A/N: No harem. Not a harem. No harem in sight, well not one involving Harry anyway. I'm can see why it may have came across as such, but no – No harem. Harry/Tonks, that's all well and good. Hedwig is with them for now, but she is an owl that's been turned into a human. And as mentioned, she is undergoing lots and lots of change. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

No harem.

Chapter 33: Pain pain, Go Away

The battered and pulverised corpses of the Death Eaters lay around me, mixed in with the burning tents and remnants of the battle transfigurations. The stench of blood and brimstone is thick in the air. A foreign wand sits loosely in my hand as I survey the scene. I tense as a wand is pressed to my throat. Casting my eyes sideways, I see a woman with black hair and red eyes.

"Et tu, Death?" The words tumble from my mouth. The woman smiles, eyes flashing sinisterly.

"Crucio." She whispers, almost lovingly.

I awake with a kick as the after-shocks hit me, biting back a groan as my frame shakes.

Still in St Mungos. Tonks is still in the seat beside my bed, which isn't usually allowed, but none of the staff really want to tell her to leave. She's been clutching my left hand in hers for almost the entire time she's been sitting her. It hurts, but knowing that she doesn't hate me for what I did means I can forgo the comfort. I turn my head so that my good-eye can see her and I smile as I see that she is still wearing the eye patch.

"How're ya feeling?" She asks, resting her chin on the edge of my bed. It's only been 2 hours.

"Like shit." I croak. "You?" She lets out a sigh.

"Worried mostly. Hedwig went to get some food, I wanted to see you wake up before I went, The sandwiches are supposed to be marvellous." She says dreamily.

"Try the t-tuna." I say as she stands up.

"Can I trust you not to get into any trouble?" She asks with a faux-stern voice, leaning down to kiss me softly. It feels like a slap.

"I'm sure it will find me." I joke, she scoffs and rolls her eyes.

"Don't make me handcuff you to that bed." She winks as she leaves. The glass in the door is charmed to only work one way, to ensure the patients privacy. She's too good to me. Even after I do something this foolish, even after I almost get myself killed. I sigh and roll back. I should've just run or went to find her straight away with Sirius. I should've just killed them instead of trying to incapacitate them, to detain them so 'justice' can be served. Justice from a corrupt government. Justice to those men would have been slow and painful deaths. I shift again as the door opens, letting sound flood into my room before the charms seal up again. "Albus?" In all of his silver and purple pin-striped robed glory.

"In the flesh, so they say." He smiles and takes the seat recently vacated by Tonks. "Are you well?"

"It could be w-worse." I swallow heavily and dig my nails into my palm. "What happened to him?"

"You may be pleased to know that you missed Mr Lestrange's heart by inches, he is currently under Auror guard." I merely nod. Damn it. I was aiming to kill him. "But alas, my time is short and I have a couple of your possessions with me." He digs into his sleeve and withdraws my wand, hesitating for a moment before giving it to me.

"He. Snapped. It." I growl. Rabastan Le-fucking-strange snapped my wand. One foot on the handle and a swift kick was all it took. If I ever encounter him again, he will not walk away from it. "But you repaired it..." I hold the wand before my face, trying desperately to hold it steady as I inspect it. No crack or splinter, mark nor imperfection mar it's length.

"In any other circumstance, including those in which your wand was also broken, I would not have repaired it." He says firmly. It shocks me a bit. "However, I have here another item of yours." Again, he digs into his sleeve, withdrawing another wand, his wand – The Elder Wand. "When you disarmed me, you explained to me that the wand cares for naught but power, do you remember?" I nod slowly. "Elder is said to not give up it's masters lightly, some say a great feat can win them over. Thestral hair is only mastered by those who themselves have mastered death." He turns the wand slowly in his hands, as if measuring it. "I was fit to possess only the meanest Hallow, the least extraordinary. I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to kill with it. I was permitted to tame and use it, because I took it, not for gain, but to save others from it." He extends the wand towards me, handle first. "Perhaps that, in time, you too shall discover why the wand has chosen you." He finishes with an encouraging smile.

