See disclaimory thing in Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Do you Believe in Magic?

"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it.
Action has magic, grace and power in it."
Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

Albus Dumbledore paced the parapets of the East Wall like an ancient sentry watching for some enemy to come over the horizon. Despite this he was not actually watching the horizon. In fact, he was not watching much of anything at all. The East Wall was one of his favorite haunts when he had to think and his office grew oppressive for two reasons. First, there was hardly ever anyone there because it was remote, and second it was hard for the spacious vistas to be anything close to oppressive.

Young Harry Potter had met a new magic user, and not seconds later, alarms had screamed that one of Albus Dumbledore's professors had been seriously wounded. Fawkes had taken him to Sybill's work room to find the Divination Professor standing before her table, Tarot cards swirling around her as though caught in a vortex though there was not the slightest breeze. Her fingers had been so firmly affixed to the crystal ball on the center of the table that her skin had actually burned to it. What had been most disturbing, however, was the blood and thicker things streaming down her face from her ruined eyes as she stood motionless without making the slightest sound.

A moment later the crystal ball had disappeared in an explosion that rivaled anything he had ever heard come out of Severus Snape's classroom. Albus had gotten a shield up in time to protect himself, but Sybill had taken almost the full force of the blast. Poppy had arrived moments later, and while Sybill would live without scars to her face, her eyes were impossible to fix. It might be possible for her to be fitted with a pair of magical prosthetic eyes, but not until it was discovered how her real eyes had been ruined.

If, that is, she would even accept them.

Privately Albus had his doubts. Portraying herself as the blind Seer who gave up purely mortal sight to see glimpses of the future was just the kind of thing Sybill would enjoy playing to.

But his worry about what had happened had been eclipsed by worry about what Sybill had said before Madam Pomfrey had dosed her with a dreamless sleep potion so that she could work. The medi-witch had been inclined to dismiss Sybill's ravings as the product of shock, and they might very well be so. But the idea of an older Harry Potter loosing demons into downtown London filled him with a sick sort of dread. And necromancy, while not the 'darkest of the Dark Arts' as some sensationalist authors and politicians would have people believe, was no better. Worse, it seemed as though he hadn't used either because he'd become a Dark Lord himself, but because he'd resorted to it in order to fight Tom.

Then there was the nameless woman. He couldn't think of a witch that bore her resemblance in Britain, but she could have easily come from another nation. France, given that she had first appeared in Sybill's vision of Paris? Yes, that was it. She was probably French.

That other nations would join their fight was only mildly hopeful for it meant that Tom had most likely attacked them first. His former student had many faults, but stupidity had never been among them. If he had felt comfortable attacking outside of Britain, it meant he felt that he could win even if the nations gathered their strength against him.

And not only that, if Sybill's ravings had been a true vision and not a product of insanity or pain, it meant that he not only felt comfortable facing all the wizarding world, but the muggle world as well.

In his youth Albus had dreamed of uniting the two, for both worlds had many things to offer one another, but now? Their weapons were too great. The fear in the world, scarcely unknown in his childhood, was now so great that their responses bordered on psychotic. How would they respond to magic now? With fear, with hatred, or even worse, would they see magic as the answer to all of their problems like far too many witches and wizards did these days?

He had headed for the East Wall upon leaving the medical wing, but no sooner had he stepped outside than a portrait had informed him that Hagrid needed to speak with him immediately. Such words and tone were foreign to the half-giant's normal demeanor, and the Headmaster had hurried outside to Hagrid's hut to find him standing with a centaur who had told him, in depressingly unobscured language, that the stars had been twisted out of alignment.

What was that supposed to mean? He didn't question Firenze, the ability of centaurs to be able to hold the positions of all the heavenly bodies inside their minds and point them out with amazing accuracy at slightest need or want, was well known. In fact it was only very recently that the muggles were able to devise machines that approached the same capability and sensitivity as a centaur. But something that could twist all of the stars and planets out of their ordained tracks?

Something buzzed in his robes and Albus absently pulled his pocket-watch out of his robes and peered at the twelve hands. It took him a mount to realize that it wasn't the alarm that reminded him of tea, but something else buzzing. He pulled out a second pocket-watch and touched a tiny stud. A small crystalline sphere, barely larger than a snitch, popped out of the face of the watch. Fully a score of hands swept through circles inside the sphere and Albus Dumbledore felt his heart skip a beat for all of the hands should have been still, or, at most, only two or three should have been moving.

Harry Potter was missing.

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Harry Potter was not missing for he knew exactly where he was.

He was sitting in a tattered armchair.

The fabric was worn smooth where it wasn't ripped, and all four legs had been removed some time in the past so that the bottom of the chair rested on the hardwood floor of Allie's flat.

