them in Australia."

"Mind-wipe by blunt instrument?" asked the elf hopefully.

"It's my belief that's called forced amnesia..." the first commented dryly; "I prefer the cleaner method of erasing the memories and then layering compulsions so that they don't intend to go looking for missing memories or whatever triggered them to find my home."

"Wait!" called Remus.

Wandering over, wearing a cream turtleneck, black trousers and combat boots under a black robe, Harry's eyebrows wandered somewhat higher seeing the contents of his cell.

"I don't suppose you'd like to explain what you're doing trying to get through the wards of my castle?" he asked mildly.

"Following Harry's owl." replied Sirius, not making the connection with this young man with his long raven hair descending to his lower neck and a moustache/goatee combination and Harry.

"Ah, you may be excused trying to invade." Harry commented, a smirk twitching onto his lips upon seeing Sirius oblivious, though Remus was suspicious.

He began circling his hair through various styles from Lucius Malfoy-style slicked back into a smooth ponytail before settling onto Potter Chaotic Mess Style. The goatee retracted and the sharp, aristocratic features softened slightly before returning to how they were.

"Harry?!" Sirius said suddenly.

"Bingo, by the way, I haven't been following magical politics, has Fudge declared you innocent yet?" Harry said as he unlocked the door on the cell.

"Nope, but back on topic, what happened to you?" asked Sirius.

"Temporal accident and semi-immortality, never tested the constraints of it but I'm about a thousand and fifteen years old..." chuckled Harry; "But anyway, you're going on an all-expenses paid holiday to a rather nice Caribbean Island I own. There are about three hundred other inhabitants and they all know of your innocence."

At that moment, Arlyss swooped out of a fireball, grabbed both men and vanished in another fireball.

"Well, that sorts that out." Harry commented to himself before walking out of the dungeons past a disappointed elf who had been coming up with all sorts of tortures for the prisoners; "Back to bed for a few hours I think."

Not bothering to be seen at breakfast at Hogwarts, Harry went into his classroom and enlarged it slightly, adding conjured seating in a part-semi-circle facing his raised dais which could be used for duelling while a desk sat in one corner. He noticed that Dumbledore had increased significantly the number of lessons, he had seven years of two classes and seven periods a day, meaning that he was teaching half of Hogwarts a day.

Georgia walked in under a glamour as Perenelle and simply smiled. It was one that reminded Harry of a pet Great White Shark he'd had a good many years ago.

"I might have enchanted the room so that any of your teachings cannot be spread to others and that if they use them for ill, it will cause excruciating pain." she sniggered.

Harry shook his head and muttered;

"Salazar would be proud."

About five minutes later, a fourth year class spilled into the room and made their way to their seats, some chatting raucously, others looking around as they didn't see the two invisible people at each end of the room.

Then Harry cleared his throat and became invisible. With the slightly ageless look of Nicholas Flamel and a set of plain black robes which were surprisingly normal for someone of his supposed magical stature.

"I have no intention of bull-shitting you now, your defence studies have been fragmented to downright awful. Luckily you avoided having Voldemort avoiding teaching you such pesky things as Defence against the Dark Arts as everyone from fifth year up did. However, you had Master Obliviator and fraud Gilderoy Lockhart who couldn't curse his way out of a paper bag. Remus Lupin was an excellent teacher, but he stuck a lot to minor dark creatures. Bartemius Crouch Junior, the Death Eater masquerading as Alastor Moody did teach fairly well, albeit like a crazed maniac." he commented softly, voice carrying in such a way that would make a master orator jealous.

Georgia inserted herself from the back of the classroom;

"We're going to put you lot through a fairly intensive course of teaching. There will be little theory, much practical on various subjects, and possibly further voluntary work for those who excel."

"Starting today, what is the best defence?" Harry asked, wandlessly conjuring a chalkboard.

"Shield charm." called out a Hufflepuff.

Harry immediately stunned him, letting him lie collapsed on the table for ten seconds before enervating him as a piece of chalk wrote the words 'shield/deflect' on the board.

"Didn't work, you didn't have time to shield, try again." he commented.

The Hufflepuff had his wand out and shielded Harry's first stunner. The second streak of red light had an odd aquamarine blue cap to it. The shield-piercing spell broke through the shield, dissipated and allowed the stunner to do its work. Ten seconds later, the fourth-year was awake again.

