Part 2 Chapter 7

Lightning gathered in a cackling mass at the very end of Harry's staff, reaching down towards his hand with long, spidery tendrils. Harry gestured with his free hand, and the energy discharged with a bang, ionizing a path through the air and connecting with the tree stump that he had been using as a target. The spell didn't make contact and die out, like most directly targeted curses, and the tether of jumping blue light holding Harry to his target remained, occasionally reaching out towards the ground and burning curious patterns into the grass. The stump blackened slightly under the onslaught, but was otherwise unmoved.

Harry held the sussurus for forty seconds before allowing the magic to slip through his fingers. The gem in his staff blazed briefly as the last dregs of power expended themselves, before the lightning disappeared with a pop and the faint smell of ozone.

"Most impressive," Death congratulated him from where he stood. "Your endurance has much improved."

Harry shook his head slightly, knowing that even after weeks of practice with Tonks and Death's personal instruction, he still would fail to defeat anyone as skilled as Quirrel had been. Thinking of the man who had been possessed by Voldemort, Harry's brow furrowed and a burning question laid heavy on the tip of his tongue. Glancing at the dark apparition of his master, Harry couldn't bring himself to speak it.

"Go on," the timeless being urged him. "I shall not be offended."

"Why did you end Vernon when he threatened me, only to stand aside while Quirrel did worse than Vernon ever could have done?"

"Ah," Death nodded, a small smile on his face. "I knew that this day would come. Walk with me."

Allowing his staff to fall back into its unassuming disguise, Harry closed the distance between them to take his place at Death's side. They walked, slowly, along the crest of a hill, in companionable silence. At long last, they came to a high bluff overlooking the sea, and there they stopped.

"As El, my greatest desire for mankind is to know them truly, to share my creation and guide my children with a loving hand," Death began. "Inevitably, because I desired to give men free will, there would be those who would choose to oppose me. The way of this corrupted world is evil, and yet I must deal justly with all men. How could I profess to love my children, if I do not discipline them? And so I must treat worldly men by the ways of the world, rather than the ways of the spirit."

Harry sighed, leaning on his staff. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Vernon had made his choice. His heart had no room for love," Death explained simply. "The timing of his death didn't matter; it was the same in all times and all places. You see time like a single current, but I see the ocean. Quirinus Quirrel was a good man who had been subdued by an evil greater than he could hope to defeat. I could not strike him down when his destiny had not yet run its full course."

"I killed him," Harry replied accusingly. "You knew that I would kill him. And you let me suffer anyway."

"I let you determine Quirrel's fate," Death answered him. "You would not be who you are today without that experience."

"What about Tom Riddle? Hasn't he made his choice?" Harry pressed. "Or do you also hope for his redemption?"

"Alas, he is lost to me," Death replied solemnly. He looked down at Harry with his fathomless black eyes. "If, by his accursed life and inevitable death, I might deliver my gifted children from their own folly, then I shall suffer him to linger another day in this world. You are my justice, Harry. When you strike him down it will be just as if my own hand had crushed his black heart to dust. My direct intervention would be a disservice, for it would deprive your country the opportunity it needs to become stronger."

Harry opened his mouth to respond when he heard a distant voice calling for him. He hesitated, anxious to clarify the things that Death had said, but when he glanced over the robed figure was gone, and he was alone on the cliff's edge.

I wonder what it would feel like to fall?

He turned away, and walked towards the voice. Moments later, he saw Nymphadora on the crest of a hill, waving her arms.

"Wotcher, Harry!" she greeted him once he was nearer. It was then that Harry saw another woman, and he greeted her as well as Tonks. "This is Amanda. She doesn't believe that you're as good as I've made you out to be, so I thought she could officiate a duel between us. It'll make the last one before school starts a proper contest. What do you say?"

Harry shrugged. Even though he had already practiced magic today, he felt nearly at his full strength, and was eager to test himself without the restrictions that Tonks had insisted upon. "Will you use your staff?"

