Chapter 3

Harry idly twirled his wand, an Ollivander's creation, through his fingers as he lay in a wonderfully comfortable chaise lounge and reflected upon the visit which had led to its procurement.


"Mister Potter, I had wondered if one day you would come to grace the floor of my shop." Ollivander spoke softly, and only after his other customer had left the premises. Harry's head cocked ever so slightly in puzzlement.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir."

"Of course. My name is Octavius Ollivander, my family and I have been the premier wandmakers in Britain for over two thousand years."

"Congratulations."

Ollivander laughed at the response. "Indeed, indeed. But you are not here to learn my history, young Potter. You are here for your wand, I imagine?"

"Yes sir." Harry felt nervous, knowing from Nibgit that the wand was the wizard's primary tool in the manipulation of magic.

"Well it is the wand that chooses the wizard Mister Potter, but after so many years of watching wands do so I think I have a pretty fair idea of which will choose any particular individual. If you would follow me?"

It was not long before Ollivander placed a wand into his hand and instructed him to give it a swish. Harry did so, and the wandmaker's robes caught fire at the hem. The older man displayed remarkable adroitness in putting out the flames before they could spread and waved off Harry's apologies.

"Mister Potter, I sell wands to young children who are about to go through puberty every year. I have been set on fire more times than I care to count, and this time was hardly worth mentioning. I'm sure worse will happen before we find you your wand, and if you apologize every time something happens we'll never finish." The older man smiled at the younger and handed him another wand, which Harry waved again. An explosion happened in the aisle to their right and Harry started another apology before halting himself and just handing the wand back with a laugh. Ollivander laughed with him before searching for another.

Forty minutes later, the store was in a state of disarray it had not been in prior to Harry's entering and Harry was starting to wonder if he would ever find a wand. Waiving the next wand he was handed, colored sparks shot from the wand end, and sputtered out moments later.

"Almost," Ollivander stated with a small bit of sadness. "It seems that you may have once been a fit for that particular wand, and perhaps one day changes will bring you back into line with it, but it will not work properly for you now." He motioned for Harry to put it back into its case and turned back to the shelves. Harry closed the lid of the case and then without a moment's hesitation slid the wand into his coat pocket.

Ollivander turned back moments later and handed another wand to the younger man.

Another half hour passed and Harry had yet to find a wand that fit. Harry was becoming frustrated, but the older man seemed delighted.

"You are turning into quite the tricky customer, Mister Potter. I have not had this much fun since young Neville Longbottom came into the shop five years ago!" Ollivander led Harry to another row whose shelves were less cluttered than those towards the front of the shop.

"Let us see how these wands respond to you, Mister Potter!"

The first wand he was handed produced a much stronger reaction than any other wand previously, and a whole shelf of wands was upended. Ollivander looked delighted.

"Wonderful! Just wonderful!" Harry just took the man's continuing eccentricities in stride.

Four more wands were tried before Ollivander handed another wand to him. It was black with hints of gold and had a handle made of what looked like bone. It was, Harry thought, certainly an impressive looking specimen.

When he gave the wand a swish a light so powerful he had to shut his eyes shot out of its tip. He felt the wand drawing something from himself and the light grew ever stronger. He heard Ollivander stumble in front of him and tried to drop the wand to turn out the light, but his hand seemed to not respond. Slowly, the brightness receded and Harry was once again able to open his eyes. He found Octavius staring back at him.

"It certainly seems, Mister Potter, that we can expect great things from you. The wand you are holding is one of the oldest in the shop, made by an ancestor of mine some eleven hundred years ago. It was an experimental wand with a core of phoenix feather. The interface between core and the ebony driftwood is enhanced with dragon blood. It will be quite temperamental at times. Remember that you must assert your mastership at all moments."

Harry swallowed involuntarily. "Thank you sir for the advice."

"Now," started Ollivander again with a small smile, "let us ring you up for two wands and call it a day."

Harry froze at being caught having slipped the other wand into his pocket.

