A Third Path to the Future

by Vimesenthusiast

Rescued from the Negative Zone by the Fantastic Four, Harry Potter discovers he is a mutant and decides to take up the cause of equality between mutants and humans (among other causes). How will a dimensionally displaced Harry Potter, one who is extremely intelligent, proactive and not afraid to get his hands dirty effect the marvel universe? Pairings: Harry/Jean/Ororo/others pos.

5. I don't think he meant that as

ATP5revision

I don't own Potter or Marvel

I have decided to do something a little different with the chapter headings of this story from now on. I will take a single quote from the chapter that I think shows what the chapter is about rather than try to come up with a single sentence to describe it, which was getting pretty boring.

Thanks go to Xunzar for going over the back chapter like this with me.

Chapter 5 Er, I don't think he meant that as a challenge

Charles knew that this was going to be a touchy subject for some reason, and so decided to see if he could calm the situation down first. "Might I ask why Jean came to you for more help? I thought that she was doing well with her mental exercises."

"She said she was still having trouble keeping out other people's stray thoughts and emotions. And I have to say given the state of her mental defenses, that was understating things; if she didn't have as much control of her powers as she did, it would be far worse. Now answer the question Charles." Harry said grimly, his eyes locked on Xavier's like a cannon's aiming sights.

An apt description as it turned out because when Charles tried to say, "Mr. Potter, I am an expert in matters of the mind. So in the interest of saving time, let me simply assure you it is for the good of both Jean and everyone . . ."

"DO NOT USE THAT LINE WITH ME!" Harry shouted suddenly, bringing his hands down on the professors wooden desk. With a surge of magic, large wooden claws grew out of the desk to swiftly surround Charles' head, while another two reached out and grabbed him, pinning him in place.

Charles leaned back carefully, belatedly realizing that his words must have sounded like the old man Harry sometimes mentioned when he talked about his adventures in his home dimension, the one he called 'Bumblemore'. Harry had often mentioned how he had cloaked his agenda in something he called the greater good, which was dangerously close to the words the professor had unwittingly used. Note to self: watch how I word things around Mr. Potter from now on.

Harry stood up, nearly incandescent with anger. "I have heard that line far too often before to trust it! 'Harry, I assure you Professor Snape has my full confidence', 'Harry, for the greater good you must forgive and forget', 'Harry, I assure you, I have nothing but your best interests at heart'!"

He sat down abruptly, covering his eyes with one hand, breathing in and out as he tried to calm down. "Sorry about that Charles; you just, just hit a button I didn't know I still had. But I am not a child, nor am I going to be put off by polite, vague assurances. Just tell me straight out why you did it please."

Charles looked at the wooden claws still surrounding his head and decided to simply answer the younger man. "The first time I met young Miss Grey, her powers had been awake for a little less than a week. Yet it was not her power that I first sensed through Cerebro, but a . . . foreign entity that had housed itself in her brain. It had been there for some time and I could not expel it. I was worried how it would affect her mind and abilities and I was forced to seal it away from the rest of her mind."

Harry brought his hand down to stare at the older man. "And you're certain that it is a foreign entity? I didn't see any sign of that when I was in her mind."

"Positive," said Charles firmly.

Harry frowned a little. "And did you try to talk to whatever it was?"

"No. As far as I could tell, it is incapable of speech, or its thought processes are too different from our own for us to communicate with."

Harry leaned back thinking hard. He visualized Jeans mind again as it had been when she brought his astral projection into it. He didn't really think the books he saw chained down were the sign of a foreign entity, and the fissure in her mind below her…. that could be the sign of some kind of foreign influence, but I don't know. The point was he didn't really know one way or another, though he thought having whatever was in those books locked away would have an effect on Red's personality. And something else about it was bothering him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Still, there is something more important to discuss now. "Okay, so why haven't you told her about it?"

"Again, I was afraid how knowing about it would effect her mind."

"That might have been a good idea when she was younger," Harry replied sternly, "but not now that she is an adult, albeit barely," He smirked, while outside Jean sneezed, wondering why she suddenly had the urge to smack Mr. Potter upside his head. "Why haven't you told her about it?" His eyes widened suddenly, as if he had only just noticed the transfigured claws poised to gut Charles and he put his hands on the desk gently. A second later the claws began to recede and his desk returned to normal.

Charles nodded in thanks before sighing. "I would prefer to wait until her mind is fully formed to talk to her about it. That way, she will be strong and able to repel its influence. I want my X-Men to have normal childhoods, or as near as they can until they graduate high school."

Harry gripped his chair's arms very firmly and counted slowly to ten before responding. Even so, his magic got away from him for a moment and a few knickknacks on the huge bookshelf that dominated one wall suddenly changed shape. Some became little robins, others changed from metal to glass, but strangely it was the glass creatures that were moving around, while the robins turned out to be stuffed. Charles noticed this out of the corner of his mind and realized he had said something that could have set Harry off again if Harry hadn't been able to control himself.

As soon as he was calm again, Harry said, "Ignoring the question of that even being possible given their powers or if there is in fact something like a 'normal childhood', that's a nice sentiment, Professor—" and was it just Charles or did that word come out with some vitriol behind it? "But you are falling into two classic traps: the first is keeping secrets from your own partisans— something you shouldn't ever do; when secrets come out they will breed dissatisfaction and distrust. The second is one of assumption—you assume she would not rather know sooner, that she isn't ready for it now. Bloody hell man, this is her fucking head we're talking about!"

Charles frowned. "I'm sorry, Harry, but that is my decision to make. I do not believe Jean is mature enough just yet to handle learning about this."

Harry glared at him then said abruptly: "Three weeks." Charles blinked in surprise and Harry went on, "You have three weeks to tell her about it, Professor, or I will." Charles opened his mouth to protest this unilateral decision, but Harry went on inexorably. "Jean is an adult now. She has a right to know what is going on in her own mind. I refuse to hide something like that from her—hell, from anyone."

Who knows what kind of damage a block like that is doing to her, he thought angrily. I don't bloody care if there is some kind of alien entity inside her; those books aren't foreign. They look like any other mental block, and I know damn well that blocks can be dangerous.

"The only reason I'm giving you that time is because she knows and trusts you more than me, and you're the one who put it there in the first place. No, Professor, three weeks, I'll give you that much time to think up how to tell her, but if you don't, I will. After all, you have no idea whether or not you sealed other parts of her psyche along with whatever this thing was, and what danger that could be doing to her." Leaving that thought hanging in the air, Harry got up and left, leaving a suddenly concerned telepath behind him.

OOOOOOO

Harry walked into the danger room to the sound of a water balloon falling down on his head from above. He raised a hand and, with a wordless leviosa, sent it spinning back to Kurt, who caught it deftly, grinning. "Nice try, Blue boy, but a little unoriginal."

He walked forward, then suddenly levitated over a hole in the ground covered by a tarp and filled with paint that had been set up right by the entrance. "That was a little better, but you must try harder to prank the master, grasshopper."

Kitty giggled, then ran up and looped one arm around one of Harry's, dragging him forward to where the rest of the x-kids were waiting in a clearing in a forest the Danger Room had created, just like the trap and the balloon of course. "Hey, Teach, what are you gonna have us do today?"

Harry chuckled, most of his ill humor disappearing at the exuberance these two were exhibiting, though some of his irritation came back when he saw Jean with the others, stretching out quietly along with Rogue. He smirked a little as he saw Scott trying desperately to keep his eyes away from her and Rogue, while Evan not so openly goggled—the spandex uniform they all wore may have covered their bodies and obscured the details, but what they did show was enough, considering how fit they were. That brought another question to his mind: "Why are you all wearing spandex anyway? I just don't get that. The FF did too, must be a yank thing."

Jean rolled her eyes, while the others all looked at one another and shrugged. Scott straightened up as Harry walked toward them, frowning at Kitty still hanging off one of his arms. "All X-Men present and accounted for sir."

It was Harry's turn to roll his eyes, but then he became more serious. "Alright you lot, I realize I said I wanted to go over your AAR's with you before having a team drill, but I decided to see if you had learned anything in action before that, so we're heading straight into the team exercises. We'll have five sessions designed to help you learn tactics and teamwork. Each session will give you an objective and pit you against me using a team of Danger-Room-created robots. First up will be you against me and a company of regular troops protecting a computer disk in a building over there." He pointed away to the southeast through the computer generated forest. "Your objective will be to get the disk and get out." He looked down, ruffled Kitty's hair a little and stepped back as the Danger Room changed a little. He walked behind a tree and disappeared. Now, let's see what the kids have learned so far.

OOOOOOO

Scott slapped his hands together briskly. "Alright! Let's plan this out a little more thoroughly this time. Kitty, you'll be the scout on this one, with Kurt guarding our sides. Rogue, Jean and I will be in the center until we encounter resistance. Then we'll start to knock out the opposition and find one of the officers so Rogue can drain for his memories while Kitty moves off to grab the disk once we have a map of the building." Rogue frowned a little, knowing that was really the only use her powers had against regular troops. Oh sure, she could use her powers to knock them out, but that was about it; she couldn't drain their powers and use them as her own because they didn't have any.

Jean frowned suddenly, then turned around and blasted a tree behind them apart with her telekinetic powers. The tree shattered with an explosive crack of released energy that sent the pieces of the trunk stabbing into and through the trooper crouching hidden behind it with a radio. She stomped over, looking down at it as it faded from sight. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, Mr. Potter!" She turned back to look at the others. "Okay, we can continue now." For some reason, she felt a little elated by that bit of mayhem. "Maybe we should switch up those orders a bit, since that 'trooper' probably relayed all of what you just said to the opposition."

Scoot blanched a little at the surprising violence, but nodded. "Alright. In that case, we should switch it up. Kurt you're our scout; bamf out a hundred feet or so then come back every three times to report to us until you find where the enemy forces are. We'll still send Kitty in to grab the disk though." Kitty frowned a little at that, as did Jean, but she nodded. After all, if these were regular troops, they wouldn't be able to stop her from ghosting through everything to get to the objective, once they knew where it was anyway.

Kurt nodded and bamfed away, heading in the direction Harry had indicated as the others made their way after him.

OOOOOOO

Harry smiled as the robot radioing him the little planning session died. Well, whatever else, Red still seems able to learn, regardless of that thing in her head. Grrr, shake it off Potter and get your own bloody head in the game.

His company of 250 infantrymen were broken up into squads of course. He had placed most of them around the building, which looked like any normal military building—square, squat, and dull—with three squads in the building itself. Now if he knew the kids, they would go for the old flash and feint with Kitty going for the disk on her lonesome. It was a good plan, if the opponents didn't know what her powers were—an assumption that could eventually get her killed—so the electrical current going through the walls, floors and ceiling of the room that held the computer disk meant that wouldn't work. The question was: what they would do when that happened, and how they would go about bringing the flash. He made his way up to the roof to better direct the action, a dedicated com-man next to him to relay his orders. Around the roof was a squad of snipers.

Not ten minutes later, a red beam of light lanced out, smashing into one of the foxholes and throwing men hither and yon. "I wonder if One-eye would be so quick to overpower his eye beams like that if these were real troops? I have to ask about adding some more realism to these things. Ah well." He turned to his com-man. "Contact front. Have third and fifth squads break contact, reform behind the base, and move out in skirmish formation to flank left and right respectively. First, second, and fourth, hold positions and lay down covering fire, wildly uncontrolled bursts, overload them if you can. Snipers, priority targets are the redhead or the man with the eye beams."

The clearing erupted with the sound of gunfire as his robotic troops obeyed him and Harry shook his head, thankful once more for having been put through the SAS small-unit-tactics course, even if it made the phrase 'Hell Week' far more real than he had ever wanted it to be. Only he and Neville had survived to the end, with their larger than average magical cores to sustain them rather than sleep. Neville was exhausted by the end of the week, Harry remembered fondly, while he was still good to go physically, but not mentally. Below his vantage point, the battle continued as more red beams lanced out joined by dozens of bone spears from Spyke.