Tonks shook her head. Harry had finished it for her a short time ago; and he had to admit that it was much more difficult without El sitting beside him for every step of the process. Her staff was shorter, and couldn't transform in the same way as Harry's, but it acted the same in all other respects.

"I haven't decided if I want to lose my wand," she replied. Harry nodded carefully, understanding her hesitation.

"You are a healer?" he asked Amanda.

She nodded. "I'm the one that'll patch you up when Tonks is through with you. You know the rules of a duel?"

"No," Harry replied, rolling his shoulders. Tonks gave him an excited grin and danced a few paces away from him while Amanda explained the basics.

"You start when I say," Amanda began. "The duel ends when one of you is incapacitated or incapable of continuing. Obviously, don't cast Unforgivables or Dark magic. You two should know each other's limits, so try not to kill each other. Got it?"

Harry allowed his staff to assume its natural state. Seeing Amanda's rather surprised expression, he also changed Death's cloak to a tight, black vest with a tall collar. She stepped back and Tonks saluted him with her wand. Harry bowed at the waist, quirking an amused grin when she pulled her own transformation.

Her typical athletic form was tall, muscle-bound, and intimidating. Her hair was short and black, her skin tan and her features square. She now bore very little resemblance to the feminine beauty that he had met on the train.

It would be a tense competition. Harry knew that he could surprise Tonks several times with the spells in his arsenal, since it had grown to be quite diverse over the last year, but she was familiar with his habit of sidestepping towards his stiff leg, and she knew that she could outlast him because of his younger magical core and her ability to assume a highly athletic form.

Amanda started them with a short countdown, and Tonks wasted no time in unleashing a volley of silent curses in his direction. Harry hardly even shifted his staff as he erected a general deflector and weaved some simpler shields closer to his body. They were small enough that he could cast around them, and weak enough that they didn't tire him too quickly when he sustained them.

Death had always told him to dodge first and block second, but with his somewhat impaired mobility be rather preferred the opposite. It certainly handicapped his offensive capabilities, but Harry had honed his defensive skills to near perfection, and it took quite a bit of effort to break through his layered shields unless he wanted them to fall.

Harry's first offensive spell was the sussurus shield-breaker. It was primarily intended to startle Tonks, and if he was honest there was a measure of pride behind his choice as well. It certainly would have been more effective if he had led with a series of less intensive curses.

Harry whispered the incantation so that neither she nor Amanda could hear it, and sidestepped the latest of Tonks' attacks just as he dropped his final shield.

When he unleashed the lightning which had gathered at the blade of his spear, it burst forward in a chaotic storm of jagged lines, crashing against Tonks' hastily conjured shield and wrapping around it like a clenched fist. A terrible shrieking noise cleaved the air and shook the ground before a blinding flash marked the collapse of Tonks' shield. The lasso of lightning constricted, finding another, stronger shield this time, and Tonks managed to raise an earthen wall between them to cut off Harry's line of sight before the lightning could reach her through it. He cancelled his attack and cast a battery of three banishers, demolishing the wall and forcing Tonks to sidestep.

She retaliated by conjuring a cloud of pebbles and banishing them in his direction. Harry diverted the hail of projectiles with a planar barrier and cast an old Roman spell which mimicked the action of a ballista. Harry was relieved that Tonks' shield managed to absorb the long pulsing lance of orange flame without falling. Had it pierced her, the damage it would have done to her would have been substantial. Shaken by his own actions, Harry reined himself in and engage in an entirely harmless exchange, acting primarily in defense.

Tonks was flagging quickly, relying on traditional dueling techniques to wear down his immaculate defenses, and Harry could feel the strain of the sussurus in his limbs as he began casting a bevy of small deflectors in the path of her spells. Traditional shields such as protego and the Eastern equivalents absorbed magic rather than redirecting it. Harry's shields required less effort to sustain, but were harder to cast. Such shields were not typically used by modern magic-users because they were not really very effective against spells like incendio, sussurus, or fiendfyre.

