Chapter 12: Swords, Books and Familiars.

The following morning when Harry and Tonks had got ready to begin the day, they each headed into the training room again.

Tonks had had a bit of experience with hand to hand combat and wanted chance to brush up on her skills. And Harry was happy to accept anything that delayed his one on one fight against the founder who was famous as a ruthless warrior.

When Gryffindor appeared in front of them, he looked around before speaking. "Good day to you both. Merlin informed me that you had moved to another house, but I never thought it would be here…" he said trailing off.

"You know about this house?" asked Harry, surprised.

The founder laughed. "Know about it? I helped build this place with my own hands." He replied proudly. "But that can wait for another time. We are here today to cover sword fighting and if I have time any other weapons and unarmed combat."

For the next couple of hours, Harry and Tonks learned the basic movements and techniques needed for effective sword work, despite Godric's initial objection that women should not carry swords…at which point Tonks promptly threatened him with a nice little exorcism spell that aurors learned, and he quickly relented.

After some time at this, and once they were sufficiently skilled, they were instructed to face off against each other.

This took nearly 15 minutes of trading blows before Harry was eventually declared the winner by landing a strike that, had the blades not been enchanted not to make actual contact for training purposes, would have neatly separated Tonks' head from her body…effectively rendering her useless in terms of fighting.

Then came the moment Harry had been dreading: him against Godric Gryffindor.

Ironically, Gryffindor found himself up against the sword that he himself had forged, but Harry found that it suited him the best out of the ones available, and the spirit used a standard training one, as Harry could actually be injured and using a real sword was out of the question really.

The pair traded strikes and blocks as well as insults, which Harry was informed was a standard part of any fight like this, for about 20 minutes, far longer than Harry had expected to last.

At that point, Godric stepped up the pace gradually until he was going all out, and to his utter disbelief, his student kept matching him strike for strike…this was unheard of!

Eventually Harry's youth and agility won out over Godric's experience, and he was able to make a quick stabbing motion to where his opponent's heart would be as Gryffindor raised the sword up to deliver what would also have been a strike that could end it.

Bowing to acknowledge defeat, the spirit said "You should be proud of your achievements here, few have ever bested me in a battle of swords, and none that I have ever seen or trained has picked up the art this quickly. I believe we shall have to have a rematch before my time here is over." He decided with a grin, actually being very proud of the young man and the warrior he was becoming. "Now, that's all well and good if you happen to be like me and lug a sword everywhere with you…"

For the next several hours the pair learned the arts of unarmed combat and the basics of fighting with a staff as well as daggers, throwing knives and archery. Each of them performed well in different areas and each decided that when going into dangerous situations they would be carrying weapons beside wands in future. And Tonks personally wished that they had taught at least some of this at the auror academy, as it could have saved lives of several of her friends.

The unarmed combat was particularly interesting for the spirit of the founder to watch, as the pair each used their morphing abilities to the full, making it extremely difficult for the other to gain the advantage, as joints that bend in the opposite direction to what they are supposed to in the blink of an eye make it very difficult to perform any sort of locking technique. They also had a bad habit of forgetting that they were supposed to be fighting while they were wrestling around on the floor…and then becoming embarrassed when Godric instructed them to return to the task at hand.

Eventually though, they had learned enough for one day, and Godric bid them farewell after informing Harry that his lesson the next day would be with Salazar and he would be learning the mind arts, which he was told were Legilimency, occlumency, telepathy and empathy.

Their muscles aching, the young couple decided to try out the bath tub that was in their room, having so far only had showers. It was modelled after the prefect's bath at Hogwarts that Harry had seen in his fourth year…basically a swimming pool with taps full of bubble bath, only this time much more ornate, the bottom and sides being made of or at least covered in gold, the same as the taps which had precious stones in them, all in all, very expensive but very nice.

Two and a half hours later they finally emerged from their shared bath and got dressed, having found interesting uses for a modified bubblehead charm that kept the water out and the air in but allowed solid objects to pass straight through.

Play time being over, Harry decided that he wanted to look through some of the things he had seen in the study previously and not had time to look at, and Tonks decided to go to the library and try to hunt down a good novel, leaving Harry to his boring stuff but still being close enough that they could talk if they wanted or needed to for any reason.

Harry sat behind the large, polished oak, desk in the study and began to go through the drawers.

He found some personal effects, including letters from his mother, that made it obvious that this had been relatively untouched since his father had been here, even though all other personal items from the house had been removed (he had been informed that part of the lock down that the house underwent after being masterless for some time included moving all personal effects that weren't in protected areas into storage in the family vault at Gringotts).

