Disclaimer: J. K .Rowling owns Harry Potter and his world.

Notes for the convenience of the reader: Harry's children: Margaret, Victoria and James, children of Ginny, Beth, daughter of Luna, and Adrian, son of Harry and raised by Julie and himself. Current wife, Julie.

Chapter 4

Harry had always been good at playing. He threw himself into his play, and his joy and pleasure were contagious. Beth had explained to Julie once that Harry's emotions were more intense than those of most people - that his joy was greater, that his pain was greater, too. Even that he loved more deeply. They had been married twenty-two years, and Julie felt the truth of Beth's statement. Beth thought that this quality was related to his ability to work more powerful magic than anyone else, that magic came from the spirit, and that Harry's was a special spirit.

On his ninety-sixth birthday, Julie sunbaked on the beach, as Harry floated on a surfboard, supposedly waiting for a suitable wave, but more involved in talking to his friend, Ben McKenzie. Ben had taught him to surf a few years before. The area was a popular place for surfing, though there were no carparks close. The beach backed onto the long wall that surrounded Zefron school, and every morning, Harry came through the gate that had been let into the wall. Ben never wondered about the school where he knew that Harry sometimes worked. There were spells and enchantments that ensured that Medjkind, as Harry now invariably referred to them, were not too curious.

Ben was suddenly alert. Dolphins often played in this area, but his voice was strangely hoarse as he called to Harry, "Harry, that's not a dolphin."

Harry turned, looking at the fin that arrowed toward a nearby surfer. Abruptly, the shark veered away, and Harry stared in its direction, sitting still on his surfboard, although Ben was yelling at him and the others to head to shore. It was only when the shark was well out to sea, and Harry had instilled in its small brain that humans were not for eating, that he caught a handy wave, leapt to his feet, and flew before the wave, laughing in his pleasure. He was in trouble when he joined the others on the beach. Even Julie rebuked him, though she should have known that he'd simply made the shark go away.

After the shark scare, the other surfers picked up their things and left. Julie, too, picked up her towel. She never stayed too long in the sun; it might be bad for her skin. Ben stayed, still talking to Harry. He was going to be a doctor, and was overflowing in his enthusiasm for his chosen career. Adrian came through the gate, looking dapper in the expensive clothes that he liked. He was sixteen now, and somewhat of a dandy. Adrian was walking on air. His mind was full of Thea. Last night, they'd made love for the very first time. He could not have believed that something could feel so good. Thea was happy too, and they were meeting again that evening.

There was a casual greeting for Ben and for his father as he joined them, but his mind was on a different track. His father was sitting on the sand, Ben on a towel, but Adrian, with complete casualness, pulled out a wand and conjured a chair, to keep his clothes clean. There was a silence. Ben was staring, first at Adrian, then at Harry, then at the wall that surrounded the school he'd never asked about. Adrian was scarlet. He knew better than to work magic in front of muggles.

"Vanish the chair, Adrian," said Harry calmly, and Adrian drew his wand and vanished the chair.

"Sorry," he said, his voice husky with shame, and in response to a jerk of the head from Harry, he retreated out of sight beyond the high stone wall.

Ben was staring down at the sand, his face white.

"Maybe you should lie down," Harry suggested practically. Ben was looking as if he might faint, and did lie down.

There was a procedure for when Medjkind accidentally witnessed magic. A commonly used spell could modify memory, and secrecy was maintained. But Harry firmly disapproved of interfering with minds, and there had been close friends before who knew what they were, and were able to accept it anyway. Thea, for instance, had seen Adrian use his wand to stun a man who was trying to drag her into a car, though he'd only been ten at the time. Thea knew, and she'd never told anyone else. Now Ben knew.

Ben finally spoke. "I always thought it odd, that you said you'd had laser surgery that helped reduce that old brain damage. I know now that laser surgery is nothing like that advanced."

Harry acknowledged, "No, it was some very precise magic."

There was another long silence. Ben lay on his back, his hands behind his head. He was no longer feeling faint, and was reassessing his friendship with this man. And yet, he remembered a day when they'd taken Harry out on a boat. They were cheering him up, since he seemed to have lost the ability to balance, and could no longer walk. "Remember that day we got so drunk? I forget who drove us back, but you and I, and the girls, we were singing!"

Harry grinned, remembering. "I'll probably never live that down. It was mentioned not five minutes after we set foot back at the school." He laughed, "I thought we were singing so beautifully, but Alec said it was appalling!"

And now Ben laughed too. His friend was human. The friendship could continue. "That shark?"

"I made it go away."

They went back in swimming for a while, then. Ben still wanted to talk, but Harry was looking at his watch. His spell-breaking stint was to start soon. Ben had a very serious question. "Why is it so secret? Surely a person with magic could do a lot of good for everyone."