Most of the décor was utterly—almost boringly—normal. The furniture was mostly old and heavily worn. None of it matched, and none of it would have passed his Aunt's muster, but he didn't doubt that, like the legless armchair he now sat in, the rest were all sinfully comfortable…if somewhat strange to sit in.

He moved in the chair, trying to get just right. The short distance to the floor was…odd to say the least, and he finally settled for curling his legs up next to him and leaning heavily on an arm in a way that Petunia would never have allowed. For the first time in ages he was contentedly full. Not 'unhungry', not 'fine', full.

Okay, so the canned stew could have used some work, but it was wonderful nonetheless and fresh strawberries had made for delightful afters. One of them would need to go shopping if they were to have milk for breakfast, however.

Neither the odd furniture, nor the feeling of a full stomach, distracted him from the very…odd nature of the… Harry supposed he could call it 'art', but it wasn't like anything he had ever seen. Chalk drawings—a few numbers and many things that might have been letters, but mostly just squiggles—covered the walls, the ceiling, and portions of the floor. Many were set into patterns around circles or triangles, or many-sided many-pointed figures he had no names for. There were stars with five points, stars with six points, stars with 12 points or more. There were stars within stars, and stars within circles, and squares within stars, and combinations thereof. Some of the figures were in white chalk, others in red, blue, green, orange, purple, and a particularly vivid shade of pink.

Right before the large windows (which had their own designs) was an absolutely enormous circle. Matching it was an identical circle (as best Harry could tell) on the ceiling above it. Weird characters lined the outer and inner edges of the ring-like circle, and another set of characters, utterly different from the first, was set inside the ring itself. A large drawing, similar to some on the walls, depicting a triangle with a line through it with more of the odd writings, filled the inside of the circle.

"Like it, huh?" Allie asked.

"It's wonderful," Harry said softly.

His aunt, he knew, would have disagreed. The whole room was barely the size of the living room in Number 4. A mattress filled one corner opposite the corner which held a small range-oven, an even smaller refrigerator, a sink, and a trio of cabinets. The circle took up most of the third corner (opposite the door) and a second door on the wall shared by the kitchen and circle, led to a small bathroom that was barely larger than his cupboard under the stars but managed to fit in a toilet, a sink, and a shower. The outer wall, opposite the door to the hall, was brick, and wedged between the mattress and circle was a grate on a pair of cinderblocks, under which was a small camp stove. The odor of mildew and cigarette smoke (though he didn't see any sign that Allie was a smoker) was pervasive, and the ceiling bore the grim testament of water damage. Despite all of these failings, it was clean, and kept in a precise neatness that was the one thing his Aunt probably would have found satisfactory.

He turned to look at her. "What is it?"

She smirked. "Magic circle."

Harry scowled. "Okay, so what does it do?"

"See these sigils?" she asked, gesturing towards the walls.

Harry nodded, it wasn't like it was possible to miss them.

"These are designed to keep magic out, to nullify magic inside these walls," she said. "Most magic-users prefer wards, which are sort of like magical fences and burglar alarms and things of that nature. But like the mundane variety, wards can be broken if you know the right magic. There are more complicated, dangerous, wards that I could use, but since there is a whole building full of mundanes I prefer not to risk one of them setting something of that nature off."

"Could they do that?" Harry asked. "I mean, if they don't have magic…"

"You know those people who dig up old Egyptian tombs?" she asked.

"You mean the Pharaoh's Curse is real?" Harry asked.

"There are curse-breakers who are supposed to neutralize the curses the old wizards of Egypt put on the tombs before mundanes open them," she said. "There was one, back in the late eighteen hundreds, I think, that they missed. The mundanes got there first. I think it killed something like seventy people before the curse-breakers were able to stop it."

"Wow," Harry said.

"Since I didn't, couldn't, use wards I used a method that drove magic out. A sort of reverse-ward. Inside that circle is the one place in this flat where magic can be freely and easily practiced."

"Why would you want to keep magic out?" Harry asked.

"I like my privacy," Allie stated. "And then there are—" she stopped abruptly. "Let's just say I sleep better at night when I'm not wondering if something is suddenly going to pop up in my flat."

"Oh…does that happen often?"

"You'd be surprised," she said drolly. "Or it could just be me." She shrugged, "Either way, it is possible, given a powerful enough caster, for magic to be performed outside of the circle, but it will be far from easy. There might be a half dozen, maybe as many as ten, mages capable of it in the UK."

"Wow," Harry said again. "Are there a lot of…wizards and witches in England?"

"More than in some countries, less than in others," she replied. "We do have one of the most powerful wizards on the planet though."

"Really?" Harry asked eagerly.

She nodded shortly, staring at the circle.

"Allie?" Harry asked when she didn't reply.

Allie turned to him and nodded towards the circle. "You want to try some?"

