Chapter 9

Angela glared up at Harry as she landed in his manor. "Can't you make these things more gentle?" she asked in reference to the portkey Harry had given her last week.

Lord Black grimaced. "Unfortunately not. Come on," he said as he helped her stand up. "Your mother and Rotwood are waiting for us."

She followed the man into the sitting room where her mother and the goblin were waiting.

Demona smiled at her. "Hello Angela."

"Hello mother," Angela said, returning her mother's smile.

Rotwood cleared his throat drawing everyone's attention. "Now that you are both here, I can give you your wands and be on my way." He pulled two wooden boxes out of his bag and set one on the table. He opened the remaining box and pulled out a wand. "Fourteen and a half inches, willow and oak with a core made of phoenix tears, a bit flexible, but not much. Good for charm work and healing." He handed the wand to Angela, handle first. "Give it a wave if you would."

Angela waved the wand and golden sparks flew from the tip. Startling her and her mother. Harry and Rotwood just smiled.

"Very good work Rotwood," Harry complimented the goblin.

The goblin snorted. "I always do good work Lord Black. Anything less would be a mockery of my skills."

As he turned to grab the other box, Angela examined her wand. A vine-like design had been carved into the handle, which appeared to be made of oak. The rest of the wand looked like willow, and it was unadorned. It actually didn't look to remarkable, but she couldn't have been happier.

She turned her head to face the goblin when he began speaking again, this time to her mother. "Your wand was a little trickier to make. Eleven and one-quarter inches, Olive, with a core of basilisk venom and the spike off of a particularity nasty Hungarian horn-tail mother, stiff. Good for offensive magic." He handed the wand to Demona. "Due to the instability of basilisk venom, I had to add silver to the wand to stabilize the core."

"Why silver?" Demona asked.

"It just needed to be a metal, preferably not gold due to it's softness, just so the venom wouldn't seep through the wood and kill you. I also chose to use silver for it's symbolism, it's the metal of the moon. The core is in a silver tube inside your wand. So give it a wave so I can see if I did as good as I did with the other wand."

Angela watched as her mother waved the wand and a light seemingly appeared out of nowhere from above her.

"Very good," Rotwood said. He turned to Lord Black. He hesitated momentarily. "Normally, I'd tell you these wands are to be returned to the goblin nation as soon as it's wielder dies. However, since the owners of the wands are not human, I will not hold you to those standards."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You don't want these wands returned?"

Rotwood shrugged. "What good would it do? I normally make swords and other weapons. In fact your lucky I can make wands at all. It's not like they're valuable to us. The silver in the one wand is now tainted by venom, even if I did salvage it, do you realize what I would have to go through to be able to even use that silver again? And what good is the wood now, aside from kindling? Aside from trying to sell the wands, which with wands customized to this extent could only be done to those of the same blood, there's nothing we could really do with them. Besides, we just tell human wizard that what we make is ours and they're just leasing it to annoy them. You would too if they were such assholes to you and your entire race."

Harry chuckled. "I'll see you later Rotwood. Have a good night."

"You too Lord Black." The goblin turned to the two gargesses. "Ladies," he bowed his head to them. "It was a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure was ours," Demona answered for the both of them.

Once Rotwood had left, the two gargesses turned to face Harry.

"Now that you have your wands," Harry began, "I can begin teaching you. The question is how often do we want to meet? Personally, I would suggest a few hours each night during the week, with weekends off. But the decision is up to both of you."

"Why do we need weekends off?" Angela asked.

"For two reasons," Harry explained. "The first is that this way, if one of you misses a night, we have two nights to choose from were you can come and I can teach what you missed. The other reason is that we each need a day or two off, just to relax and unwind."

"That makes sense," Angela said. "So then when will our first lesson be?"

"Monday night?" Harry looked at both mother and daughter to wait for any objections.

"That will be acceptable," Demona said. "And the schedule makes sense." She turned to her daughter. "I doubt you will be able to always be here if your father keeps sending you on patrol."

"Not to mention, if something major happens," Angela added. "The clan is still looking for Hyena, and the Quarrymen might try something big with the clan."

She didn't notice her mother and Harry share a look when Angela mentioned Hyena.

"Lessons begin at midnight," Harry said. "They'll run till four. That should give you both plenty of time to do anything else you wish too."

