[Peeking out from behind the door] Hi? I wish I'd updated this sooner, but I've had a very busy year. I wrote my thesis, graduated from college, went on two vacations, one of which was to visit family members whom I hadn't seen in four years, and, most recently, dived headlong into the search for a job. After such a long wait, this chapter might feel like a let-down since it's mostly setup, but you be the judge.
I do not own any of the source material for this story. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.
"Tell me about your magic," the Ancient One told Harry the following day. "How did it work before the Phoenix?"
They were kneeling across from one another on the floor of her audience chamber, a smaller version of the room where he'd met the Sanctum Masters. Both of them were dressed in black. "I'm not much of a theoretician," Harry began slowly, "but I'll do my best. Researchers from my world believed that the ability to use magic is linked to the soul, and I think they were right. My magic is a living part of me, an extension of my being that responds to my instincts."
"Give me an example."
Harry thought about it for a moment, then said, "The Patronus Charm. An ancient, extremely difficult piece of magic that most adult witches and wizards struggle with, if they can cast it at all. You're supposed to dredge up the happiest moments of your life and use them to create a tangible spirit guardian. Most people can only produce an incorporeal Patronus, but if properly formed, it will take the form of an animal that symbolizes something deeply important to you. Then there are the Unforgivable Curses."
The Ancient One raised an eyebrow. "Unforgivable?"
"Three Unforgivable Curses," Harry recited, knowing he sounded like Barty Crouch Jr. posing as Moody and hating it. "Some of the most powerful and sinister spells my people know of. The use of any one of them on a sentient being without special dispensation from our government would earn you a lifetime in prison, partly because of their effects, partly because the requirements to cast them are indisputable proof of intention to cause harm."
"Describe them, please."
Harry did so. The fake Moody had shown him and his classmates the curses, but he'd neglected to explain how to cast them or why they were considered worse than, say, the Blood Boiling, Bone Breaking, or Entrail Expelling Curses. The Imperius Curse could only be properly cast if the practitioner truly believed that their victim didn't deserve to have the option of disobeying them; more, that the caster themselves deserved unquestioning obedience. It was not impossible to use the spell for good, Harry knew from experience, but it was an undeniably sinister spell, despite the calm bliss unresisting victims experienced.
The Cruciatus Curse, as Bellatrix had demonstrated, required genuine sadism and a desire to cause harm. That spell, alone among all that Harry knew of, could not be used for benevolent purposes. Not in its proper form, at any rate—lesser instances fueled by righteous anger were about as effective a defensive weapon as the Stunning Spell, albeit more vicious.
The Avada Kedavra Curse used the practitioner's absolute intention to kill their target to extinguish the victim's life force, like water dousing a fire. Merely producing the infamous bolt of green light was proof that the practitioner fully and unhesitatingly intended to kill their victim, which meant that the spell's only unambiguously benevolent applications were euthanasia, as Snape had done for Dumbledore, or as a means of destroying uncontainable threats. If Voldemort were to appear before him now, Harry would have used the curse on him without hesitation, but that was the exception.
"It seems to me," the Ancient One said when he was finished, "that to draw out your full potential, you must draw on your feelings to shape your spells."
Harry nodded. "More or less, and I tend to feel things pretty strongly. That's how I was able to master the Patronus Charm when I was thirteen."
The Ancient One's lips twitched. "Let us move on, for now. You've described how your magic is fueled, but how is it categorized?"
This would be easier. "Most of the spells my people invented are categorized as either Charms or Transfigurations, though in a lot of cases, the distinction is so blurry as to be irrelevant. Charms change an object's state or properties, while Transfiguration changes what the object actually is. Most conjuring spells are designed to create something from pure magic, so they're considered a variation on the transfiguration formula, but several conjuring spells summon existing matter from elsewhere without pulling it through the intervening space, so those are considered charms. Counterspells do exactly what they say, whether that means breaking an enchantment or undoing a piece of transfiguration.
"Dark magic is what we call any magic that's specifically designed to harm others or requires the practitioner to harm others to achieve the desired effect. We categorized it by the severity of the harm. Jinxes are pranks—annoying, but mostly harmless. Curses are the most potent kind of dark magic, with severely debilitating or lethal effects. Hexes fall somewhere in between; less harmful than curses, but worse than jinxes. Of course, people disagreed on which category a spell qualified for. The Stunning Spell is technically a charm that knocks targets unconscious. It doesn't normally cause any physical damage, and it's easy to undo the effects, but it's still a spell that's designed to leave you helpless if you're hit with it, so I personally consider it a hex.
"Many magical effects are easier to achieve or made extra effective by potions. Burn-healing spells, for example, aren't very effective on anything worse than first or second-degree, so for those, we use potions and pastes. We had cures for the common cold, truth serums, poisons, a sleeping potion so powerful it's called the Draught of Living Death, and so on."
"Do all of your spells require a wand to cast?"
"No." Harry paused. This was where things would get interesting. "A wand is nothing more or less than a focus, something that helps us draw out and direct our magic. Wands make spellcasting a lot easier, and they have helped my people expand the possibilities of what our magic can do. They also acted as practical tools: keys, ID markers, and so on. The problem is that it's very easy to become dependent on them. Most schools of magic, including the one I attended, used wands, so I'm not very experienced in wandless casting. What I've found, though, is that wandless magic is more instinctive and less precise. It's like painting with your fingertips instead of a brush."
"Interesting." The Ancient One adjusted her posture slightly, then adopted the expression of a lecturer. "Now turnabout is fair play, so listen carefully. As I've told you, no human in this world is ever born magical—it is a talent like any other, one that can be embraced or neglected as one chooses. Different magical traditions have their own methods of accomplishing various feats, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. The more a practitioner commits to a particular way of doing things, the harder it becomes to adopt new approaches. The Masters of the Mystic Arts, therefore, have strived over the millennia to grow our knowledge and maintain flexible traditions so that our disciples will be as well equipped as possible to deal with the many dangers of our lives."
She motioned with her hands, drawing lines of fiery energy in the air with deliberate slowness."At the root of existence, mind and matter are the same. The language of the Mystic Arts is therefore as old as civilization, for any language can be used to shape magic. Practitioners must find the words and phrases most strongly linked whatever it is they are invoking and combine them with appropriate symbols to fashion spells. There is no such thing as a true name per se, but the stronger the connection our choice of language is to something, the more we can control that concept. The universe isn't a simulation, but it does have a source code if you will, and magic is our way of hacking the program.
