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Part Two

Marcus turned to study Potter as they came through the door into the entrance hall of Hardstone Hall. Potter was swaying on his feet, his eyes blinking rapidly open and shut. When he saw Marcus watching him, he tried to straighten, but that wasn't going to be possible.

Marcus nodded to him. "You'll need to sleep before we start training."

"Why? Isn't it important that we start right away?"

"It would be, if I thought that you could keep on your feet through it," Marcus said, and ignored the way that Potter flushed. He supposed he should technically call the kid Silver, but he seemed to prefer the Potter name, so he could keep it. "Follow me." He turned and walked up the main staircase, keeping a careful ear cocked behind him. The last thing he needed was for Potter to fall down the stairs.

But he seemed to be keeping up pretty well. Marcus still carried his trunk, so at least he shouldn't have any weight that would cause him to fall and split his head open.

Marcus flung open the door at the top of the staircase and stepped out of the way so Potter could get a look at the bedroom. He blinked a few times again; then his eyes blew wide and he stared around.

"This is more room than I could ever use," he objected, turning to Marcus.

Marcus shrugged. "But it's what you've got. Are you going to accept it or not?"

Potter seemed to be internally debating that, but after a moment, as he looked around at the immense walls, the ceiling that loomed twenty feet overhead, and the windows that stretched nearly the whole length of the wall, something in his face firmed. He nodded. "If you're going to offer it, I'll take it."

"Smart," Marcus said approvingly, and spent a moment waving his wand. Potter's trunk unpacked, the clothes going to coil inside a wardrobe at the foot of the bed. Other things, like his broom, arranged themselves on the shelves arching over the pillows. Marcus thought he would probably appreciate them there.

"You don't have house-elves?"

Marcus glanced at Potter. "No. My father freed them during one of his paranoid moods. Is that going to be a problem?"

Potter blinked and shook his head. "Better not to have them," he said, and curled up on the bed, lowering his head to the pillow. "Then you don't get any Dobbies."

Marcus opened his mouth to ask what Potter meant by that, but soft snores echoed up to him a moment later. Shrugging, Marcus hung up some of Potter's robes, regarded the Muggle clothes in bafflement, and then left.

He would have to wait until Potter woke up to know whether it was true that Muggles used their sleeves as cleaning rags.


Harry opened his eyes and stared up at a sparkling crystal chandelier that made him frown. Had he somehow Apparated to a Muggle ballroom and then fallen asleep? He sat up, looking around.

It took one sight of the Firebolt leaning against the wall by his headboard to remind him of what had happened. Harry closed his eyes, fought for a minute against the visual of Cedric's body, and then got out of bed.

He wanted to start training, but he would have to find Flint first.

Well, no, all right, he would have to relieve himself first.

A door off to the side, about fifty feet past the chandelier, seemed to be the bathroom. Harry opened his eyes and blinked at all the gold and silver that revealed. It seemed to be on the taps, the shower, the tub, and the mirrors.

It was gaudy, but it was also a functional bathroom that seemed to work a lot like the ones at Hogwarts, so Harry used the loo and took a shower, leaning against the wall as the hot water pounded down over him. He breathed in and out, deeply and slowly, and let the visions of Cedric recede.

Harry was never going to forget him. But he also couldn't avenge Cedric if he was just going to let himself be overcome with distress all the time.

Stepping out of the shower, toweling his hair dry, Harry paused when he saw a grey robe hanging up on a hook near the loo. He approached slowly, especially when he saw a fluttering note pinned to it.

Potter—put this on. It's warmer than your school ones.

Harry kind of hoped Flint hadn't just casually intruded into the bathroom while he was showering, but he also had to admit that he hadn't looked around much before starting to wash and the robe could have been there before. He pulled it on, and Warming Charms and what seemed to be Comfort Charms immediately adapted the robe to his size.

Well, so far this is a lot better than the bloody Dursleys' house.

Harry turned and made his way to the bedroom, where he found another note on top of a pile of his Muggle clothes: I know that you might want to use these for rags, but I want to burn them.