Over her strong objections, Marvel Girl had been assigned defense. While her kinetic power was able to slow, stop, or redirect the bullets coming at them, there were hundreds of bullets coming toward them. Suddenly it got worse as two snipers found their range; their rounds moved faster and were heavier and thus harder for her to stop. Scott and Evan were trying to keep the troopers' heads down, but the troopers were too spread out for Scott to take more than a few out with each blast, and Evan could only hit them as fast as he could throw his spears.

Cyclops ordered Kitty to make her way forward before barking out orders to the others. "Nightcrawler, take Rogue and get in close. Knock out as many of them as possible. Spyke, charge forward and get in among them too. Marvel Girl and I will stay here and . . ."

At that point, the two squads Harry had moved around to pincer them got into firing range and Jean went down, unable to protect herself from that many bullets from that many directions. The Danger Room announced her death in its normal mechanical tone: "Marvel Girl, mission kill."

At that point, Cyclops forgot the mission and turned to see the redhead down on the ground. "Marvel Girl!" He ran over, leaning down to check to see if she was alright and fell down dead, taking several bullets in the back.

"Cyclops, mission kill." Scott groaned, smacking his head on the ground but he turned to see if Jean was alright. Despite taking numerous 'gunshots', she was, and she was glaring at him angrily. Scott gulped and shifted away a little as he saw her hand starting to glow a little.

Meanwhile, Evan had been pinned down in the open, unable to survive being shot and with no cover fire. Eventually killed, joining his teammates. Rogue lasted longer where she had been dropped off by a wildly teleporting Nightcrawler, but she soon went down as well.

Kitty was caught by the electricity sparking over everything in the room with the targeted disk in it. She cursed and began to bang her head against the wall as soon as the Danger Room marked her as mission killed. "Damn it! I should have known. Harry was the one to help me figure out I had a problem with electricity, of course he'd use it to protect the disk!"

Nightcrawler lasted far longer, bamfing from place to place and even taking out all the snipers and a dozen of the troopers using the martial arts skill Logan had been pounding into him. Eventually though he too went down, 'stabbed' by two of the men he had tried to attack.

Harry shook his head, smiling a little. The kids had learned a little, but not much just yet. Still, that was what these little exercises were for. "Danger Room, cancel simulation and give me a sitting room big enough for all of us here. Oh and tally up how many troopers I lost. Come on lads and lasses, quit laying there feeling sorry for yourselves." The youngsters all groaned but complied, Jean still glaring daggers at Scott, who was hunching his shoulders, but his jaw was clenched mulishly.

The Danger Room responded, forming a large sitting room where they each had comfy chairs facing where Harry lounged on another chair. Kurt was the first to collapse into his chair, already exhausted by the number of teleportations he had done in so short a time during the session. The Danger Room spoke up as the others took their seats. "Total number of kills: 118. Numbers broken down: Nightcrawler: forty. Shadowcat: zero. Rogue: seven. Marvel Girl: one. Evan: twenty-two. Cyclops: forty-eight."

"Not bad. Not great, but not bad. These DR-created troops weren't exactly reacting like a normal human unit, either in a good or bad way." Harry said.

Evan nodded. "Yeah. I think this exercise is good, but the troopers need to react better. I mean, we've all been in fights against the Brotherhood and we know that people normally grunt or yell when they get hit. I don't know what noises people would make if they were, y'know, being killed, but still. And wouldn't there be a moment of panic or something, even if they knew what our powers were?"

Logan, who was as usual watching from his place in the control room, spoke up over the speakers at that point. "We'll tweak the program to be more realistic going forwards, punk. How realistic do you want it, Potter?"

"As real as you can make it Logan. I want the next crew to act as lifelike as possible. That means reacting for themselves and panicking—make that last bit a random thing in the program for the next batch." Harry turned his attention back to the kids. "Now, what do you think went wrong?"

Jean frowned, not wanting to dress Scott down in front of the others; she thought it would be bad for the team dynamic. Kurt spoke up before any of the others, "We went in a little too cocky. Again." He said that last word a little bitterly, as it really was a mistake they should have known to avoid by now. "And we didn't react to our opponents moves, just bulling ahead."

Harry nodded seriously. "Understand one thing above all else, learn this one lesson above all others: flexibility beats out planning and brute force. Being flexible, able to change and take advantage of openings as soon as they appear, is essential to winning any fight. Being prepared for any foreseeable chance is what makes a good tactician and leader."

Scott stiffened, knowing that dig was being sent his way and wondering what he could do to become better. Harry had indeed meant it that way. He had hoped to see more of Scott's leadership qualities, and they still had three of these exercises to go, but he was already coming to the conclusion that Scott just wasn't cut out to be the leader. He tired hard, and he quickly assumed that role, but that didn't make him the best for it.

Rogue spoke up, a little irritated by how useless she was against normal troops. Oh they just had to touch her for her powers to take them out, but that had proven easier to said than done. On the other hand, boy was she thankful that the troops weren't really humans; that many sets of memories would've given her a hell of headache. "What would you have done then, Mistah Potter?"

Harry smiled. He did want them all to call him that during these little sessions; it gave the whole experience a little more serious tone. "I would have had Kurt and Kitty scout out the perimeter, then taken the snipers out of action with Scott's eye beams or Kurt teleporting Red in among them. Plus I was up there and without me to direct them, the troops would have simply remained where they were dug in. After that, you would have had to fight your way through the building, but that would be easy enough with Kitty to scout for you."

"And what would you have done to combat that tactic?" Jean asked, breaking off her glaring at Scott to look at him.

"I would have spread the troops out a bit more and rigged the building with booby traps to counter Kitty's phasing ability." Harry answered promptly. "I might not have been on the defensive that often when I led the New Marauders against Moldyshorts, but I know how it's done. The SAS blokes that trained us were very bloody thorough, let me tell you." He stared off into the distance and for once, he was smiling as he remembered. "And there are a few families minus their home but with all their members alive that wouldn't have been without that training."

The X-Men all shared a look, shivering a little. Up until the past few weeks, none of them, even Scott, had really realized how serious being an X-Man could get. But whenever Harry looked away like that at something no one else could see, they were getting a pretty clear idea. It was different from Logan's gruff exterior and worldly ways, or Storm's calm, quiet, tested confidence.

This was a young man—barely two years older than some of them—who had fought in a war and wore his scars on his sleeves and in his eyes. Who was helping them to learn how to fight and survive, not because he believed in Charles' dream (though they thought that was a part of it), but because he felt they would need it. They all vowed at that point to step up their game going forward. After all, the Brotherhood might be kids just like them, but who knew what other enemies were out there? The little powwow session continued for another fifteen minutes, then they broke up for another run.

OOOOOOO

The kids did far better in the next operation, which was a mission Harry had taken from World War II. They were a force of allied troops ordered to take out an artillery battery by a certain time to allow a fleet attack the harbor it protected. This time however, he warned them all that the opponents would be both regular troops and at least three troops that could use the spells that Harry had already used in the Danger Room against them when he first arrived. They were given a map of the area, but no information about patrols, people, or anything else, but were told Harry would not be participating, as he wanted to see what they would do.

This allowed Scott to plan out the attack, and again, Harry was not impressed by the fact that he didn't take into account any of the other team members' suggestions. In fact, he ignored them despite the fact that Jean and Kurt came up with very good ideas. Jean's idea of using her telepathic power to cause chaos among the defenders by turning a few of them randomly on one another was scary, and probably wouldn't have worked as well as she thought, but they could still have tried it. Scott shot it down however by saying it would take too long and exhaust her for further action.

Kurt's was a little out there; he thought they should not even bother entering the fortress, but instead just get in front of the guns and melt them just enough so that none of the artillery shells could actually pass through the barrels. It was a good idea if you didn't take into account that there were patrols around the bottom of the cliffs at all times that checked in randomly, or that such a thing would be pretty obvious to the troops in the actual artillery battery. Again, however, none of the kids suggested sending off Kurt and Kitty to distract the guards, which would have been the best idea, as these troops were programmed to not have a clue about the kid's powers. The solidarity the kids showed, not thinking of splitting off to achieve the objective as two different groups was nice, but didn't help them actually achieve said objective and further showed their lack of experience and flexibility.

Instead, the group went with Scott's idea with very little in the way of discussion. His plan consisted of drawing out the defenders, then taking out as many of them as they could before fading away, forcing ever more troops to come out until they were weakened enough for the team to take on in a frontal assault. However, they forgot that Harry had made the robots in this session act as human as possible. Even without Harry actually participating, the robots responded appropriately rather than, as Evan called it, "a stupid AI would, like in RPG games", whatever the heck those were. Harry had never been able to play a computer game in his home dimension (he'd never even had access to a computer, except in the public library), and had been far too busy since he arrived to play them. Instead of being drawn out in small groups, the defenders came out in force faster than the X-Men could respond to.

The X-Men still won, performing excellently under fire without any snipers or attempts to encircle them and taking out two of the magic troopers during the battle, which surprised Harry, but they still lost Nightcrawler, Rogue and Spyke before they could retreat. They did, however, take out one of the special troops, which impressed Harry.

After entering the complex, both Marvel Girl and Cyclops went down when the group ran into the last of the magic using troopers. Much like in the first session, Jean went down first overwhelmed by the magical blasts she had to keep away from them, though she did take the magic trooper down with her. Scott went completely to pieces when she went down and was easy prey for the guns of the rest of the troopers.

Harry groaned and looked up at the ceiling as Kitty, little innocent Kitty, was able to get through to place the bomb. Not only that, she did it in a place where the troopers couldn't see it, and soon enough the bomb exploded, taking out the artillery pieces just in time to beat the timer.

"I don't know what Scott's thinking," he said to the air around him, "but I don't think he's winning any points when he goes all the pieces when Red goes down."

Storm replied from where she had joined Logan in watching over the sessions from the control room. "I think it's rather sweet," she sounded a little dubious, "yet also very stupid; you're right."

"Pretty much what I thought too, the last part anyway." Harry ordered the danger room to cancel the present session, and walked over, ruffling Kitty's hair approvingly. "Good job little one, way to keep your eye on the ball!"

Kitty grinned, staring up and wishing desperately once again that he were a few years younger and thus datable, but alas it was not to be, and she had seen the looks he and Storm shared. Pity; those eyes of his were so-o-o dreamy, and the rest of him wasn't bad either.

As the others gathered around, Harry called Scott over to talk to him. Scott went, still not certain what he had done to cause Jean to glare at him so much.

Harry put an arm around his shoulders, drawing him in close and whispering into his ear ,"the next time you lose it because Red goes down, I'm going to start pranking you mercilessly every hour for the rest of the week, including the time you spend at school. I will find a way, believe me. There is more to these sessions than just you making googly eyes at her, and you're not making any points with her, me, or your other teammates. She doesn't seem to like the attention, and all your other teammates can see your preference for her. They all can tell you'd choose her over them and that will effect teamwork and morale."

Scott flinched a little looking a little uncomfortable. "We shouldn't be doing these until we're dead anyway, that doesn't teach us anything!" he exclaimed after a moment, ignoring the last few things that Harry mentioned.

"Life-and-death situations teach a hell of a lot more than situations where you can get back up again right away." Harry said calmly. "Just be glad I'm not putting you lot through Hell Week." He smirked a little, thinking of what would happen to them all. The only two he could think of that would make it even halfway through were Red and Boney, the first because she was so damn stubborn, and the second because he seemed to have way more endurance than the others. Apparently he was a bit of a basketball star, which probably explained it. "Just because you can't seem to keep thinking once Red goes down is no reason to stop the exercises." With that parting shot, he brought Scott back over to the others.

"Alright, you achieved the objective, so that is technically a win." He shook his head sadly. "I'm not one who thinks like that however; I want everyone here to go into and come out of these little training sessions alive, just like in real life. Start taking these exercises seriously, because one day they might be. Every one of these exercises I'm throwing at you lot could be achieved with you all alive at the end if you put your heads together. Now, we're going to go through this one again," he said looking over at all the others in pushing Scott forward to join them. "I want to see you guys learning from your mistakes."