"Me?" Harry asked in surprise. "You want me to try magic?"

"Why not?" she asked. "Go on and sit in the circle."

Harry got up and walked over to the circle and stood in it. "Now what?"

"First," she said. "You see that triangle with the line through it?"

Harry nodded, the indicated…design, he guessed, took up most of the inside of the circle.

"That's a lock. As long as it's there, the circle doesn't work. So erase the sigil—that's the proper name for it. There are a pile of rags in that footlocker next to the circle."

There were more than just rags in the footlocker, Harry saw as soon as he pushed it open. There were a collection of different colored candles in a variety of holders, some crystals, a pack of multi-hued chalk, and several knives…among other things he couldn't begin to name. He grabbed one of the rags and hurried back into the circle and began wiping away the chalked sigil.

"That's good," Allie said before he had done little more than smear the sigil across the circle.

Harry frowned, "I thought it had to be clean," he half-asked.

"Not clean, just broken," she frowned. "I don't think I can explain the technical details of it without explaining a bunch of other stuff first. Just suffice to say that it's the design that is important. If you break the design, you break the effects. Really, just breaking one of the lines, even if it was only by running your finger across one of them to disturb the chalk, would have been enough. Smearing the entire thing was more than sufficient."

"Okay," Harry agreed after a moment. "What now?"

She gave a half-smile that was not, quite, a smirk; and walked to the footlocker where she pulled out a plain white candle without a stand. "Have a seat," she gestured to the floor as she walked into the circle and sat down.

Harry sat down across from her.

Allie held the candle loosely with both hands. "Now watch."

Harry frowned, what, exactly, was he supposed to watch? When nothing happened right away he felt a stab of disappointment. Seeing all the pictures—sigils, he mentally berated himself—and the glowing coin, he had thought for a moment that magic was real. But as nothing happened he began to wonder if the coin hadn't just been a trick of the light.

"Harry?"

"Huh?" he asked, startled out of his reverie.

The candle was burning gently in Allie's hands. "Huh?" he asked again, staring first at it and then at Allie.

"Magic," she said.

"Can you do that again?" he asked.

She blew the candle out and held it again, "Watch this time," she said.

Harry concentrated on the candle, and this time noticed a brief wisp of smoke just before the candle burst aflame. He reached out to touch it, and pulled back with a singed finger. "Magic," he whispered.

Allie blew out the candle again and handed it to him. "There is a triad, three points—well, technically I guess there are five—that all successful magic is based on."

"You mean like magic words?" Harry asked. "Like hocuspocus or abracadabra and magic wands and top hats and stuff?"

She shook her head. "Incantations, wand movements, steps in rituals, or ingredients in potions, serve to harness effects. They make magic easier to both perform and duplicate. How much good does it do to develop a spell that can light a candle, for example, if you are the only person able to cast it?"

"Not much, I suppose," Harry said. "If you die or something it's lost forever."

"Exactly," Allie said. "Spell-crafting, designing new spells, incorporates things like wand movements and incantations to make a spell that other magic users can easily duplicate." She wagged a finger at him, "That is a gross simplification. I certainly don't understand all of what they do. But the point remains."

Harry nodded, being able to make a spell that others could do made sense enough. A thought occurred to him. "But if you can come up with a spell that's the only way to do something, you can make people come to you to do it."

"There are some spells that a patented," Allie said. "Most of those are highly specialized charms. There are also some rare and exotic spells that are kept in certain families and passed down within those families, or passed from master to apprentice. Most common-purpose magic, however, is meant to be reproduced by everyday witches and wizards."

"So what is successful magic based on?" he asked.

"The first point is power," she ticked off a finger. "Take your pick on where it comes from. The pure-bloods like to say it comes from within a wizard or witch; that it's a part of them. Others say that power is external but witches and wizards are conduits for it."

"What do you think?" Harry asked.

Allie shrugged. "I don't know, and I can't say I really care. There are Talents, specific magical gifts that some people get and others don't. At least some of them seem to follow blood-lines, but not all of them do. I suppose they could be totally internal, or simply a way of using power that others can't. It's sufficient, I guess, just to know that the power exists and that not all wizards and witches are equal. Some are more powerful, some are less, and some are better in certain types of spells and weaker in others."

"If you say so," Harry said.

"Okay, point two," another finger. "Imagination. Some people have it, some people don't. There are mundanes with tons more imagination than most wizards and witches. Imagination sets the limit for what you can do. If you can't imagine doing more than lighting this candle, you're never going to be able to do more than light the candle. Doubt kills the ability to do magic faster than anything."

Harry nodded again, "What are the last three points?"

"Well, the two I wasn't really counting are skill and control," Allie said.

"So, spells and the like?" Harry asked. "Incantations and wand movements?"