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"How are you doing with Hyena?" Demona asked as soon as Angela had left.

Harry shrugged. "I've made some progress, but not much. At this rate it'll probably be another few weeks before I'm done with her."

Demona smirked. "I shouldn't be getting jealous, should I?"

The fae-wizard snorted. "No you shouldn't." He smiled. "Did you get the bouquet of roses I sent you earlier this week?"

The red-haired gargess chuckled. "I think you gave my secretary a heart attack. I don't think she believed I could ever be nice enough for anyone to send me flowers. But yes, I liked them."

"By the way, have you found a new assistant yet?"

"No. I can get by without one, but it does make my job so much easier with an assistant. On the other hand, The first assistant I hired tried to kill me, and the last one was selling information about me and my company to one of my enemies. I don't think I plan on having an assistant for a while."

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Monday night rolled around quickly. And as both Angela and Demona were early, Harry started the lesson at eleven instead of midnight.

After several words of caution to the two females, Harry set a matchstick in front of each of them. "This is the first step in transfiguration," Harry explained. "As we progress, what you will change will increase in size and complexity." He pulled out his old holly wand and pointed it at a table, turning it into a pig and back again. "Eventually I expect you to be able to do that. But not for a while yet. As you two are not children, I will push you both harder than I was pushed. But remember that I was only eleven when I first began to learn magic."

Now," Harry continued, "to give you both a bit of motivation, I have this." He pulled out a diamond studded hair pin. "For any triumphs you make in class, I will award you both points. Whoever has the most points after a month, gets this hair pin. And I will have a new prize up for grabs every month. Triumphs are things such as completing spell-work first, answering questions I ask correctly, and doing well on the test that I will give you to gauge your progress." He pointed to two magical scoreboards in the room. "You can keep track of your points there as I give and take them, which I will do for any cheating, or attitude. Not that I believe that I will be taking any points from either of you, you are adults after all."

Harry then instructed the girls on how to transfigure the matchstick into a needle. Due to the fact that they were both adults and not children who had trouble listening to instructions, they both completed the task within half an hour, with Harry making minor corrections to pronounceable and wand movement. Demona completed the task first earning herself five points. Harry smiled and moved on to levitation charms.

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Over the next few weeks, lessons progressed quickly. After a month (were Angela won the hairpin 162 points to 158, probably due to being more patient than her mother), Harry was halfway through many of the simple first year spells he had learned back at Hogwarts. Often his students complained about the simple spells he was teaching them. He merely smiled and told them that they had to learn them first. He knew that things wouldn't really get exciting or complicated until partway trough the second year spells.

He did notice that Angela had a talent in both potions and charms. When practicing the charms, she almost always finished before Demona, and her potions were of a higher quality. On the other hand, Demona was better at the simple curses and hexes he had taught for defense and, surprisingly, herbology. But both were about tied in their skills at transfiguration, and both rather good at it.

And as Harry reset the point board and revealed the next prize, a beautiful goblet which would keep your drink chilled at all times, he noticed the spark of friendly competition that had developed between the mother and daughter pair.

It was fun to be teaching again.

Harry had also made progress working with Anna. He figured that in another week or two, the end of the month at the latest, he would have her mind healed.

Not to mention that his romantic relationship with Demona was progressing nicely. They tried to go out on a date at least once a week, disillusioned so that the word didn't reach back to Xanatos or the clan. And after each lesson, after Angela had left, the two would go out for a nighttime glide, avoiding the areas they knew the clan patrolled of course.

All in all, life was good.

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"Do you have the money?" a cloaked figure asked the gargoyle in front of him.

The white haired gargoyle smiled. "Of course." He slid a briefcase over to the man.

The man opened the briefcase and looked at the gold inside. He then handed the gargoyle a small vial. "Just as you ordered. That is the most powerful tranquilizer on earth. It is impossible to wake up from it without it."

"What is it called?" the gargoyle asked as he inspected the vial.

"The drought of living death," the man replied as he closed the briefcase. He picked up the briefcase and turned to leave.

"Just one more thing," the gargoyle said.

The man stopped and turned to face the gargoyle, only to find himself on the receiving end of a laser gun.

"I'll take the gold back."

Thailog laughed as the humans dead body hit they floor.