AN: A big thank you goes out to LeRob for beta reading this chapter for me. You can find his stories here on this site under the same name or follow the link in my bio page to the website I share with him.

Sistat Inter Bitu pe Marvos
Chapter 5
Dealing With Death

Seasons started to pass but Harry's resolve never wavered following that sickening vision. Day by day it hardened more than ever. He focused his mind entirely upon increasing his duelling ability and let everything else slip from his mind. Time and time again he would sit up late into the night repeating incantations in his head or jotting down notes on complex spells and defensive manoeuvres.

Had his friends seen him now they would not have recognised him. Long days in the jungle heat had tanned his previously pale skin and intense mock battles with Marques had added extra tone to his muscles. He looked like a completely different person to the boy whom had left Britain almost two years ago - he looked like a man.

At first Harry had sent letters to his friends weekly but over time the correspondence had slowed. Ron and Hermione had completed their education and were now fully fledged members of the Order of the Phoenix. They had more important things to worry about other than sending Harry letters. Not that they didn't write; they wrote every now and again but their letters were mainly about inconsequential things. Harry didn't hold a grudge against them; he was extremely busy himself.

Hedwig loved this place. She was never held captive in her cage and revelled in the abundance of animals available for her to hunt. Harry had never before seen her so full of life. She rarely retreated from the high forest canopy and appeared to be in much better health than Harry had ever seen her.

This night found him alone in Marques Torres's house. He sat in the candle-lit kitchen and looked back on the time he had so far spent there; he smiled as he remembered the time Marques had given him a book to read and then quizzed him on the subject matter afterwards. He found it funny now, though it was far from at the time.

"Jesus Christ, Potter! Is there even a brain in that darn head of yours?" Marques had exploded when Harry had been unable to answer the majority of his questions.

"I'm just not book smart like Hermione," Harry had snapped, he was somewhat peeved, this wasn't the first time Torres had questioned his ability to think.

"You talk about this Hermione a hell of a lot, Potter, are you nursing a boner for her?" Marques taunted in a snide, mocking tone of voice. "Do you want to dance the Horizontal Shuffle with her? Ah, wait, I get it! You talk about that ginger pillock an awful lot too, that Donald Peasley." He said the word 'ginger' with such a pronounced sneer on his face that it looked as though he thought anyone that spent more than two minutes in the room with a redhead would walk out with matching hair. Harry didn't have much time to think about that, though, as Torres's next question shocked him. "Potter, are you confused about your sexuality? Do you not know if you're a gay boy or not? Do you now know whether you want to use the front door or the back door? Well, I hate to break it to you, Potter," Torres continued whilst leaning over the table until his face filled the whole of Harry's vision, "but unless you get your brain into gear you're destined to die a virgin!"

Harry was seething. "That's not very nice."

Torres smiled mockingly back. "I'm not a very nice person, Potter, but I'm sure you know that already."

"Look, I learn better by doing things!" Harry snapped. "Not sitting down reading a load of drab and boring words!"

"Ah, okay. I get it," Marques replied thoughtfully, that mocking smile still plastered on his face. "You have trouble reading the big words, don't you? I can't say I'm surprised; you've seemed a bit dim since the first second I met you." He said it all very slowly like he was talking to a three-year-old. "Well, come on then; don't just sit there. If you learn by actually doing things, Potter, you can come outside and learn how to get your arse kicked. Then tomorrow you can get your arse kicked again! I'm sure you'll learn a lot."

Torres started to walk out off, Harry glared at him.

"And Potter," Torres had called over his shoulder. "If you ever need a nappy change, don't you dare come crying to me."

From that day forward Marques had not asked Harry to learn from a book again. Their lessons had always focused on the practical side of things, and as such, Harry had found himself learning a lot of things faster than ever he had before. The old Auror could be a good teacher when he wasn't making Harry build up a head of steam.

