Chapter 3: Introducing the other protagonist

Harry Potter is reviewing the past few months of his life, from the last round of the Triwizard Tournament to the death of Cedric, the revival of Voldemort and his own escape, the unveiling of Crouch Jr. as the fake Moody, and then up to his saving of Dudley not long ago, meeting the Order, the joke of a trial, and Dumbledore's evasion of him. He was wondering how it all lead up to his current situation. Namely: staying alive.

Now, this isn't a situation he was unused to. After all, he's Harry Potter, the-bleeping-Boy-Who-Lived; the past four years of his life were devoted to 'staying alive,' and that he was here proved he was good at it. His current situation was a little odder than normal though, even for him.

He and his Godfather, escaped convict Sirius Black, and his former Defense professor, the werewolf Remus Lupin, were trying to clean one of the annex hallways of number 12 Grimauld Place -the ancestral home of Sirius' family, and current base of the Order of the Phoenix- of the cursed items his relatives had left lying around since he abandoned the family years ago. In the annex they stumbled upon a suit of black (ha ha!) armor guarding a closet door. The suit seemed to be immune to magical damage, disarming and stunning spells fizzing out on impact and stronger blasting spells and hexes being deflected off entirely. What's more, it was wielding a broadsword. And the sword was on fire.

Just another day in the life of The Boy Who Lived.

"Dammit Sirius! I hate your family!" Harry yells to his Godfather as he rolls under the armors sword swing and comes out smelling singed hair.

"Welcome to the club!" Sirius shouts as he pelts the armor with a rainbow of hexes, and barely dodges one that rebounded in his face.

"Well, look on the bright side," Remus calls from his own corner, where he is trying his own rainbow of spells on the armor, though with a more relaxed air and careful hand than Sirius, thus avoiding the rebounds his best friend keeps having to dodge. "It couldn't get much worse."

"Moony you idiot!" Sirius yells to the werewolf as he turns into a dog to dodge the attacks of the armor and get some distance. He pops back into a man directly opposite Lupin with the armor between them and resumes his magical assault. "You never say that! Especially when Harry's involved!"

Harry starts adding his own, less damaging, spells, hexes, and curses to the older Marauders lightshow. "He's right! That phrase is the signal for Voldemort to reveal he's possessing Quirrel! For the ghost of the Prefect to reveal he's Voldemort! For the moon to come out and the rat to escape! And for your defense professor to reveal he's a Death Eater!" Throughout Harry's dramatic listing of yearly kicks in the balls, his spells were slowly growing in intensity and destructive force. He pours all of that anger and hatred at those memories down his wand and out at the armor with a bellowed, "REDUCTO!"

His blasting curse* comes out as a bright blue ball of energy and hits the suit of armor so hard that, even though it rolls off its shoulder into the ceiling and creates a hole into the next floor, it makes the armor stumble forward a few feet into the wall.

The two older wizards are just as surprised as Harry at the power he was able to put behind that spell. Harry himself stumbles back out of the annex into the main hallway to lean up against the wall facing into the annex to catch his breath. That spell chain took a lot out of him.

"That boy is just full of surprises," Remus murmurs to Sirius.

"That's my Godson for you," Sirius gloats to his boyhood partner in crime. "Now let's us keep this hunk of junk busy while Harry recovers. Can't have him showing us up, now can we?"

"Right. You'd never let us live it down." The two start dishing out some really punishing spells on the armor, and it has to start actively swatting them away after a few make it flinch.

Harry finally catches his breath as with a shouted "Mr. Potter!" Professor McGonagall runs up to him from down the hallway. She reaches his side and he can hear loud footsteps coming from out of sight behind her. "What was that explosion a moment ago?"

"Sorry Professor," Harry huffs out. "That was me. Sirius, Remus and I are fighting a magic-proof suit of black (ha ha!) armor. I sent an overpowered Reducto at its back, and it slid off into the ceiling. Unfortunately that's the only thing to have affected the thing so far, and it barely moved it!"

She nods at his words. She looks at the battle to see how the younger-than-her men are faring, and sees the same magic barrier that's been causing them problems in action. "I see. Let us see how this armor reacts to something a bit more solid." With a flick of her wand McGonagall sends a length of heavy chain to wrap up the armor, but the flaming sword intervenes and renders the chain useless in a few offhand slashes.

"Yeah. We tried that too." Harry finally straightens up and starts breathing evenly. He turns down the hallway and aims his wand at a curio cabinet partway down it. "Time to get back in this. Mobilimensa*" Harry levitates the curio into the hallway behind the armor, then with a flick of his wrist to get it going and a shouted "Depulso!*" added for extra kick, he slams it into the armors back, and sends it crashing into the far wall as an assortment of Order aurors finally reaches them. They were delayed with keeping the younger fighters back from the front.