Of course, the other reason was related to the recent magical wars. Most of the combat had taken place in cities or on crowded battlefields where the Statute of Secrecy was a concern. And directing enemy spell-fire into your allies was always frowned upon.

Tonks adjusted her strategy by closing distance with him, which increased the tempo of their duel. Harry grinned and palmed the shrunken shield that he had made with Ted's assistance, easily matching the pace of her spellcasting. He allowed her to think that he was struggling to keep up with her, back-stepping in time with her advance, until he conjured a purposefully weak deflector and enlarged the shield in his hand.

She rattled off a combination of white, red, and yellow spells, still casting silently, and the first two were diverted successfully. Harry leaned into her magic, angling his spear towards her and circling left as he successfully weathered the attack on his enchanted shield.

Now, in close quarters, Death's insistence on weapons training paid off. Harry prepared lightning on his staff to prompt a defensive spell from Tonks, vaulted a wide curse aimed at his ankles, and barreled into her with his shield. As she staggered he rammed the rim of the wide wooden disc into her jaw, snapping her head up. She blew him away from her with a wide-area banishing curse, and he rolled with the force of her magic, coming up shakily on his feet with lightning pulsing thickly around the glowing gem in his staff.

Tonks regained her feet just in time for her shield to shatter under the force of Harry's sussurus. The lightning's pulsing tendrils gripped her body and lifted her partially from the ground, crawling over her robes and filling the air with a concussive screech as magic pulsed between them.

Harry wrested his power back the moment a scream touched her lips, and the lightning sloughed from her body onto the grass, crawling back to him and gathering around his arms before it faded into smoke.

Tonks collapsed the moment her feet touched the ground, and Amanda rushed to her side. The pink-haired auror trainee waved her away after a moment of panting, searching the ground for her wand.

Harry tentatively approached them, wearing his usual cloak and bereft of his weapons once again. "Are you alright?"

Tonks snorted. "What the hell did you cast?"

"I'd like to know that as well," Amanda seconded, eying at him warily.

"It was a shield-breaker curse," Harry replied honestly. "I've been waiting for a good time to try it."

"That was no shield-breaker," Amanda scoffed. "You're lucky it didn't kill her!"

Tonks put her hand on her friend's arm. "It might have hurt like the dickens, but it only inflicted minor burns," she soothed. "And let me tell you, it taxes your shields like nothing I'd ever felt before. Where did you learn it?"

"It was in that book on the Etruscans," Harry replied. "I'm sorry. The author said that it was unpleasant, but I knew that it wasn't lethal or even very dangerous. Not unless it's held for a lot longer, at least. A banisher would have felt worse for you."

"You took me by surprise with that shield. Did my dad help you with it?" Tonks told him as she stood, gesturing at his off-hand. Harry noticed that her whole body was shaking quite violently, and apparently Amanda did as well.

"I'd like to see that book of yours, if you don't mind," she told him primly.

Tonks waved her off. "Oh, come off it, Amanda. You don't see me being a sore loser, and I'm the one that took the spell!"

Harry and Tonks chatted about their duel all the way back to the house, valiantly ignoring the suspicious looks that Amanda was sending his way. Once they were back, she checked Tonks over once again before she left, but not without having a whispered conversation with Nymphadora.

Harry could guess the gist of it. Probably warning Tonks to keep an eye on him, report any suspicious activity to the DMLE, and to call a healer if she didn't stop trembling within a couple of hours.

Tonks dismissed her with good humor and apologized to him about it, but Harry knew that she wasn't as comfortable with the incident as she seemed. Harry encouraged her to consider using the staff he had made for her and let the matter rest, but he never once saw her cast a spell with the staff rather than her wand.