He also found a pair of books that were in a the top drawer by themselves. One was entitled "The Potter Book of Family Spells" and the other "The History of Potter Manor".

Harry decided that these warranted further exploration and set everything else aside to look at them, starting with the history book, which detailed major changes to the house throughout the time it had been standing, including ownership and renovations.

It turned out that until the previous year there had been a house-elf living there, left over from his parents' time, but it had apparently died of old age (the book was very detailed and clearly magically expanded to hold many more pages than its size should allow). However, it turned out that they weren't as alone as they thought as the Potters throughout history had been very tight on security and in some cases somewhat paranoid about trespassers…in fact, some of the entries reminded Harry very strongly of Mad-Eye Moody.

But according to the book, the manor – like the family chamber at the bank – was heavily guarded by magical creatures that would attack any one passing through the gates or over the walls who was not accompanied by a family member.

According to the text, roaming the very expansive grounds were:

A colony of Acromantula that hid in the forest on the grounds. (which Harry was very thankful it was noted would stay hidden at all times unless needed to protect the property.

4 Basilisks , which it was noted should only be attempted to be handled by those in the family who possessed the Parseltongue ability as, though they were loyal to the family, anything other than their native language was considered an insult, and insulting a basilisk was not a good idea. Hmm…Harry thought looks like talking to snakes isn't that uncommon in my family…good to know I'm not the only one…though I suppose with Slytherin in the family tree I wouldn't be would i?

There were apparently 12 chimaera scattered around the grounds, which it was said were the descendants of a mating pair that were raised by a member of the family and as such repaid their debt to this day by guarding and protecting the property, as the forests provided ample food supplies and the open areas were their preferred living quarters, making the grounds their ideal habitat.

Dragons: 3 Chinese Fireballs, 5 Hungarian Horntails, 4 Peruvian Vipertoothes, 6 Romanian Longhorns and 8 Ukrainian Ironbellys.

A pair of female Erumpents (note said if replacing either of them to only get females as the males had a habit of blowing each other up in mating season)

A dozen firecrabs in the lake and stream that were on the grounds.

8 graphorns

9 griffins

95 grindylow in the lake

A herd of 25 Hippogriff

10 Kappa in the stream along with 3 kelpie and another 2 in the lake

3 manticores (at this one, Harry laughed remembering the lesson yesterday, and reminding himself to warn Tonks so she didn't provoke one thinking it was him playing around again, as that could be…messy)

As Harry had predicted, there were more Nundu here as well, in this case, 15 of them patrolling the grounds.

5 re'em

30 runespoor

6 sphinx

And finally 12 Tebo

All in all Harry was very impressed with his ancestors' work as it was considered impossible to train most of those animals, never mind get them all to live together without killing each other off…but apparently it had been done, and he had to admit that it did make it highly unlikely that anyone would survive long enough to be able to break into the house or attack if they managed to penetrate the wards in the first place, which were also outlined in the book.

The wards, Harry didn't really understand as he had not done any work with them before so he could only go by the name of them to guess what it did, but even he was impressed.

He also discovered that he had his own professional standard quidditch pitch somewhere in the grounds, which he thought may just need some exploring before too long.

Having seen enough of that for now, Harry set that book aside and looked at the second one.

The "Book of Family Spells" was in fact just that, it contained detailed explanations and instructions for many spells and potions of various types that had been created by members of the family.

He was interested to see that, while most were apparently closely guarded secrets known only to the family and their spouses, he did recognise a few of them as incredibly well known spells.

According to this, the stunning spell, the disillusionment charm, scourgify, the patronus, and many others that he recognised in passing but didn't actually know, had all been developed by members of his family at some stage in history.

This filled him with pride at his family's accomplishments as well as a sense of determination to live up to that legacy.

He had been beginning to wonder if his family had been rich snobs who just sat around living off their accumulated wealth, but the more he learned the more it became apparent that was not the case…the wealth was there because just about every family member in history had made significant contributions to society and had been rewarded for doing so, as well as very good sense when it came to managing the businesses they owned or part owned.

Deciding to learn as many of the spells he could in his free time, Harry returned the book to its previous home in the desk before opening the history book to the last page, which was blank, and picking up an expensive looking quill from the desk began to perform what was clearly a family tradition and added a section saying when he took control of the house and a bit of his first impressions as well as the circumstances of his coming into ownership at this particular point in time.

Once he had completed that task, he realised that he had been reading for several hours, and decided to call it a night.

