The next morning brought an unpleasant surprise to Harry.

"Good morning, Harry!" spoke an unwelcome cheery voice.

Harry looked up to at the dining room table, to see Gilderoy Lockhart sitting next to a bemused Albus.

"I thought I had another week before we were going to meet" replied an annoyed Harry as he sat down to breakfast.

Gilderoy dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin, taking care not to get any food on his lilac silken robes. Once complete, he shot a dazzling white smile at Harry as he responded.

"Indeed, that was the plan, but your recent birthday made me realize that now was the time to strike. I believe I have deduced your primary problem, and how to improve your image with the… sigh… minimum of effort."

Harry's eyebrows rose in surprise, as he noticed Albus leaning forward in interest.

"I'm going to ignore the fact that you just said the word 'sigh' instead of sighing. You really have a plan?"

"Oh yes! Though… are you sure about this whole 'minimum effort' thing? A quick six-month book tour would do wonders. I could set it up with just a few…"

"No!" Harry interrupted Gilderoy. "No book tours… I don't even have any books to tour with."

Gilderoy's smile faded to slightly radiant. "What about the Boy Who Lived books? Everyone knows you get a cut of the profits from their sale."

"What!? No, I don't!"

Albus cleared his throat at this point. "We really should discuss your finances at some point, Harry. Perhaps once we are alone. For now, I can assure you that you are receiving a portion of the profits from that series of books."

Harry looked at Albus, eyes full of shock. "You mean… are you responsible for those… you… what!?"

Albus sighed. "I assure you Harry, I would much rather if those books had never come into existence. When the first book was published, I immediately tried to get them removed from the shelves and stop all future printings. Unfortunately, my detractors were not interested in helping me, and my supporters were too busy buying the books."

Harry groaned, as that seemed about right for the small slice of the magical world he had seen. "Aren't there laws or something that can stop people from writing false stories about me?"

Albus shrugged. "Not really. It's more of a case by case basis, which itself is based on the mood of the Wizengamot or Minister. As for journalistic ethics, that is a concept that has yet to be embraced in the magical world. Of course, the tabloids of the non-magical world make me question how fully those ethics have been embraced anywhere when it comes to celebrities. You can challenge people to duels I suppose, but those aren't really binding and tend to make you look like a violent bully. So, I did the best I could with a bad situation and ensured you at least profited from the use of your name."

Gilderoy spoke up with an impressed tone. "You're why Harry gets a full half of the profits?"

Harry looked at Gilderoy with confusion. "How do you know how much I get?"

"It's written at the bottom of the cover of each book. I hear that helped to boost sales, because people could say they were buying it as a small way of thanking you. It helps that they're pretty good reads, even if aimed at children as an audience. Still, Albus, how did you get half of the profits?"

Albus looked down at his incomplete breakfast, evasively. "I simply pointed out that it was in their best interest to give Harry a more sizable portion than they initially considered."

Harry smiled slightly at that response. "Is that all you did?"

"Well… one could say I was a touch aggressive in my argument and went a pinch too far with my showmanship."

Harry's smile turned into a grin. "Would you mind recreating your argument for me?"

Albus lifted his eyes in resignation, and huffed. He raised and twirled his wand. The table shimmered as a shield covered the food and the table slid away to the wall. Five lamps and a dozen candles were conjured on freshly conjured tables. With another flick of the wand, the candles ignited.

"Keep in mind, Harry, there was a bit of back and forth between the publisher, Samuel, and I. He liked the idea of claiming that you were getting a portion of the proceeds, but initially he was thinking of just 1%. My calm arguments got me nowhere, so this part of the argument only came as a final negotiation technique. I do not recommend using this as an opening salvo in your future negotiations."

"Understood. Now, show me."

Albus sighed, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. When his eyes opened, they no longer displayed any of his normal kindness or warmth. Instead, his expression made Harry thinking of barely restrained deadly violence. His blue eyes gave the impression of crashing into a mountain of ice. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that streaks of lightning were sparking across the surface of those eyes.