"We harness energy drawn from our life force, from the universal force that keeps the multiverse in balance, and from other dimensions to turn words and images into reality. The energy lines you see me drawing now are formed from eldritch ichor, a substance we sorcerers generate from universal energies to craft shields and weapons, and spells. Sometimes, we use the ichor to manipulate forces and entities native to our reality. Other times, eldritch ichor sigils invoke the powers and abilities of extradimensional entities. Personal energies require no such constructs to cast, but their applications are far more limited—a human body, after all, has only a very limited amount of life energy to spend.
"Occasionally, we perform rituals that allow us to tap directly into an extradimensional entity's powers, not even using eldritch ichor spells, but this is difficult and dangerous, for many such entities demand a price for calling on their powers. As you know, I have been using such magic to siphon power from Dormammu without his consent. This has allowed me to extend my life and increase my overall power without becoming a slave to his will, but I still had to sacrifice for that power."
A thought occurred to Harry, and he blurted out the question before he could stop himself. "Your name? You gave up your name for immortality?"
Without acknowledging his outburst, the Ancient One flicked her hands, and the construct expanded in Harry's direction, spraying him with a warm burst of wind. The lines of energy dissolved into sparks.
She lowered her hands back to her knees. "Some spells require too much power to sustain without risking self-harm, so we rely on enchanted objects to cast them. All Masters of the Mystic Arts are equipped with sling rings, for instance, which allow us to open portals and navigate the different layers of reality. We use potions only in a limited capacity because ingredients with the appropriate properties are scarce on Earth. When we do, they are typically used as a means of delivering spells that are less effective when cast by traditional means, or as a means of manifesting spells that are too powerful to cast unaided. In some cases, potions are used as mediums for a practitioner to ingest spells."
Harry frowned. "Ingest spells?"
She shrugged. "Some rituals are all about preparing a long and complex incantation, then dissolving it into a potion as a means of taking it inside yourself. No matter what, our practices do not typically mesh well with strong emotions. Everything we do is, shall we say, clinical. We operate in a calm place and let the power come to us. Our thoughts and intentions become reality, but not our feelings."
"That sounds… so bizarre to me," Harry admitted. Magic was more than a set of rules and practices. Yes, inventing new spells and potions was a very scientific process, but magic was much like the Phoenix; fire and life. It responded to the eddies and flows of the practitioner's deepest feelings, whether they wanted it to or not. Trying to cast a Patronus Charm or a Killing Curse without drawing on a well of emotion would be like trying to cultivate a plant without water.
"I think," said the Ancient One, "that you will need to bridge the gap between your practices and mine if you are to master the Phoenix Force. And that means you will have to walk a fine line."
"And how exactly do I go about that? Spells like the Patronus Charm won't work without the associated emotions. But if I tap too deeply into my feelings, I risk losing control of the Phoenix. And if I try to live without feeling anything at all…."
"Have you ever heard of the concept of the edge of chaos?"
"No."
"It's the idea that life needs a balance of order and disorder to survive and thrive in the long term. If a society or an individual changes too much, too quickly, if they take too many unnecessary risks or shed all restrictions, they will tear themselves apart. But if you refuse to change or move forward, if you are too rigid, you will stagnate, or snap when subjected to the unexpected or the complex. The secret to a healthy society and a healthy person, then, is to find the edge of chaos and stay there."
"That's an awfully fragile balance."
"Indeed, but one you must learn to live in. You must find the cliff and keep yourself two steps away from its edge; no more, no less."
Harry nodded. He'd known this wasn't going to be easy, but the idea of living at the edge of chaos was more than a little frightening, given what lay at the bottom of the Ancient One's metaphorical cliff.
Many wizards from Harry's old world would have assumed that bonding with a cosmic entity capable of enhancing one's magic was the greatest blessing imaginable. Voldemort would have salivated at the possibilities offered by a force capable of controlling life on a fundamental level. But Harry knew better. Great power wasn't a blessing; it was a curse.
Yes, the Phoenix Force would one day make him effectively unstoppable, but the process of bonding with it had badly scrambled his powers. Far from being a god of magic, his raw power remained static, and his control was shot. He'd never had to go through physical therapy, but if he did, he imagined it would feel something like this, rebuilding skills he considered basic from the ground up. Hence, his initial routine consisted of meditation, reading, and physical exercise, including martial arts training.
For much of his short life, Harry's magic had been a fundamental part of his identity. By the time he'd taken his W.O.M.B.A.T.s, it had become a third limb. He took great pride in his powers, the same way a musician would in their instrument. Having to rebuild himself from the ground up was as frustrating as going back to muggle primary school.
At Hogwarts, his academic performance had been… inconsistent. He'd never been as zealous as Hermione, but he'd always been intuitive and eager to learn. Over time, stress and distractions from his insane life had taken a toll on his academic focus, leading to lower marks than he knew he was capable of. At the same time, it had propelled him to take a greater interest in esoteric, extracurricular subjects, like the Patronus Charm and the Animagus ritual. The Triwizard Tournament had forced him to accelerate his development as a wizard, but during the first few weeks of his fifth year, depression and post-traumatic stress had sapped his energy until he barely saw the point of trying. O.W.L.s hadn't seemed important when the Ministry of Magic was burying its head in the sand while Voldemort gathered his strength.
It wasn't until the D.A. lessons that his passion had been reignited. Learning the full contents of the prophecy later on hadn't exactly buoyed him, but it had filled him with a new drive to make himself the best wizard he could possibly be. He'd known he stood no chance of defeating Voldemort in direct combat—no amount of training could bridge the experience gap between them—but he still needed every advantage he could get.
Of course, having a fragment of soul stuck in his head hadn't helped matters. Harry had lived with the parasitic entity attached to him for so long that he hadn't realized how painful its presence had been until it was gone.
From the beginning, his greatest advantage during his Hogwarts years had been his raw power, which was as high as it could naturally get and, with the right motivation, allowed him to cast master-level spells before he even came of age. At the same time, his inconsistent study habits had initially made his spellwork somewhat inflexible and imprecise, much like a giant whose fingers were too thick and clumsy to pick up a grain of sand. After Voldemort's death, Harry explored and trained his magic extensively, not merely out of a desire to fight, but to truly live. His skills hadn't reached their full potential when Dormammu consumed his world, but he'd been well on his way.
His best subject had always been Defense Against the Dark Arts, but it was far from his only strength. His Charmwork and Transfiguration were excellent, and while he was no Newt Scamander, he was better than most with magical creatures. Though not the prodigy Professor Slughorn had mistaken him for, Harry was a highly capable potioneer when he didn't have Snape breathing down his neck. Flying came to him with almost unnatural ease. He'd switched from Divination to Ancient Runes in his Fourth Year, though it had taken him a long time to truly appreciate either area of study. He'd dabbled in Arithmancy during his Auror career, and his experiences seeing into Voldemort's mind had inadvertently given him a passable understanding of Legilimency. And despite his initial struggles with Occlumency, no one had penetrated his mental defenses since the Battle of Hogwarts.