He exited the study and realised that Tonks had evidently already finished and left him to it, probably seeing that he was highly absorbed in what he was doing.

When he reached the bedroom he confirmed this assumption, seeing that she was already in bed and fast asleep. He slipped out of his clothes and into the bed, crawling up behind her and holding her until he too succumbed to sleep.

Over the next several days, Harry spent the time split between training and exploring the house and grounds and interacting with the many various creatures that he found there.

Tonks usually joined Harry with the training, citing that she needed to keep in practice and was always willing to learn new things. She wasn't even particularly disappointed when she couldn't do half of what Harry was learning, as much of it focussed on either very high power spells or things that were specific to certain abilities that she simply didn't have. She did however draw the line at accompanying him on his visits with the many beasts that existed in the grounds, claiming that it's just not right, most of them things are man eaters…unlike you I've been brought up my whole life to fear these things and run at the first sign of them…you just don't have a conversation with them!, which Harry found highly amusing and often teased her good naturedly about.

Harry had also had the opportunity during his lessons to get to know the founders and merlin as actual people as opposed to the myth and legends that surrounded them, and discovered that though all very different, he could get on very well with all of them.

Slytherin had taught Harry much about the various mind arts in their lesson, and since Harry had the latent ability already, unlike many who had to force their minds to work that way, he picked it up easily. Harry found Salazar to be a hard task-master, but at the same time realised that he was only like that because he knew what Harry was capable of and that he needed to achieve high goals in a short time, as such the two came to a fast, unspoken understanding on that matter.

Hufflepuff decided to further the work Harry had already started himself, and their first lesson was a hands on approach to caring and interacting with magical creatures, which considering what they had available was much more interesting than anything even Hagrid could put together (as even though he would probably have tried to get most of these animals at some point, many were actually illegal to own now, but the Potters got around that law since they had already owned them before it came to pass…the restriction was only on the distribution, sale and trading of the creatures). It turned out that Harry had a trait that many in the family had inherited from Helga, they were what was termed "beast masters" which meant that they were able to communicate and control any animal so long as they treated it with respect, which Harry supposed explained how his ancestors had been able to control these animals and get them to live together in the first place. Harry found Hufflepuff to be a kind and considerate person, full of compassion and they easily got along.

Ravenclaw's first lesson with Harry dealt with incredibly complex charms and the ways to combine more than one into a single spell to gain extraordinary results. Harry found this founder to be his idea of what a teacher should be, strict when necessary, but reassuring and supportive at the same time.

Harry's second lesson with Merlin concentrated on the theory and principles of magic itself, something that was severely lacking in the Hogwarts curriculum at present. Merlin explained that magic was a force that flowed through everything in existence from people and animals to objects and the air and even the earth itself, and that spells were merely a way of shaping this energy to bend things to your will. Thinking of it this way made a lot more sense to Harry and things that he had previously not understood properly began to make more sense. He had always been taught (and Tonks confirmed that it seemed to be standard for most people to be taught this way) that the magic was in the spells, that you actually shot bolts of magic at people and things, not that the spells were just a way of connecting you in the correct way to your target and the coloured light you saw was merely a by-product of this joining. This concept of everything being connected and magical people being more in tune with these connections and able to use them to manipulate their surroundings, made a lot of sense to Harry, and the way Merlin explained it, the amount of magic a person possessed within their being, the greater the connections that formed were and that was why the different power levels existed and how absorbing raw magic from his teachers had helped Harry.

Once that lesson was completed, Harry went outside and sat on top of a large grass covered hill and was shortly joined by a male griffin who he had quickly become very fond of and had taken to accompanying him when he was in the grounds since his first explorative trip into them.

Harry was in many ways extremely apprehensive about the following day. Tomorrow was the day that he was to attend the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Sirius Black, and though he already knew more or less what he had received from it, in many ways this would make it final and confirm that Sirius was gone for good. It was also the day of his meeting with this mysterious goblin, Director Ragnok, who wanted to talk to him…though what a bank manager would want to see him about he was unsure, since Griphook had been dealing with everything and Harry couldn't think of anything else that needed doing. And to a lesser extent he was anxious about meeting Tonks' parents, even though she had reassured him that they would be fine with him, there was still a small element of fear and uncertainty…after all, meeting the parents of your girlfriend for the first time is never something to look forward to, Harry reasoned, not that he had had a lot of experience in these matters…but still.

Sensing Harry's emotions, his griffin friend curled up around him protectively and began making crooning noises that Harry found comforting and relaxing, as griffins possessed an ability similar to phoenix song…strengthening and comforting those pure of heart and causing immense pain to those of evil intent.