"So" spoke Albus. His voice was quiet, and yet it felt it like it was coming from every direction. "You refuse to give young Harry his rightful due?"

An invisible wind started to swirl around Albus, billowing his robes dramatically as the air around Harry started feel heavier.

"After everything that boy has gone through… after everything he has lost… after everything you owe him… you are going to sit there and tell me that you are willing to steal from him? Steal his name for your own use and give him an insultingly small amount of compensation!?"

The lightning in Albus's eyes became more pronounced, as streaks of electricity coursed between his fingers.

"You know, Samuel, the only type of person I could imagine willing to steal from young Harry is someone who hates that he was responsible for the downfall of Voldemort. Or perhaps someone who has just fallen completely to the Dark. I believe you know how I feel about both Voldemort's followers and Dark Wizards in general, Samuel…"

The flames in the candles roared as they grew to a height of five feet.

"I apologize. I rarely loose control of my magic like this. But I am finding myself slightly angered."

The air speed around Albus doubled. The air around Harry began squeeze in tightly from all sides, as he felt his body unable to move and he labored to breath against the squeezing of his chest.

"I know that there is nothing I can do to legally stop you Samuel. Still, you can choose to do the right thing and give Harry half of the profits. You can show you understand how much you owe him. However, if you go forward with this madness, I will make sure every citizen of this country knows that you are stealing from a young boy, to whom they all owe their lives. I am sure many who have lost family and friends in the war will be less than pleased with you. To ensure they know how to avoid you so they aren't tempted to do something silly like amass into a violent mob, I will let them know your name, physical description, home address, work address, and regular routes you take. I will of course have to avoid running into you personally, because the idea of you treating Harry like that just makes me feel so…"

The five lamps exploded.

Albus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The electricity effects disappeared, the wind disappeared, the pressure on Harry disappeared. The candles went out, and then disappeared along with the tables and lamp shards.

Albus opened his eyes, and they were once again filled with warmth and kindness. With a wave of his wand, the table was moved back to its original position, the shield disappearing.

"It went a bit like that. Happily, Samuel was moved by my argument."

Harry looked at Albus, feeling a mixture of surprise, respect, and warmth. "Would you have really set a mob on him?"

Albus smirked. "An idle threat helps no one, Harry."

Harry smiled and then looked to his side. "Where is Gilderoy?"

"I believe he had to return to his hotel to change his robes."

Harry chuckled.

A little less than an hour later, Gilderoy returned wearing a set of fresh lavender robes. Harry, having had some breakfast, felt much more ready to handle some time with the man.

"Well…" spoke Gilderoy as he took a seat in one of the chairs of the sitting room. "Now that we know that book tour is off the table, and that Albus can be… terrifying, how about we discuss what is the core of your problem?"

Harry nodded.

"Right, your problem is that you refuse to be in your box."

Harry stared at the smiling Gilderoy, then at Albus to confirm that the older man was equally confused. Thankfully, Albus did not look enlightened.

"I'm going to need a bit more than that."

Gilderoy chuckled. "Right, of course. You see, every person is a unique individual with their own beliefs, drives, complex reasons for their actions, and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. However, people just don't have the time or desire to understand all of that for other people except for perhaps the one closest to them. As such, we all come up with a short description for a person and then put them into a box or two in our minds so we can quickly know what to think of them."

Gilderoy pointed to Albus. "Albus, for example, would be 'grandfatherly eccentric Merlin' and placed in the 'Do not push too far' and 'definitely Light' boxes. As an important note, Albus earned that description honestly though his power, decades of teaching, and fighting against two Dark Lords."

He then pointed to himself. "I, as you can guess, have worked hard to force people to put me in the boxes of my choosing. That being the 'handsome heroic author' and 'definitely Light' boxes. Obviously, I knew that was built on a foundation of lies, so I came up with a backup description for people to use. By acting overly foppish, people who suspect me of lying are going to think of me as a 'harmless pretty boy fraud' and they are unlikely to care enough to dig deeper to find the third real box that Albus discovered."

Harry looked at Gilderoy with a sense of shock. "You planned for the case of being thought of as a liar?"