Harry had asked Torres about his time in the Aurors on one occasion; it was something he wouldn't be in a hurry to ask about again. Torres had started off explaining about a Brazilian Auror's daily routine before steadily getting angrier and angrier as the conversation led to the area of dark wizards and the crimes they had committed. Torres had gotten so angry that he had once again ordered Harry from the room. Once again Harry had left the man alone to look into his wooden box.

Torres lost his temper on a regular basis, but after the first couple of weeks spent in his company Harry started to notice something of a pattern to this. Whenever the subject of their lessons or conversations turned to that of dark wizards, Torres's eyes would narrow and their usual azure blue would become colder until they were almost glacial. He would rant and he would rave, he would smash things and throw things, but he would always, without failure, apologise for his behaviour afterwards. Harry stopped fearing that fiery temper, for after the day of his arrival Torres had never again laid a single finger on him in malice. Curiously, after each and every one of his outbursts Torres would seek solace in that small wooden box, the contents of which Harry still did not know.

That box was on a shelf in the same room as him now and Torres was nowhere in sight. More than one time this evening Harry had needed to force himself to tear his wandering eyes away from it to prevent him from becoming too curious of what it hid. His teacher always looked so unlike the battle hardened warrior Harry knew him to be whenever he laid eyes upon that box. Instead he looked anguished and pained, lost and lonely. Several times Harry had seen a flash of light off a silver chain, but always he had left his teacher alone in his pain as he was asked to do. He would always remember, though, the look of confusion and thought that would momentarily flit across Torres's face, before being replaced by a look of longing and mourning.

Harry sighed. He was extremely bored. That was one of the side effects of being so many miles away from any form of human civilisation. Harry had not seen another human being apart from Torres since he had arrived in this secluded place.

He stood as he noticed that his glass was now empty of his evening brandy; he'd started to drink it after Torres had started to offer him it with his meal and had found that he quite liked it. Harry wondered where the man got it from, but considering that he never went into the city he supposed that it was mail ordered. He felt like another drink and so made his way over to the shelf for a refill. It was when he was lifting the bottle down from the shelf that it happened. The sound of something hitting the floor echoed through the room.

Slowly Harry tilted his head to look down; the colour quickly drained from his face. It was the worst possible thing that he could have knocked off – it was the box. What was more, its lid had sprung open from the impact of hitting the floor and now all its contents were strewn across the floor. Harry's eyes instinctively looked at each individual thing.

A photo of three men, one of them undoubtedly Torres in his youth. A broad shouldered man with silver streaks prominent in his hair. A boy younger than Torres, smiling and waving. All of them were smiling and waving.

A phoenix pendant affixed to a silver chain. Its eyes jewels that seemed to burn with a life of their own.

A slender and feminine golden ring. A carefully cut and polished diamond mounted on it.

Harry bent down and started to scramble to put the things back in the box. He was so focused on returning the things and getting the box back on the shelf before his teacher returned that he didn't hear the sound of Torres' heavily-booted feet walking into the kitchen. He did, however, see those booted feet stop inches from his face. Harry looked up with wide eyes and winced. Torres was angry, very angry. He almost expected one of those feet to be pulled back and driven into his face with force.

"I didn't mean to," Harry stammered as soon as he'd managed to find his tongue. "It was an accident. I was getting the brandy and knocked it by accident."

Torres didn't seem to hear a word of what Harry had said. He snatched the pendant Harry had been in the process of returning to the box from his hand and uttered just two words:

"Get out."

"I'm sorry." Harry tried to apologise. "Really I am."

This time, three words: "Just get out."

For the first time in a long while Harry feared that Marques would become violent. It wasn't that he was scared of the violence in itself; no, he had faced much violence in their duels. It was that he didn't want Torres to be so upset with him. After all the time that Torres has spent taunting him, and even though the man was a far from likable person, Harry had come to respect him.

And so he did what was asked of him. He left those things that obviously meant so much to his mentor scattered around the dirty floor and walked towards the door. He started to leave his mentor shaking with rage behind him.

