-September 1993-

"Tell me, Harry, what is the significance of a person's magical power?" Dumbledore asked, once again sitting behind his desk. He had done this each time I had been in his office last year; after he had dealt whatever it was that landed me there in the first place he would ask me a question. I still wasn't sure if my answers had been wrong or right, but he would always respond with something rather vague and slightly annoying. I had dismissed it as a headmaster being a headmaster and testing my knowledge at the same time as Dumbledore was being Dumbledore and being slightly batty, but the third time I had been forced to his office and he had asked his question, the answer he had given had almost made sense. I had pondered on it for a while before I finally determined what he had meant and been rather surprised by it. In the end I had spent a good portion of my spare time over the summer pondering his other questions and particularly his answers. The implications had confused me just as much as they had excited me. This time, however, he had called me to his office without another reason, and I was beginning to wonder if the reasons I had been called to his office previously had only ever been excuses for these questions.

"Well, sir, someone's magical power is what determines what they can do magically, someone with a lot of power, like you, can do things other people can only dream about; kind of like how before you said magic was only limited by imagination, but it is also limited by power, and even if some of that can be gotten around with the right planning and, um, imagination it still needs power. So um, someone's power determines what they can do and whatnot." I flushed slightly under his particularly twinkly gaze, I had really wanted to get the answer right, and I had just managed to babble myself into embarrassment.

"Hmm, magical power actually determines what I call magical potential, which is, unfortunately, a potential that is surprisingly underappreciated and too often left unachieved. Also magical power determines how much magical energy a person can expend before needing to recover. However, there is one way that magical power plays a rather significant role in our society that very few people realize. Do you know what that is, Harry."

"No, sir. I don't know, sir." I answered not willing to make a fool of myself further by guessing wrongly again.

"Yes, I hadn't expected you would. You see everyone has an aura that is constantly flowing off of them – think of it as magical leakage, if you will – and the stronger someone is the stronger their aura is. The rather interesting thing about this is that wizards, indeed everyone, both magical and not, both human and not, react to these auras on a subconscious level. It is instinctual for a wizard with a weaker aura to submit to one with a more powerful aura, and a wizard with a more powerful aura will often feel superior. You see it is a rather interesting interaction as the weaker an individual is the less attuned to auras they are, but also the larger the gap between auras the greater the urge to submit is. This is the reason incredibly powerful wizards, like Gellert Grindelwald and Lord Voldemort, are able to gain such large gatherings of followers, as those wizards instinctually desire to follow them." Dumbledore said calmly, as if he hadn't just dropped a rather large bombshell on me.

"Oh." I said rather eloquently. I wondered privately why I never felt superior to the Dursleys, but I suppose it's possible they beat that out of me instead of my magic. I almost snorted, when I realized Dumbledore had just made sense and my first reaction was to guess that meant he wasn't done speaking yet. And I was right.

"Now in my younger years I made it a bit of a hobby of mine to study auras and to become more attuned to them, I believed it would be a good idea for me to be able to tell how powerful and how well rested an opponent was just by sensing their aura. And in doing so I have developed a rather simple scale in which all individuals fit rather easily. I shall endeavor to explain it so that you might understand one of the most incredible and terrifying things about our magical society." I gulped nervously; what could inspire Dumbledore to call it terrifying? "It is a scale of one to one hundred, one being too little magic to sustain life and one hundred being a wizard of Merlin's incredible caliber. Between one and ten would be your muggles and other non-magical beings, between ten and twenty would be your squibs and between forty-five and fifty-five you would find a little over eighty percent of the wizarding population, fifty being a nice average for all wizards. Are you following thus far, Harry?"

I nodded vigorously, still curious as to where this was going – it still made sense. "Yes sir, I am."

"I would like you to take a moment to pick out a number of individuals you have met, it doesn't matter who and tell me where on that scale of power you think they fall."

I gazed at him confusedly for a moment. Did he want to make sure I was listening? Should I perhaps tell him about my aunt being less than ten and Mr. Filch being less than twenty? No, he asked if I was following, and I was-am, so he must want me to name wizards. "Um. Well I suppose Ron would be," Should I say forty-five because he doesn't do very well in class, or- no Ron's just lazy it has nothing to do with power. "I suppose he would be about a fifty-two or three, and Hermione would likely be a Forty-five." She is always the first to answer questions and the first to get a spell right, but she works really hard for that and even though she thinks no one knows and that she hides it well, I've seen her practicing most of our spells before we ever go to class and she usually struggles. "I suppose um Voldemort would be a, um, eighty or ninety?" Only the refrain of 'are you asking or telling?' passing through my mind stopped me from staring quizzically at Dumbledore and waiting for him to confirm it. "and, um, you'd definitely be in the nineties, um, sir." I hoped he didn't think I was trying to flatter him, or be a teacher's pet, because I wasn't.

He peered at me closely, and smiled an amused smile; I'm sure I imagined it but I had almost thought he had been proud of my answer for a moment. "Indeed for the most part those are surprisingly accurate estimations. Young Mr. Weasley is above average at fifty-one, while your other friend Ms. Granger is a healthy forty-three. Young Mr. Riddle just before he left Hogwarts was a rather daunting eighty-seven, and has likely now grown to be somewhere in the range of ninety-two to ninety-four, I have been unable to get a clear reading on him since he left this school, all those years ago." I swallowed rather dryly, I was really kind of hoping he would tell me that Voldemort was a lot lower than that. "You Mr. Potter, are a very impressive fifty-nine, and, taking into account your age, you can expect to reach the high seventies some time during your lifetime." He smiled benignly.