Allie nodded, "That would be skill. The better you are able to duplicate those, the less power it takes."

"But you didn't use a wand," Harry said.

"Nope," Allie said. "Don't have one, never used one. That keeps me from doing almost all magic that mainstream witches and wizards use. But I'm powerful enough that I can sell what skills I do have in that fringe world I mentioned."

"Those that can't do magic, but know it exists?"

"Exactly. Now, I'm not saying there's no skill involved, just that my skills are sufficiently different to give wizards and witches as tough a time doing what I do as I'd have doing what they do." She paused for Harry to nod his head in understanding. "Control is the compliment of skill, and it deals with just what it sounds like."

Allie gestured towards the candle Harry held, "Starting a fire is a skill. Control would cover how big a fire you started and how much power it takes you to do it. If you channel power in the area around the wick there's a lot of power that isn't doing anything and is wasted, whereas if you channel it to just the wick you don't waste as much."

"How do I know if I'm wasting power?" Harry asked.

"Experience mainly," Allie said. "Magic is just like any other ability, the more you do the better you get. The better you get and the more experience you have, the better you get at manipulating it."

"Okay, so power is how much magic you can do," Harry said. "Imagination governs what magic you can do. So what's the last point?"

"Will. Strength of character. Want. Desire. Whatever you decide to call it, it all comes down to the same thing. A strong will requires less power to achieve the same result. A powerful wizard with a weak will, will waste power on spells that a middling witch or wizard can perform. There are spells, enchantments, that can make you feel or do things. A strong strength of character can fight them off.

"Now," she said, gesturing at the candle. "Take that candle and light it. You have power aplenty. You know it can be done because you just watched me. All you have to do is focus, and want it enough."

"How do you want something bad enough to make it happen?" Harry asked, taking the candle. "I can think of loads of times I wanted something to happen, but nothing did."

"How about the glass of that snake enclosure?"

Harry bit his lip, "That was pretty neat," he said. "Um…there was this time I was being chased by Dudley and ended up on top of the school's kitchen. And another time Aunt Petunia nearly shaved me bald after a haircut and when I woke up the next morning all of my hair was back."

"Did you ever feel something special just before something did happen?" she asked.

Harry frowned. "No," he said after a moment, "Or at least not that I can remember."

Allie reached out and cupped his hands, still holding the candle, in hers. "Don't look at me, look at the candle. I want you to feel the wax under your hands, feel the line where wax dripped down one side. Start adding visual details…"

Harry felt himself starting to drift as Allie's voice droned. He was startled out of his reverie by Allie's hands releasing his. He blinked. Twice. It was…apparently not impossible. "I don't believe it," he whispered. "I'm looking at it, but…"

"Remember what I said about imagination?" she asked. "If you can't imagine yourself doing it, if you think you can't, then you can't. At the same time, if you think, even have a little niggling doubt that says you can…" She leaned forward and blew it out. "Now do it again, and this time," she stood up and stepped outside of the circle. "You're on your own."

Harry frowned, "Are you—"

"Not me," she cut him off. "You. If you don't believe, you are going to fail. Same as last time; focus on the candle, see the wick, picture what it looks burning, then will it to burn."

"Okay," Harry said, not at all sure if he believed himself when he said it, but… Somehow the candle had already burned twice without any way of being normally lit that he had seen so that meant it had to be possible…right? He scowled and focused on that, the possibility that magic existed. He stared at the wick, then imagined it burning.

The candle remained unlit.

He scowled at it. Okay, that didn't work, so maybe if he imagined it being lit, a transition of some kind? The wick was cold to the touch, and he imagined it growing warmer, warmer until it was hot. A wisp of smoke curled upward from the black tip of the candle wick, then began to glow ember-red. But it wasn't until a flame appeared and then grew that he noticed…

And promptly dropped the candle on the floor where it went abruptly out.

"See?" Allie gave him another smile that stopped just short of being a smirk. "You can do it."

"I can do magic," he whispered.

He picked up the candle and stared at it for a moment. Then he turned and looked up at Allie. "Can you teach me something else?"

She snorted, "You're exhausted, Harry. Lot of excitement this afternoon, a good meal, and you spent almost twenty minutes lighting the candle."

Harry looked at the clock, "It didn't seem like it."

She shook her head, "You really have no clue, do you?" she asked.

"No," Harry rolled his eyes. "Why?"

"Most people can't do that, not right away. Figuring out how to consciously use magic without the use of a focus is something most wizards and witches have trouble with. Nature of how they learn to wield it, I think." She frowned in thought, but then shrugged. "I know other types of magic users don't have trouble with it. Could be a cultural thing, I suppose. My point is, that was a very good start."

"Oh," Harry said, picking up the candle. "You said I was famous?"