The next two sessions were pretty much the same, only this time the kids had learned a bit. Expecting a massive response against their little probing attack, they had prepared several ambush points, and between the two of them, Evan and Scott were able to wipe out nearly the entire force that came out after them, even the two magic-using troopers. As they were doing this Kitty, carrying Rogue, was popping in and out of the fortress grabbing the attention of the guards and taking out and draining any officers they found inside while Kurt teleported Jean up to the canyons where she destroyed the artillery using her telekinetic powers. Casualties on their side included everyone but Kurt and Jean this time, as Kitty was caught my a magic trooper, which was far better than before in planning, but not perfect—they still took casualties. The second time, Kitty and Rogue went in first, taking out the officers and disorganizing the enemy, then the others attacked much as they had before. Without officers, the trooper's reactions were slow and chaotic, allowing Kurt and Jean to destroy the guns before the X-Men lost anyone.

By this time, the kids were getting tired, especially Kurt. All of the teleportations he did in the first session and the few in later rounds were coming back to haunt him; he was exhausted. The others were bruised and battered and Kitty looked as if she were close to falling asleep. Phasing around with Rogue took a lot out of her. The only one who didn't look worn out was Jean, who looked almost as fresh as a daisy—as if she hadn't been using her powers and constantly protecting herself and her friends from bullet swarms.

Harry looked at her, briefly wondering if that was because of the strange powerful entity that Charles had reported was living inside of her, but shook it off for now. He had wanted to continue, but looking at the kids, he realized they were too tired to get the most out of what he had planned next. "All right," he said smacking his hands together. "I think we should call it a day. I'll go over your AARs tonight and see what you think of your performances tomorrow. See if you can think up solutions to the issues in your performance today. Then we'll each look over recording of today's sessions, see what you think of each of you individual efforts."

As soon as those words left his mouth, Kitty, Rogue, and Kurt all collapsed to their knees, Kurt did so on purpose, as he began to kowtow, smacking his head on the ground and genuflecting. "Thank you, oh vise master. Thank you, thank you!"

Harry laughed along with the others, then kicked his head just a little bit to get him to stand up again. "Now, these little exercises are supposed to teach you how to work as a team, but you can learn to be a team in many other ways and one of them is just hanging out. I prepared oodles of popcorn and drinks before coming down here, and I installed a little device onto the TV that will let you watch any movie you all decide you want to see. Go. Have fun and hang out a bit and get to know one another outside of life-and-death situations, school work or even more dangerous things."

He waved his hand and the X-Men all moved off except for Jean, who asked, "can I get out of this? It's not like I don't see the point or don't want to hang out, but I have a physics test on Monday and it's a hard one. Our teacher's a bit of an anal retentive, if you don't score 80% or better, you fail."

Harry looked up at the ceiling and asked, "What do you guys think?"

Storm's voice came back quickly from a nearby grill. "That is true; she chose to take the hardest physics course the school offers, and that demand sounds very plausible given what I know of the teacher in question."

Harry nodded. "All right, Red, you can go, though I think Professor Xavier might have something he should say to you."

"Not at this time, Mr. Potter," Charles's voice replied, sounding quite a bit colder than normal. Harry simply smirked and walked away while Jean, wondering what the heck that was about, made her way up to her room.

OOOOOOO

"Your letting them off pretty easy, aren't you, Potter?" Logan greeted the younger man as he entered the control room. Ororo simply smiled, which Harry reciprocated to as he pulled up a chair. Both Logan and Storm tried to ignore the tension between Xavier and the wizard, but both were wondering what had caused it.

Harry scratched his chin, shrugging. "I pushed the kids as far as I could today; their powers take a lot of energy apparently, and only Evan really has enough endurance to keep using them for long periods of time. Using their powers as much as they do in these sessions wore them all out. Can you tell me more about Evan's powers by the way? Is there an upper limit to how much of that bone stuff he can pull out?"

Ororo answered him sitting down quietly and leaning back, smiling slightly as Harry's eyes followed the motion for a moment before he settled on her face. Harry never perved out on her, but the little things he did to show he found her desirable were quite pleasant—even the outright flirting they did at times was fun, though they never flirted during their morning talks. Harry kept his distance then, which was rather sweet, since she knew he still sometimes had issues seeing her as nature intended, though not enough to make him or her uncomfortable. "We haven't seen an upper limit to my nephew's abilities in terms of the size of what he creates, though the amount of bone he can bring out at any time is directly proportional to the amount of calcium he takes in on a daily basis. Why?"

"Right now, the kids have two long range specialists, Boy Scout and Red, two infiltrators, Kurt and Kitty, and two skirmishers whose skills are wildly different. Rogue is excellent against one enemy in close, but at range is a liability, same when facing large numbers of troops; she can take them out, but taking in that many memories knocks her out, right? Evan, though, is excellent at taking on large numbers, but they really need a tank—someone who can center the battle, get in close and disrupt the enemy and match any strong man they have, Kurt mentioned something about a 'Blob'? If Evam can make armor as well as offensive weapons, then he could be that tank."

Ororo smiled. "He will like that idea quite a bit. Evan has complained about how he seems to be a little underpowered in comparison to Scott's and Kurt's power, despite the fact that the looks that come with his mutant gene are very useful." Evan only compared himself to the other boys, all of whom felt the girls were, well, a little weaker than them, save for Rogue whom, as Harry had pointed out, was a bit of a one trick pony.

Harry eyes narrowed. "Yes . . . Scott. Can I ask why he was chosen as leader of this little troupe of yours?"

"Why are you asking, Mr. Potter?" Charles looked at him, wondering where this was going to go.

Harry smirked a little, staring back at him. "I'm asking because he has none of what I would call the leadership variables. He's not very charismatic, doesn't listen well to the contributions of the others, is pretty self-centered, far too certain of himself, and isn't mentally flexible."

Before Charles could respond Logan asked curiously. "Then who'd you pick as the team leader, punk?"

"Kurt." Harry answered simply. "He learns fast; he's flexible, has a certain amount of charisma and listens to his teammates."

"Nonetheless, Scott is the team leader. He takes the position seriously; he is the most powerful offensively, has had the most training, and is the most knowledgeable about military matters." Charles said firmly, trying to end the discussion. Scott was indeed the only one of the teens who had stepped up into the leadership role, and he drove himself hard to fulfill it. What was more, Charles didn't think any of the others were mentally mature enough to handle the responsibility.

His attempt to end the conversation didn't work. "Taking the position seriously is nice and all, but it doesn't make up for the other intangibles. Scott may think he's a natural leader, but he really isn't. A good leader takes the opinions of others into account before making plans. A leader, especially on the small scale we're talking about, has to be flexible, and Scott isn't. Worse, he plays favorites. They lost the first sessions as badly as they did because he shut down, ignoring the enemies around them and the welfare of the rest of his teammates, when Red went down. Don't get me wrong, Red's an integral part of the group; her telekinetic powers are incredible in both strength and ability, but they still had a chance to win both the first and second matches when she went down."

"Those things can be taught," Charles said, again firmly, trying to head off the argument. "Besides, none of the others have stepped up and tried to assume a leadership role, have they?"

Harry looked over at Logan and Ororo and both of them shook their heads. Harry frowned. "Well I suppose there's nothing we can do about it now, but I would recommend trying out the others on a rotating basis. Still, at this point it's really not all that important as long as they have Ororo or Logan around to make the decisions in real life situations."

Honestly, the one he felt had the most leadership potential was Red; none of the others had her poise or control and she was becoming more and more flexible as she continued to learn. But he could tell Charles was more leery about whatever the entity inside her was than he wanted to let on, which was why he mentioned Kurt, whom Harry felt could be a leader someday.

Moreover, the bald one's support of Scott meant this was a losing battle anyway. Maybe it's because Scott's the one that has been drinking his Kool-Aid the longest. Harry thought grimly. Then again, from what I've seen so far in terms of flexibility and listening to others he and Scott are pretty much the same.

"True. Now, what else do you want to have them work on?" Harry asked.

Harry shook off his misgivings for now, wanting to remain professional despite his disagreement with Xavier. "Rogue and Kitty both need to learn some weapon to augment their powers; Kurt could do with some more hitting power. One trick ponies do not last long, trust me. I knew plenty of wizards that were great magic users, but take away their wands and they were helpless. It's a pity you don't have a good engineer here to make them some stuff. Still, I can see what I can come up with. Also, I want to look at ways to give those spandex uniforms of yours some more protection—why on earth do you have them wearing spandex anyway?"

Charles and the others looked at one another than shrugged. "It just seems appropriate," Charles answered, a little lamely he had to admit, "Spandex just seems to be what heroes wear, that's all."

"Hmm. Well anyway, I think Logan should take over their training again. Build up their endurance and hand to hand skills; that'll give me more time to work on a few toys for the kiddies, as well as my other projects. Evan can do some things about getting better at using his power, but I don't think I can help him there; after all, we still don't even know what my mutant power is. I'll give the Boy Scout some reading and things to research and get him more acquainted with small-unit tactics. Run him through some sessions like this every night and only let him move on when he can keep all of his team alive and achieve the objective. Your choice on the objective and the enemy units, and I'll lead the opposition as often as I can, and with that lady, gentlemen, I'm off." Harry stood up, bowed grandly to Ororo then nodded cordially to Logan before shooting a look at Charles out of the corner of his eyes as he walked out of the control room. "Remember Charles, three weeks." Charles stiffened, but Harry was already gone. He frowned a little but waved off the questioning glances of the other two and wheeled himself out of the room.

OOOOOOO

Alone in his room, Harry frowned as he worked on his laptop, thinking. Charles' dream is great, and he doesn't seem as controlling or as willing to sacrifice other people as Dumb-as-door, but he is still keeping secrets when there is no need to. I think Jean would be able to handle it easily, and his insistence on keeping Scott as the leader . . . that doesn't seem right to me. And if he's willing to keep a secret like what's in Jean's head from the person who is housing this strange entity, what else is he hiding? Yes, it's past time to see what I can do to become independent as possible.

First he tried to find videos or pictures of places in various American cities where Logan had mentioned he could go and sell his gold galleons and other things without any questions asked (and certainly none answered if authorities came calling). After a while, he was unsurprised to look up and see Hedwig watching him from the bedpost. "You always seem to know when I need you don't you girl?" He asked, raising a hand for her to light upon. "I'm going to need to ask you to go to each of these places, okay?"

The owl's head twirled in place, then she ruffled her feathers with her beak. "Preck, Preck preeck."

He smiled a little. "Three pieces of bacon per city."

The owl replied, "Preck," then moved her head up and down firmly.

"Five pieces is highway robbery Hedwig!" he exclaimed, stroking her plumage softly. "And what in the world do you want one of those for? I don't think it would have any effect, it's meant for a different species you know."

The owl's reply this time took longer and involved a bit more body language and in the end, Harry was forced to concede a least a few of her points. "Well, that is true—I don't exactly pay for the groceries around here. Fine; five pieces it is for each city, but in terms of bait, you'll have to wait until we're done." Hedwig closed her eyes for a moment ruminating then nodded firmly, accepting the deal. "Deal then. You know the drill: go to all of them in turn, find places where I can teleport to without anyone seeing me. But only go to three each night, I don't want you to tire yourself out." Hedwig nodded complacently and then within a second she was gone.

Next, Harry cast a sensor spell that flashed out from his present position to find anyone that was interested in him or his present domicile. He found one soon enough, in a house well away from the mansion. He didn't think anyone from there could see anything, but he wanted to make certain later. Hmm, an intent-based ward that confounds those looking at the house with ill intent, or too much interest? Hmm, well that will be simpler than trying to sneak up on whoever is out there. He swiftly put together a few rune stones to mark down the area that this new ward would cover then pulled on his invisibility cloak. It was a little warmer than usual for some reason, but he ignored that, and walked out of the mansion and around the property. Each time he put down a ward, he touched it with his wand, anchoring the ward to himself for now. Another ward was a mild protective ward, this one was purely against those with ill intent, who would suddenly be either confounded or turned aside if their will was not strong enough to push further.