Platform 9 ¾ was crammed from the wall to the rails with a pulsating mass of anxious parents and frenzied children, and Harry would have expected to find himself somewhat anonymous as a result of the crowd. Instead, anyone within twenty yards in every direction continued to look at him and talk in low voices, as if it really made a difference whether or not he could hear what they were saying. He hated this, standing out in the middle of a sea of stranger, like some kind of circus attraction, and he could tell that the Tonks family was quite unused to the attention as well.

Andromeda had her hand on his shoulder, squeezing him reassuringly, but when he looked up at her face he saw mirrored in her eyes the same discomfort that plagued him.

So it was with great relief that he noted the Hogwarts Express in all of its antiquated glory puffing its way into the station, met by an energetic rush of excitement as students of all ages faced the coming year with an array of emotions from sophomoric optimism to cold dread.

Harry thanks Ted and Andromeda for a wonderful summer, promised to write, shrugged off a few hugs, and proceeded to shoulder his way through the crowd as swiftly as he could manage without losing his stacked trunks, which levitated low against the ground behind him. One benefit of his fame was the fact that everybody seemed to know where he was at all times, and a path had cleared for him in short order.

He found himself an empty compartment, stowed his luggage with a lackadaisical wave of his hand, and fell heavily onto the bench. After a brief moment of hesitation, he cast a weak compulsion on the door to discourage the odd passerby from poking their head inside.

Technically, it was against the rules to use magic on the train, but Harry knew that they couldn't pick his magic out from the rather incredible array of enchantments that pulsed under his very feet, keeping the train running and invisible to muggles. He figured if the prefects could spot his little ward, then they deserved to hand him a citation. It was a rather obscure…

The door to his compartment opened suddenly enough to startle Harry from his musings, and he blinked in surprise when he saw a little blonde girl leading her ginger friend past his compulsion. "Just through here, see," she was saying. She paused when she noticed him. "Oh. Hello there."

"Hi," Harry muttered, folding his arms in disappointment. Had he cast the spell incorrectly?

"Wait," the redheaded girl exclaimed. "That door wasn't there a moment ago!"

"Yes it was," the blonde replied lightly. "Are you Harry Potter?"

The boy in question sighed and rose to offer his hand. "Charmed," he said dryly as she took his hand and shook quite energetically.

"Luna Lovegood, at your service," the girl introduced herself, dropping his hand. She turned and waved a pale hand at her gob-smacked friend. "That's Ginny Weasley. We're neighbors."

Harry would have shaken her hand as well, but she didn't seem to be responding, so he focused on Luna instead. "How did you like my spell?"

"On the door?" Luna clarified. "Oh, it was quite nice. I thought that a hobgoblin had snuck onto the train when I saw it."

The Weasley girl seemed to shake herself from her stupor. "I'm sorry, Harry, we'll just find another compartment."

She tugged Luna's arm insistently. Harry sat down and leaned back. "If you leave now, then you'll reveal the door."

At that, Luna sat down promptly, almost dragging Ginny into the seat with her. Harry smiled and tapped the ground with his staff, lifting their trunks onto the racks with a silent levitation charm.

"Your magic is very beautiful, Harry," Luna complimented, to which he responded with hesitant thanks.

"What do you know of hobgoblins? Are they related to the proprietors of Gringotts Bank?" Harry asked. It appeared to him that this young girl was more than she appeared to be, if she could not only see the ward on the door, but also his active magic. Perhaps the creatures of which she spoke were simply rare or difficult to see.

Luna shook her head. "Distantly enough to be ignored, I think. Goblins don't really enjoy being reminded of the fact."

Ginny looked back and forth between them with a confused look on her face.

"I see. I haven't heard of them before."

Luna shrugged. "Nobody can see them. It's part of their curse," she explained. A dreamy smile pulled at her lips, and her wide blue eyes blinked slowly. "Well, maybe you can."

"You'll have to forgive Luna," Ginny interjected. "Her imagination is very active."