When Harry had himself asked this question, it had been dismissed by Hagrid with a fairly casual explanation, which he'd accepted at the time. But now he knew better, and explained. "Wizard lore goes back millennia. We've always been around, but we've always been a very small minority. It's dangerous to be different. Remember the witch burnings? It's laid down in our law that we keep our heads very low. Just because we can do magic doesn't mean that we can't be killed almost as easily as anyone else."

Ben was thinking about witch burnings, and finally said, "I'll keep it quiet."

Harry thanked him, and rose, preparing to leave. "See you tomorrow?" he asked tentatively. His friendships were precious to him. But Ben was casual, and only said, "Of course."

Ben looked after him as he walked away. There was a long white scar slanting down the left side of his back, and another fainter, quite close to it. There were other scars, one on his front, just below his rib cage, and a couple on his face. Wizards were obviously not all-powerful. But they could make sharks go away - maybe it was not a bad thing to be friendly with a wizard.

Adrian, inside the little house on the grounds of the school, apologised again when Harry entered. He was very repentant, and yet his mind still kept straying to Thea. Harry regarded him with amusement. It looked like Adrian was like him in more ways than looks. He had a fair idea what had caused his lapse, and only told him to please not do it again.

"Did you modify his memory?" Adrian asked, but was not at all surprised when Harry shook his head, and said that he thought it'd be all right.

Ten minutes later, Harry reappeared, showered and dressed, wearing the cape of a wizard. Julie fussed over him, drying his hair with a spell, and then combing it as he waited patiently, even though it was getting late. She finally finished, handed him his wand, kissed him, and watched him vanish.

The next instant, his reappearance was in a wizarding area close by. They were waiting for him. There was a healer to supervise the cures, as Harry was not a qualified mediwizard, and aurors to keep him safe.

The healer was called Callum Ironside. He was nervous. The sudden death of Madam Diefenberger was known, and it was widely speculated that Harry could go the same way. It had been reported in the monthly journal, American Healer, that Madam Diefenberger had appeared to have acute head pain just prior to her sudden death. And it had been noted that the great wizard was known to have had similar episodes of such pain. Harry wasn't worrying, and only gave his usual genial greeting, and waited for the first client to be brought in.

The usual routine, then. Spells ran in fashions, and this year the fashion seemed to be the infliction of curly tails sprouting from buttocks. Not many of Harry's first dozen patients could sit with any comfort. Harry paid little attention to what he was doing. A scant moment of attention, a brief wave of his wand, and the person was cured. He didn't even bother muttering an incantation these days. There was another contingent from Europe. Madam Diefenberger was dead, and it was not known whether the great wizard would be willing to leave the teaching that he loved, in order to heal the results of what was mostly wizard duelling, a practice which he condemned. Harry was undecided, and had given no answer when queried. The service was seen as essential, and now he was, again, the only one.

There was a break, and a generous afternoon tea. The American Ministry did everything it could think of to make Harry happy, so that he'd be willing to continue with this service to Wizardkind. This was the second week that Harry had been doing the job here, and the healer finally managed to bring himself to the point of asking Harry whether he could please have a look at him. Harry regarded him with some amusement. He'd never voluntarily allowed Callum to examine him. He declined and reassured him that Healer Granger had checked him over just recently.

"Is she still alive?" asked Callum.

Yes," said Harry with emphasis, "And perfectly healthy too!" But his brow had become black, and Callum shrank back.

After the break, a creature was wheeled in. It had presumably been human, but now it looked more like a legless caterpillar. It didn't look like it could speak, but its eyes beseeched. Harry paused, and felt. There was more than one spell, and they were intermingled, inter-dependent. This would take a bit of effort. He'd seen something like this before, a wizard rendered helpless as a punishment and a prevention against further crime. It had been used instead of imprisonment. That had been a mass murderer, both mad and evil. But when he looked at this man's mind, there was no great evil, and no madness, just a piteous desire for release.

A wave of the wand didn't work, nor that higher degree of magic that Cissy had so recently mastered. And then he moved to reassure the man, saying that he was pretty sure that he could help him, but he was just going to finish off the rest of the day's list first, before coming back to him. He added a mental warmth and reassurance. It was needed, as the patient had become afraid that he was to be left after all. But Harry would make himself tired with this one, and so it was better if he was the last of the day.

He went on to eighteen patients, all from South America, where Cissy was meant to have been working. They were all quick and easy, and it was time to attack the legless caterpillar.

There were always observers, this time separated from where he worked by a transparent wall. Harry noticed movement as two more witches appeared, followed by three more wizards, even the American Minister for Magic. Harry frowned. Someone had been talking. He knew that his strong magic was impressive, but he didn't really like being watched, and wished that he'd just done the difficult client as he'd cropped up, even if it did tire him. And thinking about it, he more carefully felt for threats around him, and laid his own anti-apparation charm over the area in which he worked. Intermingled spells had been used before to attack him as he concentrated. Toby was the auror in the room with him, and he quietly looked at the surface of his mind. He didn't know Toby well, and he was in a vulnerable position when he worked his strong magic, and he mentioned it to Toby, too. That he should be especially alert, that patients like this could be used as a trap. He had no sense of danger, but his sense of danger had never been infallible.