The rest of the night, Harry stayed up working on his various projects. For the first time since he had escaped the Negative Zone, he allowed his magic to sustain him rather than sleep and it answered his call with ease. It was worth it. By the end of the night, he had made designs for weapons for Rogue and Kurt, and even a small ranged weapon for Kitty. Kitty would have wristbands—something that was on her body could be phased out with her and wristbands didn't add much to her overall weight—that were able to shoot darts filled with paralyzing agents. Rogue got the same thing, while Kurt got a small needle that could be attached to his finger and filled with a paralytic or anything else. It would take Harry a while to actually create them, but none of the parts he would need were anything that would cause concern if Charles bought them.

He also finished designing the runic array for Storm's emotional shield from the weather pattern around her. Or at least the hoped so—it would take her actually trying it out to see what it would do. At the moment he wasn't certain, and he would need to figure out a way to power it, much like the kind of runic array Kitty wanted to use. If it did, though, he would start work on something similar for Rogue, although that would be much harder.

Looking up, he saw the sunlight streaming into his room and he got up and made his way over to Storm's arboretum for their daily time together. There wasn't anything sexual or overtly romantic about it, despite Storm going around in her birthday suit. Storm hadn't grown up with any kind of nudity taboos, so rather than being naked, she was simply undressed. It was all a state of mind, and Harry, despite not being nearly at home nudity as she was, had grown accustomed to it. More, the slightly flirtatious nature of some of their conversations often times took more of his attention than the view itself. He also felt as if Storm were getting as much out of this as he was, being around someone she could relax with completely, letting her hair down and her shields as well, because he understood some of her mental scars and had the same ones himself.

Harry found her already awake and moving around, her body as usual uncovered, but Harry took merely a second to glance at her appreciatively, then shook it off as he removed his own clothing, save for his boxers. He murmured a greeting to her as he prepared some morning tea for the two of them to share while she went around watering her plants however she finished much more quickly than normal, and came over to sit and look at Harry in question.

"What?" he asked, looking up at her.

Storm shook her head, smiling a little. "You may think you're good at hiding things from the people around you, Harry, but you're really not. Not from someone who knows you anyway, and I am happy to count myself among that number." Harry blushed a little at that, but smiled back, amused and amazed that this woman had grown to know him so well in so short a time, though the opposite was also true. "So what is the cause of this argument you are having with Charles that has you so concerned?"

Harry scratched his chin for a moment and shook his head regretfully. "It's really not my story to tell. Suffice to say that he's keeping secrets when he really doesn't have any reason to do so. His reasons against still keeping it just did not sit well with me, and I well know the consequences of what he did, to put it as vaguely as possible, and I think he doesn't. Moreover, I'm not exactly satisfied with his approval of Scott's leadership."

Storm sighed a little. "I think you are being over hard on the young man. While I do not think that he is doing himself any favors by mooning over Jean, it is obvious why her deaths in those sessions caused him to overreact. He has time to learn and get over it. I think because the 'school' you learned in was so harsh, you don't realize that you don't have to be so harsh on them.

Harry leaned back thoughtfully and nodded, conceding the point. "I suppose I don't. It's just that I want them to be prepared for anything, you know; I've been looking online at the news—anti-mutant sentiment is on the rise and mutants themselves are appearing more and more often. Other nations seem to be dealing with it in their own way, but America is being its usual slow-arse, schizophrenic self and it will become more and more dangerous for both it and its enemies." Not that other countries were dealing with it very well yet, but the wait-and-see attitude in most of them was a far cry from having no official line yet like in America, which seemed to be waiting for public sentiment to form a consensus, then jump ahead of whatever that choice was. Charles seemed to think that the main threats would come from other mutants, but Harry knew it would come from both other mutants, like a grown-up version of this Brotherhood, and the public at large.

Storm reached forward, taking one of his hands and squeezing. "I realize that, and I cannot express how thankful I am that you are willing to help them learn. You can reach these kids far better and more easily then Logan or I could. Logan can help train their bodies, but not their minds, and I, myself . . . I think they all see me as some kind of stuffy tutor, helpful in battle, but not someone they need to listen to out of class."

"I think you're selling yourself short, Ororo." Harry replied, gently tracing her hand with a finger, causing her to shiver a little. "I think once we figure out how to disconnect your emotions from the local weather patterns, you'll see that you'll have a much easier time relating to them. I think they could all do with a big sister in their lives, but Logan . . . yeah, you're right. He's too gruff and too old to be anything but an authority figure to them, whereas I can be both."

"Regardless," Ororo said, squeezing his hand again, thankful the shiver from his touch on her hand had no other visible effects, "I think that in many ways, you can step back a little. You've come up with a good exercise regimen for them, let them go forward and learn at their own paces from now on."

Harry sighed again and nodded. The crisis wasn't just around the corner after all, though he could see it coming. Storm went on, "And while I do not know what you speak of, I do know that Charles does tend to keep secrets. He even knew Mystique from before, and knows where she is hiding now, but refuses to do anything about it. I agree with some of his reasons for that, but I did not agree with his reasons for keeping it a secret at the time."

Harry frowned suddenly. "He knows where the leader of the opposition is, and isn't doing anything about it?"

Ororo wiggled one of her hands indicating yes and no. "She's not really opposition per-se her beliefs are opposite our own, but it's not as if she is some kind of violent maniac intent on killing everyone who disagrees with her. More the Brotherhood is just like our own students for the most part. They are simply kids with bad backgrounds and sometimes even broken families, who see their powers as the ticket to a better life. We can't really fault them for thinking like that, only stop them when they cross the line and actually start attacking civilians."

Harry frowned a little but nodded. There had been a few young, junior corpse munchers who had been able to turn away. Not many, but some. There were just some lines that couldn't be crossed without truly changing the person doing the crossing. Draco had crossed a line, and had enjoyed doing it, but Theodore Nott had seen the line coming and ran away rather than try to cross it. He still believed in pureblood supremacy, but he wasn't a killer. Millicent Bulstrode had turned away from it too, forsaking both her parents for pretty much the same reason. A few others in other houses, both older and younger had done the same, or planned to if it came to that, before the war ended so abruptly. "So you're saying that these kids are just troubled teens at this point? That's all right for now, but sooner or later troubled teens become troubled adults, and eventually they do cross a line. I'm just concerned that I don't really know how Charles will react— or how he wants the kids to react—when that time comes. I've seen too many fools who believe that sacrificing the innocent to redeem the evil makes sense." Dumbledore and his entire order of the fried crow come rather forcibly to mind.

The Nubian goddess squeezed his hand again, saying nothing. In a way, she agreed with Harry; the dream Charles had of the future was grand, and she agreed with it just as strongly as he did else she would not be here, but Ororo had grown up on the streets of one of the toughest, nastiest cities in the world, and then reached her teenage years on the Serengeti plains, where life was always chancy and often brutal. She knew well that there was a time for talking, a time for forgiveness, and a time for killing.

She womanfully made an attempt to change the subject, and the two of them talked about his project to help her, as well as the project he would soon begin to help Rogue. The problem with Rogue was he could already figure out a way of cutting off her powers, after all they were based on touch which was much easier than an emotional connection you wanted to cut off at will, but any easy solution he could create right away would effectively cut her off further then she was already. So he needed to think of a way to cancel out her powers, but not make it permanent or something that couldn't be easily reversible.

That would take quite a lot of time and trial and error. He hoped to be finished within three weeks, however, that way he could leave if Charles ordered Harry out after Harry went through with his ultimatum to speak to Jean about the entity in her head if Charles didn't.

After that, Harry and Ororo left to get dressed, meeting up again before going downstairs to prepare breakfast. It was only as the kids came down, groaning in the knowledge that Logan would be training them most of the day, that both of them realized they were holding hands again and reluctantly let go before anyone could see them.

OOOOOOO

Sunday was filled with exercise and language lessons, interspersed with one-on-one meetings with Harry about their AAR reports and how they did in the team exercises the day before.

Most of these were easy. Kurt, Evan, Rogue, and Jean all knew what they did wrong, accurately pointing out how they had gotten better and where they could still improve. In Kurt's case, it was endurance and speed, never staying in one place for long and getting stronger so he would be able to perform more teleportations before becoming tired. Harry talked to Evan about new uses of his powers as well as being less arrogant, something Evan was already correcting, and Ororo's nephew was ecstatic to find out he might become the team's tank with some effort and imagination (well, after he got over the irritated feeling of talking to the man whom even he was beginning to see as his auntie's boyfriend. That was just wrong on so many levels) and a bit more effort.

Jean, too, felt power and its application was the answer and wanted to continue the one-on-one sessions with Harry to learn new and more interesting ways to use her powers, rather than the brute force applications she had been using. That she was able to recreate some of his spells gave her hope she could do more, and he agreed.

Rogue was a little tougher. She was a more prickly personality and didn't like being seen as weak. But she knew how vulnerable she was at range and was willing to do anything she could to counteract that weakness. She willingly agreed to be trained with a rifle for now, providing long range support until she could get close.

Scott was even tougher. He was another prickly personality, and he didn't want to admit he was wrong at all on a personal level. He kept trying to bring up what the team did wrong, rather than admit that he went to pieces when Jean went down—only what the team as a whole did wrong, never himself. His AAR was well written and thoughtful on a team level, but it was useless as a personal review. Harry rather grimly brought him to task on that and his numerous personal mistakes, and pointed out his biggest weakness, well biggest physical weakness anyway: that he was next to useless without his goggles/glasses, something any reasonably competent enemy could take advantage of. When Harry brought this up, Scott's resultant 'pity me' party disgusted Harry so much he backed off.

Kitty was last, and met with Harry after dinner. She was already yawning, exhausted from Logan's all-day lessons and Harry smirked a little at her as she joined him in the back yard. Kitty glared at him, but the glare flowed off him like water. "Like, I already know that I've got to work on my endurance, and learn a distance weapon so I'm useful at range, got anything else to tell me teach?"

Harry nodded. "Two ideas actually. Have you ever tried to phase someone into a solid object and leave them there? And have you done the same for objects into other objects?"

Kitty grimaced. "Yeah, I have done the first. They're stuck like that until I let them go, but it like, looks so gross, and takes a lot out of me for some reason. But not for objects."

Harry nodded and picked up a few pebbles, handing them to her. "Let's find out then."

It turned out that if she just left something in something else, they interpolated somehow without any damage done. Yet if she put even a bit of impetus into the object left behind, well . . . The two of them stared at the tree that had just exploded. Kitty's eyes were still wide, while Harry had a large grin on his face and a second after the tree settled, he began to laugh. "Ha,haha,ahahahahah, mwhahahahahhaha!"

Kitty looked at him askance as he laughed diabolically and then reached over slapping him on the back to snap him out of it. "Bad teacher! No maniacal laughter for you."

Harry shook off his odd mood and smirked at her, noticing how tired she was. It looked as if trying to impart that bit of momentum to her rock while her hand was in the tree had taken a bit out of her, adding to her already pretty exhausted state. "Alright kid, that was all, I thought you showed the most improvement in your team exercises yesterday. Keep it up. And if you want to help me with a little project, get up early tomorrow and we'll see if we can get a certain runic array to work okay?" Kitty nodded, too tired to get his hint, and went off to be immediately thereafter.

OOOOOOO

After a Sunday filled with Logan running them into the ground and interspersed with Ororo's language lesson as well as Harry's more cerebral discussions (for some for others as mentioned it was more of a dressing down), most of the kids were actually looking forwards to school. Jean, however, was not. She was slowly going insane with worry over the physics test she was taking later that day.

