The month of October is usually associated with a cool breeze flowing across a serene landscape dotted with flaming trees that are ready to shed their leaves till the rejuvenating season of spring brings them back to life with soft childlike innocent leaves take their place to repeat the endless cycle of life and death.

Harry Potter was not feeling too much of the light wind though. He was in a terrain where snow clad mountains competed with lush coniferous forests to provide an overall awesome view. He was at the Himalayas.

Sheltered in a cave from the howling winds that raged from the north and then mellowed down enough by the time they reached the great Indian plains, he was kept company a man who very well could have passed off as the prominent English wizard Albus Dumbledore with his bright twinkling eyes and outsized white beard.

The only difference being that this man was in a partial state of undress with only a carroty loin cloth, which would seemingly have offended western sensibilities, to cover him and possessed a light brown tone of the skin. No, Harry Potter was not here to test his gender orientations. Rather he was in an extreme state of meditation softly chanting an ancient Hindu hymn that was to aid him in his purposes of concentration.

Suddenly after a day long span of absorption in his ritual which he had been going over for the past month and a half, he felt as if ants were slowly crawling along his back. An intense heat in his spine as if molten lava was softly making its way down took its place and a soft buzzing echo in his ear slowly rose in crescendo to reproduce a roaring sound that finished with a clap of thunder. This was immediately followed by a feeling of pure bliss that gave way to millions of bright flashy lights in his head that revealed to him the creative, intellectual and spiritual side of life.

With an extremely content smile on his face, Harry slowly lowered his chin to reveal a set of beautiful glowing green eyes and was met with the sight of the Indian version of Dumbledore proudly beaming at him.

"Did you see, my child?" he asked of Harry. Harry slowly nodded.

"You are now one with yourself now child. You must learn to harness the energy you have been gifted with. Your magic is only worth so much. But the energy within us all is so immense, so powerful yet so beautiful. Each of us is enough to create a star by ourselves just by harnessing all which we have. Go now. Go in peace. May the blessings of the gods be with you."

Harry slowly got up and wrapped his arms around the wizened Indian hermit to give him a gentle hug.

"And child, you don't need that stick you carry around with you anymore. Nor those silly words you keep uttering with that stick. Will it. Ask of your being for it to happen and it will happen……"

With a trusting nod, Harry took out his wand from his holster and giving it one last loving look. He then gripped the sides of the wand and with a slight effort bent it at the middle. What happened next would remain firmly etched in his mind as an everlasting memory.

The wand broke with a resounding CRACK and exposed a stunning red and gold feather from Dumbledore's pet phoenix. The feather immediately burst into flames and all of a sudden, exploded into millions of red and gold sparkling lights. The glittering lights soon turned into a phantom figure that took the shape of a majestic phoenix. It slowly drifted upwards and just when it was about to touch the ceiling of the cave, it gave a mighty screech and without another warning rushed towards Harry.

The moment it entered Harry, he felt as if all his pain, all his sorrows, all his misery was had been washed away. He felt rejuvenated as if he had suddenly found an oasis of water in a hot sterile desert.

"My child! Oh my! Do you realize what has just happened?" the hermit suddenly exclaimed.

Without waiting for Harry to answer, the positively gleeful man clapped his hands and continued talking – "Look what it did! This celestial creature cleansed all the darkness that was trying to take hold of you. When you first came to me, lost and miserable I questioned myself whether I should teach you the ancient ways. I sensed a great amount of inherent righteousness in you, but that was slowly being eaten away by your rage and anger. Sooner or later, these would have led you to the path of self-destruction. It seems I made the right decision, for only someone absolutely pure of heart could have received such a wonderful gift from this creature. Now I have nothing to worry about. You must go and solve that which earlier troubled you so greatly."

With a silent nod and a barely audible pop, Harry left.

"Rise oh tortured soul,

The brunt's you have borne enough

It's time taming

Wisdom and faith in you

Floating on towers of imagination

Success, failure, adventure

Risen you Have now

Vision of your glory, is there

It is now an eternal story."

With a soft sigh, the old man finished his song and slowly made his way out of the cave to collect fruits for the day's meal.

--------------------------

Lavender Brown always considered herself to be a very sociable and gregarious girl, whose zest for life could only be matched by her best friend, Parvati Patil. No wonder that she was now fervently kissing her fifth selection of a boyfriend in the past two weeks at the window facing the north side at the infamous Astronomy tower.

She suddenly felt warmth creeping up her face till she chanced a look outside to see a majestic figure making its way through towards the outer doors of the great hall. With an impatient huff she broke away contact with her male companion and felt a growing good pleasantness as the figure approached closer. This person was walking with a naturalness and grace that only the noblest of blood and the highest order of royalty could even think to imitate.

There was an extremely powerful aura surrounding him and she suddenly felt loved and wanted and that everything in the world was all right. Her natural instincts kicked in and she realized she must find out who this person was. With an unnatural burst of speed she raced down towards the great hall, just in time to see the doors of her school - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, gently opening.

TBC

A/N: Dear Reader, how do like the story so far. I understand that my story started really fast paced and then somewhere after the upheaval the Fudge, turned dramatically slow. I am going to slowly pick up the pace once more. I had reached a slight stumbling block (what u guys like calling a writer's block), but hopefully that phase is over. No wonder my most recent update came almost a month after I wrote last.

Hmm. Now a lot of you guys (and gals, of course!) are too smart for your own good. It becomes easy to predict the story if the author doesn't add twists and turns. Jeffrey Archer in fact wrote a book based on this - If I remember correctly it was called - Twelve Red Herrings.

Neways, I diverge. What I have tried to do is bring in a little twist in the plot. I am aware that a lot of fics. deal with 'Harry goes training and comes back a superman'. Yes, I agree to having done something very similar here, but I tried giving it a whiff of freshness. No elves, no 4 founders, no Merlin, No Dumbledore and definitely no Bellatrix (which if I might add seems to be an emerging trend!)

I most whole heartedly welcome your comments and suggestions. Even though I may not personally mention your nick, trust me, I take every single suggestions and for that matter your appreciative comments very, very seriously.

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