"Of course, sir," he said with a smile and placed both wands up on the countertop. He paid the price without quibble and vowed to learn more about magic before trying to get a five finger discount at any other shop.


It was only two days since he had met with the goblins, and while he was somewhat confused as to the reason they had been so helpful, he was also extremely grateful for them having been so. The discussion he had had with Nibgit had been both enlightening and infuriating. That the Bartons had known about magic and hid from him his heritage had made him see red. But Harry had learned over the years to curb his instinctive reactions, and he held his fury in check for long enough to think about what he had found out.

Yes, the Bartons had lied to him, and caused him and incredible amount of pain, both physically and emotionally, but it would do Harry no good to go back to them and take revenge in his current state. Besides, the worst he could do would be incredibly unimaginative at the moment. Once he had control of the powers that magic was going to bring into his life – he would be able to serve un plat froid. The Bartons had currently won a stay of execution, as there were much more important things to focus on.

'Not that I will be leaving them alone forever,' he thought with a vicious grin.

Pulling himself from thoughts of the future he returned to his present situation and looked around the room. Harry had been stunned to learn that not only was he the owner of a manor house (and truly this was a manor) but that the manor had a library inside. Shelves lined the walls of the room floor to ceiling, broken only by doors to other rooms. Books filled the shelves nearly to capacity. Harry would have said that the number of books was uncountable, but a master listing on a pedestal in the center of the room informed him that there were 12,113 books in the library. That, of course, should have been plenty of books to sate his appetite for knowledge of the magical world, but due to the house having been unoccupied for fifteen years, there was a dearth of recent knowledge.

"Tilly?" Harry spoke aloud. A soft *pop* announced the arrival of the house elf and Harry both relived his amazement and again noted the subtle similarities it shared with the goblins of Gringotts.

"How can Tilly help Sir?" Harry smiled at the smaller creature.

"Hello Tilly, thank you for coming so promptly. I have spent a bit more time here than I had meant to and could murder a sandwich right now. Could you make me something small?" There had been a lot of information that Harry desperately wanted to look up when he finally got a moment to breathe, but the most necessary information in his view had been to look up the new creatures he was coming to meet and determine how to best interact with them.

He had been shocked to learn of House Elves place in society as virtual slaves, and he had made a conscious choice to treat the creatures with the respect he would a human butler. His first order to Tilly was that she was to come to him immediately with any concern she had and that she was to never punish herself of her own initiative. His second order was that Tilly was to never refer to him as Master, but as either Harry, or Sir, if she was uncomfortable with the less formal interaction.

Following his initial meeting with the tiny elf and exploration of the library Harry had asked that Tilly visit a magical bookshop and purchase some tomes on recent history and current events in the Wizarding world. Harry also had the elf pick up what issues of the Wizarding newspaper, The Daily Prophet, which she could. It was these that he had been reading prior to being caught up in thoughts.

"Of course Sir Harry!" the excitable elf rattled off before *popping* away. Harry shook his head with a chuckle at the giddy kipper and turned back to the newspapers littered in front of him.

A full half of the papers included some sort of plea for him to come forward and be re-united with the Wizarding world, but Harry was not inclined to do any favors for the world that lost him and consigned him to fourteen years of Hell. Sure, it was petty, but sometimes pettiness could serve a purpose. Harry did not want to get bogged down in public appearances and he certainly did not want to explain where he had been to anyone in the Wizarding world. He had no desire to be known here too as a criminal, not when, as it appeared, he actually had a positive reputation.

'No,' he thought, 'the Wizarding world is just going to have to satisfy itself with knowing I'm alive for now.'

Tilly returned with a light lunch of a couple sandwiches, cheese squares and lemonade. Harry thanked the elf again and enjoyed his lunch as Tilly returned to her other duties.


With a swish, flick, and two carefully intonated words the cup rose steadily into the air. Harry smiled at his success. It had not taken long to master the spell, but Harry returned each day to make sure that he could still cast it. Each day, as his confidence with the spell rose, so did the object with less trepidation. As Harry carefully lowered the teacup again to the table he reflected on magic and what he had learned thus far.