"There are ways past a shield, that was just one of many. I could have massively overpowered my stunner but that would probably have crushed your ribcage, caused significant internal bleeding, cardiac arrest and death as well as blasting you out of your seat into the wall." Harry commented; "Whereas I used a shield-piercing spell which momentarily opened a hole in your shield and allowed the stunning spell through. Shielding is not perfect. A killing curse can and will go through any magical shield. Five points to Hufflepuff, any other ideas about the best defence?"

"Negotiation, dissuade an attacker." a Ravenclaw piped up.

"Dissuade me." Harry ordered.

"Well-"

After enervating the student, Harry said sarcastically;

"Unfortunately, I'm far too evil to negotiate with, I've hit you with a killing curse and heaven is now greeting the dead with visages of school teachers. Five points to Ravenclaw, any more ideas?"

"Offence." added a different Ravenclaw; "The saying 'the best defence is a good offence' must have some grounds."

Harry added it to his list on the board.

"Attack then." he ordered.

He nearly shuddered with disbelief as a tickling charm was cast at him and swiftly stepped aside, put a shield in place behind where he had been standing and deflected the spell with a deflection charm, heading straight back at its caster, swiftly followed by a simple finite.

"Five points but it didn't work, I deflected it back, though I had a shield as a backup and had avoided the spell anyway." said Harry; "Next."

"Dodge, avoidance." interjected a Hufflepuff.

She evidently knew what was going to happen and was tensed to avoid the spell by moving to her right. The stunner impacted her neatly as she threw herself sideways.

"I was able to predict from your body-language that you were ready to move to your right. Thus, I calculated the time it would take for my spell to travel to where you are, how far you'd move in that time and then aimed for where you'd dodge to." Harry explained after reviving the Hufflepuff; "Five points. The point of this exercise is to prove that no defence is infallible. Every defence has a time and a place. Even Lock-your-memories-away-Hart could probably dissuade someone from a fight with a charming smile, but if they were hell-bent on killing him, he was dead."

"Now, initially we'll be teaching you from the basics up. Disarming, binding, stunning and petrification spells. Once you have mastered those, we will move on to cutting, blasting, bludgeoning and minor fire spells. Whether or not you can do those, I will further your learning with proper combat magic and possibly some minor battle magic." Harry explained.

"What happens if we could do those spells?" asked a Ravenclaw with curiosity, not anger or condescension.

"Then I will see if you have actually mastered the spells and then you can assist your fellows. Remember that I am somewhat limited here in that I have to work with the lowest standard in the class. Some spells I am willing to allow you to practice on your own or learn on your own, others I am not." replied Harry; "It's not a perfect explanation, but a few centuries ago I was playing with Fiendfyre, it got a bit out of control and I nearly drained my magic completely and burn myself to death. I do not want anyone accidentally killing themselves as the paperwork is really irritating."

"I've added a spell to the room which means you can't share the contents of these classes with the other students, it wouldn't do for them to be prepared." commented Georgia from where she was leaning against the wall at the back and smirking; "But, a quick question, who knows the difference between light and dark?"

"Dark is evil." stated a Hufflepuff.

"Not really." Harry sighed, he hated the white-black views most held; "I could right now bludgeon one of you to death on the ceiling with a levitation charm, use a tickling charm to torture you into insanity. A stunning spell as I earlier mentioned can cause horrific internal injuries. There is a rather nasty pair of dark curses, the blood-freezing and blood-boiling curses. The only way to counter one is a very careful application of the other to balance it out. Imagine however, somebody is holding a child hostage or about to commit a murder, I probably would hit them with an Imperius and order them to drop their weapon and surrender themselves peacefully. The cruciatus can be used to resuscitate the dying and bring people out of comas. The killing curse was invented for hunting dangerous animals and also can be used to provide a painless mercy killing to the terminally ill. DO NOT mistake dark for evil."

At this point Georgia took over and taught the students the disarming charm and rope-binding spell, having them perform it time and time again until they could verbally use it extraordinarily quickly. They intended to move onto non-verbal casting when they had a broad range of spells to work with, but for the moment they would be satisfied giving the students enough defensive magic that they could hold out another minute for the Auror forces in case of an attack.

At the end of the second day of lessons, he'd taught every student once and had released the spell stopping them discussing the lessons with teachers and other students. It was useful that Harry had linked a confundus ward to a time-compression ward on his classroom, allowing him a double lesson with each set of students without them noticing.