There is no flash of light, no gust of wind to signal a bond. It has already decided, and I have already become it's 'master'. August 26th 1994 3:03AM. The day Harry Potter masters the Elder Wand.

"Wait." I stop Albus just before he leaves. "Are you disappointed in me?" He turns to give me an odd look.

"Disappointed? That you were able out-duel thirty three – ahem, thirty-two combatants single handedly?" His eyes sparkle at his little joke. "That you were able to perform great feats of magic whilst under threat of death? No, Harry, I am proud of you, a small part due to the non-lethal measures that you have taken, but you also chose to expose your life so valiantly and readily to protect those who could not do so themselves."

"I didn't want to be like the rest of them." I hold up the Elder Wand, my wand. "Killing to resolve all their issues." I sigh, resting the wand on my chest, looking at my first friend. "I think we both know that I'm not going to be as gentle the next time something like this happens. I'm not … I can't be as good as you are." He smiles sadly.

"I only ask that you exercise restraint and mercy. A man is not measured by how he treats his equals, but those beneath him." He must have a bookshelf full of these lines.

"Mwotcher perfessor." Tonks returns with a sandwich in each hand and one in her mouth.

"Nymphadora." He smile genially whilst her hair turns red. "I shall leave you in ... capable hands, Harry." He closes the door behind him after Hedwig gives him a hug.

"Ruddy man. I know he only does it 'cause I can't hex him." Tonks scowls, dropping down heavily onto the chair as Hedwig climbs onto the end of my bed, crossing her legs beneath her.

"You should t-tryy it sometime." I say, wincing as I sit up to accept the food. "Healers tell you anything?" I ask Hedwig whilst devouring the sandwich. Torture works up an appetite.

"Only that the best treatment for this sort of exposure is time." She scoffs. "Fat lot of good that's done the Longbottoms though. I overheard one of them calling you an arrogant fool, lucky to be alive – That sort of thing. I followed a couple of them down to the café and they were whining because you wouldn't tell them about your chest, or your blood either." She snatches one of Tonks' sandwiches.

"Hey!"

Whilst they were going over my nerves, and getting on my metaphorical ones, they also checked for other injuries whilst waiting for the Not-So-Dreamless Sleep potion to take effect. Obviously a large spider web of blackened-green skin around a puncture wound draws some alarm, but I wasn't going to tell them a basilisk had done it. They'd not been happy with my answer of 'it's an old injury' apparently. Luckily they didn't look at my back.

"Is that Dumbledore's wand?" Tonks leans over to look at the bumpy wand.

"Technically it's my wand now, it just took it's time to realise it." I look down at the fabled Deathstick again. Why me? And why now?

"This is the one that you got got when you whooped his arse? The really old one?" I nod. Tonks only knows that Albus wasn't it's first owner, I feel guilty for not telling her. Hedwig knows, but she reads through my had like a newspaper.

"Funny how such a nice person ended up with such a bad wand." Hedwig muses.

"He said he tamed it." I lean back onto my piled pillows.

"Anyone else interesting used it?" Tonks asks. Plenty.

"Uh, there's only b-been one woman to ever own it. She went by 'Belladona' but her real name w-was Bellatrix Cornwald." I explain, trying not to strain my throat too much. "She was in charge of a tavern in the early 18th century that was home to a guild of mercenaries. She did also do a lot of work for the guild outside of h-her establishment, most of 'em being ludicrously important politicians. Despite all of that, she was actually a nice person." I laugh a little. "Kind hearted until it came to the dirtier side of her j-job. She looked after the others when they spent too much of their pay on drinks, stopped rookies from being harassed – About as nice as they get. She got the wand when she was 21, on her first contract from what I can see. I think she was asked to kill this man, so she used her womanly assets to bring his guard down and she snatched this wand and used it to melt the guy's b-brain."

"Yeuck." Tonks screws her face up whilst I watch the wand carefully.

"She died a few months before she was 49, but she hadn't aged a day, not physical anyway. She w-was incredibly well read and used 'dark' rituals to retain her youth. She was also the one to ward the building, which is here in London I think. Pretty amazing really, wonder if the old p-place is still there."