He was only half way across the room, however, before Torres spoke again, just one word: "Wait."

It was that word that told Harry that his mentor was not shaking with rage; it was that word that told Harry that his mentor was sobbing and in obvious pain. He stood and he waited as Torres carefully, tenderly, picked up each item and looked at them longingly before placing them carefully on the table. He retrieved the brandy and seated himself at the table before he spoke again. "These things mean a lot to me, Harry. An awful lot. You see, they are the only things I have left of my family... Everything else is gone."

Harry remained where he was. He didn't know what to say.

Torres sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Take a seat, Harry, and pour yourself a drink. I think it is past time that I explained to you just why it is that I hate dark wizards so much."

"I remember - all too clearly - returning home from the Auror Academy," Marques said, his eyes looking far into the past. "I was nothing but a boy. I'd decided that it was time I visited my father and brother. My mother had died giving birth to my brother Davi and so there was just the three of us; I remember very little about her. We were a close family. I came back quite often to see them; I loved sitting around the table and listening to Davi talk about what he'd gotten up to at school. He was a right little trouble causer; father used to dread the weekend mail so much that he'd try to hide from the post owls. More than once he had been sent a howler from some parent whose kid Davi had played a joke on."

Marques smiled at the thought; the smile soon vanished.

"Father had anti-apparition wards up around the house so I used to fly in on broom. It was a warm night, no breeze that I can remember, a clear, beautiful night – just perfect for a night time flight. I was flying at a steady speed and just gazing at the forest below me. I love Floresta Amazônica; it's so much more tranquil, much more beautiful, than Rio de Janeiro. Some call Rio A Cidade Maravilhosa – The Marvellous City – but to me the most marvellous place on earth is right here in Amazônia.

"The atmosphere suddenly changed around me on that night. The birds, who moments before had been chirping wonderful songs, squawked in alarm and took to the air. The bushes below rustled as animals ran to escape some sort of danger. I looked around me and saw the cause of their sudden fright. Thick black clouds of smoke billowed upwards over the tree tops and up toward the heavens; I thought that the forest had caught fire as it had been an extremely hot day. I carried on flying, a little faster now, but when I got closer to the house I saw flames licking at the sky. They were close to the house, this house, and so I urged with all my might for my broom to go faster.

"The closer I got to the house the clearer I could see the flames, and as a result the more dreadful the whole scene became. I noticed that the flames weren't coming from an area near the house as I had originality thought. It was not the forest that was on fire. For the first second that realisation hit me time slowed to a stop. An eternity seemed to pass. I had noticed that it was the house that was on fire. And what was worse, what sent a chill through the very marrow of my bones, was that the flames were imbued green with magic. The fire had not been started by the heat of the sun, it had been started by something, or someone, of a magical nature.

"I thought, perhaps, that my father had left the fire unattended. He was starting to get on in age and it wouldn't have been the first time he'd fallen asleep and knocked the Floo powder into the grate. But even as I flew toward the house I knew that there was more to it than that."

Torres seemed to be so drawn into the past that he had forgotten where he was. The drink he had poured himself had been left abandoned on the table. He stared at the wall, not really seeing it, never moving his eyes from the same spot.

"I flew as fast as I could. I was getting close! So close! Then I hit something. I was thrown from the broom and onto the floor below. I was injured. My left arm was broken, as were some of my ribs. Adrenaline kept me going, but my movement was severely restricted. My broom had been broken on impact so I set off on foot. But I came across an invisible barrier. I couldn't get any closer to the house.

"A ward had been set around the house that prevented anyone from entering. Suddenly the severity of what was happening hit me. My father would never have set such a ward, and even if he had he would have informed me if he was adding such a thing to the defences. Someone else must have erected that ward, and that did not bode well. It meant that whoever had raised it must have been there for a long while as a ward of that type takes several hours to cast. I'm not sure how much you know about wards, Potter, but they require runic patterns to be drawn and long incantations to be spoken. No ward can be cast in a short amount of time, no matter how simplistic its effects."