Harry raised his eyebrow. "It's quite alright. You're related to Ronald Weasley?"

She nodded. "He's in Gryffindor."

Harry played for a moment with the fabric of his cloak, searching for something to say. He was about to speak when Luna interrupted him. "I was sorry to hear about Quirinus Quirrel. My father used to know him, you know. They traveled in the same circles."

"It was a bad situation," Harry replied with a hard voice. Luna either wasn't aware that she'd chosen an uncomfortable topic of conversation, or she just didn't care.

"It really doesn't seem like something that he would have done," she said, peering at him with an innocent expression. "Stealing the Philosopher's Stone."

Ginny gasped and held a hand over her mouth, looking aghast at the girl sitting beside her. Harry's face lost all semblance of a pleasant expression, and his eyes flashed as he leaned forward. "You shouldn't believe everything that you read in the paper," he warned softly.

Luna shook her head, eyes wide and startled. "I didn't mean to imply…" she trailed off, looking through the window at the crowded platform. "Well, I don't know what I meant."

"I wish that Quirrel could have lived," he told her solemnly. "But I don't regret what I did."

"No one outruns Death," Luna replied strangely. Harry froze, searching her eyes in the pregnant silence that followed her statement.

Harry dropped the conversation as he sat back. "What house are you hoping for, then?" he asked abruptly, looking at Ginny. She curled her hair around one finger and shrugged.

"My whole family has been in Gryffindor. But I'm not sure I like their colors," she said. Her eyes flicked up to his face and her cheeks pinked slightly before she fidgeted and looked away.

The train jumped beneath their feet as it began its journey North, and Harry laid his head back against the cushioned seat. Ginny excused herself, claiming that she was going to go find a few of her friends, and Harry enjoyed a moment of silence before he sighed and glanced intently at Luna.

"What did you mean when you said that no one escapes Death?"

Luna blinked. "You are wearing His cloak," she answered.

Harry was so surprised by her insight that he floundered for an appropriate response. Luna bobbed her head and gestured at the clasp. "There's a very distinctive mark on the clasp. The mark of the Brothers Three, the Sign of Death."

Harry blinked and craned his head to get a look at the silver clasp. It looked to him like fine silver arranged in the shape of two skeletal hands gripped tightly together, without any sign of a mark. "It's just a regular clasp," he replied slowly.

"Oh, of course it is," Luna said in a low voice. "I'm good at keeping secrets, Harry Potter."

"Well, it is Death's cloak," he admitted reluctantly. "But there's no insignia on the clasp."

Luna cocked her head slightly, jostling her platinum blonde hair and the radishes on her ears. "You just aren't looking at it right."

Harry quirked an eyebrow at her and shook his head. "I'll have to take your word for it, then," he told her. She blinked, as if surprised, and Harry glanced through the window, watching the countryside run by.

"Have you ever met Death?" Luna asked quite suddenly, in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

He glanced at her briefly, met her earnest blue eyes, and nodded his head. "Yes," he answered aloud.

Luna shuddered. "I saw Him," she told him dreamily. "Once. You…remind me quite a lot of Death, Harry Potter."

Harry felt a strange mixture of pity and pride, and impulsively reached out his hand towards her. Luna gasped, leaning away from him briefly, and just as he was about to pull his hand away the girl slapped her hand into his palm, gripping his knuckles painfully.

"That was just the way He did it," Luna whispered, looking at their intertwined hands. "He had this look...and then he reached out…and she was gone. But I'm still here."

Harry said nothing until she released his hand. "I'm sorry."

"Oh," Luna fidgeted in her seat. "It's alright. No one outruns Death, Harry Potter. You should know."

Their eyes met, and Harry's breath caught for a moment as he found in this young girl an understanding that no one had ever shared. He wondered, for a moment, if Luna knew enough about the world to be afraid of the dark.

When she blinked, there was that detached air about her again, and Harry knew immediately that she did know. And she was afraid.