Harry snorted and scooped up the clothes. He was going to take Flint up on that offer. He'd actually rather burn them himself, but he'd better make sure the Trace didn't work here first.


He looks better, Marcus thought, as Potter walked into the dining room. His eyes were still haunted, but he wore the grey robe and he was practically marching now. And he carried the pile of his Muggle clothes that Marcus had left for him on the floor of the bedroom.

"Can I cast the spell to burn them?" Potter asked.

"Yeah, go ahead. My wards are impervious to things like the Trace."

Potter nodded, dropped the clothes in the middle of the dining room floor, and lit them on fire with an "Incendio!" so powerful that Marcus thought he could feel a hot wind lifting his hair from where he stood. Then Potter watched the horrible things burn with folded arms, only nodding in satisfaction when Marcus couldn't even see the ashes anymore.

"What kind of training plan do you have in mind?" Potter asked, turning to the table and drawing a chair out with a screech. Marcus kind of enjoyed that. Long training meant it was hard for him to deliberately make a noise, even with furniture.

"Eat first."

Potter stared at him as if he didn't know what the words meant, but then nodded shortly and sat down at the table. Marcus lazily waved his wand to float in the dishes that had been waiting in the kitchen.

Potter blinked, and blinked again, as those dishes settled in front of him. "I thought you said that you didn't have house-elves."

"I don't."

"So, what, you made all this?" Potter gestured, almost angrily, at the plates of bread and meat and cheese and steaming soup and thick cuts of fruit that stood in front of him.

"The kitchen has spells that chop ingredients and make certain dishes that were prepared in that spot and the counters were enchanted to remember. I just buy the food." Marcus nodded at the bowl of beef stew that was nudging Potter's arm. "I think you should eat that one first."

"Fine."

Potter tore into the food, so ravenous that Marcus raised his eyebrows a little. "I wouldn't have thought someone as bird-like as you was that interested in eating," he said, and picked up a hunk of bread to dip in his own stew.

Potter stopped dead for a minute and glared at him. Then he said, "My Muggle relatives didn't give me any better food than they did clothes," before tearing again into the stew, followed by a piece of chicken.

Marcus narrowed his eyes. So he was going to have to work with Potter to get over lingering stupidity from Muggles as well as what the Dark Lord had done to him?

It's a good thing I really want to be safe from the Dark Lord.


"Is this a dueling room?" Harry stared around the huge space that Flint had led him into. It looked like a square stone box with dozens of runes carved on the walls and floor. None on the ceiling, for some reason. Harry could see sparks of magic flitting back and forth in the runes whenever he turned his head.

"No, it's a battle room."

Harry looked dubiously at the runes again. "I don't know what that means."

"There's one thing you should keep in mind, Potter." Harry was glad that Flint didn't stumble over his adopted name, but he did sound hard enough and stern enough that Harry kept his eyes on him. Flint took a step forwards from the other side of the room where he stood. "We're going to be studying battle here. Fighting. Not duels. Duels are a fancy way of hitting each other with little curses in a formal setting. That's not what you'll be doing with the Dark Lord or any Death Eaters you'll confront. I'll teach you to fight."

"Where did you learn to fight?" Harry asked, ignoring the thrill crawling down his spine.

"My ancestors."

"They lived long enough to—"

Flint shook his head and faced the wall of the battle room, snapping his wand forwards. He didn't say anything that Harry could hear, but some of the runes sparked and spat and formed a brilliant vision made of light and fire.

Harry jumped as he saw a curse flying towards him, but Flint didn't react, and Harry decided that it probably couldn't come out of the vision. He edged towards the side, so that he could see the battle from a different angle.

Because it was a battle. There was a man who was probably a Flint, if only because of his height and muscles, turning in a circle on a field of mud and ashes, his cloak flying behind him as he dealt with spell after spell. He sometimes raised shields, but not very often. He seemed to just curse people so often that they had to deal with his spells instead of attacking him.