"Nice shot mate!" "Bloody Hell!" "Harry!" "Wotcher?" and "What's the situation?" are all heard from different people at different volumes.

The two who were there first ignore them though so McGonagall can ask, "Why didn't you do that sooner?"

"We tried throwing things at it a while ago, but we ran out pretty quick. There wasn't anything bigger than a flower pot in there, and it was too cramped to do more than dodge and fire as it was swinging that sword."

Sirius and Remus make their way to the group as the student and Professor are talking. "Harry! Brilliant throw that. We were wearing it down though you know," Sirius says as he slaps his Godson on the back.

"Now Sirius, you and I both know we couldn't have kept that up much longer," Lupin says as he steps up to the group. "Splendid shot Harry."

"Thanks-" Creeaaeeaekkeakkkek. "Oh come on!" Harry, and everyone else, turns back into the annex, and sees the suit of armor pushing the curio away from itself and stepping out of the hole in the wall. Slightly dented, but still functional.

"Bloody Hell! Whatever's behind that door had better be worth this!" Sirius yells with a very canine growl.

Lupin (the 3rd!) sighs. "Any ideas?"

"Hit it till it breaks," the ticked off Godfather-Godson pair says in perfect twin stereo.

"We might need something a bit more detailed," Remus says as he steps up and the three form a solid line blocking the hallway, Harry in the middle of his predecessors.

"It's coming," Harry says in an all-business tone. "We need a distraction. Sirius?" The dark cloaked wizard transfigures the curio into another suit of armor and sics it on the black (ha ha! still funny!) armor. It doesn't last long under the flaming sword. "OK, here's the plan. We disarm it with extreme prejudice, then attack it with its own sword."

"And if that doesn't work?" Remus asks, his wand already out at his side, ready to fire at a moments notice.

"We fall back on the first plan. On three, hit its arm with everything you've got. One…two…Three! EXPELLIARMUS!" A good six jets of light converge into one on the arm of the armor. McGonagall, Tonks, and Hermione had stepped up to add their spells to the boys'.

The joint spell is strong enough to stick, and though the barrier of the armor takes most of the power out of the impact, the suit still drops the sword. As soon as the sword hits the ground, Harry's in motion. With a quick "Accio!" targeted at the swords hilt, he has it flying into his hands. The weight is too much for him, which he expected, and he uses the momentum of the summoning to enter a backspin and bring the sword up for a cleaving blow that takes the suits left arm at the shoulder on the downswing. Harry stumbles past the armor as the five who helped him disarm it start laying into it with blasting curses.

Kingsley maneuvers around the attackers and comes up behind Harry as the armor is distracted with accumulating dings. "Good work Harry. You can sit the rest out. May I borrow your sword?" Harry passes the hilt of the sword to the much larger black man and he takes it up in both hands. "Yaahhhhhh!" Kingsley charges the armor with the sword and proceeds to finish dismembering and decapitating it in splendid form. Then with a shout of pain Kingsley drops the sword, whose hilt is now wreathed in fire. The fire dies down after a few moments.

"That was unexpected. Why didn't it burn me as well?" Harry thinks aloud.

"Probably the law of possession," Tonks mutters as she leans over the sword and pokes at it with her wand. Harry barely hears her respond, the reason being she happened to be facing away from him when she bent over and his eyes were at just the right level…you get the point; she's hot!

"Come again Nymphy?" Sirius asks after ducking behind Remus for protection. Crazy he may be, but he's not stupid.

Kingsley decides to speak up while Tonks is glaring down her cousin. "Ah, the law of possession. That would explain it."

"Excuse me, Auror Kingsley? What's this Law of Possession? I've never heard of it." Hermione asks.

"No, it's not likely you would," he says as McGonagall sees to his hands. "The Law of Possession is old magic, one of the combat rights of magic. A wizard who defeats another in battle becomes the master of that wizards' wand." Here he turns to Harry, his hands free of any burn marks. Who knew McGonagall was good at medical magic? Maybe it was a class in her day? "If the sword follows the same principle, then since you are the one to have taken the sword from the armor, it would now recognize you as its master. It attacked me because I took the sword from you without a fight."

"Well it's not much use to me," Harry says. "I can barely lift the thing!"

"Still, it is a powerful magical artifact, and it might aid you in the coming ordeals. It would be a good idea, though, to have Fillius examine it to make sure it isn't too dangerous for you to use," McGonagall says. "You can bring it with you when you return to Hogwarts."

"Um, Professor? I don't think it would be safe to take something like that on the train to school," Harry says waving at the fallen and doused sword.

She smiles. "Then it is a good thing you aren't taking the train."

A startled "What?", and one "Wotcher?", circles the group of wizards and witches, skipping a few of the older males, though their implied "What?" is easily read in the now rather visible whites of their eyes.