The Masters of the Mystic Arts did things very differently from Hogwarts. For one, all the students were adults, which Harry wasn't used to outside specialized training programs like those for Aurors and Healers. For another, subject-specific classes were divided according to the sort of powers that a sorcerer wished to invoke, rather than the fundamental nature of the spells themselves. Instead of Charms and Transfiguration, there were classes on the different types of mystic energy and their uses, spell formation and direction, portal creation, invocation of mystical forces or entities, and the multiverse.
Kamar-Taj divided students into ranks based on their level of magical aptitude. The lowest rank, novices, wore white robes and were held to a fairly rigid curriculum designed to teach them the basics. Once they learned the core techniques of summoning mystic energies, fashioning eldritch ichor into basic constructs for spellcasting, and opening portals, they were promoted to apprentice rank. Apprentices wore deep crimson robes and were free to study on their own, provided they made a worthy effort, attended classes taught by the Masters whenever they wished, or else received private tutoring sessions.
It was rather like attending a university, except there were no grades to pass a course, there was no monetary cost, the subjects taught were often fiendishly difficult, and the standards were sky high, regardless of one's area of study. While novices were kept under close observation to ensure they didn't accidentally hurt themselves, apprentices learned at their own pace and were free to leave whenever they wished. The programs one had to complete to graduate to Master rank were brutal, but that was only sensible, given the duties expected of the Masters: teaching complex and dangerous magic, dealing with threats to the integrity of the world's shield against extradimensional invasion, and policing the use of magic worldwide.
As multiversal refugees who practiced their own form of magic, Andromeda and Harry didn't fit into the normal system. Andromeda was invited to study the arts practiced at Kamar-Taj at her leisure, though she had little time to explore new ways of using magic when she had Teddy to take care of. Harry, with his invisible rank, was effectively an apprentice who answered exclusively to the Sorcerer Supreme, but that only meant that he was held to an even higher standard than his alleged peers.
Since Kamar-Taj had been established for the express purpose of training monastic warrior sorcerers, its training philosophies heavily emphasized not only meditation and spirituality, but martial arts and athleticism as well. Harry was no stranger to the latter—Quidditch players and Aurors alike had to be in top physical shape to perform effectively, and the latter were trained in the basics of melee combat to increase their survivability—but he found himself pushed to a whole new level even so.
Quidditch players had to develop strength in their entire bodies to be able to control their brooms while performing complex, dangerous aerial stunts. Aurors were trained to be able to keep a clear head and cast advanced magic no matter how distracting or stressful their surroundings, no matter how exhausted or injured they might be. Both professions had required Harry to hone his reflexes and endurance to the nth degree, and he'd had plenty of opportunities to put all of that training to use despite his relative youth.
He still had to up his game to satisfy his new teachers. The fitness standards set by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement were high. The standards of the Masters of the Mystic Arts were higher, and there was a much greater emphasis on the "martial" side of the coin. As soon as he had the so-called basics down to the exacting standards of his instructors, Harry was made to repeatedly strike objects of increasing hardness with more and more force using his hands, elbows, forehead, and feet to deaden his sensitivity to impact forces. At the same time, his hands were constantly treated with an enchanted herbal remedy that would temper the advantageous damage into his skin without compromising his dexterity, which itself was honed through mind-boggling sleight of hand, string games, and other routines to prepare him for advanced spellweaving.
There were other, more unorthodox forms of physical conditioning as well. Harry was trained to hold his breath underwater for ten minutes or more without magic, a completely natural yet rarely used capability of the human body. He meditated in desert heat and glacial cold with minimal protective clothing to increase his resistance to the elements. He trained his body to resist poisons and drugs through highly controlled doses of those substances he was most likely to encounter as well as how to recognize them in his environment in order to avoid exposure.
As his athleticism grew, so too did the intensity of his martial arts training. He drilled his katas for hours on end with little rest, then put them to use in merciless sparring sessions with the Masters that usually left him bloody and bruised even when he won. He practiced gymnastics and parkour skills so dizzying and complex that he vomited more than once and fell on his face or arse on countless occasions.
In addition to unarmed combat, Harry was taught how to wield a variety of weapons, including swords, knives, quarterstaffs, whips, war fans, and bows. The weapons used in sparring matches were all very real, albeit enchanted to cause only skin-deep damage, under the belief that the greatest teacher was pain. The goal wasn't to turn trainees into living weapons, but rather to temper their minds and bodies so that they could handle the dangers a Master of the Mystic Arts was expected to face. It was a brutally effective philosophy that Harry hated and respected in equal measure.
At least once a week, a group of apprentices would embark on survival training exercises in the isolated, sometimes extradimensional wilderness. On such trips, they had nothing but their wits, their lessons, and strictly limited magic to carry them to the safety of a portal linked to a Rotunda of Gateways. Sometimes, they would be given extra objectives, such as killing monsters summoned to hunt them down or retrieving enchanted objects. Harry wasn't allowed to participate in such exercises yet, but he knew he'd be expected to as soon as he learned the appropriate magic. He wasn't worried; wizards weren't usually trained to go without food, rest, or comforts for extended periods, but Harry had experience with all of these things. Similarly, he sailed through sensory overload and deprivation training, having already been subjected to it by the Aurors.
Every day, he and his fellow apprentices would spar with each other and their instructors in the rooftop courtyard of Kamar-Taj for at least an hour. They would also spend time meditating on philosophical questions or their lived experiences, sometimes with the aid of focus candles, incense, acupuncture, or drum beats. When he wasn't pushing his body to its limits, Harry read books from the Kamar-Taj library as well as his personal collection, learning everything he could about not only his new surroundings, but also how they compared to the wisdom of his old world.
It was bitter work, but his physical and martial abilities developed fast. He was proud of that. What he wasn't proud of was his progress with magic.
"Normally," the Ancient One had said during his first practical lesson, "we only introduce the Mirror Dimension to apprentices when they reach a point in their training where they cannot unleash their full power within the walls of Kamar-Taj without causing collateral damage. But you constitute a special case."
As Harry watched, she waved her hand, cracking reality in front of her like glass. The distortion rippled and undulated as if it were water under wind, forming a wall of jagged, ever-shifting planes of crystal. She strode into it, disappearing into her reflection. Harry followed her without hesitation—he'd seen stranger things—and this time was able to feel the shift in the nature of the universe around him.
