A/N:  I have decided to alter the name of the story from 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Touch' to 'Harry Potter and the Fate of Hogwarts' because I don't feel the former adequately describes the story.  It has nothing to do with the fact that I was given a suggestion to change it in order to increase the number of people reading it.

A/N:  If anyone is wondering what a Katar is, I will tell you how to draw a crude but convincing looking one, all you need is a pencil a piece of paper and a ruler.  First, draw a triangle with a 4-inch side and 2 nine and one quarter inch sides.  The 4-inch side is the base.  Draw a line on both ends of the base that are perpendicular to it, these lines are 7 inches long.  2 inches along these lines, from the base of the triangle, draw a thick bar that joins them.  If you have done all that correctly, you are now looking at a very crude but recognizable rendition of a Katar.  That thick line you drew is the handle, and it is gripped like a pair of knuckles or a punching dagger. 

            Chapter 6

            American History

            Harry awoke Monday morning to a crack of thunder.  Glancing out the window, he heard wind howling around the castle, but couldn't see much through the think fog that blanketed everything.  He thought nothing of it as he drifted back to sleep.  He woke again as a veritable sheet of water slashed over him.  Jumping out of bed, Harry saw the other boys were up and doing drying spells on their beds, apparently having been roused the same way.  He quickly closed the window that had blown open and joined the others in drying his bed.  When his bed was dry, he no longer felt sleepy and decided to get dressed and go down to breakfast.

            When he got to the table, he found Ron already sitting there, trying to finish some Defense Against the Dark Arts homework that he put off all weekend, Hermione sitting beside him with her nose in a book.  Harry sat down opposite them and pulled up a bowl of porridge, and began to slowly eat some of it.  After a few minutes of absolutely nothing happening, the mail arrived.  A pair of barn owls swooped down and dropped a rolled up parchment at both Harry and Hermione.  Harry pushed his away to read later, knowing full well it was this morning's edition of the Daily Prophet, while Hermione unrolled her's immediately.  Almost instantly, Harry saw her eyes grow wide and her jaw drop as the color drained out of her face.  Harry unrolled his copy and looked at it.  The headline caught his attention and compelled him to read the front-page story without thinking.

SIRIUS BLACK CAUGHT

Investigators at the Department for Magical Law

Enforcement caught Sirius Black, the elusive

Azkaban escapee, on Friday in the Manchester

area.  Citizens of the town became aware of a snowy

owl that made frequent visits and the investigators

were called in to ask the owner of the owl to please

either buy a native type of owl or put a charm on it to

make it less noticeable.  Much to their surprise, they

encountered the convict hiding in an abandoned house.

He surrendered when he saw the officials surrounding…

            Harry couldn't read anymore of the article.  Feeling very nauseated, he got up from the table and ran for the bathroom.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            Harry missed the first half of potions, being in the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey refusing to let him leave until she was satisfied there was nothing wrong with him.  He gave his note to Professor Snape as to where he was and sat down.  He sat there spaced out in disbelief that his godfather was caught and would any probably be kissed by one of the dementors.  He didn't hear Snape droning on and on about porcupine quills and cobra fangs and an endless list of other ingredients and what their basic effects were, despite repeated blows to his ribs from Hermione's elbow to pay attention.  Harry was only dimly aware of when the bell rang and proceeded to Andranos' History of Magic class.  He sat down and waited for the bell, which arrived shortly there after.  For the second time in as many weeks Andranos was late for his own class.  Ron and Hermione tried to console Harry with limited success, that is, enough to bring him back into reality.  The three were startled when they heard a low-pitched, but loud nonetheless, scream ring out from somewhere above them.  A few seconds later, a dimension door opened at the front of the room with Andranos stepping out of it.

            "I apologize for my tardiness, I had something I had to deal with.  Now, although I only do this class for fifth, sixth, and seventh year students, doing it for each house individually it is seriously cutting into my time.  So your headmaster, in his infinite wisdom, has agreed to permit me to do two houses at a time.  I have decided to pair Hufflepuff with Ravenclaw, and to pair Gryffindor with Slytherin."