"Is that the way you'll teach me to fight?" Harry whispered. He winced as the scene showed a red spell setting the Flint fighter on fire. He waved his wand and dissipated it, then went back to flinging curses.

"You won't be able to endure as much as Catullus Flint could because of his sheer strength," Flint said, and waved his wand again. The image dissolved back into the runes. "But yes, I'll be teaching you the basics of that method. Attacking with countercurses instead of shields. Relying on offensive magic instead of defensive."

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it.

"Speak up, Potter. This won't work if you keep silent because you're worried about upsetting me or something."

Harry glared at Flint. "I wasn't worried about upsetting you. It's just that Defense is my best class. How good am I going to be at offensive magic if defensive magic is my skill?"

Flint smiled. It didn't make his face less ugly, Harry thought, but it made it sort of fascinating. "Defense is misnamed. You've learned some jinxes and hexes in there, haven't you?"

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, even Quirrell had taught them some spells like that. He thought the only person who hadn't was Lockhart.

"This is the more advanced version of that. Curses and countercusrses—which are different from shields, because they take the curse's energy and turn it against itself. It's just another form of attack." Flint cocked his head. "The most important factor will be whether you want to attack. Think you do, or do you just want to cower in your beddy-bye and hope the Dark Lord doesn't find you?"

"I want to kill him when he shows up again. I want to win."

Flint nodded. "That's the spirit. We're going to begin with you flinging the curses at stones." He raised his arm, and the floor split open to release three jagged boulders of dark rock Harry thought might be obsidian. "Now, show me what curses you know."


"Is it hopeless?"

Marcus looked up from notes he was making on a scroll of parchment. Potter lingered near the doorway of the study, his damp hair sticking up from his forehead, where his scar was angry and inflamed. He stared at Marcus with despairing eyes.

"Is what hopeless?" Marcus asked, a little snappish. He was trying to use basic Divination techniques to predict Potter's future battle prowess, and it was hard to work with mostly guesses and one morning's data.

"Will I ever become a better fighter?"

Marcus stared at him. "Why wouldn't you?"

"I—I wasn't doing well. I didn't manage to counter any of the curses you flung at me."

Marcus took a deep breath and pushed away the scroll. He would just have to remember where he'd been later. "Come in and sit down, Potter. I'm not craning my neck to look at you in the doorway."

Potter plodded into the study and sat down in the chair across from Marcus's desk, where no one had sat since his father went to St. Mungo's. His eyes were huge from this distance, and even more melting with sorrow than Marcus had seen them before.

"You couldn't counter any of the curses because I hadn't taught you the countercurses yet." Marcus kept his voice as calm and slow as he had when he was talking Draco Malfoy through some kind of screaming fit on the Slytherin team. "I would be amazed if you could counter any of them, when the whole point is that you're here to learn new things."

"But…"

"Yeah?"

"I read that history book you gave me, and everyone talks about how Voldemort just has instinctive command of magic." Potter ignored the way that Marcus flinched a little at the Dark Lord's name. "How can I fight him if I can't do the same thing and just know what spell is right to use in the right situation?"

Marcus sighed and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. It had no answers. "Instinctive is a slithery word, Potter."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that authors use it when for the most part they have no idea how a wizard or a witch did something," Marcus said, and received blinking-eyed attention that pleased him a little. "Yes, the Dark Lord is powerful. But he got defeated by an infant already, even if that infant wasn't you. He's not invincible."

"And you think that I can defeat him…"

"Yeah, I do."

"What—what else can I learn about fighting besides countercurses? What can I do to get better at it before I know the spells?"

Marcus leaned back in his seat. This was the kind of question that he was better equipped to answer, since some of the players on the team had asked similar ones. "You can increase your stamina. The best way is with exercise. You can drink some potions to increase it, too, but once you've drunk them, you still need to do exercises to keep that increase."

"Is it like—Quidditch exercises?"

Marcus shook his head and stood up. "No. My father started me on a training regimen once he started teaching me how to fight. Come this way."