The Mirror Dimension was inherently less tangible, less… real. Reflections showed only half of the original, so it made sense for a dimension that only existed as a reflection of the real world to be a less defined, more malleable place.
With gestures of both hands, the Ancient One did one of the most amazing things Harry had ever seen. Every geometric surface in the room, the patterned floors, the ceilings, the walls, even the windows, grew consecutive reflections of itself, like flowers sprouting new petals in endless blooms. In seconds, the chamber expanded into a psychedelic cavern half a mile across.
He blinked. "Good show," was all he'd said.
In the beginning, she had him focus on basic powers and control exercises. Since Phoenix Fire had become a part of his magic, the core abilities common to all Phoenix Hosts quickly became second nature to him— legilimency, pyromancy, and telekinesis—to the point that he could manifest them with a mere flex of his will, not even casting proper spells. Most of Harry's telekinetic charms, the very spells that were easiest to cast wandlessly, became redundant to the point of uselessness.
Meanwhile, fire magic was too easy now; he could just as easily summon an ordinary, insubstantial flame as produce a concentrated bolt that was more energy than fire, similar to a Blasting Curse. Many times, he accidentally created uncontrollable infernos that the Ancient One was forced to smother using her reality-folding magic. He shuddered to imagine how any Fiendfyre he summoned might look.
To his relief, Harry did retain some powers from his old self and could use them freely without any special modifications to account for Phoenix Fire: apparition, his Animagus form, his sixth sense for magic, nonverbal incantations, and Parseltongue. Indeed, his effective apparition range expanded greatly after minimal practice. Most of his astronomy knowledge carried over as well, and for that, he was grateful, since astronomy allowed wizards to empower more conventional forms of magic by invoking appropriate constellations and celestial bodies—it was easier to conjure a lion when Leo was visible in the night sky, easier to summon blizzards by invoking the image of frozen celestial bodies like Europa.
Unfortunately, that was where Harry's luck ran out. Tasks he'd once considered simple, including transfiguring a matchstick into a needle, had become as difficult as they'd been when he first attempted them at Hogwarts; it was as if he'd regressed into a first year. He had to painstakingly practice his spells and frequently modify them to account for the lack of a wand or the permanent changes wrought on him by Phoenix Fire. On top of that, he was expected to learn the practices of the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to simply adopt their method of writing spells in the air with eldritch ichor, as Harry's magic did not typically respond to energy formations, no matter how esoteric the symbols he drew might be.
Instead, he focused on alternative magical traditions from outside Kamar-Taj—this dimensional reality's equivalent of alternative witchcraft—and how they overlapped with his own traditions and those of the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Gradually, carefully, he found and harnessed connections between the symbols of the Mystic Arts, the rituals and runes of the witch covens, and the various principles he'd learned back home. It was diabolically complicated, and progress was slow.
The biggest problem, though, was potions. Any potion, even a basic Boil Cure, required at least some spellwork from the brewer; without the appropriate charms to draw out and bind together the magical properties of the ingredients, a potion would be nothing more than a nasty-tasting mess likely to cause food poisoning. And for all his successes in adapting old spells to his new self, Harry could not for the life of him get potion-brewing charms to work. Every time he tried, his creations literally blew up in his face. It happened with such regularity that even Seamus Finnigan would have been impressed. Worse, his emergency supply of ingredients was extremely limited.
While mundane ingredients were fairly easy to acquire, most of the magical plants and creatures he needed were completely unavailable. According to the library of Kamar-Taj, there were a few species of magical organisms native to Earth, but most were exclusive to alien planets or dimensional realities that were difficult and dangerous to access.
It had been a shock to learn that the Nine Realms of Norse mythology were real. The gods of Asgard were alien beings with their own brand of magic, as were the Jotnar, Vanir, and other beings. Of all the planets encompassed by Yggdrasil, Alfheim was most abundant in magical creatures familiar to Harry: unicorns, winged horses, griffins, et cetera. Dragons and fire-dwelling salamanders were found on Muspelheim, while selmas (aggressive cousins of sea serpents) inhabited the frigid seas of Jotunheim.
However, even if the creatures he needed existed, and even if he went to the trouble of hunting them down, they were not quite the same as he was used to. His magic was alien to theirs, which meant that they would not react in recipes as he expected them to. Thus, he, and by extension Andromeda, was forced to rely on the limited supply of creature parts in his trunk. With a bit of work, he'd be able to establish a sanctuary for his supply of magical plants, but he did not dare dip into his precious stash of creature parts until he was certain he could use them safely, and even then he would save them for absolute emergencies.
Andi, at least, was still able to brew potions correctly, and as she'd passed her Potions N.E.W.T. with an Outstanding, Harry had complete confidence in her ability to manage their brewing supplies. If they worked together, they might even be able to reinvent potions with new ingredients. They weren't expert potioneers on Snape or even Slughorn's level, but they could manage, if they worked hard and smart enough.
The Masters of the Mystic Arts had potions of their own, but, as the Ancient One had intimated, they were very different from what Harry was used to. The Masters generally relied on a strange combination of mundane materials and magically captured sensory ingredients—the sound of someone's voice, the smell of a flower, the heat of a sunny day—to create their brews, and the potions themselves weren't usually used the way wizarding world potions were, except for the simplistic healing balm and its like.
Nothing is ever easy, Harry reflected as he put down Key of Solomon that evening. He was sitting at a communal study table in the darkened Kamar-Taj library, alone with his thoughts and the librarian, an amiable, older fellow from Pakistan named Khan who spent most of his time playing on his Gameboy at the reference desk. A glance at his watch told Harry it was ten past midnight, which explained the bleary feeling in his eyes and his building headache. His ointment-lathered fingers throbbed; he'd cracked bones punching a tree trunk today, and an exasperated Andromeda could only heal so much.
Before he could decide whether to keep going or call it a night, Harry was distracted by the sound of footsteps on the library's stone floor. Turning in his seat, he was surprised to see a round-faced Nepalese man a few years older than him dressed in white novice's robes perusing the stacks, several volumes already tucked under one arm.
"'Lo, Wong," Harry said, his voice hoarse with disuse.
Wong started in surprise. "Apprentice Potter," he said, his voice slightly gravelly, and inclined his head.
"Can't sleep?"
The older man hesitated before saying, "No. And neither, it seems, can you."
Harry offered a weak smile and shrugged. "Join the club, we've got jumpers."
Wong didn't laugh. As stern as his countenance suggested, Wong was not only humorless, but an utter stoic. He had arrived at Kamar-Taj not a week after Harry and his family, recruited by a troubled apprentice around Harry's age named Lucian Aster. Aster, for his part, refused to talk about his past, but Wong admitted to quitting a stable job at a Target store in Kathmandu to search for spiritual enlightenment and a purpose in life.