Harry had started to think that Torres had forgotten he was there, but the use of his name put an end to that. Torres tore his eyes from the wall and stared at Harry with such dead eyes that it startled him. Torres voice was cold and hard when he continued.

"Then I heard the screams. Screams of absolute agony. I tried to get past the ward, but wards have never been a subject I was good at. There was no hope anyway, the incantation to pull down a ward is almost as long as the incantation to erect it. It would have taken me hours to pull it down, hours I didn't have to spare.

"Those screams are forever etched into my memory. Those of my brother screaming his throat raw. Those of my father begging for his youngest son's life to be spared. I hope that you never have to hear screams like that, Potter, the screams of a distraught parent trying with all their might to protect their son."

Harry looked down at the carpet, he said nothing about hearing the screams of his own mother every time a Dementor came close.

"I didn't give up, though. No, despite everything I knew about wards I redoubled my efforts. My arm was agony and my breath came in short gasps, but still I gave it my all. Tears stung my eyes. I had to stop this! I couldn't let my brother and father die! I had to save them!"

Torres had tears in his eyes as he retold this part of the story. Harry too felt tears threatening to well in his eyes. He was just about to tell Marques that he didn't have to continue when the man started talking once again.

"The screams were continuous, a driving force that told me I couldn't quit. Each scream became more pained than the last, until one of pure agony ripped through the very fabric of the night. With that scream all hope left me. It didn't take my fathers anguished cry to tell me that my brother was dead."

Torres was openly crying now but his eyes were Arctic in their coldness.

"He was only thirteen, for fuck sake! Just a boy! He didn't deserve what was done to him, nobody deserved it!"

Minutes passed in silence until Harry thought that Torres had finished his story, but it was not so. Torres knocked the whole glass of brandy back in one go before continuing.

"Amazônia flashed crimson when the wards fell. I didn't know what had brought them down, and I didn't stick around to puzzle it out. I took off as fast as my legs would take me towards the tower of flames that was the house. I could feel the heat even before I entered, I had visions of finding my family burnt to a crisp. I knew I was going to find at least one dead family member, I just hoped that I could help my father.

"When I first entered it was like walking into an oven. It was so very, very hot, and so quiet. Too quiet. My father's screams had stopped. My heart felt heavy. I was too late! I had to make sure though, I just had to.

"I found my brother first. He lay on the floor of this very room." Torres pointed to a spot just below the shelf from which Harry had knocked the wooden box. He stood and walked over to the spot. "Right here. He lay in a pool of his own blood. Gashes marred almost every inch of his body. His muscles still twitched, remnants of his time spent under the Cruciatus Curse. His eyes, so innocent, were still wide with fear. He had every reason to be scared; he was, after all, just a child. How long I stood there, I don't know. All I could feel was an ache in my heart and a longing for revenge."

Torres lapsed into silence. Harry just sat and observed him.

"Then something caught my attention," Torres continued, turning on the spot he looked towards the old armchair by the fire. "Sobs of mourning. My father sat staring right at me. Tears falling from his eyes. But he was not looking at me, he was looking straight through me to the body of his youngest son.

"I could see it in his eyes. He didn't have long left. Blood pooled at the base of his chair. His clothes were matted in his own blood. A body lay at his feet, one of the attackers. I knew there had been more than one, the fire showed signs of recent magical travel. My father had driven a knife into the man's throat with such brutal force that it was embedded in bone; now I knew why the ward had fallen; it had died along with its caster. I feel no pity for that man's family, none. The bastard deserved to die.

"I took my father in my arms and hugged him close. His last words to me, 'The Phoenix shall rise from the ashes; you should take my place when they do,' meant nothing to me. He placed this pendant in my hand." Torres held the phoenix pendant for Harry to see. "I've been trying to figure out what he meant to this very day."