Several hours later, Tonks went outside to try and find Harry as it was getting late and they had yet to eat. Bloody figures she thought Harry could never be satisfied with just owning and controlling some of the most feared animals in existence…no, he has to come out here every day and be FRIENDS with them! Has no one ever told him that you're not supposed to be able to pet a bloody chimeara?! And I saw him the other day with a group of adult unicorns! And I damn well know he's a man! She ranted internally as she began searching the places she knew he had taken to spending the most time, all the while hoping that what ever was keeping him company today wasn't too bad.

Twenty minutes later, Harry awoke from his peaceful sleep, when he felt his friend moving to protect him and heard it making noises that were clearly a warning to someone or something.

Harry shifted his body and saw that the someone that was about to be attacked by the griffin was Tonks, who had apparently come to check on him.

Stepping in front of him and placing a hand on his neck, Harry spoke to his self-assumed protector, "It's ok, she's a friend, you can relax."

The griffin looked Harry in the eyes for a moment then its gaze shifted back to Tonks before it gave a distinct nod of it's head and settled back down onto the grass.

"Hi Tonks, sorry about that, are you alright?" asked Harry concernedly.

"Wha? Oh! Yeah, I'm ok. Was just a bit scared…griffins are very much creatures of the light, but when they get protective they can be very fierce." Came her reply. "I was just coming out to see if you were about ready for dinner…it's getting awful late and we've got an early start tomorrow and will probably be busy all day." She explained.

Sighing, Harry said "Yeah, I know. We should probably get something and go to bed early to be ready since Godric has decided that I need to have at least the basics of whatever it is we're doing complete before we go to the bank." He said, dreading whatever the spirit might come up with that early in the morning. "Let me just say goodbye to my friend here and I'll be right with you." He finished, before walking back over to the griffin, who had been watching the exchange between the two, and stroking the soft feathers around his neck.

A few minutes later Harry and Tonks were walking back to the house when Tonks asked, "So, when were you gonna tell me about that one?"

Not quite sure what she was meaning, Harry asked "What do you mean? When was I going to tell you about what?"

Smiling and shaking her head, she replied "I'm gonna guess that griffin has been following you around since you first started coming out here?" at his nod, she continued "and it's obviously very fond and highly protective of you. Now, I'm no expert on magical creatures…in fact I flunked out of that class at school before I'd even got an OWL in it, but I have read a few books and I know full well that it's beginning to bond with you."

Still confused Harry asked, "What do you mean 'bond with me'? It's just friendly, that's all."

"Harry, griffins are naturally very loyal to any witch or wizard who can tame them, but that loyalty only stretches to doing what they're told…the way that one was behaving it's obvious…well, obvious if you know the signs anyway…that it's bonding to you and becoming your familiar…it's the same signs that happen in any animal undergoing the process. I know you are close to Hedwig, but you never actually bonded because her she is incapable of the bond…most snowy owls are. It's really an honour to be chosen to have a familiar, especially a magical creature, and a griffin more than most as it would only bond with someone who is entirely pure of heart and mind…this is amazing, I think it's only been done once before and that isn't even confirmed." She said, before stopping, realizing she was beginning to rant a bit.

Harry went through a range of emotions, at first he was shocked, then confused, then happy and finally content. He supposed he had known that some type of bond was forming between the two of them, but he didn't really know much about the process involved with familiars.

Tonks explained it to him while they prepared and ate a quick meal.

It turned out that the animal had to first choose the witch or wizard and begin the process, it was impossible to force an animal into this sort of bond. The animal that chose you was generally one that felt you exemplified the main characteristics of itself, so to be chosen by something like a griffin or a phoenix was a high compliment, where as should something like a flobberworm or a snail try to bond with you it could be a bit embarrassing.

This was the stage Harry was now at, and he had a choice to make, he could either accept or decline the offer. If he declined, they could remain close but not as close as they had been, and if he accepted then the bond would progress to the final stage, where they would spend a lot of time together strengthening the connection and eventually they would be able to mentally communicate over any distance and call upon each other when needed.

It all seemed a bit far fetched to Harry, but he had seen a few witches and wizards, both at school and elsewhere, that had familiars and it seemed like a highly beneficial thing.

He decided to think about it properly and make his decision within the next few days.

Until then, thoughts about animals and plans for the following day could wait, as there was a beautiful young woman who was currently dragging him in the direction of the bedroom, and he didn't think that she planned on either of them sleeping for quite some time.