How miserable and aimless does one have to be, Harry had wondered when he first heard the story, to willingly abandon consistency and safety for a life of fighting monsters? Wong hadn't been groomed into an underage warrior, as far as he knew.
Harry recalled the miserable daze he'd lived in following Sirius's death, the contradicting desires to be alone and to have company. Knowing now how unhealthy it had been to isolate himself from his friends, he forced himself to speak through the lump in his throat. "Have a seat, if you want. We can be night owls together."
Wong studied him for a moment, then approached and sat opposite him, setting his books down with a thump. They stayed like that for an hour, reading, the only sounds the rustle of pages being turned, pens scratching notes, and Khan the librarian putting down his game to take a walk through the stacks. Eventually, Harry's exhaustion became too great to ignore. Once he realized he was reading the same sentence over and over, he decided to call it a night. He looked up and Wong had fallen asleep on his desk.
"Ennervate," Harry said with a wave of his hand.
Wong winced in place and groaned. "Ugh. Let me sleep."
"Not here, mate. You want to sleep? Find a bed."
"I hate you."
"Cheers."
The next morning, Harry sat in the center of the hard, cold stone courtyard outside his quarters, legs crossed, hands resting on the tops of his knees, trying to quiet his troubled mind by focusing on the mental image of a single candle's worth of flame. A common misconception held that meditation was defined by the absence of thought. In reality, to meditate was to clear one's head of emotion and focus on either a single thought, activity, or outside object. It helped organize the mind by stabilizing and clarifying thoughts, reducing stress and anxiety while promoting peace and self-awareness.
He'd first tried meditation as part of his disastrous Occlumency lessons with Snape, but he'd had no chance of actually learning anything at the time. On top of being a naturally emotional person with a tendency to brood, he'd been a traumatized, angry teenager operating under far too much pressure. He'd needed a particularly patient and helpful tutor. Instead, he'd been stuck with a pathetic excuse for a teacher who'd hated his guts.
Exceptional wizard and spy Severus Snape had been, but also a bitter, unrepentant arse who had no business teaching children. He was a lot like Aunt Petunia that way.
Dumbledore had tried to curb Snape's unprofessional behavior once he'd learned the full extent of how badly it was hampering students' education, but with limited success; Snape had bettered himself for the sake of ordinary students, but he refused to put aside his schoolboy grudge. Worse, he'd tormented Neville for not being the one Voldemort personally targeted, as if that somehow made him responsible for what happened to Lily.
Harry could not excuse that kind of hypocritical, childish spite in anyone, let alone in an educator. He owed his life and his final victory against Voldemort to Snape's spycraft, but there was too much animosity between them for Harry to feel anything for him other than reluctant, grudging respect for his accomplishments. He'd made a point of telling people the truth about Snape's loyalties after the war ended, but no more than that. Neville's view of the matter was even dimmer.
In an act of blatant hypocrisy, Snape had once condemned him for wearing his heart on his sleeve and claimed it made him weak. If Snape, obsessed with the past as he was, could compartmentalize well enough to hide his thoughts from Voldemort, then Harry could find peace in the face of his losses. And he had to; with the Phoenix Force bound to him, his mental balance was of utmost importance.
Thoughts of Snape led Harry's attention in a new direction. Dumbledore had been the one to bring Snape over to Harry's side of the war. From a strategic perspective, that had proven to be one of his greatest victories, given how invaluable an asset Snape had been. Unfortunately, that victory had come at the expense of the students of Hogwarts, just as Harry's safety had come at the expense of his childhood.
Harry understood why Dumbledore had done things the way he had, really he did, but understanding did not equate to forgiveness. Not completely, at any rate. He owed his life to Dumbledore's manipulations, but did that justify them? There wasn't a right answer. If Harry had lived with anyone who wasn't a blood relative, he'd have died before he ever reached Hogwarts. If he stopped returning to the Dursleys for even a single summer, he would not have had the option of returning to the world of the living after Voldemort struck him down in the Forbidden Forest. A neglectful, quietly cruel childhood had been the price for his survival to adulthood.
Surviving wasn't the same as living.
As for Remus, well… a werewolf living in arms reach of the Boy Who Lived risked Azkaban if he sneezed wrong, so he wasn't entirely responsible for his role in the mess. But he wasn't free from blame either.
Every adult in Harry's life had failed him in this regard. He knew Hagrid and Professor McGonagall had been there the night he was placed with the Dursleys. The entire arrangement, minus the details about the blood wards, was a matter of public record. Harry never hid how he felt about his relatives, not even from Draco bloody Malfoy, yet Dumbledore had sent him back there every summer regardless, all in the name of his long-term survival. Everything had been about Harry's long-term survival, whether he liked it or not, and he'd resented Dumbledore and Remus a long time for that.
Once he'd had time to think about it, though, the bulk of Harry's ire concerning his childhood had settled on the Ministry of Magic and Barty Crouch Senior. If Crouch had bothered to give Sirius a trial, Harry would never have gone to Privet Drive to begin with. Of course, if Sirius had been responsible and prioritized Harry's safety over his need for revenge, Crouch would never have gotten the opportunity to throw him in Azkaban in the first place, but it was harder to be angry with Sirius when Sirius's failure was acting too rashly, rather than doing nothing at all.
Regardless, what was done was done. Every parental figure Harry had ever had—Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were great, but they didn't count—had given their lives for a cause they believed in. He respected their dedication and their bravery, but that didn't stop a small, selfish part of him from wishing they hadn't. He never wanted anyone to die for him.
:::::
Carol Danvers wasn't sure what to expect when she saw her communicator light up with the special signal from Nick's pager. She'd told him to use it only in a potentially world-ending emergency, so she braced herself for the worst: a Kree invasion (as unlikely as that was), an Asgardian grudge match (even more unlikely, but not impossible given what loose cannons Odin's children were), a civil war among the Skrull refugees on Earth (she dearly hoped not), a Ravager raid (some clans were dumb enough to go after worlds under Aesir protection).
She was therefore very surprised to find Terran space as peaceful as it had been when she'd left it. The relay satellite she'd left in orbit to boost the signal from her pager was functioning normally. There were no signs of a recent space battle, nor could she detect any ships in orbit. Puzzled, she checked her communicator's screen for details on the location of the pager signal. It was coming from an object traveling along Interstate Ten through Louisiana.
So Nick wanted to meet clandestinely. Perhaps there was a problem with the Skrulls.