Those words startled Harry. He sat upright in his chair and tried not to let his face betray him. He had a niggling feeling that he knew just what those words meant. He kept his mouth shut however.

"My father died in my arms, the anguish of loosing his son still visible in his eyes. All I have left of them now are these tokens."

Torres sat himself back down at the table and poured himself and Harry a fresh glass of brandy. They remained seated, neither saying a word for sometime before Torres locked eyes with Harry.

"That is part of why I hate dark wizards. That is part of why I wish death upon them all. That is part of why I will, one day, have my revenge."

"Part of?" Harry questioned.

"Yes," Torres replied, his eyes once again looking far into the past. "I've yet to tell you the story of my wife."

"It took me a long time to get over the death of my family, and even then it was only because of the happiness that Andréia brought into my life.

"After I lost my brother and father I threw myself into my work. I spent every available minute in the training facility; I wanted to make sure that I was good enough to have my revenge when I finally found out who was responsible for my fathers' death.

"I was still in training when a one of the older Aurors, Luís Azevedo, invited me to his home for dinner. I got on really well with him; he was one of my trainers and he taught me a hell of a lot. I respected him more that any other person in the world. I remember the date I went for that dinner even to this day. August the Second, 1945. It was the first time that I ever laid eyes on Andréia. She was Luís'syounger sister, and she was the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. To cut a long story short I started to date Andréia and stopped focusing so much on revenge; for the first time in a long while I was actually happy."

He smiled at Harry over the table.

"I completed my Auror training in 1947 and three years after that Andréia and I were married. That was the day that I put this ring on her finger." He held the ring that had been in the box up so that it glinted in the light of the torches. "She looked stunning on that day, absolutely beautiful. The only thing that made it less special for her was that her brother couldn't be there to see her wedding."

Torres refilled their glasses with brandy once more.

"Just a few months earlier Luís had been sent on an assignment to Britain; it was top secret and so we didn't even know what it was that he was doing there. I still don't to this day. I knew how much it meant to Andréia to have him at the ceremony and so I asked the Head Auror if it was possible for him to let Luís return for a few days. If I think about it I probably already knew that the answer was going to be no.

After the wedding we came to live here. It was still full of ghosts from the past but now I had something that made the place seem happy. Those first seven years living here were bliss. Then one day during the summer of 1947 I was called into see the Head Auror at work. He told me that Luís had failed to make his last five reports and was, for all intents and purposes, now classed as a missing person. The news hit Andréia hard when I told her. At first she was insistent that everything would be alright and Luís would turn up any day but over time her optimism failed her.

Despite that, everything returned to normal after she was done grieving. We started to try to have children but no matter how hard we tried she never fell pregnant. It was seventy-seven before anything else out of the ordinary happened again. I was called to see the Head Auror once more and informed that I was to be sent to Britain to work on the case of an escaped convict who had apparently been spotted around them parts. Andréia, being her usual stubborn self, refused to stay here while I went and 'gallivanted around Britain for God knows how long.'"

Torres sighed.

"It was slow going at first. No matter how many people I interviewed or how many leads I followed, I kept getting met by dead ends. That was until Dumbledore came to see me in my office. He told me that he believed the convict was working for a Dark Wizard going by the name of Voldemort and that he might be able to help me track him down. Over the next couple of years I worked closely with some people that seemed to be working for Dumbledore, although to this day I still don't know exactly what it was that they did for him. They were a strange lot, werewolves and beggars and the like."

Harry schooled his face so the Torres would not see anything out of the ordinary there.

"During the investigation I found out that a few people at the Ministry of Magic still remembered Luís. They said that he suddenly disappeared in fifty-seven without ever packing up his things. They'd thought he'd returned home at first but when the Brazilian Aurors got in touch with them they realised that they were dealing with a missing wizard case. It had been so long since he had gone missing, however that they saw little hope of ever finding him."

Torres ran a hand through his air. "And they never did find him, the bastard!" he growled.