"Yeah," Allie sighed.

"So you know why I am?" Harry asked before yawning.

Allie nodded hesitantly.

When she didn't say anything Harry frowned. "Will you tell me?"

"You sure you want to know? It isn't really a nice story."

"Yes," Harry said.

For a moment he thought Allie was going to refuse, then her shoulders slumped slightly. "Fine. C'mon," she held out her hand for the candle, and when he handed it to her she gestured towards the legless chair.

Harry curled in the chair and watched as she put the candle away, then re-chalked the triangle design in the center of the circle. She dusted her hands when she finished and walked to the kitchen nook where she poured herself a glass of water and asked if Harry wanted one, which he politely declined. She returned and settled down on the couch.

"It begins with a Dark Lord," she said. "I like to think that magic isn't really good or evil, that it just exists and the way that people use it determines if it's good or evil. A lot, almost all, wizards and witches would disagree with me though so maybe I'm just projecting my hopes…" she stared down at her glass of water. "Most of them divide magic into 'light' and 'dark' good and bad. I don't know, I can think of a lot of ways that perfectly good magic can be used to hurt people. To be fair, a lot of what people call dark magic really is bad stuff; magic with far fewer good uses than bad ones…and some that have no good uses at all."

"Like…hurting people?"

Allie looked up at him, "Worse, much worse," she said softly. "The worst of it, what I know of it, has no good qualities."

She was silent for a moment, then visibly shivered. "So… This Dark Lord, he was about as bad as they come. He killed a lot of people, made a lot of other people disappear. He started quietly at first, spent time learning darker and darker magic, using rituals to make himself more powerful. By the beginning of the seventies he had all of the British Isles, or at least the wizarding community, locked in terror. Nulls, the mundane world, they were both suffering too, but the wizarding world—as I said—takes certain measures to keep magic a secret from the mundanes, who wizards call 'muggles'."

She toyed with her glass again, "He never really got outside of the Isles. Most Dark Lords tend to be fairly localized, or at least regionalized, which is probably a good thing. For a time it was thought that he was effectively unbeatable. Utter nonsense of course. but people were scared, and scared people do…weird things. Your parents opposed him, the way I understand it they were pretty vocal about it too.

"Then they disappeared into hiding." She snorted, "They probably already were hiding. Opposing a Dark Lord is one thing. Telling him where you live, your infant son lives, and inviting him to take his best shot is something else. Anyway, they went into better hiding. Only their location was betrayed. He showed up, killed them both, and then tried to kill you."

"What do you mean 'tried'?" Harry asked.

"I mean he tried to cast a death curse on you. And that curse…" she waved a hand airily, "bounced. The story goes that he died right there and you were marked with a curse scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on your forehead."

"You don't believe it?" Harry asked.

"I have trouble with some parts. Why you lived, for one. It should have killed you and didn't. There are theories out there that range from you being the second coming of Christ, to intervention by aliens, to being the reincarnation of Elvis. Probably the most serious one is that your parents' deaths formed some sort of protection," she closed her eyes. "Lots of people died, Harry, a lot of them in front of their families and friends who were killed in turn just as easily. Also, they say he died, but no body was ever found. Questions without answers."

"Could it have been destroyed by the curse?" Harry asked. "His body, I mean."

Allie shrugged, "I suppose. There are curses that will do that. But you were pulled out of the building so presumably the fire hadn't gotten to that point. The story actually names a specific curse, and that curse is not capable of destroying a body—which brings up the question of, if you were the only survivor, how do they know which curse was cast?" she asked rhetorically.

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He was simply gone, Harry, but nobody can say where or why."

"So I…defeated him?" Harry asked.

She shrugged again, "Apparently. Anyway, people went kind of crazy after that. The Dark Lord was gone and they decided it was party time. You became a hero over night. Haven't really stopped since. Expect everyone to know you. Most of them are going to want to look at the scar."

"I don't want to be famous," Harry protested. "Especially not for something I can't remember!"

"Yeah, well, we don't always get what we want," she muttered.

Harry flinched at her suddenly bitter tone, but she shook her head and said, "Sorry, Harry, you don't deserve that."

Harry nodded, "What was his name?"

Allie looked at him, "Sorry?"

"His name, the Dark Lord," Harry said. "What was it?"

"Most wizards and witches don't mention it. For too many of them it brings back memories that they'd just as soon forget." She snorted, "Gone for ten years and most are still scared witless by a name."

She shook her head. "Voldemort. He called himself Lord Voldemort, poorly pronounced French and all."

"Oh," Harry said. "So, another magic lesson?"

Allie laughed. "You feel up for it?"

Harry nodded eagerly.

"Okay then," Allie said. "Why don't you go grab that silk bag, and we'll check ourselves for tracking charms."