This was yet another huge, square stone room in what seemed to be the cellars of Flint's house, although this one was filled with huge metal or stone balls, ladders that seemed to be bolted to nothing and go nowhere, and ropes hanging from the ceiling. Harry looked around and swallowed. It somewhat resembled Muggle playgrounds, but he had the feeling that there was a lot different about this.

At least, he hoped there was. Swinging and climbing didn't seem like it was going to make him a better fighter.

"You push your magic into these balls, and they give back a burst of power that helps build up your muscles," Flint instructed him, and leaned his hand on a round stone that was almost the height of his head. There was a glimmering flash, and then the light turned and flowed back around Flint. He grunted a little, then stretched, and the light stretched with him.

"I don't know how to push my magic outwards like that," Harry said, gritting his teeth as he did. He hated confessing that, since it made him useless, but there was no point in lying. Flint would find him out soon enough if he did that.

"Come here."

Harry stepped up beside Flint, and Flint laid his hand on Harry's shoulder and closed his eyes. For long moments, there was nothing, and Harry had just about decided that he wouldn't be able to do it and he would be useless at this when he felt a stirring of something under his heart.

He gasped. Flint nodded, not opening his eyes. "Feel that. Concentrate on it. Pull it towards you."

That was easier said than done, Harry found, because pulling on the magic made it start fluttering madly and trying to escape from him. But at last he managed. It was easier if he kept his eyes shut and focused on the rough surface of the stone under his hand rather than the magic itself.

"Good. Now push it into the stone."

Harry wanted to ask how Flint knew that Harry had pulled his magic up into his hand, but the power began to drain away as he started to shift his concentration. So he thought hard about the feeling like a bird's heartbeat in his palm, and shoved it into and down through the stone, wanting to make it glow the way Flint had.

There was a draining sensation that made Harry frown because of how much it pulled at the center of his chest, and then—

Then the most wonderful feeling as the stone gave its magic back to him. Harry thought he could actually feel his bones strengthening and his heart getting better. He opened his eyes with a gasp.

A blast of green light was just fading, and Flint was watching Harry with his eyebrows raised. "Huh."

"Huh, what?" Harry asked, taking big breaths. He still felt wonderful.

"Just white light is what I have, and most other members of the Flint family have, too." Flint tilted his head the way he had before. "The green color is kind of unusual. It reminds me of the color of the Killing Curse."

Harry felt himself smile in a foreign way, a way that felt like it was peeling the skin back from his lips. "Well, I might not have survived the Killing Curse, but I still have the imprint of the magic that did."

"True enough." Flint led Harry away from that stone to another one that looked like it was made of obsidian, like the targets he'd practiced casting spells at in the battle room. "Try with this one. Try to do it faster. And then show me how well you can climb the ladders and the ropes."

Harry nodded. He would do this. He would do this. He was going to become stronger.

And he was going to show Flint that all the effort he was putting in to train Harry wouldn't go unrewarded.


Another letter tumbled through the wards with the owl carrying it, who was squawking wildly and batting its wings at the air.

Marcus snorted, removed the envelope from the owl's leg, and tossed the bird back into the air. The owl circled and tried to land on a perch, probably having been told to wait for a reply, but the wards snatched it and swept it back outside.

"What are all those?"

Potter stepped into the dining room, eyeing the pile of letters on the table with nervousness. Marcus smirked. "Sensible of you to be afraid," he said, and waved his wand to send the letters skidding across the table to Potter. "These are written by your friends and admirers wanting to know how you are and when you're going to come back and let them fawn over you. And these are the ones that people wrote to me scolding me for kidnapping the Savior. Or the terrible little boy pretending to be Harry Potter, in some cases." He nodded at the towering stack of letters next to him.

Potter squinted at them. "They sort of look like…pale Howlers…?"

Marcus nodded. "Passing through the wards disarms them. I'll read them for a laugh."

Potter looked down at his own letters sort of wistfully. "I wish I could laugh at these."

"You can if you want," Marcus pointed out, but Potter shook his head gloomily.