Gilderoy smiled proudly with a deep chuckle. "I am the son of a muggle father and a witch mother who became one of the most famous authors in a world full of blood bigots while earning, from said bigots, prestigious awards based on nothing. That was not an accident. I knew that most men were going to dislike me for drawing the attention of the women in their lives, so I needed to give them a false lead to make them feel happy that they had found my 'secret shame'. Once people have you assigned to a box, they will do most of the hard work for you. If they learn anything new about you, they will accept everything that affirms their beliefs and reject that which denies their beliefs, so it will take quite a bit of evidence for them to bother moving you into a new mental box."

Gilderoy then looked at Harry intently. "Which brings me to you. I had to really work hard to ignore the box I had for you, and that's how I figured out the problem. If you were not the Boy Who Lived and you hadn't spoken to that snake, and I was forced to describe you, you would be that 'antisocial Quidditch player showoff' kid. After you spoke to that snake, you would also be put into the 'probably Dark' box."

Harry's expression twisted in anger. "I'm not any of those! Well, I play Quidditch, but I'm not a… Dark antisocial showoff!"

Gilderoy put up his hands placatingly. "Of course, you aren't, Harry! Of course, you aren't. The boxes we are put in can oftentimes be unfair. I got the antisocial part from the fact that you seemed to have barely any friends at school, and this was before the whole Chamber opening thingy. I got the showoff part from you flying a car to school instead of taking the Express. Perhaps you had a good reason for it, but you didn't share that with the rest of the school. As for being probably Dark, people tend to think of the two most famous Parselmouth wizards in history, and they are known for being quite Dark. Of course, those are bad boxes to be in, but it's even worse for you."

Harry ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "How can it be worse?"

"Most people come into the world as blank slates. Albus and I got our boxes over time. You, however, got placed in boxes when you were a toddler. When you defeated You Know Who, you were placed into two boxes. You were placed in the 'next Merlin' and 'definitely Light' boxes. Those Boy Who Lived books certainly helped to solidify your placement. So, when you arrived back in our world and your demonstrated boxes didn't mesh with your expected boxes, people started to feel betrayed by you and even a bit attacked. That sort of conflict between expectation and reality is likely to cause huge swings of public opinion as every little thing you do becomes an exaggerated example proving or disproving their expectations."

Harry let out a yell of frustration. "It always comes back to that damn night! I didn't do anything to defeat him! it was just some weird quirk of magic."

Gilderoy chuckled, and then raised his hands again at Harry's glare. "I'm sorry about laughing, Harry. It's just, you are not the first person who I have heard say something like that. There's occasionally someone who mentions that it was just luck, or something your parents did, and they immediately get yelled down and kicked out whatever tavern they have gotten drunk and decided to air such an unpopular opinion. People hate the idea of it being a 'quirk of magic', because if someone like You Know Who can be killed by… bad luck, then what hope does the normal witch or wizard have? People hate the idea of it being something your parents did, because it makes them feel like they failed their deceased family members by not doing whatever your parents did. People need a Dark Lord like You Know Who to have been defeated by a hero, and they prefer the hero to be alive, which makes you the 'next Merlin'. And if you're going to be the 'next Merlin', then you need to be 'definitely Light' because no one wants a Dark Merlin. On the bright side, knowing these boxes exist, you can use them to solve your problems."

Harry, despite his annoyance, leaned forward in curiosity. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Albus's expression change from thoughtful to avidly interested.

Gilderoy smiled with pride. "As luck would have it, when people discover you are Albus's apprentice, they will view that as proof of you working towards fulfilling your role as 'next Merlin'. If you manage to pull off some spectacular magic in the future, that will cement your place in that box. Albus also helps to tentatively put you in the 'definitely Light' box. To cement your place in that box is what will take a small amount of work."

"And what is that 'small' amount of work?"