"Why didn't we do that earlier?" Harry asked.

"Mostly because any that we have on us after what we did are beyond anything I can do to remove," Allie replied as she retrieved blue and white chalk.

Harry watched as she drew several runes around the circle, explaining each one as she drew it, and then emptied the silk bag in the center of the circle. A wallet and some loose coins spilled out, followed by a charm bracelet, and two knifes in sheaths. One had a wooden handle, but the other (which was at least as long as his out-stretched hand) had a hilt that was black with a silver cap at the end and silver runes laid into it.

Allie swept up the collection and placed them on top of a piece of silk. "Now, I can't scan for magic traces directly, so I have to use an indirect approach and scan for all magic in effect."

"You mean spells and stuff that are already on them?" Harry asked curiously.

"That's exactly what I mean," Allie said with an approving nod. "Now watch."

Harry watched as she let a trio of candles around the circle, and then chanted for a moment in a language he didn't know. The circle glowed briefly, as did the things in it. When the circle stopped glowing, so did the wallet and change, and, after a moment, the plain-looking knife stopped glowing as well. In contrast, the black-handled knife looked like someone had dunked it into a rainbow and spun it until the colors wrapped around each other and then bound in place with a black and gold spider-web. For a moment he thought the charm bracelet was like the knife until he realized that where the knife was glowing with different colors, each individual charm glowed a separate color.

"What do the colors mean?" Harry asked. "How would we know if there is a tracking charm on one?"

"A tracking charm would show a magical link," Allie said. "Basically, we'd see a line of magic that went from it to the edge of the circle. If something had an illusion on it the illusion would ripple, allowing us to see what it was disguising. If there was something transfigured, we'd see an image of what it was made from."

"Made from?" Harry asked curiously.

Allie nodded, "There are spells that will allow a magic user to change a guinea pig into a teapot. If we had one of those, we'd see an image of the guinea pig."

"Why would anyone want to turn a guinea pig into a teapot?" Harry asked

"Probably some witch wanted to see if it could be done," Allie said. "Other than that I have no idea."

"And there isn't magic that could block us from seeing it?"

Allie looked at him.

"I mean, if magic can do anything we can imagine…"

Allie shook her head, "Imagination, or rather a lack of one, sets a hard limit, Harry. It isn't the only one. As for blocking this, sure, I can think of a half-dozen ways. What it is, however, is sufficiently different from how most use magic that I don't think it'll be a problem.

"It's like the difference between am airplane and a train, Harry. Both will take you somewhere, but they do it in very different ways."

"If you say so," Harry said doubtfully. "So why do those things glow?"

"Well, the knife is a magic-working tool," Allie said. "It's had enough power channeled through it, or used to direct or shape enough power, that it's become a magic item in its own right. Each of the charms was forged with an enchantment."

She cancelled the spell and lifted up the bracelet, "Hold out your hand."

"It tingles," Harry observed as she dropped it into his cupped hands. "Is it powerful?"

Allie shrugged, "It depends on who you ask. A lot of witches and wizards would look at it and scoff. They'd have a point too. There is a lot of magic that can be done with a wand that just isn't capable of being done without one. Most of it is a lot more impressive than what can be done without one. On the other hand, for what it can do…"

Harry held onto the bracelet a moment longer before handing it back. "What about us?"

Allie shook her head, "Harry, if there is still a tracking spell on us it'll take me longer than we're going to be here to undo it. In all likelihood, a spell that is still in effect after what we did is either powerful enough, or subtle enough, that I'm not going to be able to remove it anyway. Especially not after that salt-water dunking we did."

"Because salt disrupts magic," Harry said.

"Especially my kind of magic," Allie said with a nod. "Try using it against someone with a wand and mostly they'll just laugh at you."

A thought occurred to Harry. "We lit the candles, how were we able to do that if the salt disrupts magic?"

"Because the candles were simply us," Allie said. "Salt is less effective against magic when it is focused that way. It'll disrupt spells that are more delicate, complex, and less so against magic that requires brute force."

"Oh," Harry said. He thought about it for a moment, "So most witches and wizards use wands, and the way they use them is the way we used the candles?"

"Very similar," Allie said. "We were channeling magic through the candles with the end-goal of lighting them. Wands are only one example of a magical focus, though the most common. A focus is a tool that magic is channeled through that concentrates and directs it more efficiently.

"Very generally speaking, there are only two types of magic, and everything else is a sub-type of one or the other, or both. The first is focus-based, which tends towards more immediate and spectacular. The second is non-focus based. It takes longer to set up, a single spell can take minutes, hours, or even days compared to seconds for most focus-based."

"Is it more powerful?"