Thankfully, she had taken some of Mr. Potter's advice and changed her mental defenses around a little. Rather than being, well, unimaginative about things, she had decided to be a little more proactive. While she had stuck to the idea of a circular defense, that was where the similarity ended. Her defenses were built to keep things both in and out, and had the tools to do so.

Despite her confidence in her new mental defenses to keep out errant thoughts, she was still freaking out a little, so she was rereading her physics notes as she walked down the stairs. Her studying was interrupted by laughter and whoops in front of her in the main hall. She looked up and gaped at what she saw.

Harry and Kitty, who had indeed woken up early and joined Harry (who had bowed out early from his time with Ororo that morning) to study runes, were sitting on a carpet. It was one of those that all their rooms had come with, some kind of bulk-purchased, ugly thing with 70's era colors that Jean had replaced as soon as she could, and she knew all the others did as well. The odd thing about it was, of course, that it was floating in the air in the middle of the hall.

Kitty grinned and waved as Rogue and Jean came down the steps. "Heh, we got the flying runes to work! Like, this is so amazing! I bet we could put them on our uniforms soon!"

Harry wagged his hand in the air noncommittally. "Remember, a runic array works along the same principle as a ward, they both need to have a power source. I need to figure out a way for the power source to be something that won't run out of juice after one use once or when it's a certain distance away from me. Also," he pushed her lightly, making her giggle a little, "what's this 'we' thing, Curly-cat?"

Jean scowled a little as the others all chattered gleefully about the idea. Scott in particular was taken by the idea of them having that much mobility. Flying like that would take Fred's and Lance's powers out of the equation.

Ever since Jean had learned about her telekinetic powers, she had hoped to fly. But so far she just couldn't sustain it. She could slow a fall or boost a jump a bit, but actual, useful flight eluded her. Hopefully the ongoing lessons with Harry will get my strength and control up enough to do it.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Harry dropped down in front of her, his place immediately taken by Evan. "Are you alright? I know you said you had a major test today and that you were having problems with keeping out people's thoughts and emotions in stressful situations."

Jean shrugged. "I revamped my defenses like you suggested, so hopefully I won't be hearing anyone else's thoughts today, we'll see."

"Would you like me to check on them Jean?" The Professor asked, wheeling up after smiling indulgently at the flying-carpet duo. Harry stiffened a little and moved away slightly to keep Charles in his sight, but didn't say anything, hoping that this was a segue to Charles telling Jean about the foreign entity in her head.

Jean noticed the tension between the two men, but didn't make the connection that it had anything to do with her. "Yes please, Professor; I really don't want to be distracted while I'm taking my test today."

Charles nodded agreeably and sent out a feeler toward her mind. He also hoped to see evidence that would prove his sealing away the alien mind inside Jean had not had any effect on her. Yet after a second he recoiled in shock. "What in the world was that!?"

"How do you like my new mental defenses professor?" The redhead smirked a bit. If her little pets could keep a real telepath out when he was trying to get in then they would certainly block out stray thoughts.

I-I . . . yes, Jean, they-they're very nice. Now, if you'll excuse me?" Charles wheeled himself off, looking quite disturbed about something.

Harry watched him go and then turned back to the younger girl, a small smirk of his own on his face. "You used one of the examples I told you about that came from Luna, didn't you?"

Jean giggled a little, her normal anxiety gone at the Professor's reaction. "Yep, but I added some of my own tweaks. I think my little Belsham-trees will do nicely to keep my powers to myself, and anyone else's thoughts out of my head." Harry grinned, getting the reference and easily able to picture what she was talking about in his head. He clapped her on the back lightly, laughing with her before going in to bring out breakfast.

Ororo came down at that point with Logan, smiling happily at seeing the carpet flying, images of going out on flights with Harry rather than Hedwig (something the two of them had done on and off of at night which they both enjoyed, well, if she was interpreting Hedwig's precks correctly anyway) which she thought would be an extremely romantic thing to do. Logan merely looked and shook his head. Everyone but Jean stayed to take their turns flying on the carpet before breakfast until it ran out of power a few minutes after Harry left.

Jean had a few minutes to look down at her notes before a plate arrived in front of her and she looked up, her frown of concentration disappearing into surprise. Harry always served a fruit cup along with whatever else he was making for breakfast, but this time rather than a random mix, her bowl was filled with cherries, blueberries, and passionfruit—not a single strawberry, pineapple or cantaloupe in sight. How on earth does he know that these are my favorite fruits, or that I don't like the others? In point of fact, she hated strawberries or raspberries; they simply were tasteless to her. She looked at the main serving plates and her eyes widened a little further as her mouth began to water, seeing that the one in front of her, Rogue, and Evan, who was sitting across from them with Logan, had pancakes rather than the waffles on the other two servers she could see on the table. Or that blueberry pancakes are my absolute favorite?

She looked around, and saw that Storm and Kitty both had their own specially prepared fruit bowls as well, and Kitty even had chocolate chip waffles in front of her, something that made her and Kurt, who was sitting across from her very happy indeed.

This must be to reward her for learning something about runes, and, well, why he did it for Ms. Munroe need not be said, and for me . . . I guess he wants to cheer me up before my test. She took a bite from her fruit bowl and nearly moaned aloud at the taste. It worked, too. For knowing me for only a few weeks, that man knows my tastes entirely too well.

The food was so good Jean almost completely forgot her desire to diet until she was about to start the second pancake she had put on her plate. When she did she firmly put her fork down and tried to get up, only to find herself once more stuck to her chair. She frowned, searching her place for the telltale rune that was holding her here. Harry hadn't yet used an active spell, and she thought he wouldn't in their little breakfast battle. He would consider it unsporting, not giving her a chance to get away.

She frowned a little as she didn't find one, then felt underneath her seat and underneath her place at table. Nothing there. She then felt the back of her chair and didn't feel anything there. She frowned a little then sighed as the smell of the pancake on her plate hit her. She sighed again and picked up her fork again. After eating the last bite she looked over at Harry, a frown on her face. "Alright I give, how did you do it this time Potter?"

Harry smirked a little, remembering times in his home dimension when that exact phrase had been used by irate students in his fifth year after he had taken up pranking to relieve tension. "You checked everywhere but your own back. Surprising really, I would have thought it would be one of the first places you would look."

Jean grimaced, then reached behind her and felt around. After a series of comical contortions, she was at last able to reach the center of her back. Her hand came back holding a sticky note on her back. The runic array wasn't one of his normal Egyptian or Norse runes, it was Japanese, and one of the few of that language he was happy with using, but it was the only language that could be used on paper; the others were a little too powerful to be contained on something so flimsy. Japanese didn't have the power, but could achieve a few more effects (exorcism was just one of them, but the variety made him glad he had brought along a few books to study when he could) and their power lasted for quite a bit longer.

"Huh, you slapped this on my back when we were laughing together before breakfast?" Harry nodded and Jean shook her head, a small smile on his face. "Well played, Potter; you may have won this round, but I will win the war."

The others all laughed, even Scott, and Ororo smiled.

"But you're not so nervous about your test, are you?" replied Harry.

Jean blinked, realizing this was true, and went outside to meet her boyfriend with a much lighter heart.

OOOOOOO

That night, after Harry spent most of his day on his various projects,and building his knowledge of the technology in this new world, Hedwig returned with the first five of their teleportation points around the US. The two stared into one another's eyes as Hedwig imprinted the location into Harry's mind. This was something they had done a few times back in their home dimension. Hedwig would scout out an area around their target, then imprint a place on Harry's mind. He would apparate to that location, often taking other people with him. Most of the time, the image had been of a clearing in the woods somewhere, but this time it was of a flat rooftop in a city in Texas, at least that was what he thought. It really didn't matter—Hedwig would be the one guiding him to each successive stop. After about ten minutes he was able to picture the rooftop well enough and he nodded, breaking their connection. Harry picked up a large sack of galleons and several gold bracelets and things made from melting galleons down, gathered his magic around him, and a moment later was somewhere else.

The sun was still high in the sky here, and Harry found himself on top of roof, maybe five stories in the air, with a few shorter building around him and a few taller but none with windows facing him. Hedwig appeared in the air a moment later and Harry walked over to the edge of the building down the exterior fire escape, a Notice-Me-Not spell already in place on both of them. As soon as he touched down on the street, he cancelled the spells. Harry didn't have anything he particularly wanted to hide, and Hedwig would probably garner much more attention than he would.

About five minutes later, he walked into a pawn shop that specialized in buying gold for cash, a small smile on his face. He swiftly moved up to the register at the back of the store and greeted the worker, a large, heavily muscled man with numerous visible tattoos. "Hello, I have some gold coins and other heirlooms that I would like to sell." Later, he walked out with $110,000 in cash. It wasn't quite as much as he would have gotten at a more reputable place, but this store was not part of a chain and was locally owned, so wasn't connected to any other store elsewhere. The owner might be, but probably not; pawn shops tended to be a little shady, and this one had been recommended for just that fact by Logan in any case.

Harry hit up two other places that night with similar results, ending the night with a little under $400,000 U.S. Two more nights of this and a few gold bars and that should be enough to get a bank account started, hopefully in Switzerland. Or somewhere else they don't allow foreign interference.

OOOOOOO

The following few days fell into a new pattern for everyone at the institute. The kids were working almost exclusively with Logan again on physical exercises, but Harry had also assigned Scott and the rest some research to do on small-unit tactics and strategies. He was hoping that one of the others would step up and challenge Scott for his leadership position, but that wasn't happening just yet. Evan was willing to challenge him physically, but it became apparent he wasn't willing to do the mental work needed to really become the leader of the group. Say what you would about Scott, he was a hard worker and he ate up the work.

Harry interspersed working on his various projects with playing pranks on all and sundry and getting to know the kids. Jean (or Red, as Harry continued to call her), buoyed by the fact her new defenses had finally blocked out other peoples thoughts from her mind, actually began to prank back, using her powers to shift items in the kitchen a little when Harry reached for them or tripping Harry and planting paint balls in places then exploding them as he neared. He hadn't yet gotten her badly in return yet, but it was an amusing escalation of their breakfast wars, and she enjoyed a day of being a blonde once. Kurt joined in enthusiastically, and he and Harry eventually forced Charles to ask them to tone it down.

Harry learned that Jean, while having normal middle class parents, had been more than happy to leave them behind—not just because of her powers, but because they were not exactly the most loving parents. They were kind and nice, but were also aloof, demanding, and unprepared to deal with their daughter's mutant status. They had known Xavier for a while before her powers awakened, and it had been an easy choice for them to let her go to the institute. Kurt, on the other hand, was an orphan, and had been taken in by a band of gypsies. They had been his family until Charles had found him and brought him to the institute.

Kitty came from a well-to-do family, and she regularly wrote to her parents, preferring to do that rather than phone, as it let her tell them more than she would otherwise without worrying about long-distance fees. They were proud of her, both for her grades in school and choosing to learn how to control her powers, and they were all very close. Evan's parents were regular humans, too; his mother was Ororo's older sister, who had been left behind to finish her school year when their family moved to Cairo. He was close to them, but they had been ill-prepared to handle his powers and trusted Ororo implicitly to watch out for him, so had let him go to the institute far more easily than Kitty's, who had put up a fight before letting her go. Evan had a bit of a problem with authority, but was a good kid nonetheless and, as Harry supposed, the most physically fit of the X-Men thanks to being a basketball player and skater.

Harry got to know Rogue by asking her about music, something she was the acknowledged master of in the household. Harry didn't really care for music one way or another before, but he found he liked some of the hard rock of America and of course the U.K. He had also gotten to know Rogue a little more, finding out how much of a problem her powers were for her. She couldn't even brush against someone else in the hall, lest she drain them of their vitality and memories. It made her aloof and standoffish in most social situations, wary of letting anyone get close physically or emotionally.