Gilderoy pulled out several pieces of parchment. "We create a post box for you to receive fan mail. We send an open letter to the major newspapers in the countries that care about the Boy Who Lived. You just explain that you are Albus's apprentice, how you appreciate the kind welcome you have received since your return to the magical world, and that you can be contacted at your new post box which you will try to check as often as your world travels and training will allow you. Then you send thank you letters to people who write to you. Later, we can come up with extra things for you to do to solidify you as a Light Wizard. Of course, you'll want to have Albus check the letters for potions and curses and what not. I have all the forms you need for me to get things started. If we finish early enough, it will run tomorrow."

Harry looked at Gilderoy, aghast. "You said people think I'm showoff. How is that supposed to help?"

Gilderoy shrugged. "You're famous, people are going to sometimes think you're a showoff. The Boy Who Lived can't stop being famous, so you'll be better off just accepting that. By connecting with the common man, you at least show yourself to be humble. People want to believe you are Light, Harry, so just give them some reasons to be happy with their beliefs."

After a side conversation with Albus and further refinement of the plan, Harry reluctantly agreed and helped to write his letter to the Magical World.

Harry took an extra long shower that night, as he felt incredibly dirty. He just hoped that he wasn't making a huge mistake and that the next day would be better.

The next day was not better for Harry.

As he walked into the dining room, he saw Albus reading a letter with a very severe expression on his face.

"Is something wrong?" asked Harry as he sat down for breakfast.

Albus looked up at Harry as he placed the letter down. "Let's go for a walk in the garden, Harry."

"Can I eat breakfast first?"

Albus paused to consider the idea and shook his head slightly. "It's probably for the best that you don't."

Albus stood and began to walk out of the room, Harry following curiously.

Once in the garden, Albus conjured a chair in front of a marble bench that Harry often sat upon to enjoy the view. Albus sat on his conjured chair and then waved his hand toward the bench.

"Please, have a seat Harry."

Harry sat down on the bench, looking at Albus with a rising sense of nervousness. "What's wrong?"

Albus sighed. "I have just received several letters from various people at the British Ministry. This will be revealed in tomorrow's paper. At least Gilderoy managed to have your letter to the Magical World published today, so the story and your letter won't be printed together… that's a small mercy I suppose…"

"Albus, what has happened?"

"Sometime, over the past few days, Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. No one knows how he…"

Albus's voice faded away as the blood began to pound in Harry's ears. Of course, Sirius Black (the bastard who had made Harry into an orphan and then killed Peter which forced him to live with the Dursleys) had escaped! As he felt his anger increase, he barely noticed his magic flowing through his fingers into the bench.

He knew that things had been going too well. He had been having the best summer of his life, and he should have known that was the universe setting him up for a fall! GOD DAMN IT! He squeezed his fingers tight as he felt his magic pulsing wildly.

The man had killed his parents. The man had killed Peter Pettigrew, who could have been his caretaker. The man should be rotting in his cell but was instead running around free. Vaguely, he could hear Albus calling his name as his magic felt like it was pumping through his entire body into the bench. A sound of cracking filled the background behind the sound of his own heart's pounding.

No, the man didn't deserve to just rot in his cell. Albus's voice started to turn into a shout. Black deserved to be in a grave! The cracking grew louder and louder. Not only did Black deserve to be in his grave, Harry was going to… OUCH!

Harry's eyes regain their focus on his surroundings, trying to understand what had caused his pain. OUCH!

Harry looked down at Albus who was standing and pointing his wand up at Harry. Why was Albus below him?

"Harry! Cancel the spell, I'll catch you."

Harry looked at Albus in confusion. Looking around, he realized he was floating at least twenty feet in the air. Looking at the bench he was sitting on, he realized he was levitating the thing while he still sat upon it. But the levitation was not smooth, as the marble was cracking in every visible place. Many chunks of marble had already dislodged from the bench and were now floating around Harry's head and dozens of feet above him.

Harry looked inwards at his mind's bowling alley, what he visualized as being how he cast magic. It was chaos. Every lane had dozens of balls rolling down them, with some balls caught in place, other balls hitting the pins, other balls ricocheting off random balls and into different lanes, and some balls bouncing back and forth between the pins and the start of the lane.

With a deep breath, he pressed the universal cancelation button.

