Chapter Forty-three: To Stand Beside You

Summary: Forth-third chapter. Six to go. That about sums it up.

Harry stared at his godfather. He couldn't have heard him right. All Sirius had done for the past fifteen minutes was tell Harry why it was too dangerous for him to go after Voldemort. Now he was offering to teach him the very spell to do it with.

"Why?"

"Because at least this way I'll know what's going on, Harry. Dumbledore said it best. I may not have my magic back yet. But I have my mind still. I can plan a decent strategy."

Harry looked dumbfounded.

"You're going to let me do this?"

"No. I'm not 'going to let you do this', Harry. I still think it's very dangerous. But I think it's honestly more dangerous to not offer you some type of guidance." Sirius sighed quietly before he continued. "A parents job isn't to shelter a child forever, Harry. And as much as Arabella and I would love to simply tuck you away somewhere and make sure you're never hurt again, that wouldn't leave you with much of a life. Now, I understand you're need to seek revenge. Honestly I do. And I would be failing you terribly if I just stuck my head in the sand and hoped it would go away. Because I don't think it will. So the best thing I can do is to try and prepare you for what you may have to face one day in your life, hope it doesn't come any sooner than it has to, and pray you're smart enough not to go looking to hurry it along before your ready to meet it. But I also realize this one spell is going to be your greatest chance at survival. And to that end, I think you should learn it."

"But why you?"

"Because if something goes wrong, I won't have Moony blaming himself for it. That responsibility is that of a....." Sirius stopped abruptly in his train of thought. "It's not his. It's mine." He corrected quickly.

"Then you'll let me go with the ministry to..."

"No." Sirius stated firmly. "I'm not doing this so you can go hunt Voldemort and his snakes down, Harry. I'm trying to give you a tool to defend yourself. Not a weapon to commit murder with."

"Its not murder." Harry replied solemnly. "It's revenge."

"So why is this any different from my wanting to kill Peter in the Shrieking Shack?"

Harry thought for a moment.

"You told me then that would have been murder. And yet I wanted it for all the same reasons you want to kill Voldemort."

Harry still had no answer for his godfather.

"Murder is murder, Harry. Voldemort has to pay for his crimes, that's true. But you aren't the one who should have to dispense that justice."

"But how can you teach me the spell. You can't even...." Harry stopped suddenly. Bringing up Sirius condition had become for him something closely akin to saying an obscenity out loud.

"Arabella will help in the magic department when we get that far." Sirius answered the unasked question.

"What about your leg?" Harry asked.

"I don't need to walk to teach you a spell, Harry. If anything, this will help take my mind off my own problems for a while. Give me something else to think about."

Harry almost smiled at the prospect. He was finally going to be given one sure-fire weapon against Voldemort. But his enthusiasm was short lived.

"But there are provisions, Harry." Sirius broke into his thoughts.

"Provisions?"

"You have to swear to me that you won't use this spell for any other reason than to defend yourself. Promise me that."

"What?"

"It's important, Harry. Promise me. The spell is only for defense. You won't use it for any other reason."

Harry stared at his godfather for a very long time. What good was taking the time and effort to learn this spell if the only time he could use it was if Voldemort attacked him. What had Pettigrew said? Voldemort wouldn't come after him until he had killed enough of the people Harry cared about to dishearten him from fighting back.

"But Voldemort will still come after you if he isn't stopped." Harry replied quietly.

"And we can take care of ourselves, Harry. This is to make sure you can take care of yourself if we can't be there. Now promise me."

Harry paused, then slowly nodded. "All right." He said. "I promise."

"Next, you only perform this spell if I tell you to."

Harry thought for a moment, then nodded.

"And last, you don't use this spell but once. After you cast it, you never try to use it again. All right?"

Harry thought the request was sort of strange, but nodded just the same.

"All right then." Sirius replied, still looking as stern as before. "I'll still be tied to this bed for the next week. But Remus has agreed to start on the preliminaries with you. None of what he teaches you will be the actual spell itself. But there are certain steps you have to pass first before you'll even be able to attempt it. Remus will be teaching you those since they mostly involve defense spells."

And so Harry began his new 'classes'. Much of what Lupin began with seemed to Harry to be little more than elementary protection spells. After the first few days Harry was beginning to wonder if Sirius hadn't just arranged with Lupin to come up with something to occupy his time until Sirius was ready to take over his training.

By the fifth day Lupin seemed to be reading his mind. When Harry came down for his class, Lupin announced the lesson that day would be more of a practical than what they had been doing before.

"A practical?" Harry asked.

"To see what you've learned." Lupin explained. "You've been learning protections spells, right?"

Harry nodded.

"All right then," Lupin stated, drawing his own wand out, "Protect yourself."

And with that Lupin began firing off spells so fast Harry could hardly deflect them quickly enough or think up the right one to use. By the eighth one Harry felt the spell hit him in the leg and knock him back several feet.