Nick and Carol had both agreed it would be unwise to reveal her existence to the wider world unless it was absolutely necessary, so she took care to shift her photonic energy output into a pattern that would prevent her from being detected by any radio telescopes and other sensors that might be trained on her approach lane. Once she was satisfied with her self-made cloak, she entered the upper atmosphere, deliberately shifting her entry vector so that she'd make planetfall on the outermost edge of New Orleans.
She wasn't worried about witnesses. Her top atmospheric speed, while orders of magnitude slower than her acceleration in hard vacuum, was too fast for the human eye to perceive, and the veil of cosmic energy suffusing her body to facilitate her flight had the handy side-effect of swallowing and muffling up her sonic boom. Worst case scenario, some lucky soul in a neighboring state would see her at the top of her descent and mistake her for a meteor.
In a fraction of a second, she went from the edge of the exosphere to the top of a forest canopy. She noted changes to New Orleans and the land around it as she approached the ground; the suburbs had expanded, and she could have sworn that the coastal wetlands had shrunken.
In the next fraction of a second, she decelerated to a soft, momentum-defying landing on the forest floor and shut off the glow of her powers. She retracted her helmet and strode through the shadows cast by the moss-laden trees. A minute or two later, she found the edge of the woods, and there sat a house with a wraparound porch; her favorite house in the world.
"Welcome back, Auntie," said a voice that was at once familiar and strange. "You're just in time for Christmas." A young woman, a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, got up from a swing bench hanging from the porch ceiling, set down her book, and sauntered down the back steps to the lawn. She was tall and slender, with dark brown skin just like her mother, dark eyes, and a short head of black hair that spun around itself in tight ringlets.
Carol smiled. "Well, look who's all grown up," she said brightly as she approached Monica Rambeau. Inwardly, she cursed the circumstances that had prevented her from being there to watch Monica's growth. She hadn't been there for the moment when her best friend's daughter outgrew the nickname "Lieutenant Trouble," and assumed the shape she wore today.
It's for a good cause, Carol told herself. She had to believe that, or she would never be able to live with herself. She'd searched tirelessly for a new home for the Skrulls, but thus far failed to find a suitable planet. It didn't help that she'd been sidetracked multiple times by flare-ups of conflict with the Kree and other interstellar powers. The scout team accompanying her on her travels professed to understand her ongoing failure, but she knew their patience had to be wearing thin. She needed to do better. After she finished with whatever Nick wanted from her. Assuming it's worth the effort.
If Nick had called her over nothing, she'd tell him exactly where he could shove it.
Monica's embrace pulled Carol out of her dark thoughts.
"It's good to see you, Monica," Carol said, returning the hug. "How have you been?"
They meandered back to the house, catching each other up on what they'd been up to since they'd last seen each other. It had been three years since Carol's last visit, but it seemed that little had changed, save Monica herself. With college on the horizon, Monica had decided she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and become an airwoman, and she had already made inquiries into the process of joining ROTC. Her high grades and steely nerve had impressed the recruiters she'd spoken with, and Maria was supportive, despite clearly disliking the idea of her only daughter risking herself in such a dangerous career.
One odd thing had happened, though. A month ago, the auroras of both poles had flared wildly and unnaturally, showing themselves in latitudes where they normally never appeared and shining brilliant, deep gold for several hours. The energy surges that accompanied the strange phenomenon had disrupted electronics worldwide, though there had thankfully been no deaths. No cause for the so-called Golden Storm was ever pinpointed, which had led to wild speculation about secret government weapons programs, solar activity, and aliens.
The back of Carol's neck began to prickle. "Did any of the Skrulls know what was going on?" she asked.
Monica shrugged. "Don't know yet. I haven't seen any of them since before the light show."
"Not even Talos and his family?"
"They moved up to New York last year for work. Gi'ah wanted to stay, but Soren wouldn't let her."
Carol was disturbed. Her homeworld was changing, as all things bound by linear time did, and she was missing out, just as she'd missed out during her years as an amnesiac Kree super soldier. She wished she could stay here for a while, fully reconnect with her roots, but she couldn't. Duty called. It was pure dumb luck that the call had brought her back here.
An hour later, Carol, sitting at the breakfast table with Monica, a hot latte in her hands, heard a car pull up to the driveway. A few minutes after that, Carol was joined at the table by Nick Fury and Maria Rambeau. A warm family reunion, it was not. They'd been brought together by necessity, not choice. The talk was all business, and the business was, as Carol anticipated, the Golden Storm.
"Talos said he doesn't know of any weapon, Kree or otherwise, that could have caused it, and I believe him," said Nick over his black coffee. "But I still want your perspective."
Carol fixed him with a look. "You called me from the other side of the galaxy for my perspective?"
"Something lit up the poles and disrupted every electronic device on the planet simultaneously," Nick said testily. "I can't just ignore that, not when all the evidence says it wasn't a natural event."
Point. "Honestly, there isn't a lot I can tell you," Carol admitted. "I don't know of any weapon or force that could have caused an event like that, unless some cosmic entity decided to play a prank."
"Cosmic entities?" Maria said, clearly dubious.
Carol nodded. "Yeah, those are a thing. Most of them only exist in myths and legends, but a few are real, known quantities."
A vein pulsed in Nick's neck. "Go on."
As Carol began to speak, she wondered whether she was making a mistake in speaking up at all. Nick was a good guy in many ways, sincerely dedicated to protecting the world from anything that might threaten it, including itself. He didn't have a self-interested bone in his body. Unfortunately, as the old saying went, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. Nick Fury, for all his good intentions, was a paranoid control freak willing to go to extremes to achieve his goals.
Carol knew he genuinely sympathized with the Skrull refugees, but she also knew he had no qualms about taking advantage of their status to further his own goals by employing them as spies. In telling him the little she knew about cosmic entities like the Celestials and the Phoenix Force, she was giving him yet another threat to obsessively prepare for.
Civilizations thousands of years ahead of Earth had tried to meddle with such entities, either to control them or destroy them, and failed every time. She'd never met a Celestial, but she'd seen what they did to those who provoked their wrath. It wasn't pretty, and she said as much. Cosmic entities weren't superbeings like her; they were more like forces of nature. Dangerous. Awe-inspiring.
Unstoppable.
If Nick didn't take her warnings seriously, he might resort to even more extreme risks in the name of global security. Like messing with the Tesseract, which Carol was fairly certain contained an Infinity Stone.
Too late to turn back now, she thought resignedly.
When she finished, Nick visibly stamped down his alarm, no doubt to confront it at a later date, and began to tell her about the Avengers Initiative. Before he was done, Carol realized another alarming truth: Nick Fury, bless his heart, was utterly nuts.
