2006

With a final calico-tearing bellow, the engine of the sports-car fell silent. Climbing out of it was an handsome-looking young man, jet-black hair laid in a slightly messy but elegant way, tanned skin, emerald-green eyes and a sharp suit. The car next to him was a replica of a Jaguar XJ13, running a twin-supercharged seven-litre V12 from Lister. He'd seen the original car and fallen in love with it, commissioning a replica with modern brakes, gearbox and engine.

The driver stepped out. Harry Potter, the so-called 'Boy-Who-Lived. Otherwise known as Caspar Garcia d'Avila, so-called Grandee of Avila. Abandoned around Christmas in 1991 by his uncle in the Spanish fortress town of Avila, he'd been found by a local blacksmith and raised as his own child. As Rodrigo had been in his seventies, he'd had several other local tradesmen help raise Caspar.

So when the blacksmith had passed on of old age, leaving ten-year old Caspar behind, the near-genius child had kept the legacy of his 'Abuelo' alive. From the day he could read, he'd taken on knowledge voraciously, learning French, Italian and English, maths through business as well as business itself, and most importantly to him, how to forge and use swords. The way he'd been raised meant that when he grew old enough, Caspar effectively became the leader of the town. He worked with the tradesmen, met with tourists, frequently spoke with the clerics, taught the children to fence

All the while, he worked long hours in the forge, producing the most beautiful and practical swords in the country, selling for between thousands and tens of thousands. Granted a doctorate of metallurgy by the University of Madrid, Caspar had come to the attention of the Royal Family, a representative of whom had visited the forge. After an hour of discussion, demonstration and negotiation, he began supplying Juan Carlos and the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon with swords, both ceremonial, decorative and practical.

He had been thirteen at the time. Over the next three years, he'd sold swords, daggers and other such weapons to most European Royal Families, several Middle Eastern ones, a number of films, film stars and nobility. Five local children every year apprenticed under him, learning both to make and use the blades, known in the city as 'Los Pequeños Caballeros', and while he and an assistant still made the greatest of their swords in Avila, he owned forges in Toledo and Salamanca where other employees made more mass-market weapons.

But nobody knew his greatest secret except for an elderly man from Damascus who made and sold Persian Rugs. Nouri al-Rashid was known affectionately by many as 'El Emir'. In fact, he was a skilled sorcerer who had taught all he knew to Caspar. A tiny amount of it was magic. He taught wisdom, calmness, but also, though slow to anger, al-Rashid fought with ferocious skill and lethality. Magical bandits were sometimes an issue in the wilds of Spain, and they'd both had to kill. Caspar had learnt to be the last to draw a sword but the first, and last, to strike, being the last to enter a fight, but always ending it.

Caspar's 'in' with the Royal Family had allowed him to quietly have emancipation papers filed, granting him the rights of an adult from his fifteenth birthday. Including a driving license which he immediately took advantage of. Nobody questioned it as, outside of Avila, few knew him, and ten years of working in the forge, ever since he was five, had given him a build that few sixteen-year-old teenagers could achieve.

Walking onto the forward deck of the ship, he sighed pensively as the arms of his passenger wrapped around his chest from behind, her chin resting up on his shoulder.

Monique, his best friend, his partner, his lover, everything to him. Caspar turned to face her, leaning into her touch. She had been his friend since during the time he'd been mourning for his 'Abuelo', finding her, homeless, on the streets of the city. Without any reserve, he'd moved her into one of the spare rooms over the forge, and from that day onward, they'd trusted unreservedly in each-other, taught each-other and learnt from each-other.

Though Monique was nearly a year older than he was, there was a part of her that always looked to him as the 'leader', even when she'd first started getting hormones and looking at him in a slightly different light and it took a year-and-a-half for him to catch up. Around six months after Caspar had taken her into his home, she'd confessed that she had been thrown out of her home for having magic. After a brief period of her sitting on him to stop him hunting down her progenitors, he calmed down and admitted his own possession of those abilities and shared them. That had been the beginning of their partnership, sharing everything, their darkest secrets to simple things like chores.

In the magical world, where duelling was still the norm, Caspar had watched, amused, as Monique fought off a number of duellists who decided that he wasn't 'man enough' for her. The one he'd fought after a particularly foul insult directed at both of them had ended up with fifteen stab-wounds to painful but non-fatal places and concussion from being dealt a heavy blow from the sword-guard of his rapier. Unfortunately, there were more duels over her than either would have liked, Monique being a beautiful young Hispanic woman with dusky skin, grey eyes and dark, near-black hair descending, when not tied up, to the middle of her back.

"This is the first time you are returning to England, yes?" she asked in slightly broken English, and upon catching his raised eyebrow continued; "We are going to the land, we should speak the language."

"Yes, I've never been back." Caspar admitted, his voice a husky baritone; "Cowardly it may be, but I've never been able to face my demons."

Monique simply rested her head on his shoulder. She knew that as a master of the mental arts, that he had almost perfect recall, especially of particularly memorable events, be they memorable for positive or negative reasons. It also meant that negative memories haunted him far longer than they would for most.

"If there is one thing you are not and never have been, it's a coward, amado." she whispered, her soft lilting tones emphasising her conviction.

A few days later, the XJ13 bellowed off the car-deck of the ferry onto the pier at Southampton. Built in England around a six-hundred horsepower twelve-cylinder engine, it was fast, getting them to London in, despite city traffic, a bit less than two hours, chewing up the miles with ease.

The whole way, Caspar was ill at ease, having never before returned to England. It wasn't that it wasn't a beautiful country, or that the people were terrible... much, but he still remembered some of the most terrible occurrences in his life happening on these shores.