Disclaimer: We all know how these work, I acknowledge that J.K. Rowlings, Warner Bros. and Scholastic own Harry Potter and all other characters and settings from cannon, and I get to write whatever I please and even add in characters of my own as long as I don't get any money. The no money sucks but there you go, at least I don't get lawyers knocking on my door. Addendum: If you recognize a name of a character from elsewhere it isn't mine.

Sirius' Savior

Chapter 47 New York

They portkeyed to New York City on June 8th five days early. So instead of a sixty day jump they did a fifty-four day time jump. The apartment, and the building it was in was owned by the Black Family, thus it was heavily warded. Harry's lessons would take place in the apartment. Harry's lessons were to take place in the evening because his teacher this time taught his apprentices during the day. Sirius and Harry both wondered what this teacher would be like.

They got settled in and Harry drank his potion. Sirius ordered out for food but Rachel had to go pick it up in the building lobby because of the wards. The security team this time included two women Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey both of whom were native New Yorkers. Alexis Cruz, William Cosby, and Christopher Judge made up the rest of the team. Since Harry's lesson were going to be at night the spent most of the first night coordinating the security details of the day when Sirius and Harry planned to see a good share of what New York City had to offer.

On the nights Harry didn't have class they planned to take in some theater performances. They currently had tickets for "Les Miserables", "Phantom of the Opera", "Sarafina" and "The Heidi Chronicles". The last two Harry had had to be talked into but since they had good reviews and Sirius played the well rounded card Harry conceded. They also planned to go to both the opera and the ballet in addition to seeing many museums, the Bronx zoo, and Ellis Island. Of course with their mutual interest in finance they would be visiting the World Trade Center and Wall Street. Harry wasn't sure how he was going to fit everything in not just the sightseeing but also the studying. The first two weeks of June Harry had signed up for a class/workshop at the International Center of Photography during the day.

Their first full day in New York Sirius took Harry to the Publishing District and they visited the two publishing houses with magical divisions that the Potters had stock in. While they were there they bought books on charms and transfiguration for wholesale which Harry would be using the next eight weeks and beyond. Harry also wheedled his way into some arithmancy texts and ancient runes texts. Sirius looked at their pile of books and decided what the heck and bought a few potion texts as well. They had lunch in Chinatown, before going back to the apartment. Harry and Sirius sat down and Harry had his first Transfiguration lesson before he had his afternoon spar with Rachel.

Alexis Cruz was intrigued by the man and boy. When he got this assignment he wondered why he had gotten it, his boss told him it's above your pay grade to know. His mother had always said he was as curious as a cat and as a sorcerer class wizard that had barely made the cut into WIS he wasn't about to make waves, but that wouldn't stop him from trying to put it together. He was really astonished when Jack Harkness who was a legend in Charms showed up for Harry's first lesson and couldn't resist observing.

"Hello Harry, I'm Jack I understand you want to learn magic."

"Hello Jack I already know some magic." Harry turned his hair blond, then back to it's normal black. "But I do want to learn more."

"Nice trick! Is that a glamour or..."

"Metamorphamagus."

"Cool. Do you have your wand?"

"Right here."

"Great. First thing to know for charms is the basic wand movements, every charm you'll every learn will use at least one of these twelve movements. Transfiguration uses them, defense against the dark arts just about anything you can use a wand for for charms uses these eight movements. For those other subjects you hold your wand slightly differently but for charms you hold it like so." He demonstrated the grip and then corrected Harry's. The lesson proceeded from there at the end of the evening as Sirius entered the room Jack said. "Good Job Harry. For tomorrow how about you read the first chapter in the household charms book and pay close attention to the incantations. Oh and before I forget Since all work and no play makes-"

"Jack a very dull boy." Harry finished for his instructor.

Jack grinned widely. "I was going to say Harry, but you already figured out what I was going to say. Since you won't have class Saturday night I got tickets for you and Sirius to see "CATS"."

Sirius groaned. "Is that why you told me to leave our first Saturday night open."

"Of course, you can't come to New York and not go to the theater." Jack noticed Harry was trying to hide his snickers. "What?"

"It's "CATS."" Harry finally lost the battle and started to laugh. Leaving it for Sirius to explain the joke.

"I... Cats don't like me. I'm a dog animagus."

"Oh.. Oh," he chuckled, "now I get it. Sorry I would have chosen something else had I known."

"That's okay. I like cats, they just don't like me. And my family," Sirius grabbed Harry and mussed his hair, "Likes to tease me about it."

The first day of Harry's lessons with Jack set the tone for the entire time they were in New York. Harry fell into bed every night and slept soundly usually from exhaustion. Sirius and Harry shifted his schedule slightly he woke at nine a.m. He would then spend his days doing school work for Stuart-Cavanaugh, training for his next martial arts belt, studying charms on his own, studying transfiguration with Sirius and Rachel, sightseeing the museums of New York one floor of a Museum at a time, relaxing by working out or playing his instruments, having dinner in a restaurant somewhere in one of the cities many ethnic districts, coming back and having a four hour class with Jack during the week or going to the theater on Saturday nights and going to bed somewhere close to midnight sometimes even after.