:::::
Eight months after his arrival at Kamar-Taj, Harry had crossed three major milestones. First: he'd found reliable ways to adapt any spell from his old world to his new, Phoenix-infused magic, regulate the degree to which Phoenix Fire affected his spellwork, and even recombine the methodologies he grew up learning with those of Kamar-Taj and other organizations in his new reality.
In addition to relearning powers native to his old reality, Harry worked on replicating the various powers developed by the Masters of the Mystic Arts. He learned to feel the fractal planes of the Mirror Dimension, omnipresent reflections of the real world that he could reach for and summon to create gateways. He also learned to warp reality within the Mirror Dimension into geometric patterns, folding or expanding space and matter to twist landscapes into mind-bending designs of his choosing. Most sorcerers could only do this on a limited scale, but Harry's access to Phoenix Fire allowed him to perform manipulations as grand as the Ancient One's Dark Dimension-fueled magic.
It still wasn't easy—every incantation from his old world took on new, deeper, more diverse meanings beyond those the spell creators had intended, which meant that they could each produce different or amplified effects. Furthermore, he had multiple options for aiming them. He could hurl spells as bolts of energy that took effect on impact, like arrows, or he could affect targets remotely by combining incantations with his telekinetic grip. The former was faster and easier to aim, while the latter offered more control upon contact, rendering offensive spells virtually unblockable once cast. Alternatively, he could send out his spells as diffusing waves, sacrificing precision and range for reliable coverage of his immediate vicinity.
On the one hand, this increased his spell flexibility significantly. On the other hand, it took three times the work to truly master so many different expressions of magic. Between that, physical conditioning, studying arcane lore, and familiarizing himself with the geopolitical and historical landscape of his new reality, Harry barely had time to eat and sleep, let alone help Andromeda take care of Teddy.
Christmas was a miserable affair, at the end of which he and Andromeda had vented their grief and anger by throwing fireballs and the worst curses she knew at an army of Death Eater-shaped target dummies. A few weeks after that, Harry mastered an incantation that replicated the properties of a sling ring, allowing him to open interdimensional portals at will.
Once he had that trick down, he was able to travel freely in and out of the Mirror Dimension without the Ancient One's supervision, a privilege he took full advantage of to practice his spells. He experimented with astral projection, physical aptitude augmentation, healing, and spell-assisted martial arts. He found that while couldn't directly channel the powers of extradimensional beings the way normal Kamar-Taj sorcerers did, he was able to replicate the effects of such invocations with varying degrees of success. He also learned to fly by telekinetically suspending himself in the air.
Take that, Riddle.
Harry's second milestone was not a leap in progress toward mastery of magic and the Phoenix Force, but a crucial decision regarding his long-term living conditions. Kamar-Taj had housed him and his family generously, but it was ultimately a hall of learning, and a martial one at that. It wasn't a suitable place to raise a child or make a regular life.
Thus, Andromeda had decided to move back to England, though not to her original home in Suffolk, but instead to the West Country, where Harry had been born. It was hard calling any part of the United Kingdom home when it was, in fact, a mirror image of Harry's true place of origin, but referencing the semantics of it all even in his head was too much of a headache.
Harry, for his part, had decided to keep living at Kamar-Taj for the foreseeable future, but he also planned to construct a series of safehouses around the world. He'd start with a simple cottage in Scotland, a practice run of sorts, and go from there. He knew it was paranoid of him to preemptively prepare bolt holes when he already had a safe space in Kamar-Taj, but he also knew that his safety was something of an illusion. If the Masters of the Mystic Arts decided that the Ancient One was wrong about the wisdom of training him, he'd need every advantage he could get.
That brought Harry to his third milestone: interpersonal relationships. He knew better than to think that he'd ever have anyone like Ron and Hermione in his life again, but he couldn't afford to become a complete shut-in. Thus, he'd allowed himself to bond with Wong, the only student who seemed to work as hard as he did, and developed a rapport with many of the senior masters, including the Sanctum Masters and the Ancient One's Second, Karl Mordo.
Out of everyone he'd met at Kamar-Taj, Harry found Mordo the most interesting. Mordo had a troubled past and, perhaps as a result, rather rigid ideas about what constituted appropriate use of magic. He was less concerned with dark magic, though, and more with the consequences of meddling with the higher mysteries, such as time and the soul, which Harry understood and could even respect. They'd broken the ice between them over the subject of Voldemort's Horcruxes, trading over drinks all of the philosophical, practical, and logical arguments they had for why the objects had been such a terrible idea as well as insults to Voldemort's name. It had been terribly therapeutic.
Unfortunately, Mordo's devotion to upholding natural law led to a flexibility problem. He couldn't seem to decide how he felt about Harry's status as a Phoenix host, whether he approved or disapproved of training and sheltering him. The Phoenix Force was supposed to be a reality-warping entity that primarily expressed its power through psionics. It had never in living memory bonded with a magic-wielding host, which was why mastering it was so complicated. According to all conventional wisdom, Harry was an aberration, an anomalous knot in the weave. Mordo didn't like that and had made no secret of his opinion.
Given his own limited knowledge and inexperience in interdimensional or cosmic matters, as well as what he'd learned about the Dark Phoenix, Harry couldn't say Mordo's reservations were unjustified. Even so, Mordo understood that he was a person and made an effort to treat him like one. Harry could not say the same about Master Kaecilius, who seemed to see the Phoenix and nothing else.
A widower from Denmark who claimed to have come to Kamar-Taj in hopes of finding meaning in the loss of his wife and child, Kaecilius was eerily proud and remorselessly aggressive. He'd been on an extended assignment in the Amazon jungle when Harry first arrived at the compound. In the weeks since his return, he'd taken an unnerving interest in Harry's development, insisting on serving as his martial arts instructor whenever possible and putting him through his paces with such punishing exactitude that their sparring matches felt more like fights to the death than training exercises.
Like right now.
Harry swept his left hand upward, silently casting a Shield Charm. The jet of orange light from Kaecilius splashed against it with a burst of sparks, causing the invisible barrier to ripple with fiery gold light. The pressure of the curse, whatever it was, forced Harry to take half a step back and brace himself with one foot, but he managed to flick his other hand in Kaecilius's direction.
The gesture caused a section of cobblestone courtyard several meters in front of him to explode unnaturally in a single direction, spraying Kaecilius with pebbles and dirt.
He blocked the rain of debris with a shield of concentric mandalas, which then burst in a flare of arcane sigils that turned the largest chunks into snarling black panthers. The big cats, five in total, fanned out in a pack formation that betrayed their artificial nature—real leopards were solitary hunters—while Kaecilius backed away with new mandalas in hand.