            Harry looked to the other side of the room and saw, sure enough, the Slytherin fifth years sitting there.

            "Now, I will just jump right into the lesson.  I come from the country of America, which is one of five countries on the continent of warts.  So named because when it was discovered, it was believed that all the warts spilled in wars ran to the bottom of the planet like when water is dripped on a globe and runs to the bottom.  America is run by an index system of government and ruled over by a trio of penguins, to ensure that no one man has absolute power over the entire country.  America's monetary system is based on coins of rubber, wood, and sugar, each one being one inch across and one sixteenth of an inch thick, with no decoration.  Ten sugar go into one wood, and ten wood go into one rubber.  The penguins that rule America are always sorcerers so therefore it could be said that America is ruled by sorcerers.  For those in the magic profession, the most precious commodity is the marijuana fungus, which grows in the form of a mushroom.  Marijuana can fetch prices of up to one thousand rubber pieces per pound.  To put this in perspective for you, seventy percent of the population of America makes only five rubber pieces per week.  Yes Miss Granger?"

            Harry only now noticed that Hermione had had her hand up in the air for a minute or so.

            "Excuse me, but I don't think that marijuana is a fungus."

            "Of course it's a fungus.  It grows in this form," he said as he drew a crude but clear looking mushroom on the chalkboard, "and this is a fungus, isn't it."

            "Well maybe your just saying the wrong word then, are you sure it's called marijuana?"

            "Yes, of course I'm sure…could you please slowly repeat the word 'marijuana'?"

            Hermione did as she was asked, repeating the word 'marijuana' over and over again.  Andranos pulled his amulet out from under his shirt and away from his chest.  As soon as he did this, his lips furled and he bared his teeth while his eyes grew wide as he let out an animalistic growl.  He put his hand up sharply to signal Hermione to stop.

            "If you will excuse me," he said with an obvious fury in his voice, "I must attend to something."  When he finished talking he walked over to the closet and opened the door to reveal nothing in it except a large mirror.  He placed his hand on the mirror and almost immediately a white glow quickly crept up his hand.  Once it had encompassed him completely, it subsided, but instead of just the glow disappearing, Andranos disappeared with it.  When it had finished, he was gone.  Upon closer inspection, Harry thought the mirror looked remarkably like the mirror of Erised.  Aside from conversations that sprang up immediately, little happened in the room for the next ten minutes.  After which, the entire process happened again, only in reverse.  When Andranos stepped away, he was covered head to toe in transparent but visible shiny goo.  He had his dagger in his left hand and both were covered in blood.  He glanced down at his weapon, and put it in its sheath.

            "I'm sorry for that, but it appears that before I left the Fyndow Academy, one of my colleagues thought it would be funny to tamper with my translator amulet.  I have acquired a different one.  One that functions as it is supposed to.  Now, since I don't know what I have said that was incorrect, I will begin from the beginning."

            "I come from the country of Dymora, which is one of five countries on the continent of blood.  So named because when it was discovered, it was believed that all the blood spilled in wars ran to the bottom of the planet like when water is dripped on a globe and runs to the bottom.  Dymora is run by a feudal system of government and ruled over by a trio of emperors, to ensure that no one man has absolute power over the entire country.  Dymora's monetary system is based on coins of gold, silver, and copper, each one being one inch across and one sixteenth of an inch thick, with no decoration.  Ten copper go into one silver, and ten silver go into one gold.  The emperors that rule Dymora are always sorcerers so therefore it could be said that Dymora is ruled by sorcerers.  For those in the magic profession, the most precious commodity is the Kandaa fungus, which grows in the form of a mushroom.  Kandaa can fetch prices of up to one thousand gold pieces per pound.  To put this in perspective for you, seventy percent of the population of Dymora makes only five gold pieces per week.