When he shook off the effects of the spell, Harry looked up to find Lupin offering his a hand and an encouraging smile.

"You did very well, Harry. Most students are taken out by the third or fourth spell. You managed to hold me off for twice as long. That's very promising."

Harry, as always, beamed at Lupin's praise, which he knew was something you absolutely had to earn from then former defense teacher.

"I could have done better." Harry replied. "I just didn't expect...."

"And that was the point of the lesson, Harry." Lupin cut him off. "You're not always able to know when an attack is coming. That's why you always have to be prepared. So, I'll give you a few moments to shake off the rest of the effects of the spell and we'll try again, shall we?"

Harry didn't see much point in trying to defend against Lupin's 'surprise' attacks if he could stand there and see it coming, but he soon found out Lupin had provided for that.

Once he was past the effects of the spell, Lupin took him off to a different area of the castle.

"All right, Harry." Lupin explained as he walked Harry along a corridor Harry couldn't remember having ever been in before. "This is a fairly secluded area, so we're sure not to injure any innocent bystanders that may accidentally wander in. The task before you is fairly straight forward."

Harry silently wondered about the 'fairly' part.

"This will test not only you're ability to defend yourself and think on your feet, but to see how well you can learn from your mistakes. The course you'll have to get through is set with various magical spells that you'll have to defend yourself against. If you get caught, you'll have to start from the beginning again, and the spells will change as soon as you start over. So don't think you can avoid them just because you knew where or what they were the last time. They'll change their location and type with each attempt. Now, you will start at the entrance to the corridor." Lupin said, pointing to where they had just come from. "You will move through the corridor...."

Lupin spent the next fifteen minutes directing Harry through a maze of rooms and corridors, finally ending at a room whose door was closed.

"This is the final room you'll have to get through." Lupin explained. "When you get here, you have only to retrieve what's inside and you will have completed the task. Clear enough then?"

Harry nodded with a slight smile. The whole thing seemed to him to be a sort of game. Like running a magical obstacle course.

But Harry soon found that the task put before him was anything but a game. If anything, Lupin seemed to strive to make the course as realistic as he could in terms of the level of danger of some of the spells. Some of them, Harry was sure, would have left him with a painful reminder if they had hit him. But none of them would cause any 'permanent' damage, Lupin had assured his pupil with a small smile.

It took Harry the full afternoon before he managed to make it to the end of the gauntlet. But with each try he was encouraged not only by Lupin's praise at his efforts, but by the fact he managed to get a little closer to the end each time.

When he did reach the room Lupin had directed him to, Harry found himself rewarded with a bottle of Butterbeer sitting innocently on the floor in the center of the room.

But as he started for it, a streak of blue light suddenly shot across his path, barely missing his shoulder. Harry adeptly parried out of the way of the blast and disabled the attack spell Lupin had set up.

After that it took him a full five minutes to creep across the room and finally claim his reward.

"That last one wasn't very fair." Harry chided his former teacher as Lupin joined him in the room.

"But quite useful in making a point, Harry." Lupin explained. "A favorite of your attackers is often to put what you want within sight. Easy. Accessible. Enough to make the most cautious person drop their guard for those few fragile seconds they shouldn't have. You were lucky. The spell missed you. If it had hit you, I promise you you'd have remembered it."

Harry smiled slightly. He couldn't help but be pleased at his accomplishment, since Lupin certainly hadn't made it easy.

None of his enthusiasm was diminished in the least that evening as he sat on the end of Sirius' bed, as he did each night, telling his godfather how the lessons had gone that day.

"Well, it sounds as though Remus has finished with his part of this then." Sirius announced with a pleased smile. "And you've done very well, Harry. Even Remus says so. He's been very pleased with your progress."

Far past Harry's successes with Remus lessons, what pleased Sirius even more was seeing the pure enthusiasm in Harry eyes ever night as he sat telling Sirius and Arabella what he had learned that day. Not excitement born from learning something that got him closer to his ultimate goal, but a simpler pleasure taken from just having learned something new. There was no rage now. No anger. No thoughts of seeking revenge. Just the pleasure his godson seemed to take in accomplishing each of Remus tasks successfully.

But Sirius knew that Harry hadn't forgotten what started him down the path he was now on, and Harry had lived up to his end of the bargain so far. Now it was Sirius turn to make good on his promise.

Remus had actually been pulling double duty for the last few days. After he was done each day teaching Harry defense spells, he would come up the infirmary after Arabella and Harry left for the night and spend a few hours going over the spell with Sirius and Dumbledore as they studied it for any complications.

The Headmaster had been none too pleased when the two explained the situation to him. True, he had wanted Harry to learn the spell. It was the culmination of all the plans that they were making. But he had been firm set that he would be the one to teach the spell to Harry. There were numerous possible complications. The spell was a very old magic. And old magics tended to be tricky. He wasn't entirely sure that Sirius, though a very skilled wizard in his own right, was up to teaching the spell to a wizard as young as Harry and making sure it had been done exactly right. And it was on that reason that Dumbledore had insisted on sitting in on the teaching of the spell itself.