Her family, too, was a sore subject. She had been raised by Mystique ever since she was a toddler and didn't know who her real parents were, only that she had been left at an orphanage before Mystique found her. Rogue refused to talk about those years, and Mystique in general was a sore subject. Harry hadn't yet figured out a way to cancel out her powers and still let her have the feeling of touching someone, but he vowed to make it a priority moving forward.

Scott, too, was an orphan, though he remembered his family: his mother, father, and a younger brother named Alex. They had been flying in a private plane, apparently the father was a pilot, and they had been struck by lightning or something and had crashed. It seemed that Scott was the only one to walk away, and when he did, his mutant powers had manifested due to the extreme duress he had been put under. That could have been the reason he was such a, well an emo really, yet it did not really excuse him having as little empathy as he did. After all, he wasn't the only orphan in the group. Yet Scott seemed to think that because his eyes were deadly weapons without his glasses, it should let him get away with his pity party. It almost reminded Harry of Remus Lupin and how he acted; rather than trying to overcome his disability or turn it to his advantage, Scott allowed it to dominate his life, much like the werewolf had.

Of course, all the kids had noticed the tension between Xavier and Harry, which built as the days went on. Most of them had decided they didn't want to know what was causing it, which was rather prudent of them, a path of wisdom that Ororo and Logan also followed. Scott, however, had very obviously taken Xavier's side, and was frosty and unfriendly to Harry, even when Harry was instructing him in small-unit tactics. Kurt took Harry's side, however, and had begun to target Scott even more than usual with his pranks.

The routine of the day had no impact on Harry's nighttime activities, however. Every night, he went out to a few different cities, unloading galleons (which looked almost exactly like Spanish doubloons and so did not cause much comment) and the jewelry he made from melting some of his coins down. Harry figured that if he kept this up for two or three months, he might make a dent in his available gold, but not before then.

OOOOOOO

It was Friday, and Harry was hitting up the last city he wanted to sell his gold in before he would have enough to head to Switzerland (and wouldn't an apparition that far be interesting . . .)—around $3 million U.S. The city this time was New York, and for the first two stops, the trip went as the others had. Only the story ever changed when he went into these pawn shops. He was either a collector who had decided to start a family and needed the cash now or he had found them in his grandparents' attic when he cleaned out their house, etc . . . This time, however, he stopped halfway to his last target, his magical senses tingling. He looked around, then turned and began to walk in the direction he had felt magic come from.

The feeling was as if he had hit a very low-powered warning ward set throughout an area to detect other magic users. Yet as he moved to the center of the area covered, he found a normal looking house. Well, it was normal to his regular eyes. To his magical senses, this place was singing with protective wards and enchantments. Definitely not a place I would want to try to break into. Despite the fact most of the wards looked relatively low-key and forgiving, there were so many of them and some were so powerful it reminded him a little of Potterstead. Well, without the instant-death dealing wards or any of the more dangerous traps. Still, what was there was dangerous enough and Harry could tell there was more hidden underneath them. Harry resolved to be very friendly to whoever lived here.

He walked up to the door and knocked twice firmly. After a scant minute, someone answered the door. The man who looked out at Harry was short but extremely fit, bald, and Asian, wearing some kind of Asian monk outfit Harry had never seen before. "Yes, may I help you young one?"

Harry's eyebrows quirked at the 'young one' bit, but he smirked too, knowing that the man was probably even older than he looked by a wide margin if he was magical. "I hope so, are you the owner of this house?"

"I am not. I am afraid that the owner, Dr. Steven Strange, is out at present. I am his manservant, Wong. May I be of assistance?" Actually Dr. Strange was completely out of the dimension, dealing with a magical threat. He had been gone for several days, and Wong was beginning to get worried about him. Still, that was not something he was going to share with this young stranger with the glittering emerald eyes and confident air belying his age.

Harry frowned a little then shrugged, leaning in so that even if someone were nearby, he or she wouldn't be able to hear his words. "Well, tell him that another magical user came by and wanted to talk shop. My name's Harry Potter, and I'm a new bloke on the block, so to speak." He flicked his fingers and small bits of light glittered off his fingers. "I'm at the Xavier School for the Gifted upstate if he wants to meet me. Complement him on your ward scheme for me, will you?"

Wong blinked a little, unused to seeing someone steeped in the secrets of magic so open with his gifts. "I will tell him you stopped by, Mr. Potter. Have a nice day." Harry nodded and left, finished up his errand, and left New York City without further incident.

OOOOOOO

The next day was Saturday, the first day of spring break, and the kids were heading out to some kind of endurance campout of some kind. The choice had been between a week at this campout—supposedly to build teamwork, toughness, and to get them in touch with nature—or going on a backpacking trip with Logan. Harry was amused by how quickly the kids had chosen to go to the camp, and also how training with him for that amount of time hadn't been discussed. He wasn't that much of a hard ass, was he? He waved the kids onto their bus and turned back, looking forward to spending some time studying his runic arrays and hanging out with Ororo. Ororo, too, was looking forward to having a day to herself and Logan had already called the TV, wanting to curl up and watch some kind of spy movie marathon. Charles was looking forward to a week of peace and quiet. Little did any of the adults suspect that their peaceful day would soon be interrupted.

OOOOOOO

Mystique had been slowly becoming more and more concerned by the changes she had been seeing in Xavier's charges. Not only were they becoming more individually dangerous, they seemed to be bonding as a team more. Evan had clashed with Pietro earlier in the week (something about Evan claiming he was the better athlete or some such nonsense), and rather than being evenly matched, or simply unable to actually engage one another, Evan had sneakily taken Quicksilver's feet out from under him with a single, well placed spike of bone. Pietro's own momentum had slammed him head first into the lockers along one of the walls, knocking him out. Pietro simply thought 'the punk got lucky' and Mystique would have, too, if she hadn't heard Evan mutter something about 'targeting weaknesses', something that showed he was thinking about how to fight, not just getting in and mixing it up.

Fred Dukes had also had a run in with Rogue and Kurt when the huge teen tried to punch a soda machine to raid the soda inside and the two had stopped him, an incident she had seen from her office on the third floor. The two X-Men had worked together almost seamlessly to confuse, disorient, and then take out the massive Blob, teamwork that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago. Mystique knew it had to be something to do with the new tenant at the institute, yet she hadn't been able to find anything out about him. For some reason, every time she tried to spy on the institute, she didn't see anything out of the ordinary, or she suddenly had to leave. Nor had she figured out a way to get in and steal Cerebro, which was still one of her ongoing objectives.

So she had decided to get some other help, both to get her the computer and to see what the emerald-eyed young man's power was. So while her charges were at the same camp as the X-Men and hopefully keeping them busy, she had infiltrated the Vault and now stood in front of her target. She stepped past the other guard, whom she had knocked out with a chop to the neck, and, still wearing the body of the guard she had replaced to get in, pressed the button that would halt the flow of sedative into the water of the tank.

Within seconds the man, a monstrous giant almost as large as Fred, but covered with muscle rather than fat, roused. His brown eyes snapped open to latch on Mystique in her morphed body. "What the hell are you playing at, a guard trying to have fun with the prisoner? Wake him up then knock him out again when he thinks he can get free? Well fuck you!"

The man began to thrash in the water, but stilled as Mystique raised one hand to hover over the sedative button. "Now, now, not everything is as it appears. I want to make a deal, Cain. I understand you have an issue with your brother Charles?" the man's eyes narrowed and he stilled in his tank, save for his clenching hands. "Well he has something I want. If you follow me, I'll lead you straight to him, but after that I want you to give me an opening to get it okay?"

Cain nodded. "Lady, if you know where my brother is, just tell me and I'll do the rest."

Mystique smiled and twitched her hand over to another button. The water emptied out of the tank. As soon as the water was drained a change occurred in the man in the tank, starting from a strange red jewel imbedded into his chest. Red armor began to appear on him, covering his chest, legs, and forearms, culminating in a massive dome-shaped helmet heavily bolted to the torso armor. "In that case, make us a hole out of here, and I'll direct us from there. I've got a plane waiting that'll get us to our target much faster." With that, she changed shape into a crow and flew up to latch onto one massive shoulder. Cain grinned, turned and, barely slowing down, slammed into and through first one wall, then another as alarms began to wail throughout the Vault.

OOOOOOO

Harry was lounging around in the solarium with Ororo, both of them simply enjoying being around one another, with no real need to speak. Ororo was wrapped around a book written in Chinese, some kind of romance or other, and Harry was reading through a book on runic body inscriptions Sirius had recommended to him when they were discussing Harry's crisis suit ideas. Between Harry and Storm was a plate of sandwiches and fruit that one or the other would reach for from time to time. Hedwig was also there, reading the second book in the Fellowship series. Harry wasn't certain, but he felt she was developing a little too much interest in Gwaihir the Windlord, though what kind of interest it was he couldn't say.

Their peace was broken as alarms began to blare throughout the mansion at the same time that Harry grasped his head, wincing. "Buggering shite! That is painful! Something just shattered the wards around this place—something really powerful."

Maybe it was a bad idea to link the wards to me personally, but I didn't want to use one of my hearth stones. I've only got two of them, after all. Ward stones were simply stones with wards on them, to really create a warded dwelling, they were only part of the equation, the other half was the hearth stone, usually a massive slab of specially prepared and spelled granite that contained the power portion of the runic array, as well as connecting to all the wards and weaving them together. Harry hadn't wanted to waste one of his two slabs, and had only put down his initial two stones and a low powered intent ward that would warn him whenever anyone came near the property with violent intent, rather than merely too much interest. Someone had just smashed through that ward like it wasn't even there and the backlash had hit Harry like a bludger to the face.

Ororo helped him to his feet as Charles' voice came on over the intercom. "Attention everyone, we have a situation approaching, please come to the security room."

Harry and Ororo met up with Logan and the three of them went down to the security room. They found Charles there waiting for them, looking at video from a camera installed in a rock near the far back of the property. On the screen there was a massive man in red armor thundering his way through the forest toward the mansion. Luckily, he had started at the far back, and had about ten acres to cross before he hit the mansion. Harry asked the question on all three of the younger adult's minds. "So who is tall armored and smash-happy?" The last word was added as the man ignored the trees in his ways, crashing through them without even noticing them.

Charles sighed. "That is my half-brother, Cain Marko. He was once an explorer, a treasure hunter—more of a grave robber if I am honest, but he found some kind of ancient mystical device that somehow jumpstarted his mutant gene. He has hated me since we were children for, well, normal childish things really, and he used his powers for his own selfish ends before I incapacitated him with my telepathy. Since then, he has been locked away in the maximum security prison, the Vault. He must have escaped somehow and has come here seeking me, though how he knew where I lived is beyond me. He is nigh on physically unstoppable, and when he starts moving, literally nothing can stop him."

On the screen, the giant man had nearly covered five acres already, moving in a straight line and at amazing speeds for someone so huge. He stopped and turned when a blue-skinned woman came out of the woods behind him. She was too far away for her words to be heard, but Juggernaut's reply was. "Lady, I ain't one of your brats; I do what I want to do, and no one gives me orders!" A fist the size of a ham flashed out and connected with a wet smack and the blue-skinned woman flew away through the woods.

Harry's eyebrow rose. "And that would be this Mystique woman who is the leader of the Brotherhood?" Logan frowned hoping the broad was alright. Despite their differences now, they had often been on the same side after all.

"I'm afraid so. She must have thought Cain would help her achieve something, possibly steal Cerebro, but Cain is not a team player." Charles sighed.

Juggernaut saw the security camera in its tree as he turned and he looking into it, smirking evilly under his massive helmet. "Hah, I know you're watching, Charles; get ready to meet your maker because I'm coming for you and you know nothing stops the Juggernaut! "

Harry pushed himself off the wall, one eyebrow raised in an almost amused query, as if he didn't really understand the danger of the present situation and was more intrigued than anything else. "'Nothing', huh? Well that sounds like an interesting experiment. You stay here nice and safe Baldy, I'll go out and see what some magic can do to the big red wolf."