Gravity reasserted itself as Harry rushed to the ground. He felt his body jerk to the side as he was gently placed on the ground. The bench crashed and shattered, as the remaining chunks finished their falls and pinged against the broken remnants. Albus waved his wand and the bench reassembled into its original condition.

With the bench repaired, the shock of the moment faded, and Harry's rage erupted forth again. OUCH!

Harry looked up at Albus and shouted at the man. "Stop that!"

Albus's face was resolute. "If you don't like it, then dodge. Use your Hyper Jumps if you like but stay in the garden. I'll count to three silently between shots."

"I'm not in the mood for… OUCH! Stop that!"

"No. One, two, three."

"OUCH!"

Harry concentrated on his teleportation and appeared ten feet to his left and saw Albus's spell hit the ground where was he had been standing. He didn't have time to appreciate what he had done, as he saw Albus readjust his aim. He concentrated and teleported again. And again. And again. OUCH! And again.

On his sixteenth teleportation attempt, having dodged all but three of the stinging jinxes, nothing happened.

"OUCH! Stop! I can't teleport anymore. I don't have the power. OUCH!"

"You still have your feet, so dodge. I'm only going to count to one now."

Harry's eyes widened as he found himself jumping and running around the garden. When he felt he had the reserves for it, he would teleport. The ground becoming filled with small pock holes. As time pressed on, the number of jinxes connecting started to increase. After what felt like hours, but was only ten minutes, Harry collapsed in a heap on the grass, his body sore and completely drained.

Gasping, he managed to speak through ragged breaths. "Enough… can't... move… please…"

Albus sat down on the ground next to Harry's collapsed form, not even appearing slightly winded.

Harry closed his eyes as his breathing became less ragged.

"Why?" he asked Albus.

Albus sighed. "The short answer is, I was saving your life. Focus on your breathing and your Occlumency, let me know when you feel calm enough to listen to the long answer."

Harry breathed in deeply and focused upon the apartment where he stored his memories and emotional baggage. The room where he stored the emotions was a wreck, with the door blown off the hinges. Slowly, the room reformed and was fixed. He looked at his rage and visualized it as an out of control inferno. He breathed slowly as it cooled it to hardened figure of pure ice shaped like fire. He placed the ice figure on a shelf and closed the door.

Harry opened his eyes, looking up at Albus's serene face.

"I'm ready."

Albus nodded. "One way of thinking of magic is that you are standing in a dense jungle. The spells that you are taught are paths that others have beaten down over the years. You just learn to walk the path, and you will be taken to the expected destination. It's effective and safe, and… boring. Hogwarts teaches students how to walk those well-worn paths, and the more intelligent people will figure out fascinating ways to make the most of that safe magic. And yet, no matter how inventive, they will always be limited by their implicit refusal to step off the safe paths."

"What you have been doing this summer is learning how to make your own paths. It's a process of finding dead ends, pushing through thorn bushes, and possibly finding results that don't match what you hoped for. When I showed you how to cast the air bubble around your head, I was trying to show you that you could make your own path. However, making your own path requires you to become intimately connected to your magic in a way that most people don't bother attempting or even know is possible. That sort of intimacy with your magic is not something that I know how to teach, so I simply encouraged you to find the method that works for you. Your comfortable apparitions and wandless levitations were, in a way, a form of wooing your magic. As you intertwined with your magic, it intertwined with you, and that let you internalize how you can form your own paths. You have finally figured out how to start exploring the jungle of magic on your own. It's why you were able to so quickly invent your Hyper Jumping."

Harry looked at Albus with slight annoyance. "Please don't call my form of teleportation Hyper Jumping."

The corners of Albus's twitched upward. "Then come up with a better name. For now, I will call it what it looks like to someone who can see magic."

Harry huffed. "… fine. What does all that have to do with attacking me with stinging jinxes?"

Albus, apparently getting uncomfortable in his sitting position, laid down next to Harry so they both were looking up at all the clouds in the blue sky. "You have removed the distance between you and your magic. It allows for you to forge unique paths, but it has also removed the intrinsic safety the distance gave you. Normally, your magic can't harm you unless you intentionally try to make it hurt you. The worst you can do is magically exhaust yourself. Now though… do you remember why I told you not to experiment alone with your wand to recreate what we did when you cast that air bubble?"