With another flick of his right hand, Harry unleashed a Multi-Point Stunning Hex, each jet of fiery light erupting from a different finger. One of them struck a panther and knocked it out, but Kaecilius avoided the rest by diving sideways through a portal he opened to his left. The panther pack likewise leaped aside with unnatural speed and closed in.
Harry apparated to the spot Kaecilius had vacated, just in time to see the patch of cobblestone he'd been standing on explode in a fountain of superheated rock. If that curse had hit home, he'd have lost his leg.
Merlin's pants, Harry thought. This is sparring, not a death match! He sent forth a bloom of fire, not hot enough to cause lethal damage, but enough to keep Kaecilius in the infirmary for the next week. Knowing Kaecilius would not be pinned for long by such a simple attack, Harry immediately flicked his fingers, switching from fire to a powerful Curse of the Bogies. The curse, concealed by the flames, shattered Kaecilius's mandala shield, but dissipated in the process.
Harry was prevented from following through by the panther pack, which leaped at him with their claws extended. With a thought, he slammed them straight down into the ground with bone-snapping force.
Kaecilius used the distraction to conjure a miniature blizzard, which Harry initially blocked with a Shield Charm. As ice began to build up along the hazy barrier, he shoved out with his will and twisted, fashioning the mass of snow-laden wind into a white tornado that he hurled toward Kaecilius.
Harry expected the older man to blast through the thing with brute force and prepared to open a portal to redirect the counter, whatever form it took, hoping to distract Kaecilius and leave him open to a flank attack. Instead, Kaecilius transfigured the ice tornado into a barrage of finger-length ice shards, each sharper than a sewing needle, that flew at Harry with blistering speed.
Aggressive.
If Harry wanted Kaecilius dead, he'd have simply powered through the ice shards with a large fire blast that would have kept going until it incinerated the other man. Kaecilius probably expected him to do that. Instead, he transfigured them into bubbles and slashed at the air with two fingers. The gesture left an arc of flames in its wake that rushed toward Kaecilius's legs, forcing him to leap straight up. From midair, Kaecilius used another mandala to block Harry's follow-up hex, then conjured a swarm of pursuing black swords and spears.
Harry tried to redirect them with telekinesis, but found, to his surprise, that his mental feelers slipped off them as if he were trying to grasp a flobberworm with hands covered in grease. Kaecilius had conjured objects imbued with anti-psionic properties in the heat of combat using nothing more than standard eldritch ichor—Harry would have sensed it if he borrowed extradimensional power to enhance the spell—an understated but extremely impressive feat.
And very unfortunate. Were it not for the reflexes drilled into him by thousands of hours of training and lived experience, Harry would have failed to react in time and become the world's largest hedgehog. As it was, he barely managed to catch the swarm of weapons with a Momentum Reversal Hex that burst from his open palm like a grenade blast. They froze in midair for a fraction of a second, then flew hilts-first back the way they'd come.
Kaecilius opened a gateway in their path, but Harry had expected that and opened a gateway of his own, predicting the correct position to place it by watching Kaecilius's gaze. A few meters to his right, the swarm of bladed weapons emerged from Kaecilius's portal and vanished into his own, which spat them out towards their conjurer's right side.
To his credit, Kaecilius reacted to Harry's trick without missing a beat, stopping the conjured weapons before they could touch him with a mandala shield from his right hand while the left projected another that he hurled like a buzzsaw.
Channeling a Finite spell through his fingers, Harry chopped at the mandala, shattering it into harmless sparks. He was raising his other hand to let loose a Full Body Bind Curse when the Ancient One's voice called out "Stop."
Both men froze. Harry glanced at the Ancient One without moving his head. Her face was deceptively impassive, but there was a coldness in her eyes that matched her somber black robes.
"Master Kaecilius," she said, her voice harder than Harry had ever heard it. "Restrain yourself. My ability to undo any permanent damage through the Eye of Agamotto does not give you the license to use lethal force in a training exercise, particularly without the consent of your sparring partner."
Kaecilius didn't look remotely abashed. "Ancient One, with all due respect, I believe that the Phoenix Host must be pushed to his limits and beyond if he is to do… whatever he is meant to do. Coddling him will only harm him in the long run."
"Coddling?" Harry said, more confused than upset.
The look he got from the other man was all contempt. "You are talented, Phoenix Host, but you lack discipline. If you are to succeed, you must push yourself to the breaking point, as I have done. Instead, you seek the easy way out. You are weak!"
A memory flashed through Harry's mind. A different man, a different context, but the same accusation, and from someone who didn't even have the excuse of "teaching" him for nearly five years. He knew Kaecilius was deliberately goading him, but at that moment, he didn't care. With a complicated sequence of finger gestures, he summoned the Mirror Dimension, pulling himself, the Ancient One, and Kaecilius into it.
"You think I'm weak, Master Kaecilius?" Harry said, his voice deadly calm. "You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but you seem to think that my restraint is a bad thing. Would you rather I cut loose with the full power of the Phoenix Force and reduce everything around me to atoms?"
"It is your right, Host." Kaecilius never used Harry's name, always referring to him as some variant of his title. "And one day, it will be your responsibility. Yet you hesitate to seize that power for yourself. Your fear will get people killed."
How many times had Harry heard the refrain? Hesitation gets people killed. Power means nothing if you don't use it. Such platitudes, though grounded in sound logic, were the mantras of cowards. Weak people who thought themselves strong always looked for excuses to destroy threats, real or imagined, only to plead for leniency and restraint when they found themselves at the mercy of greater powers.
Kaecilius earnestly believed some of what he was saying, but there was a calculation in his eyes that said he knew his accusations were baseless. He wanted Harry to cut loose. Why? Surely the man didn't want him to become a Dark Phoenix?
No, Harry realized with chagrin. He wants me to show that I'm at high risk of becoming a Dark Phoenix. Then he'd have justification to call for me to be killed. That, or he's genuinely stupid enough to think the best use of my power is conquest.
Stupid people didn't get very far at institutions like Kamar-Taj. Then again, intelligence and wisdom weren't the same thing.
Harry glanced at the Ancient One, who offered the tiniest shrug but said nothing. He was on his own, then. Two steps from chaos. "You want me to show you my power, Kaecilius? Fine. Here it is." He brought his hands together and unleashed a column of brilliant yellow flames a full meter thick.
Kaecilius had no time to redirect the attack with a portal; the flames rushed toward him with such ferocious speed that he barely managed to form a mandala between them and his body. The flames sprayed out and around the shield, instantly reducing the cobblestones before it to blackened, half-melted lumps.
As much as Harry disliked the man, Kaecilius was right about one thing: he was afraid of his power.
Very, very afraid.
That's all for now, folks.