"It's been like 200 years, no way it's still there." Hedwig waves her hand dismissively. "What killed her?"

"Her brother, Oliver Cornwald. He then tried to sell it at auction, but was robbed on his way into the bu-uilding."

"Hang on." Tonks pipes up, having been silent for a while. "You said a merc guild in London?"

"From the 18th century." I confirm.

"But a big warded hideout?"

"It was more like a grand hall with rooms attached, but they did hiide there." I think I know where this is going. "They called themselves 'The Black Crows', Their emblem was a-"

"Black crow with a wand in it's beak." Tonks finishes for me. I glance over at Hedwig, who shrugs, before turn back.

"This is the part where you tell me that they are still a-active and I've just created a path for you to get a promotion, right?"

"Yes and no. They're hired wands, the rough kind, but I won't get a promotion." She laughs. "We'll talk about it when we ain't sitting in a hospital." She smiles affectionately. "Shame you can't use the wand to heal yourself." She adds glumly. I look down at the most powerful wand wielded by the thickest person.

"My own stupidity astounds me." I sigh. "I can lessen it a b-bit. Get rid of this stutter maybe. The healer was using nerve soothing charms on me, but they weren't very effective."

"So you can get rid of some of it?" Hedwig asks hopefully.

"I don't really know." I very carefully hold the tip of the Elder Wand against the inside of my left arm and cast a diagnostic charm, designed for nerve damage, to determine if I can help myself in any way. As if there was any doubt, crucio is not good for the skin. The damage is more evident as I move up my arm, spell had hit me in the stomach and spread out from there, which isn't to say that it hurt any more or less around my body, just that the nerve damage is more severe around it's point of impact. The 'hitch' in trying to heal this sort of damage, which would normally be treatable, is that 'dark' magic doesn't heal well. It's why Alastor Moody still only has one leg, or why dark cutting charms can't be healed with salves and skin knitting charms without a huge amount of work. "I can try."

"Could anything go wrong?" Hedwig balls her hands into fists and rests them on her knees.

"I c-could relax all the nerves in my body and shit myself I suppose." I joke, trying to lighten the now-darker tone of conversation. It is truly a miracle that these two put up with me, even more that they don't resent me for almost getting myself killed. "Well, here goes." Come on, Peverell purple, show me what you can do. I clench my teeth together as the charm tugs at my abused nervous system, straightening my back to reduce the shakiness of my wand. As if by magic, the shaking reduces drastically. The pain is still very much there and I doubt that the aftershocks have been reduced much, but now that my hands only hold a slight tremor.

It's only a tiny slice of the enormity of the aftermath, but even this is more than should be possible. Is this the power of the Elder Wand? Or a combination of other things? Maybe the wand works on the same 'wave-length' as the cruciatus. Perhaps when the Peverell brothers created these artifacts, they were able to do so, and in turn embed a different kind of magic, because they themselves are not completely human? It might explain why the Invisiblilty cloak can hide from anything, my psychometry for example. Or why the wand can perform otherwise impossible feats. But if I'm supposed to be a far, far removed descendant, what does that make me?

Maybe when I finally kick the bucket, I will be reborn to lead a simple life …

Probably not.

A/N: The Elder Wand + Harry's theory on why the 'Deathly Hallows' work so strangely.

'The Black Crows' will be a nice segment in the future to further showcase "Sherlock Potter's" detective streak ... and maybe some flamboyant de-constructing of wards.

A review asked why Harry was worried for Tonks: She, and many other Aurors, were working during the cup and subsequent attack. He asked Sirius to go and help them before getting into trouble.

Harry will be moping more about what he, from his perspective, put Tonks, Hedwig, and everyone else through. This brush with death has hit him hard and now that he wields a not-so-metaphorical conductors baton, he will be more inclined to deliver more permanent 'justice' to enemies.

Fairly important; I will have to write carefully to not be too cliché when having Harry deal with Hedwig's ward-ship expiring. Right now i have him becoming a young head of house, but i'm open to suggestions on more ... inventive(?) ways to deal with it.

Bit nervous about this chapter, let me know what you think. And, until next time, Enjoy!