Harry frowned in concentration. "Something about a feedback loop between me and the wand that can blow me up?"

"Close enough, as you forgot the part about you being liquified. Well effectively, you are now your own wand. I doubt you would explode, but your magic could cause you a great deal of harm if you lose control too badly. When it was distanced from you, it could go wild without concern. Now, you are so intertwined that when your magic goes wild, you go wild, and vice versa. In your case, your magic was feeding off your blinding rage and initially started to tear apart your bench. The magic was initially smoothly entering the bench to lift you into the sky, but then it started hitting the bench in explosions of power, from every part of your body that was touching the marble. It was impressive to see you use multiple castings of a benign spell to such destructive effect. I wouldn't have been concerned if you had been intentionally experimenting. Unfortunately, you were simply dumping your raging magic into the bench which was nearing its saturation point. Once the bench was destroyed, your magic would have turned inward."

Harry grimaced. "So, you made me dodge like that to… drain me?"

"Magically and physically, yes. Those reserves are also linked and may eventually become the same reserve over time."

"So, does that mean I can no longer feel angry, or else I will explode?"

Albus chuckled. "That would certainly make your puberty more complicated. Thankfully, no. You can feel all the extremes that the emotional spectrum can provide you with, both negative and positive. You just need to be mindful for when you feel like your emotions are taking control of your actions and vent your magic intentionally. Your occlumency practice will help you there. I find it helpful to set aside a room for the emotions that are overwhelming to be temporarily stored, so that I can make a hasty exit and find a place to cast energy intensive spells until I am no longer at risk of losing control."

Harry smiled slightly, as he lay next to Albus. The silence dragged on as he examined the cold fury in his heart. It was as Albus said, it no longer felt out of control. He was in control of himself, but it didn't change what was in his heart.

Silently, as if afraid to speak, Harry whispered. "I'm going to kill Black."

Harry heard Albus sigh sadly, though he did not turn his head to look into the eyes of the older man. He was sure they would be full of disappointment.

After another minute of silence, Albus made to sit up as he spoke. "If you are going to kill him, then you'll need to learn how to fight. You can expect more training like you just had dodging me today. First, we need to make sure you know how to not overload your wand with your new abilities."

Harry's eyes shot wide open as he sat up suddenly. "You're actually going to train me to kill him? You're not going to try to stop me?"

Albus stood and held out his hand to help Harry up. "I'm going to train you to fight. You will be learning both lethal and non-lethal spells and techniques. Of course, as you just discovered, non-lethal spells can be manipulated to lethal effect anyways. I was already planning to teach you to fight once the summer vacation came to an end, as you will be a powerful wizard someday and will need to be able to defend yourself accordingly from the inevitable challengers you will meet. I'm hoping if you confront Sirius, you will use the non-lethal options. As for trying to stop you… I'm not sure I could."

As Harry stood, he looked at Albus curiously. "Why not?"

"I am guessing it will take me at least a couple of months to replicate your Hyper Jumps. After that, it will probably take another couple of months to devise protections against it. Of course, I will also need to come up with ways to bypass those protections, as I do want your secret weapons to have secret weapons which have their own secret weapons. Optimistically, I might have a way of keeping you from Hyper Jumping within two months. Realistically, assuming I am not spending all my time on the subject, you are looking at six months where you can run from me at the drop of a hat. If I choose to stand in your way, then I suspect that you will find a reason in the next two to six months to go on your own."

Harry nodded slowly. "I hadn't thought about that."

Albus shrugged. "The past two years have taught me not to underestimate you when you set your eyes upon a goal. You would have thought of using the Hyper Jumps eventually. More importantly, I am not sure I have the right to try to stop you. After what Sirius did… still, let's hope he is captured soon so you don't have to choose if you will be going down non-lethal or lethal path. Let's get some breakfast in you, and then you can get your wand. While you're eating, I'll write a letter to Remus."