Another wizard arrived, and this time Harry heard a mental sigh of relief from Callum, and looked back at the observers. Healer Breedon. He looked back at Callum, grinning. "I've done this hundreds of times, Callum. There's no reason to think I might die on your shift!"

Callum was embarrassed, but answered quite calmly, "You're the only one. We can't afford to lose you."

Harry shrugged. "You'll lose me one day. People will just have to get used to the idea that they shouldn't curse each other," and he turned to the pathetic creature on the ambulance trolley, as it was wheeled back in.

"Mr. Bruner, I'm going to call up some very strong magic. You'll feel a frightening feeling in the air, but it won't hurt you, and all you need to do is to be calm. And wait until I've finished. There's more than one spell on you and I don't want you jumping around until you're done. OK?" Bruner closed his eyes and opened them again. Yes, he felt.

Harry turned to Toby and Callum, and explained that the magic affected some more than others, that if they felt faint, they should simply leave the room. He ignored the observers. They were behind a wall, although they could hear what he said. It was up to them what they did. The headmaster of the school was among the observers, he noticed, and the head of their auror department, too, Briony Williams.

Harry positioned himself a little differently this time, so that his back was to the wall opposite from the door. He wanted no-one behind him. He was still wary of a trap, and when he commenced his magic, there was some extra magic added that protected himself from interruption. Tension increased in the room now, as the great wizard stood, wand raised, a look of calm concentration on his face.

At first there was nothing, or almost nothing. And then there was a barely discernible tingling in the air. Harry was very aware of his patient, in case he needed to impose calm. He was aware of the others in the room, too. He was less vulnerable than he once had been when he did this, when it had demanded all his effort, and then he would sometimes fail. Now he could raise to an intensity that no others could stand to be near. And he could divide his magic, keeping the patient calm, protecting himself, and even, if he chose, adding lightning effects, just as a bit of mischief. It was still likely to make him tired, though.

There was a humming in the air now, or it felt like a humming, but there was no actual sound. Toby forced himself to remain apparently unmoved. Callum had felt it before, and watched closely. He was still afraid that Harry would suddenly collapse and die. Harry was feeling the spells on his patient more clearly as each one broke before his magic. Two were interdependent, and the intensity in the air increased further.

"Hold still," Briony told a couple of the observers who looked about to bolt. "I don't think it will be much longer." The patient's skin already looked like the skin of a man instead of the skin of a slug. A light sheet covered the patient, as no clothing would fit him. But now a change of shape showed beneath the sheet. Harry hadn't finished, and the patient heard in his mind the simple command, Wait. And finally, the features of his face were restored. The magic was dying from the air, but Harry still felt for the magic that had afflicted the patient, and there was indeed one thing more. The Memory Modification was removed, and now the patient gasped and started trembling. He knew now who had done this terrible thing to him.

Harry glanced at the observers, and suddenly an opaque screen blocked their view. The naked man pulled himself from the trolley, trembling and crying his gratitude. Harry handed him an instantly conjured pair of underpants, jeans, and, a second later, a vivid red shirt.

"Dress!" he ordered, and the patient was pulled back from imminent hysteria, and dressed.

Harry regarded him, smiling. "My wife hardly ever lets me wear that colour, but maybe you'll get away with it for a little while."

The patient still trembled, still tears were close. Harry leaned against the wall. He was trembling too, but it was only from the effort. He waved his wand at the screen, which vanished. He glanced at Toby. Toby was supposed to be showing the man out, but Toby was pale, and made no move. His own trembling attack seemed to be over, so Harry went to the side of the man. "Someone with you?"

The patient nodded, and the voice was hoarse and broken when he thanked the great wizard, who had rescued him. Harry shrugged, "No problem," and left the patient in the company of three other Bruners who'd been waiting. Just another cured patient. As he'd said to Callum, he'd used his strong magic to cure hundreds of times, and must have cured many thousands over the years. He'd been twenty-two, he thought, when Hermione had first asked him to try and cure a man whom the mediwizards had failed.

He made up his mind. Not this coming school year, but next, and then maybe every alternate year, he would agree to travel again with the Ministry team, doing the spell-breaking. As Callum had said, he was the only one. Meantime, he'd do his three days teaching every week, and then do a day or two spell-breaking in London. The patients could travel to him if they needed him.