But he had absolutely agreed with Sirius' reasons for wanting to be the one to teach Harry the spell. One thing they did know was that the spell required not only great force of will, but a strong control over one's own emotions. And certainly no one knew better how to control their emotions than a man who had sat every day for twelve years in a cell doing just that. But before they would begin, Sirius insisted he first be allowed to discuss the matter in length with his godson, to make sure Harry, now that he seemed a great deal less under the influence of his emotions, understood what he was getting himself into.

Harry awoke one morning into his second week of training with Professor Lu[in as eager to get started as ever. But he actually found himself a bit nervous when his godmother informed him that instead of working with Remus, that Sirius wanted to see him alone that morning in the infirmary.

Harry honestly had no idea what Sirius wanted to talk to him about. It couldn't be anything to do with the teaching of the spell, since Professor Lupin had already explained to him that both he and Professor Dumbledore would be present for the first few days before Sirius took over teaching Harry on his own.

Once he got to the infirmary, Harry was surprised to find his godfather for the first time not laying in a bed. But his enthusiasm at the change quickly changed as he took in the new scene presented before him. Instead Sirius was sitting in a large chair with a small footstool in front of it that allowed him to rest his leg on it. Leaning next to the chair was a long, thin cane.

Sirius rested one hand on the cane as he watched his godson come over and sit in front of him. With each step he had watched Harry become more and more tense until he was hardly able to move his limbs at all by the time he got to the chair. He watched the bright green eyes take in the scene in front of him, analyzing it carefully. And very slowly he watched the spark of hatred begin to come to life again behind his godson's eyes.

Even though he had come to see Sirius no less than three times a day while he was training with Professor Lupin, Harry had found himself slowly forgetting his earlier anger as he immersed himself in the enjoyment of the new challenge Professor Lupin's lessons presented.

And while Sirius laid in the bed, it was easy to tell himself simple little lies to make the situation more bearable. Every day Sirius seemed more his old self. He joked more. He smiled more. He had to be getting better. Madam Pomfrey had found some way to heal his leg.

But when Harry entered the infirmary and saw Sirius sitting in the chair with his leg stretched out across the footstool, still the scarred, ruined mass of flesh it had been days before, and the cane leaning next to his godfather's chair, all the lies he had built his world around came crashing down in the face of that reality.

Feelings he had nearly forgotten surfaced so quickly he was nearly blinded to anything else around him. Only barely did he hear his godfather's question as he sat solemn faced in front of him.

"Tell me what your thinking."

Harry sat as though he were in a trance, simply staring at the scene before him.

"I thought you were better." Harry said in a hollow whisper.

"And I am." Sirius replied in the same even tone he had asked his question, still carefully studying his godson.

Harry shook his head.

"You're not." He stated softly. His gaze slowly shifted until he was staring his godfather in the eyes. "You're never going to be, are you? You'll never be able to walk again."

Sirius didn't answer the question. Instead he sat silently meeting Harry's stare.

Harry slowly shook his head as he brows knitted together. "They're going to pay for it, Sirius." He promised barely above a whisper. "I swear it. They'll pay for doing this to you. They have too."

"Is that what you're going to think now every time you look at me, Harry?" Sirius asked. "How badly you want to hurt those that did this? Because if it is, I would honestly rather you not come back anymore."

Harry seemed to snap out of his trance suddenly, refocusing his gaze on Sirius.

"What?"

"I don't want to spend my life, Harry, as a living reminder of your hatred. Of your need for revenge. Now you either need to get past this or we need to end this here."

Harry wasn't sure what Sirius was referring to that they needed to end here. Nor was he sure he wanted to find out.

"What do you expect me to do?" Harry asked. "Just ignore it?"

"I expect you to learn to accept it, as I have, Harry." Sirius offered. "Nothing more. Nothing less. Because if you can't do that, then no matter what I teach you, it'll be for nothing. You can't go forward from here leading with your anger. You have to learn first how to leave that behind. Do you think you can do that?"

Harry paused for a long time before answering. Something Sirius was pleased to see him do. It meant he wasn't rushing into an answer.

"A lot of people are depending on me." Harry finally said. "I guess I owe it to them to at least try."

"No one is asking you to do anything, Harry." Sirius explained. "If you don't feel up to this, or you don't feel comfortable with it, now is the time to tell me. I won't think any less of you. No one will. But you need to be sure. From here on out the training will get much harder."

Harry didn't mind the 'harder' part. It was the part about forgetting his anger. How could Sirius asked that of him? It was his anger, his need to seek revenge on Voldemort and his Deatheaters that had started him on this path to begin with. Without it, he wasn't sure he could finish it.

"If I'm not looking for revenge, then what am I looking for?" Harry asked.

Sirius gave him a small smile. "Justice."