Ororo shook her head, looking at her friend worriedly. "I don't think that he meant it as a challenge."

"Doesn't matter how he meant it, luv, just matters how I take it." And with that, Harry walked out of the security room, fingers twitching in anticipation. It had been a while since he had gone all out, maybe this big red bloke could give him a bit of a challenge. He stopped for a moment, channeling his magic power into his crisis suit, which he routinely wore underneath regular clothing, a holdover from his days in the negative zone. "Magia Erebea," he whispered and his active magical power dipped a little as he shunted some of it to reinforce his body's durability and speed.

Behind him Charles ordered Ororo to take the quinjet to pick up the X-Men and bring them back to help, while Logan went to change before going out to assist Harry in holding off Cain.

Juggernaut had just reached the clear yard behind the mansion when Harry stepped out to bar his path. "Hey big guy, you said nothing stops you right? I want to be clear on this: you literally think you are unstoppable?"

Cain laughed low and deep, his chuckles echoing around to the crash of falling trees behind him. "Heeheheh, that's right punk, nothing can stop the Juggernaut, not you, not my brother, not anyone!"

Harry nodded eyes and hands beginning to crackle with magical power. "That's what I thought. Challenge accepted."

"Hah, make your move punk!" The Juggernaut charged forward, disdaining the mouthy little pipsqueak that had just challenged him. Harry stepped back, lashing out with first a Stupefy, then a Reducto and Bombarda in quick succession, testing the waters, so to speak. He wasn't surprised when Stupefy did nothing but the Bombarda not working at all despite actually exploding against its target did surprise him. "Huh." Harry said ducking and rolling away, before apparating behind Cain.

Another round of spells, this time less direct ones, like the Wingardium Leviosa, designed to incapacitate in some way were equally ignored, and Harry had to teleport away again as Cain turned, trying to hammer him again, moving faster than Harry had initially thought. "Hah! I don't know what you're trying to do pipsqueak, but it ain't working! The shield of Cyttorak protects me from everything; I'm invulnerable!"

Okay, so he's immune to low level attack spells. Let's take it up a notch. Now taking this far more seriously, Harry first cast at the ground, softening it directly below Cain's feet. As the man began to sink into the bog that had suddenly appeared below him, Harry began to cast some of his more powerful spells. A shatter shaker shot out, but dissipated right before impacting Cain, and Harry's eyes narrowed. He worked his way up his repertoire, his family lightning spells, some other elemental attacks, and lashing out with a siege spell he had created along the same time as the shatter shaker, a penetrating spell called Drill of Light (Harry's naming sense was vile, he knew it, but during his travels in the negative Zone, there were no one else around to comment on them).

None of them, not even the Drill of Light, worked and Harry was barely able to duck in time to avoid a punch that would have ripped his head off as Cain leapt free from the conjured bog. He wasn't able to dodge the kick that came up off the ground into his stomach, however, and Harry woofed in agony as he was lifted and thrown back a hundred feet to crash into the rubble of the mansion.

"FFUUUCCCKKK!" Harry groaned in agony. If it weren't for his crisis suit and his Magia Erebea reinforcing his body magically, that one shot alone would have finished him. God, that bastard packs a wallop. That was like getting hit by one of Blastarr's blasts back in the Negative Zone! I really need to step up my own training; I've gotten soft if he can tag me that easily. By this time, his magic had already healed him enough to move and he got to his feet.

Wolverine had shown up and was keeping Juggernaut busy; his speed and claws were able to keep him in the fight, but couldn't do anything but irritate his adversary. Harry frowned, sending some more spells downrange at Cain then took a moment to think.

Most combat was based on learned or instinctive responses, but mage combat was different. A mage was most dangerous when he was able to stand back and think about his next move, his next spell, while his instincts kept his body alive for him. So Harry took a moment to analyze his earlier failures to do more than irritate the man in red armor. Okay, so that shield of his protects him from direct assault, as well as anything that is cast directly at him, but that spell shot at the ground below him worked. What about spells that's aren't direct effect but still attack him indirectly? Does that shield protect his senses?

Harry began moving his hands in a complicated gesture, and suddenly dozens of red envelopes appeared all around him. This was a spell that Hermione and he had worked out during their second year, after watching the rather humiliating and incredibly bad idea of a howler in action. Honestly, what kind of parent thinks shouting second hand at someone in public does anything other than humiliate the victim? Harry, however, had seen how useful a spell like that could be, and Hermione had wanted something to do, bored out of her mind already by how slowly their courses were moving. Now Harry used it, magnified many times over.

A sudden thought occurred to him and he sent a few more spells at Cain with his off-hand as his right continued to work on creating the howler spells. "Hey Logan!"

"What do ya want, Bub? Can't ya see I'm busy?" The Canadian shouted back, ducking under another wild swing and trying to stab the arm before Cain could pull it back. Again, his claws seemed to skitter off something unseen before they could touch skin and he cursed. Fighting Cain head on was a losing proposition, but with that helmet on, his head he was immune to the mental attacks that could take him out.

"You said once that you had heightened senses right? Sight, smell, hearing?"

"What of it?"

"Well then, you might want to cover your ears!" Logan jumped back and looked around at that, raising an eyebrow behind his mask as he saw something like thirty large, red envelopes, seeming almost alive in some fashion, moving and trying to open as if something were inside. For some reason, the sight filled him with dread, and Logan jumped back again as Cain tried to close the distance then brought his hands up to cover his ears.

It was well he did; as soon as the red envelopes were around the Juggernaut, who began to try and hit them, ineffectually lashing out only for the letters to move aside, they all exploded. That was really the only word for it in Logan's opinion. They all went off like sound bombs, screeching and yowling at just the right decibel to produce the most pain in their victim. Cain screamed, feeling pain, real pain, for the first time in a long while as his ears throbbed, then his eardrums burst under the assault.

Logan howled in agony, then a hasty Mufilatio hit him and the blessed silence engulfed his battered ear drums. Despite this, he had already fallen into his berserker rage; the sudden and surprising pain went straight through his hard-earned control and awoke the beast inside. Harry gasped in surprise as his supposed ally turned and charged him, claws out and seeking his life.

"Logan, what the bloody fuck are you doing?!" Harry snapped, trying desperately to stay ahead of the weaving claws coming for him. Christ, he's fast; he obviously held back as much in our spars as I did! Harry gasped in agony as Logan's adamantium claws slashed across his side, stopped only by the protective shielding of his crisis suit and even that began to fail.

He jumped back, summoning a Lacero fire whip into his hand and he lashed it forward, catching Logan in the chest and throwing him backward. He rolled on the ground howling like a wounded beast.

Harry turned and started to fire mid-level spells at Juggernaut, trying to see if he could get through that armor. A overpowered Lacero did nothing, and Harry stopped using element type spells, instead going back to using penetrating spells. The only one that even rocked Cain was one Harry called the Railgun. It was basically the monster version of a Rifela. It summoned up a small bullet of magic and sent it out via magically created electromagnets between two of his fingers. The thing hit like a freight train despite its size, but all it did was stagger the big red bastard despite his ears not having healed just yet. Harry just couldn't figure out a way to knock him down.

And a second later, he didn't have any more time to think; Logan rushed toward him again howling. "Holy Hell! What the bloody fuck is wrong with you!"

OOOOOOO

"Ah can't believe ya'll wanted tah do this instead of try and hot rod the bus tah get back tah civilization." Rogue muttered as they finally sat down on the top of a summit where the camp counselor, Sgt. Hawke, had put a flag for them to get. Well them and the Brotherhood. Why the hell had both our groups come to the same survival camp? After several different issues, trials, and tribulations mostly caused by their ongoing rivalry with the Brotherhood, who just didn't have much teamwork or common sense,both groups gotten to the summit.

Jean pushed Rogue's shirt clad shoulder playfully. 'I'll admit in retrospect that was probably the best idea. Certainly would have saved us a lot of trouble."

Rogue smirked at her and Lance and Toad of the Brotherhood laughed a little at 'miss perfect student' thinking breaking the law was a good idea.

Scott frowned. "While it would have been easier, it would have broken the law and probably gotten us in trouble not only with the authorities, but the Professor and Logan as well."

Kurt shook his head. "We vere just joking, mine fruend. Though I am missing Harry's cooking."

The Brotherhood all looked quizzical, but Evan rolled his eyes. "I hate to admit it, but he does actually cook better than Auntie O."

Kitty reached into her backpack and pulled out a small lunchbox. When she opened it, she gasped, then laughed. The others looked at her quizzically and then in shock as she reached into the small, four inch box and her hand disappeared. After a moment, she pulled it back out holding a huge turkey club. She set it down and kept bringing out more and different sandwiches along with other lunch items, giggling all the while.

Jean frowned a little. "I see he has stepped up his anti-diet warfare. I must think of a way to respond to this."

Kurt laughed as he grabbed a beef sandwich and passed half of it to Fred, who looked as if he were going to start drooling any moment now. "Harry again, jah? Taste this. See what we mean, ya?"

Quicksilver shot over to look over into the small lunchbox and gaped at the space inside. "Wh-what kind of mutant power does this guy have, anyway?"

Kitty grinned at him. "Now that is a secret! Heheheh!"

The others all sat down to eat for a bit, even Scott and Lance forgetting their rivalry for the moment to enjoy the nice view and the good food. Pietro continued to try and find out what powers the new guy had, but couldn't get a straight answer out of any of the X-Men. As they were finishing their late lunch however the x-jet suddenly roared up with a Storm at the helm, dressed in her X-Men suit, her face grim.

OOOOOOO

Harry had been holding off both Logan killing him and Juggernaut getting behind him, hammering the latter every time he got to his feet with another sound attack for over twenty minutes, but Logan had closed in again and was forcing Harry back. At this point, the X-Men arrived in the jet with the Brotherhood, and were astonished to see the Juggernaut holding his head in agony while Wolverine and Harry seemed to be fighting a few spaces away. Even as they watched though, Juggernaut got to his feet yet again and rumbled toward the two combatants, slowly, weaving like drunkard, but still in motion.

Harry looked up at them and shouted. "Get this bloody idiot off me, I nearly had the big baddy down and he goes and attacks me! He hasn't stopped either, even though big and armored keeps bloody getting back up!"

As Kurt teleported down and Jean lowered herself to the ground telekinetically, something she hadn't been able to do as little as a month ago. They all heard the Professor's voice inside their heads. Mr. Potter tried some kind of sound based attack on Juggernaut, but Logan was caught in the area of effect before Mr. Potter could protect him. The pain of the attack has thrown Logan into his berserk state, and unfortunately I can't get through his rage to calm him down. Immobilize him if you can. Juggernaut's only weakness is his lack of mental defense. If you all can somehow remove his helmet, I can restrain him.

"Harry!" Kitty yelled, already jumping out of the jet, phasing out to touch down lightly. "Mr. Logan's in a berserk state, use a spell to knock him out of it somehow!" Behind her the Brotherhood members all looked at one another, mouthing 'spell?' in wonder. They had come along when Storm informed them that Juggernaut had knocked out Mystique. None of them really liked her all that much, but she did pay the bills.

As Harry followed Kitty's suggestion via a cheering charm and a tickling charm in succession, Jean, Kurt, and Kitty engaged Juggernaut. Kurt started teleporting everywhere around the giant trying to irritate him, while Jean started hitting him with TK blasts at range. Storm joined in as well, and massive bolts of lightning hammered into Juggernaut. Unfortunately, all this martial bluster amounted to absolutely nothing; only Storm's blasts even made Juggernaut pause. Cain knew who the main threat was and barreled through, ignoring their attacks toward Harry.

Evan pulled out as much of his bone armor as he could, literally covering himself in it, and jumped down to get in Juggernaut's way along with Blob. It was good that Fred was there, as Evan was knocked aside easily. Blob, though, was pretty unmovable even by the Juggernaut and stood his ground for a few moments.