"Still got it," McGonagall thinks smugly at the reactions. "Professor Dumbledore would like Mr. Potter to finish the summer at Hogwarts helping the new Defense teacher get used to the halls and manner of the castle. It has been a long time since Hogwarts has hosted a teacher who wasn't already an alumnus."

"He's not? Where's he from? Beaubaxtons? Durmstrang?" Ron finally pipes in. More from him later.

"Professor Springfield is a recent graduate of the Merdianna Magic School in Wales."

"Merdianna? In Wales? I've never heard of it," Ron says, attempting to draw out a useful explication. He fails miserably.

"I'm sure Ms. Granger will have you well informed in no time, once she's had a few days to read up on the matter," McGonagall says without missing a beat. "Now, Mr. Potter, I would suggest you go pack. The Headmaster would like to get Professor Springfield settled as soon as possible."

"Uh, right," Harry says. He gets up from the floor and goes and picks up his new sword. He looks around for something to wrap it in, but soon realizes that as a fruitless effort upon seeing the extent of the damage he helped cause to the annex. What little furniture and decoration had been in the annex was reduced to scrap, and even the two throw rugs were shredded beyond repair.

"Here Harry. Inanimatus Conjurus." Hermione incants, conjuring up a scabbard for Harry.

"Thanks Hermione," Harry says, admiring the leather of his new scabbard.

"Nicely done Hermione," Remus says in his proud-teacher voice.

"It would appear you have been studying Ms. Granger. Though you must not forget the little things when conjuring," McGonagall say, magicing up a matching belt for Harry to attach the sword and sheath. "The details make all the difference. I'll be in the kitchen when you are ready, Mr. Potter." She walks off briskly and is followed by the older contingent, sans the marauders. Tonks finally decides to stop trying to glare down her cousin from across Remus and with a wave to Harry joins the older wizards and witch.

"Well, I guess I'll see all of you start of term," Harry says glumly to his friends.

An array of glances fly between Hermione and Ron, and Ginny, who like her brother has been standing uselessly in the background till now. "Don't worry Harry," Hermione says with fire in her eyes. "You're not going alone." She turns on her heel and heads off after her favorite professor, the two gingers hot on her heels.

"That puts an end to our family bonding time I suppose," Harry says to his Godfather.

"Don't worry Harry. We'll see each other soon," Sirius says, patting his Godson on the back. "You'll be home for the holidays! And if any stuffy old farts say otherwise, then we'll just have to break you out of Hogwarts! Just like old times, eh Moony?"

"Yes. Was it sixth year we- Mr.'s Weasley and Weasley, step away from the cursed armor," Remus says in his best imperious-teacher voice with his I'm-a-werewolf-you're-a-sausage glare. His efforts are of course directed at the only two remaining members of the battle party that came behind McGonagall: the twins.

"Well we just thought-" "-It being magic proof armor and all-" "-that certain parties-" "-like the aurors and the Order-" "-might be interested in purchasing something-" "-like it. And if we could be the ones to provide it-" "-that'd just be good business." Due to the raw confusion of the above lines, no one is sure which twin spoke when, except that they shared the ending.

"…You can have a foot. Produce results and we'll see about the rest of it. Now shoo." A twin picks up a leg and the two run off. "Those two," Remus sighs with a shake of the head. "Thank God there are only the two of them." He turns to Harry and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Now then Harry, let's go get you packed."


*the Reducto curse isn't very specific on usage when defined in the Harry Potter Lexicon. The best I can define it is 'a focused force bolt that punches holes in stuff.'

*Mobili is Latin for mobile/in motion. Mensa(there's supposed to be an overscore over the e, but I have no idea how to do it) is Latin for table. Basically Mobilimensa is 'move table.' I could have used tabula, a root of table, but its Latin translation is tablet, so would be more appropriately used for something much smaller, like a canvas picture or a slate. Wardrobe, desk, and cabinet, in Latin, were either too long or didn't sound right.

*Depulso is my best guess at the repelling charm, the summoning charms counterpart. Check the Lexicon.

OMAKE

Behind the door.

They opened the door to find a flood of pink. It was the girliest room imaginable. It was so girly, the girls cringed. There were pink walls, pink ceiling, pink furniture, pink rug, pink spread on the pink bed under the pink hangings, pink drapes in the window, and a mural of a prancing pink unicorn on the wall that really pranced. Assorted stuffed animal, plushies, and dolls in all shapes and sizes littered every available surface, including a neon pink teddy bear the size of a grown man in one corner. Through the partially open closet, they could make out the frilliest, laciest, pinkest, girliest dresses imaginable.

"This is just too creepy," Ron says.

"Now I know where we are," Sirius says. "This is the guest room Bella used to use when she visited." All this came out in barely more than a whisper.

"I think I'm gonna be sick."


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