"No, just different," Allie said. "But it is also a lot rarer in the magical community—at least it is in this country. Also it tends to be more seen in one-off spells. Unique spells, rather than those meant to be duplicated. Most people you see using it regularly will be like me, living on the fringe between both magical and mundane communities."

"Oh," Harry said. He thought for a moment, "So because I supposedly killed this Voldemort, I have to be part of the magical community? Does that mean I can't stay with you?"

Allie shook her head. "You're part of the magical community because you can do magic, regardless of what happened to you that night. And you can't stay with me, Harry. Not for long. I mean, I can barely afford to take care of myself. I have—"

"I can help," Harry protested. "I mean, I can cook, and clean, and stuff. That's what the Dursleys made me do anyway."

"It isn't that," Allie hesitated. "I didn't phrase myself well. I'm a..." she grimaced. "I have a magical gift that is—" she stopped abruptly and gave him a long look. "I can do something with magic that very few people can. It's sort of like talking to snakes, not many people can do it."

"I can, I mean, I talked to that boa," Harry said. "I liked him, he was nice."

"I believe you."

"Did you listen to us?" Harry asked.

"You were speaking parsletongue, snake-speech," Allie said. "Unless you can speak it, it sounds like, well, you were talking to a snake. It's all hissing and stuff."

"So everyone heard me hissing at that snake?" Harry asked.

"Those that were paying attention," Allie said. "I'd advise you to be careful with it when you're with wizards and witches, though. It's a really rare gift, and it is also one that is seen by most people in the magical community as dark."

"Dark?" Harry asked. "I thought you said there was no such thing."

"I said that I don't really believe there is such a thing," Allie said. "Most people in the magical community say there is, and they'll turn on you in an instant if you appear as anything less than the hero they picture you as."

"But I didn't do anything!" Harry protested.

"I know," she said. "Believe me, Harry, I know. Just…for your sake if nothing else, don't tell anyone unless you really trust them."

"Okay," Harry said softly. "What's your gift?"

Allie smiled bitterly. "Parslemouths have an undeserved reputation for their Talent being a sign of a dark wizard, though there have been a number of very prominent wizards that have that Talent and only a few of them evil. The gift I have, well, let me put it this way. Its reputation is a lot darker than being able to talk to snakes is, and that reputation is less than half of what it deserves."

"It's dangerous?" Harry asked.

"Extremely."

"Oh," Harry said softly, not at all sure what he should say to that.

There was a knocking on the door before he could say more. A moment later the locks clicked back and the door was pushed open by a tall man wearing a black leather duster and holding a gnarled wood staff in his right hand. Grey shaggy hair fell to his shoulders, and his face was partially concealed behind great, shaggy whiskers.

"Master G," Allie said, standing.

"Ms. Hawthorne," he said with a German accent.

"Harry, this is Gilbert Sullivan," Allie said. "He's my teacher."

"Harry Potter, sir," Harry said as the man stomped into the room.

"Yes, I see," the man said. "New to the world of magic, are you?"

"Yes, sir," Harry agreed as the man crossed the room to him.

"Well? Stand up, boy. In the circle," he gestured.

Harry scrambled into the circle as Sullivan stalked to it without pause.

Sullivan thudded his staff against the floor and the runes around the circle burst into multi-hued light. Up close Harry could see that Sullivan's eyes were the peculiar grey color of storm clouds before their fury is unleashed, and the deep-set wrinkles around them conveyed an age his powerful form belied. A heavily callused finger pushed back his fringe and traced his scar.

"Hmph," the man grunted and abruptly turned away from him. "You can sit," he said dismissively.

"Well?" Allie asked.

"That curse scar acts as a personal rune, one with power behind it," he said. "It isn't a Mark of Power, but with a piece of magic like that—if you survive it, of course—you cannot not be linked at some level. There's also that Trace that your Ministry likes to put on magical children, though it's still dormant. It won't be activated until he has his wand. Aside from that he's clean—though with a blood sample someone wouldn't need to place a charm directly on him."

"There's no practical way of stopping something like that," Allie said.

"Hmph," he said again. "Did you even consider using a Binding?"

"You're joking, right?"

"What's a binding?" Harry asked.

"What does it sound like, Boy?" Sullivan asked, giving Harry a look that said quite clearly that the older man thought Harry was an idiot.

"It blocks off part of your being," Allie said. "I ran into a…poltergeist, I guess, at a house I was working at. Normal poltergeists are like avatars of chaos, but this one worked with fear. If you used the railing to keep from falling down the stairs it could pick you up and throw you down them. We all ended up starving the thing out. We wore Bindings against fear to keep it from feeding off of us. I can't tell you the number of times we almost killed ourselves because we had no concept of what was dangerous."

"And if blood was used to track me, a Binding would block off my blood?"

"Blood is an agent," Sullivan said gruffly. "The actual spell would have to be tied to something that is part of you, an emotion, magic, your health."