This allowed Harry to push the now wildly laughing Logan to the ground and take stock of the situation. He paused a moment to take in the rather fetching sight of Ororo in her X-Man uniform but shook himself, concentrating on more important things. "Who are the new blokes?"

Kurt bamfed in right next to him, gasping a little from all the teleportation he had been doing. Juggernaut might look slow, but his punches came out quickly and even one would paste Kurt. "Zhey're . . . Zhey're zhe Brotherhood. Zhey're our, vell, our adversaries normally. Ve ended up at zhe same camp, und zhey came along vhen Storm said zhat Mystique, zheir leader, vas in trouble."

Harry frowned and surreptitiously pointed his fingers at each of them in turn, placing a spell on them to be activated later.

As the jet landed and let out those who weren't able to get to ground safely already, Scott tried to take control of the ongoing battle, but Harry was well ahead of him. "Cyclops, start hammering him, aim for his head. Try to blind him if nothing else. Kurt, you're looking a little knackered, you're on rescue duty, if he gets too close to any of the others, port them out of there. Big bloke I don't know, try to hold him in place, but get ready to not hear anything; I'm going to use a sound based attack on him; it seems to be the only thing that gets through and I don't want you caught up in it. Anyone got something to rattle him with, maybe get him off his feet?"

Lance spoke up from next to Toad, who was gulping fearfully at the sight of the big monster locked in combat with Fred, who now appeared to be losing. Quicksilver had already streaked off to look for Mystique. "I can. My power's based on creating earthquakes."

"That's handy. Alright laddo, rattle his bones!"

Lance grinned and complied as Jean and Scott took turns hammering away at the red armored giant, who, despite the rumbling of the ground underneath him, stayed on his feet. Harry noticed now that red crystal set into Juggernaut's chest seemed to glow a little brighter when the attacks impacted that shield. So, part magical, part mutant, all nutter. Lovely! His next sound attack went in, and again Cain howled in agony as his newly healed eardrums burst once more.

This time, though, it didn't incapacitate him, and Fred was at last toppled off his feet. Two blows landed on Fred, knocking him out before Kurt arrived and ported him to safety.

With The Blob out of the way, Lance really went to town and Juggernaut collapsed to his knees. Rogue, who had been about to try to rush in and touch the big bastard reached forward and shrieked as his shield threw her away smoking. Kurt grabbed her out of midair and plopped her down, but she was out of the fight for now.

"We need to get his helmet off!" Jean yelled and upped the power of her attacks, thankful once again to Harry for putting her though his training. It was really paying off in terms of her endurance and telekinetic projection.

"We need someone to manually unbolt it from the rest of the armor." Scott said, still firing continuously. Cain still hadn't gotten back to his feet; the loss of his inner ear and the constant earthquakes combined to make it impossible for him to stand up, but eventually his Cytorak given healing factor would heal the damage to his ears and he would be able to get to his feet regardless of anything Lance did. Well, unless he wanted to make a new San Andreas Fault, but even that might not do more than slow Juggernaut down.

Harry shook his head. "It's the crystal that's the main problem. It's generating some kind of magical shield. Take it out of the equation and he'll be much easier to deal with."

Evan got too close at this point, a rookie mistake that cost him as Cain lashed out, smashing him to the ground. Kurt tried to port in and get Evan out of danger, but Cain had anticipated this and another swift blow lashed out, catching Kurt where he teleported in. "Kurt!" Kitty screamed as Kurt arched away, his body twitching and bloody.

Before anyone else could react, Kitty phased in, trying to do the trick to Juggernaut that she had done to the tree last Sunday and hoping her phasing ability would save her from what happened to Rogue. It didn't. When she hit his magical shield, she screamed and fell to the ground, convulsing. Toad and Storm's intervention saved her from having her head caved in from a kick. Toad grabbed her with his tongue and pulled her to safety. Storm roared in anger, seeing some of her students and young friends down and injured and her self-control disappeared. She began to attack with a fury that was amazing to see.

And suddenly this isn't a game anymore, Harry though. His mind suddenly went blank and slipped into full combat mode, something it hadn't done up until this point. "Cover me." he said, his voice flat and emotionless, sending a shiver up the spine of everyone who heard it.

As Jean and Scott lent their firepower to Storm's monstrous assault, huge gusts of wind hammering into Juggernaut along with massive bolts of lightning slashing down from the sky, Harry summoned the sword of Gryffindor, a memento from his time in his original dimension, and teleported forward. This was the sword that had been made by goblins and had been dipped in basilisk venom, the most lethal poison in the universe. It had become a sword whose tiniest slash would kill, no ifs, ands, or buts. The sword slashed out and rebounded off Juggernaut's magical shield, but the impact threw him back slightly. Harry kept at it, dodging blows by bare centimeters and hammering back with all his power as all around him, the others tried to strike Cain while still missing Harry. He poured out his magic in now higher-end spells and simply pure magic bolts of power slamming into Juggernaut. His shield began to flicker, failing at last under the constant magical assault.

With a wave of his hand he solidified the ground and yelled "Earthquake boy, full power right under him. Now!" Lance quickly obeyed, and as the ground solidified Lances power lashed out, forcing the big man to his knees.

Harry apparated up, dodging another punch to stand on Cain's knees and slam his hand down on the crystal, his hand glowing with the power of a fully-powered shatter shaker, a spell that would normally shatter a whole castle of stone or metal or anything else. Yet as soon as he touched the crystal it dimmed suddenly, and Harry found his mind elsewhere.

OOOOOOO

Purple mist surrounded Harry and he looked around, wondering where the hell he was. That Crystal thing was obviously some sort of connection to something or someone else since the magic here was based on invocation, but whom it was connected to and where he was now were a mysteries. He seemed to be floating in midair, but there was no air around him, only the purple mist, reminding him of the Negative Zone. Let's see, he thought to himself, the crystal dimmed when I touched it, and I felt my magical reserves increase. But I didn't cast a spell or anything, could that be my mutant power? Taking the magic out of other people to add to my own? That would be certainly amusing, and it would explain why Charles couldn't figure it out; it only comes into play against other magical things, and maybe other people. Maybe all those times I cast Praedia Bellica made the effect permanent? Not that I'm going to complain or anything.

"You are in my realm, little mage." A voice sounded all around him and just as suddenly a bit of the mist disappeared and Harry found himself facing some kind of extra-dimensional being. It was made of mist like the purple mist all around for a moment, then it solidified into a formless man wearing red armor. His features were blank, his eyes empty sockets, and it seemed the only thing that defined his form was the red armor. And the giant jewel set into a gold circlet around its head. Even with the body of the being in front of him, the voice sounded out all around. "I am Cyttorak, little mage. I am power!"

Harry looked around, pushing out his magical senses as far as he could. This realm may have been dominated by the being in front of him, but it certainly wasn't made by him. He seemed to have been pulled, or at least his consciousness was pulled, into a pocket dimension of some kind. "Uh-huh, so what do you want with me? Only I was sort of busy you know, beating that other big ruddy bastard down and hopefully ten feet under, and I'd like to get back to it."

"You cannot beat my avatar like that, little mage. Despite the power you wield being so strange, it will not overcome the power I have invested into my Avatar in the universe. Yet your power intrigues me and the idea of seeing what you could do with my power backing you would be most interesting. Thus I would bargain with you."

Cyttorak began to make an appeal for Harry to become his avatar, but Harry had already tuned him out, taking in the memories of Cain as they were flashing around him, showing how he had become an avatar. He had been a gangster while younger then joined up with a particularly shady group of explorers. The man had murdered all three of the other expedition members as soon as he realized there might actually be something there, and he had killed several people in his rampages since. That was enough for Harry; he decided that the Juggernaut was going to die.

As the being wound down and seemed to stare at him expectantly, Harry turned back to him his eyes hard emerald chips of controlled fury. He walked forward and suddenly shot his hand out grabbing the other entity by its arm. As he had expected, the magical power of the being began to flow into him and the being tried to get away shouting angrily and smashing a fist into Harry's face.

Harry moved with the blow easily maintaining contact. "What do I think?" he yelled. "I think that Earth is for humanity, and I want you and all those like you to get the fuck out of my dimension!"

With that, the being gasped in agony; his powers had been almost entirely taken by Harry already. Cyttorak broke contact with a viscous kick to Harry's chest. With a very weak wave of his hand he banished Harry, vowing never to come close to him again. He would have to ignore that dimension from now on, so be it.

The youngster's touch had seared like fire and it had also drained him of much of his power, although it was flowing back into him now that the human was no longer touching him. Still, best to not go near one who had all the makings of a Defender of Life, especially one who could drain his power like that.

OOOOOOO

Harry's mind came back to the real world where nothing had happened for a few seconds, then the gem on Juggernaut's armor shattered into a million pieces.

Cain cried out in agony and then fear as he began to shrink inside his armor, his Cyttorak-given strength and size boost gone, leaving him with only his mutant strength which, while formidable, was nowhere near what it had been. As the others faltered in their attacks at the sudden reversal, Harry grimly latched onto Cain's helmet and using his new strength, ripped it off his head, tossing it aside to de-power later. Harry twirled away, bringing his sword up in a vicious arc, aiming for Cain's neck.

Yet before he could finish the swing, Charles shouted aloud from where he had just exited the mansion. "No! No killing, not here!"

Harry turned to him angrily, but seeing the youngsters looking on, saw his point. None of them were ready to see death first hand. "Fine. I'll take him somewhere else to do the deed."

"NO!" Charles shouted again, rolling up to him and staring angrily up at him. "No killing at all! You've beaten him and somehow taken the majority of his power, let him be returned to he prison he came from and that will be an end of it."

Harry growled. "Charles, I know he's your brother, but he's a murderer dozens of times over, and look what nearly happened to the kids!"

"It is not that, Mr. Potter." Charles said sternly. "At least not just that. You cannot simply kill your enemies all the time, Harry, you must give them a chance to reform. More you are not judge, jury, or executioner. That is the power only of the state, not us." Scott and the other still moving X-Men nodded at that, seeing it as simply good sense. The Brotherhood shrugged, uncaring, and just stared on at the discussion.

Harry nearly did it anyway, but refrained, more for the kid's sake than anything else. "That's strike two ,Charles. On your head be it; every life he takes from now on, because you stopped me from ending it right here and now is your responsibility." Charles flinched at the grim certainty in Harry's tone, but he nodded anyway.

Without another word, Harry turned and shot a full powered Stupefy into Cain's chest since he was trying to recover from the agony of his magical power being ripped out of him, knocking Cain out. Then Harry moved over to Rogue, who was now standing on her own despite the shock she took. "Rogue." She looked at him questioningly. "Drain him." Harry ordered, pointing over his shoulder at Cain. "Completely."

Rogue gulped a little but nodded and moved forward, laying her un-gloved hand on Cain's head. After a few moments, she pulled away her body a little taller and stronger looking, but that was all. She moved over and lifted up a downed tree with ease, shocking all those who were looking.

Harry nodded grimly, then went over to Kurt and Kitty's comatose forms levitating them off the ground as Storm picked up her nephew. The two turned to go inside, but Harry paused momentarily to look over at the group of brotherhood mutants clustered around one another seeing to Fred's injuries. "Tell your leader I'll be in touch. I've heard Xavier's spiel, I'll want to hear hers too." One or two of them nodded their heads, but Quicksilver simply looked a little distrusting and Harry shrugged, waving a hand and activating the spell he had set on them previously to erase everything about his fighting abilities from their minds and then moved inside, levitating Kurt and Kitty before him.

End chapter

And there we have arguments, training and Juggernaut, who has lost nearly all his powers and will not be a threat for a long time to come if ever. And now Rogue has the strength she had in the comics, though not the flight ability which will be solved soon for her and the others as it will be for Harry.

I tried to mix up origin stories for Juggernaut here to make a complete picture, simply because none of the others alone made much sense to me.

Belsham-trees, in case people don't get it, are trees with tentacles. Belshamharoth is a tentacle monstrosity from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.