            "The capitol city of Dymora, Tishanga, is located along the northern coast.  The entire city has been carved out of a small mountain, and I don't mean that is composed of caves.  I mean that the mountain has been carved down into contemporary houses and buildings, with the cooperative effort of dwarves and goblins.  This, by the way, is the only known instance of goblins and dwarves working together in our records.  They did so for a mutually desirable goal: money.  An enormous amount of money was spent in making Tishanga.  Of course this is only an assumption, seeing how it took place so long ago, and covered such a long period of time.  The city was finished fifteen hundred years ago and took seven hundred years to make.  The city is laid out somewhat like a bulls-eye.  The emperors' keep in the center, the nobility surrounding it.  Around that is the wealthy, then the guild buildings mingled in with the shops and stores.  And surrounding all that are the city walls and gates.  In the 1500 years that it has been around, there has, of course, been a shortage of room in the city and there have been expansions outside of the walls.  Whenever there is need for it, and occasionally there is, the occupants of these expansions are welcome to take shelter in the city.  Tishanga has a forest within half a league of most of it, the ocean around the rest of it.  The forest cannot be cleared away because it is under the rule of a group of elves.  Even though there are several particularly nasty tribes of orcs living in it.

            "Something that I should probably say before continuing is that Dymora is located in an alternate dimension.  I am not in the mood to explain it to you thoroughly, so I will only say that my world and your world are two objects that share the same space at the same time and are completely unaware of each other's existence.  Now, I will continue.

 "A point of interest in recent news is that your government has reached an understanding with our government.  This concerning the lack of trust you have in the denizens that guard over your prison system.  So, we are taking over your prison system.  All inmates that are currently imprisoned have already been transferred to Dymora, and all newly acquired inmates will be turned over to us, this would include all newly sentenced people, escaped prisoners, stuff like that.  People with what we would call misdemeanor crimes, thing like thievery, rape, will be put into our prisons.  People with more serious offences that are serving anything short of life or under sentence of death, will be performing hard labor.  And finally, people serving life sentences or are to be put to death, will be sold into slavery.  Case in point, one of the emperors has died recently and we are preparing to lay him to rest.  Several of these 'slaves' will be turned into lichs, to guard the tomb."

            Harry glanced over and saw Hermione sitting back in her chair, eyes wide, with a complete look of terror on her face.  'What's a lich?' he mouthed to her.

            'You don't want to know,' she mouthed back.

            "Excuse me," Harry said putting his hand up.  "But what is a lich?"

            "Well," Andranos answered, "a lich is one type of an assortment of many undead creatures.  It's most noticeable quality is its tendency to kill its target with powerful magic.  To put simply, a lich is an undead wizard."

            "But what if the prisoner is innocent," Harry ventured.

            "Don't you trust in your own justice system?"

            "Quite frankly, no I don't."

            "That's too bad, one should have faith in their government.  Now it should be noted…" Andranos stopped as a gong was heard from outside.  He slowly turned around and headed over to the window.  He opened it up, letting rain come flooding through it, and gazed out.  He put his hands over his eyes and muttered, "Sitoocamousha sitookusha, sitoocamousha, demookikla."  He let his hands drop away and looked out again.  Another gong sounded and he just stayed where he was, transfixed by whatever he saw out the window.  He closed it sharply and looked back at the class.  Harry nearly fell out of his seat when he saw that Andranos' eyes were glowing red.  "If you will excuse me, I need to have a word with your headmaster."  He quickly opened a dimension door and disappeared.

            Ten minutes passed before he returned through another dimension door.  After stepping out of it, he informed the class that, given how much time was left, they might as well leave for whatever they had next.  After saying this, he dimension doored out again.  Harry got up and made his way to Defense Against the Dark Arts with the rest of the Gryffindors.  He stopped when he heard Lavender scream.  He pushed past to see what the problem was and saw professor Moody with his hands tied behind his back and a noose around his neck, clearly dead.  He was hanging from one of the ceiling rafters with a piece of parchment pinned to his chest bearing two big words:

            CONSTANT

            VIGILANCE