I was stunned. I really wasn't sure what I expected, but somehow I had gotten it in my mind that I was really powerful like Dumbledore and Voldemort, and that was why he was telling me this. I was disappointed and ashamed of that disappointment. Hadn't I always wanted to be normal? And here I was disappointed because I wasn't more abnormal. Somehow my defeat of Riddle in first and second year had translated into my mind that I was more powerful than him, but I had never actually fought Lord Voldemort. I had fought a weak spirit, just barely kept alive by unicorn blood, and a memory of a sixteen year old boy, and both times I had nearly died. I mentally shook myself free of those thoughts. "If you don't mind my asking, sir, you never told me where you were on that scale?"

"Ah, quite right, I didn't, and we are finally getting to the point of this conversation." I gave him a quizzical look, requesting silently that he continue. He smiled as his twinkling eyes became noticeably brighter. "I am quite proud to proclaim myself a whopping Thirty-two."

"What?" I squeaked rather shrilly.

- January 2006 -

The weeks passed rather uneventfully and soon the last days of winter break were passing. Harry did well in his classes, the arithmetic was incredibly easy after his own Mastery of Arithmancy and the others were no great challenge. He had pushed himself not to shy away from contact with the other students, but had only managed to put up a friendly front and, for the most part, stayed separate from the student body. Even though the vampires kept a close watch on Harry after that first day of class he never approached them and they never approached him. He had been careful to hide anything of clearly magical origin whenever they tried to spy on him in his house. The wards would warn him long before they ever got too close – that was the wonderful thing about the open-ended intent based wards that had been set up that night: even with vampire speed the wards would register the intent to visit the moment they had it, no matter whether they were half a mile away or a thousand. Of course there were limits to the wards, like he would only know that someone intended to visit and nothing more until they passed the secondary ward-line a mile out, but it was enough that he was always able to play the innocent muggle by the time the vampires showed up.

Harry was pretty sure that the vampires never would have shown any interest if he hadn't flared his aura that first day; it had become his practice during the war that, in the event of a surprise attack, he would intimidate his opponent with his aura, usually giving him enough time to respond, or even gain advantage. Of course the school hadn't been a battle field and all that his paranoia had gained him was a lovely coven of suspicious vampires. However, when he had sensed the rather unique auras of vampires he had reacted without thinking – he was just glad he had stopped himself before he had drawn his wand in the middle of the cafeteria, where he had first seen them.

Even with the added drama of the coven of vampires, Harry found having the set routine of schooling every day with little to surprise him and nothing pressing to be done surprisingly comfortable – he was even looking forward to returning to the school when winter break ended. In the years after the war the fear of people had replaced the stress of battles and had given him little respite from the time of war. At the time Harry found himself almost thanking Albus for having left such a mess of his affairs that it took so long to take care of that Harry had been forced to confront the existence of his fears. Actually, at times, he wondered if that hadn't been Albus' plan all along; he knew Harry well enough and was clever and manipulative enough to have pulled it off.

Harry looked up from the fantasy novel he had been reading in his overstuffed couch, cocking his head slightly to the side as he listened to the wards – though they made no audible sounds. Two individuals had just passed through the one mile marker, and by the fact that the wards hadn't warned him of a visitor meant that they were headed to one of his neighbors. He would have left it at that and gone back to his book, enjoying the simple adventure – even if some of it was creepily reminiscent of his own past – however, the wards told him not of a pair of muggles but a pair of rather powerful squibs. Either squibs or weak wizards, he wasn't sure and neither were the wards. So standing and stretching a little to satisfy his stiff muscles, Harry moved over to the window and, in a move disturbingly similar to one his aunt had made so many times before, he peered through the blinds and out onto the street.

What he saw was a rather old and loud, faded red truck trundling up the street before pulling in in front of the Swan residence. There was a handsome youngish boy driving the truck who immediately cut the power before running around it and grabbing a wheelchair out of the back and helping a man – who must have been his father, judging by the likeness – into the chair. Harry guessed they were from the nearby reservation by their distinctive features. They were greeted by a Chief Swan that glared exasperatedly at the young boy, who cheerfully pretended to be oblivious. Harry guessed he wasn't supposed to be driving. The conversation was a short one and soon the chief had helped get the elder of the two into his own police car and jokingly shoved the younger into the back as if he was going to go to jail, the smile on his face taking any seriousness from it. Harry pondered the two, they were clearly much more powerful than the average muggle but they didn't seem to be wizards of any kind – perhaps the local Indian reservation had its own secrets, or perhaps they were just an uncommonly powerful family of muggles. Either way they certainly weren't a threat and whatever it was about their auras that tickled his memory would come to him sooner or later. His gaze fell upon the truck again and Harry realized it must be for the chief's daughter who was coming up from Phoenix. Even Harry with his aversion to gossip had already heard all about it from shop clerks and townspeople when he went out. He couldn't help but feel slightly curious himself about this girl, but he had resolved to himself that he would neither stare nor gossip about her; he would be polite and amiable if he got the opportunity to speak with her, but he wouldn't pry and he most certainly would not gossip. It had actually been his aversion to gossip that had again stunted his social interaction in the school, there still seemed very little else the individuals of this town did with their spare time. Even though most of it was not mean-spirited or overly invasive, his own experience as the 'Great' Boy-Who-Lived had permanently put him off gossip.

Shaking away his thoughts Harry returned to the book on the couch that included a ring that reminded him far too strongly of a horcrux.

A/N I love reviews... especially if you can point anything out that needs improvement.