The security team didn't know what to think. Most of their assignments involved spelling regular teams assigned to Judges and doing background support, security checks and what not, they couldn't figure out why they were guarding this wizard and his kid. William Cosby was older and getting close to retirement he took the night shift when they weren't going out and making targets of themselves plus the wards on the penthouse made it easy. Catherine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey took mid morning to evening frequently supported by Christopher Judge and Alexis Cruz when they were out and about New York. They were content for the most part to do their shift and then go home,but the one who truly wanted answers about who they were was Alexis. He just couldn't figure it out. Rachel at times seemed the ultimate bodyguard and oversaw the entire group, at others she was teaching Harry and interacting with the principles like a friend.

Alexis had made a point of hanging around the penthouse trying in a non-obvious way to figure out why WIS was guarding these two wizards. They were wealthy, his folks only had a three bedroom place in lower east side's wizarding district. He had shared a room with his brother, his three sisters had shared a room until they got married and when his grandparents used to visit they expanded the living room and they slept on the transfigured couch their whole place would fit in a quarter of the penthouse. But that alone didn't explain it.

He noticed that Sirius Rachel and Harry all had wizarding cell phones, that could have been due to their wealth but since the phones had only been available on the market for four months it was a little unusual. He also noticed that the hours that Harry was studying or was with Jack Harkness, Sirius usually seemed to be working on some project. He had glanced at the papers, bringing Sirius tea once just so he could snoop, but hadn't been able to make sense of what he saw. He heard Harry and Sirius talk about the stock market theorizing different investment strategies and wondered if he should invest a bit of his savings.

He noticed that Harry, who was not even nine, was being given training. This really puzzled him. He had never heard of a wizard having a strong and stable enough core to be receiving training that young. But Harry seemed to be getting really different training, including training in physical defense and a muggle education.

Alexis had grown up in a pureblood home in the only pureblood district of New York, in the New York Office of WIS he was the low power and low man on the totem pole. He'd heard rumors of "special" training that someone in the DC office offered but had never been able to find out about it. But in this assignment his "boss" was from DC and was an active participant in the training of this boy. His father had raised him in a traditional magic home but Alexis had always been one to question the status quo and one of his most enduring questions was if pure blood magicals are so superior to muggles why hide. His father's only answer was tradition although that answer never satisfied him. His father had trained him at home but refused to "indulge" his curiosity about Muggles so after two weeks of watching Alexis asked to join in.

This whole assignment had been eye opening in many ways. Harry and Sirius as they preferred to be called moved through both the magical and muggle worlds with ease and had opened Alexis' eyes to the wonders and challenges offered by the muggle world. Of course Alexis made his share of mistakes being ignorant of muggle culture, Harry had saved him a couple of times from glaring gaffes. On various days when he escorted Harry and Sirius to various museums he occasionally had the opportunity to ask Harry questions he finally got an answer he could live with to the question he had asked his father. Harry had begun it when he asked Alexis a question.

"Alexis, how come you're so uncomfortable around people when we come out to museums."

"Because I know very little about muggles Harry." Self conscious that Rachel had once again transfigured his robes into suitable muggle attire.

"Why?"

"Because my father and mother didn't teach me about them."

"They out number wizards five thousand to one. If wizards don't want to be noticed wouldn't it make sense to know about them, making you less likely to be noticed. Not that they'd burn us at the stake like they did when the statute of secrecy was originally passed but they might demand magical solutions to problems that actually have no solution and hurt us trying to force us. Or fear us for our powers and jail us or try and take our powers away. It just makes sense to know as much as possible so we can hide in plain sight."

It was the final week they were in New York that he finally realized why these two were guarded He had overheard Sirius talking to a Beth and he mentioned Roy Mustang. Alexis knew who Roy Mustang was. He was the half-blood that was shaping up to be the future director of WIS and rumor said he provided security for the Presidents daughter. The President's daughter that had recently gotten married. Alexis blurted out in front of Rachel, Sirius and Harry, "We're guarding you because you're in-laws to the President."

Rachel rolled her eyes, "Yes that right but none of the regional teams has been told that; how did you know?"

"I listened and the I overheard the conversation and I know Mustang guards the Presidents daughter and then I knew she got married it was announced over the wireless... I just put lots of little things together."

Sirius looked hard at Alexis. "Are you happy with WIS? If not I have a job I'd like to offer you..."

Three hours later on his way to see his parents, Alexis stopped by his bosses office to turn in his three week notice.

At the end of sixty days Harry had successfully levitated feathers, changed the color of his clothes, learned numerous housekeeping charms including the all important scourgify. He had mastered all twelve of the wand movements and had a pile of charm books that gave the incantations, and knew he could learn many more with time and practice. He had done a few simple transfigurations a matchstick into a needle, that sort of thing and Sirius and Rachel had him working on turning a beetle into a button. He was truly starting to feel like a wizard but he always kept in mind Inarra Serra's words about wandless magic and made at least one attempt of each spell he learned without his wand each day. He had taken his photography class. He had seen the American Museum of Natural History, the Ellis Island Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. He'd gone to the theater several times and completely fallen in love with "Les Miserables". He'd been to the top of the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building, and he strolled through Central Park and the Bronx Zoo. He and Sirius were missing Beth something fierce, so by mutual agreement they had decided the next jump would be it until the next school break. But the next jump was when Harry would start his magical warrior training.