Harry looked at the man strangely. "I thought you said that you were friends?"

If Torres heard him the man didn't say anything. He continued with his story as though he hadn't been interrupted.

"It was nineteen-eighty before I finally found out where it was that the convict was. I went to the location ready to apprehend him, but Andréia followed me! I don't know what she was thinking! Perhaps it was that she had already lost one person close to her in this place, for all we knew at the time, and that she wasn't going to lose another. Imagine my shock when not only does my wife show up as I'm about to enter the building insistent that she would be coming in with me, but that when I finally do enter the building I see a not only the person I was here to arrest but Andréia's brother instructing several of Voldemort's followers on the best torture techniques!"

Harry gasped.

"Andréia was so shocked that she couldn't move even if she'd tried. I know that bastard recognised her! I just know it! Do you know what the bastard did though, Potter? He smiled and cast the killing curse at his own sister while the bastards he'd been training held me down! They'd pounced on me as soon as I'd entered the building, I'd checked from the outside and I'd thought it was safe to enter the building. Shows how good of an Auror I was, doesn't it? I tried to fight them, but there were too darn many of them. I watched, Potter, as Andréia's brother stood over his sister's, my wife's, body and spat on it!"

Torres punched the table but Harry barely noticed, he was still in shock.

"Do you want to know what he did then?" Torres continued. "He turned to me, smiled again, and said 'Good riddance to bad rubbish'. I could have killed him with my bare hands had I been able to move, but I couldn't. He then started going on about how Mudbloods and half-bloods were going to be the downfall of the Wizarding world, and how once he'd finished helping his Lord clear up the streets of Britain he was going to take the war back home. He said that his sister had deserved to die; he said that she was nothing but a half-blood whore. Apparently they had only been related on their father's side, though Andréia had never known about it. He said that his father had bedded a Muggle whore who later fell pregnant. He raised his wand to me when he was finished with his rant and started to say the killing curse; I didn't care, and I just wanted to be with my wife.

"But he never got to finish the curse.

"The door blew off the hinges and several of Dumbledore's men stormed into the room. They battled with the Death Eaters, as I later found out they were called, and because they had taken them by surprise, they soon had the fight finished with. But Luís was nowhere to be seen! He had somehow escaped in the short while that the fight had been going on and nobody had seen which way he had gone."

Torres knocked back his drink again, his hands shaking uncontrollably has he done so. Harry knocked his drink back too, for some reason his throat had suddenly gone very dry.

"I stayed around Britain for a short while hoping to catch up with him, I was going to murder the bastard in the same cold blood that he had shown my wife. And mark my words, Potter, I would have. I still would for that matter. I had to come back here, however, if for nothing more than to bury my wife in the place that she loved above all others."

They sat in silence for almost an hour, both of them drinking several more glasses of brandy, before any of them spoke again.

"I don't blame you for hating them," Harry eventually said. "I hate them too. They've took anything I've ever considered a family from me."

"I don't just hate them, Potter," Torres had replied in cold tones. "I loath them to the very fabric of my being and would kill any of them."

"But wouldn't that make you what you detest so much?" Harry asked feeling as though his voice was coming from a million miles away, it seemed that the brandy was finally catching up to him. "By being judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one, wouldn't that make you just another dark wizard?"

Torres stiffened at the question. "Sometimes, Potter, you have to fight fire with fire. Now get to bed, we've got an early start tomorrow. Just this one more lesson then your free to leave."

Harry snapped his head towards the man. "Just one more lesson? Are you serious?"

"Deadly," Torres replied. "and I mean that in more sense than one, Potter. I'm sure you're not going to like the subject of this lesson. But it's time you learnt the true extent of leading a war, because for some reason that's what Dumbledore wanted you to do or he would never have sent you to me."

AN: Another chapter down. You can usually find these chapters uploaded to the website I share with Le Rob before they appear here, you can find a link to it in my bio page.