"Probably not the last two," Allie said giving Sullivan an intent look. "Slapping any kind of magic spell directly onto magic is incredibly difficult, and something as ill-defined as 'health' isn't much easier. Forget it. I'm not putting Bindings on him."

"Your place, not mine," Sullivan said with a shrug. "The wards you have will hold well enough. Even the Ministry's Trace doesn't function in here. But if someone was running a tracking spell using blood, or running an active scrying, they'll have seen him come in."

"Excuse me, but who are you, exactly?" Harry asked.

"You don't know who I am?" the man asked furiously. "I am one of the greatest wizards Prussia has ever produced. I did the Thaumeturgical analysis of dragon's blood and charted the interactions of seventh-sphere enchantments. I was the first to describe the use of multi-origin runeforms in conjunction with non-alphabetic iconographs. There was a time when even muggles trembled in fear of what I would do next!"

Allie rolled her eyes and mimed a mouth opening and closing with one hand.

"Muggles?" Harry asked, struggling not to laugh at Allie's irreverence for the imposing mage. "Are you…"

"Yes," Sullivan growled. "That Gilbert and that Sullivan. A Prussian librettist and composer poking fun at the ridiculous English concepts of law, the navy, and social position—not that Prussia's concepts were any better—would have hardly been appreciated in London. Not to mention the difficulties of cross magical/mundane business interaction. But pick out a pair of muggles with the right background…" he smiled. "I will admit that Gilbert had a fertile imagination and managed to get his actors to actually act, and Sullivan was hardly less of a task master when it came to getting them to perform their parts accurately and on pitch."

Allie snickered and Sullivan whirled around to glare at her. "You laugh, missy. But you forget—I know all of your secrets."

"And I yours," Allie said, her voice suddenly cold.

The man made another 'hmph' and turned away from her.

Harry hesitated, the man was gruff and rude and had called him 'boy' which was Uncle Vernon's favorite thing to call him (when he had to call Harry anything). But despite all of that, Allie clearly thought pretty highly of him and was learning from him, so…

"Sir," he said in a carefully respectful voice, "can you teach me magic?"

The man waved a hand behind him, towards Harry. "Enough with the 'sir' you'll make me feel older than my already very many decades." He turned back, "If you must, call me Sullivan. If you call me 'Master G' like Hawthorne does, I'll turn you into a fluffy white rabbit and feed you to a fox."

"Charming, isn't he?" Allie asked dryly.

"Okay, Master, er, Sullivan," Harry said, trying again. "Can you teach me magic?"

Gilbert gave him a long hard look. "Promise me the next eight years of your life, and I'll make you more famous than any wizard since Merlin. Albus Dumbledore himself will be in awe of you, and that self-proclaimed 'Dark Lord' you had running around a couple years back will prostrate himself at your feet. If you think you're famous now, just you wait. You won't have to hold any political position, but governments will do as you suggest. You won't need any general's stars, but any army you face will lay down their arms before you. You will never want for anything in your life. Money, women, glory, the very powers of the universe, all this I truly can deliver, and more still, if you accept."

"But I don't want any of those things," Harry protested.

The man smiled through his whiskers and his voice was soft as he said, "then truly you have more wisdom, Harry Potter, than most fellows thrice your age." He ran his left hand through his curly mane. "You don't need me to teach you magic, Dumbledore has a place open for you at his little school."

"His school?"

"Hogwarts," Sullivan said. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry if you want the whole thing. There are dozens of magic schools out there, but Hogwarts is better than most. But even the best school is no good at all if you aren't motivated to learn. You'll do well there, I think." He turned to Allie, "You understand I want no part in any trouble that comes of this?"

Allie nodded sharply. "I do know other people than just you, Master G, and I know you like your privacy. If I have to I might be waking some up, but that's not a problem. This won't come back to bother you."

"See that it doesn't," the man said as he stomped his way to the door. He unlocked it and slammed it shut behind him.

"That was…interesting," Harry said as Allie pushed herself out of the chair and locked the door. "Is he always so…gruff?"

"Pretty much," Allie said. "A tad paranoid too, but an absolute genius."

"So he's the one that taught you," he waved towards the circle.

"More or less," Allie said. "You heard what he offered. He offered me something similar. It was a serious offer, both of them. I told him I just wanted to learn to control my…abilities. So he's taught me runes, wards, some ritual magic…" She yanked open a battered chest of drawers with a squeal of jammed wood and rummaged around for a moment before coming out with a t-shirt and a pair of biking shorts.

"Go take a shower and rinse the salt off," she told him, effectively ending the conversation by dropping the clothes in his lap. "There should be clean towels hanging up. That'll do you for sleep wear until we can get you some more appropriate clothes."