Some of the observers wanted to talk to him, but Harry pleaded fatigue and started walking toward Zefron. Toby walked with him, and there were two other aurors close. He always preferred not to apparate when he was too tired, as apparation could be very dangerous. He paused as they left the building, scanning the surroundings with his eyes and with his mind, but there were no threats apparent.

Afterward, Briony Williams, the head of the auror department, was very thoughtful. Harry really was irreplaceable. And after talking to Zefron's headmaster, some extra precautions were ordered.

The following day, as Harry lifted his hand to open the gate that led onto the beach, he paused and extended his senses. There were wizards out there, waiting and watching. Instead of going through the gate, he apparated, direct to a position a few hundred yards further away. It was what he thought. They were aurors, although he'd specifically requested that he be allowed his privacy. He was only every attacked in wizarding areas, but he supposed it wasn't really law.

He had Cloaking Magic on himself now, as he studied the seven aurors, some sitting on the sand, some strolling around. He was surprised that they apparently thought he needed such heavy protection. There were other beachgoers on the beach and in the water, and he scanned them, too. But they were all just enjoying themselves, and no-one threatened him. He dropped the magic that stopped him being seen, and an auror who'd been looking straight through him, jumped. Ignoring the aurors, he walked back along the beach toward the gate, where Ben, and often others whom he knew, would be expecting him. His long hair was tied back with a leather thong, he carried a surfboard under his arm, a small kitbag in his hand, and he walked with an easy, athletic stride.

The aurors whose duty was to protect him from danger, watched in fascination. He had such a reputation! They wore shorts and touristy shirts, and he knew that their wands would be inside their shirts. Although dressed as ordinary beachgoers, they didn't quite look like they belonged.

Harry felt for Ben, and knew that he was on his way. He'd been a bit concerned after the previous day, but Ben was coming. He left his surfboard on the beach, put his glasses inside the kitbag, and, still ignoring those who watched, he swam for a while. There were no sharks. Instead a few dolphins joined him, playing with him for a little, before, quite suddenly, vanishing.

Ben and Seth arrived together, laughing and joking, and were waiting for Harry when he emerged from the water. Ben was fine, and again they could surf together as if they were just two young men together again. Ben didn't again ask about magic. It was too far removed from his reality. And he'd thought about what Harry had said about it being dangerous to be different. His friend Seth had relatives who had died only because they were Jews. And he understood that it could indeed be dangerous to be different. Seth commented on the groups of aurors. At first, he said only that it was unusually crowded on the beach, but he continued to look, and suddenly said that they looked like gangsters ordered to enjoy themselves or else. Harry thought it was hilarious, and fully planned to pass along the comments.

Adrian was off with Thea somewhere, but Julie joined them, and she, too, gave the aurors a suspicious glance. She deemed herself not young enough to wear a bikini, but she was beautiful to Harry in whatever she wore, and when she lay down next to him, he stroked a finger down her back, and she shivered and looked back at him with sudden desire. He moved a little closer.

Ben glanced at the pair, and said casually, "Coming in?"

"In a little while," said Harry, not looking at him. The surf was getting up, and Ben and Seth left them.

"Those men?" asked Julie.

"Aurors," said Harry. "You can rely on not getting molested by beach perverts," and again he ran a finger down her back, "Except for me, of course..."

She giggled, but said that if he wanted to surf, he'd better do so. Harry was torn. He loved to surf, but he loved his wife more. She told him not to be silly, she was sunbaking, and he was supposed to be surfing. So he kissed her, picked up his surfboard and joined his friends.

The surf was especially good that day, and the aurors watched the great wizard as he balanced on his surfboard, and caught a wave, laughing and calling to his friends. It was a muggle sport, and a muggle sport mostly played by teenage boys. They disapproved a little - it was surely unsuited to the dignity befitting a wizard!

Julie, Adrian and Thea enjoyed their time at Zefron. Harry was working every afternoon, spell-breaking, most evenings lecturing, and he, Julie and Adrian seemed always to be going to balls, parties and other entertainments on the weekends. Adrian had a chance finally to wear each of the three sets of elaborately embroidered dress robes that Julie provided him with. And when important people were keen to meet him, he relished the importance and the novelty. He looked so much like his father, and there were many there who wondered if he'd have the same power. But while Adrian was talented, he was normally talented. He would never have anything like the power of his father. He was still sometimes asked for his autograph, though. It was a consolation prize, as his father never gave autographs.

By the time the Potters returned home, Harry thought he was over the death of Cissy. Everyone died. There was no point in rebelling against the fact. It was just a matter to be accepted. Life was a circle. One was born, thrived for a time, and then died. One should just accept the fact, and enjoy the pleasures that life offered while you could. But when he learned that Draco Malfoy was dead, he took his horse out on the moors and galloped a long time before stopping close to a stone wall. He didn't even know himself whether he cried for Draco, or cried because he was alone, and was only going to become more and more alone as everyone he knew, died before him.

**Chapter end**