"I wouldn't want to do that to my friends, and I've got a few letters from them here," he said with a sigh, and began to tear the envelopes open.

Marcus shrugged and began to leaf through his own post. Some of the names were familiar, mostly from Gryffindor or as the names of some of his classmates' parents. Marcus snorted as he read through a denunciation from the Weasley mother for "kidnapping that poor defenseless child."

Yesterday, Potter had managed to blow apart one of the stone boulders in the training room. Maybe the Weasley woman wouldn't think he was so defenseless if she could have seen that.

"I—I need to answer this one."

Marcus jerked his head up. Potter was staring at the letter he held with a wobbling lip, and Marcus found that the sight irritated him. "Why is that? What's so different about that one?"

"It's from Hermione." With an effort, Marcus recalled the Mudblood who had followed Potter around. Muggleborn, he should probably say. "She's upset. She thinks that I ran away and didn't talk to her and—I didn't."

"I think you have more to be upset about than she does."

Potter blinked and jerked his eyes away from the parchment as if he had to physically pry them. "What do you mean?"

"You've just found out that your name and your past aren't what you thought they were, you've been betrayed pretty bloody thoroughly by the Headmaster, and you saw someone die." Marcus shook his head. "She can be upset all she wants. It's still less than you have to be upset about."

Potter blinked, and then his spine straightened, as if he hadn't thought of it that way before. He put the letter off to the side and ripped into the next one.

Marcus hid his smile behind the next amusing Howler, which was accusing him of conspiring with "Aaron Gold or whatever his name is" to overthrow the Ministry. Yes, he was going to get a right laugh out of these.

Potter's pretty tough when he needs to be. All it takes is someone telling him that he's allowed to be.


Harry leaned his head against the parapet and watched Hedwig disappear into the distance clutching the letter he'd written to Sirius. In the end, he had decided that only his godfather's message deserved an answer.

"Want to tell me about it?"

Harry started and turned around. He didn't know how Flint kept sneaking up on him. It didn't seem as if such a big man ought to be able to move so quietly.

Harry took a deep breath and said, "Did you know that Sirius Black, my godfather, is actually innocent?"

Flint blinked and tilted his head in that way he had, a way that Harry was beginning to find inexplicably reassuring. "Framed, was he?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "And he had to go on the run, because the Minister didn't believe us when we tried to tell him…anyway, he would have raised me if he hadn't been framed. I would have lived with him if I could have."

"All right."

"He—he wrote to me and he said it didn't matter, that I was the only remnant of his godson who would ever live, and he wanted me back and he wanted to discuss things. But he also said that I didn't have to fight V-Voldemort and I could go off and live somewhere quietly. He wanted me to come back so I could hide, too." Harry took a breath that felt as if he were trying to draw liquid boulders into his lungs. "And so I tried to tell him what I was feeling but how I wasn't going to hide and did want to learn how to fight."

"Good."

"What?"

"He sounds like he might be a decent bloke and really care about you and not just who he thought you were. But you also deserve the right to make what you want to make of your own life. It's yours, no matter who you look like. So you deserve the right to stay here and learn how to battle Dark wizards if that's what you want."

Harry held his breath for a second. Flint continued to stand in front of him and stare at him and not fade from existence as Harry knew he would if he were a hallucination.

Harry closed his eyes and began breathing again. He willed the tears not to fall. "Thank you," he whispered. "I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"Train. Get strong. Save me from the Dark Lord."

Harry could envision a time when he might have found that expectation daunting. But now he lifted his head and nodded a little.

He was already doing more than he'd thought he could, with learning some curses and pushing his magic into the stone. If he could go on excelling at things like that, then he would be able to repay Flint all he'd done.

"All right, Flint. Thanks."

"Call me Marcus."

Harry blinked and then smiled and said, "Harry, then." He ignored the whispers in his own head about whether he was sure that he was Harry and not Aaron Silver. He had chosen. He was Harry because he said he was.

Enemy to Voldemort. Sirius's godson. Hermione and Ron's friend, if they would have him.

And apparently, student to Marcus Flint.