Magic, in a classical understanding, was all about power, focus and will. Of the three, power was the considered the most important factor, which Harry had found incredibly interesting. Brute force could seemingly get anyone far in the magical world.

The Wizarding focus on power was fascinating to Harry as it was believed to be the least influenced of the three pieces of magic by an individual's self-development. Power was seen as something you are born with, or something you are not. Focus and will, however, were things a developing wizard could improve, and a keen mind was much more highly prized than a sculpted body by magical practitioners.

This tidbit explained why the vast majority of the body types he had run across within the Wizarding world were either frail or slovenly. There were exceptions, but very few wizards he had met could be considered "fit." At most, there were those that qualified as "healthy."

Shaking his head to clear the irrelevant train of thought, Harry came back to the subject of magic itself.

Magic. It was widely thought to be divided into five categories of use. The most common of course were the Channeled Magics. This is what all muggles think of when they think of a practitioner shouting "Abracadabra!" and some explosion going off as preface to a bunny appearing. This type of magic is the most visible, and of course got the most applause. Most wizards sought to become users of primarily this discipline.

The levitation charm that Harry had just cast was an excellent example of Channeled Magic. It was even more appropriate to the name as it required a continued concentration, constantly channeling magic to keep the effect going. Many Channeled Magics did not have a channeling portion to them, and were "fire and forget" spells. Dueling hexes, for example, had that distinction.

The second most widely recognized and used category of magic was Potions. The art of potions took advantage of the natural magical properties of various items and combined them in a, hopefully, beneficial way to reach a result with more potency than any of the ingredients had alone. There were tens of thousands of recognized and cataloged Potions ingredients. Plants, animals, crystals and stones. All had some effect. Living matter held the most magic and generally made the best potions ingredients.

Potions held status as one of two magical arts that could be practiced by those with no inherent magic themselves. In fact, many modern day Potions masters were squibs as it was the only facet of magic with which they could fully interact. Magical practitioners of Potions had the option of moving forward into a related, but completely separate discipline of magic -

- Alchemy. Though recognized as a separate from Potions, Alchemy was similar in many ways. Both disciplines combined natural material in ways which augmented the magical effects of the materials combined. Alchemy did so not simply through the mundane forces of heat and commixture, but also through magic. An alchemist would not combine two plants in a water based solution to create an ingestible product, but instead magically separate the very essence of the plants and combine those to create an entirely new essence. Though alchemical ingredients could be much more potent than those in Potions, many were highly unstable. Alchemy was widely regarded as an incredibly tedious discipline; there were very few successful alchemists.

The fourth major category of magic was Runes. Next to potions, it was the oldest magical discipline. It was also a discipline that non-magical practitioners could interact with in a limited fashion. Inscribed runes still needed to be activated by a witch or wizard, but could be drawn by just about anyone. Runes drew their power not from the inscriber, but from free magic in the nearby area. A rune's longevity and power derived from its inscription materials. A rune inscribed with paint on paper would function, but neither paint nor paper could remain stable channeling large amounts of free magic. Most runic constructs relied on a "rune stone." This was most often a crystal of some sort, as crystalline structures were able to channel the most magics without breaking down the very material base in which the rune was carved.

Runes were most often seen in the magical world powering wards - powerful static defensive magics. Many old families found the most magically powerful sites on which to place their familial manors. These manors were often positioned above Ley Lines - currents of free magic that flowed through the Earth in highly concentrated paths. Rarely, Ley Lines crossed. On these sites runic constructs had nearly unlimited power to draw from. There were only two such sites known to exist in Britain. The wizarding school Hogwarts was built above one, the Ministry of Magic above another.

The final category of magic Harry considered as merely a catch-all for every other sort of magic not widely understood by wizards – Natural Talents. All creature magics fell under this category as did random gifts such as metamorph abilities. There were books covering hundreds of talents and creatures that displayed magical abilities. This category of magic unique in that a wizard was either born with an ability or they were not. Though the category was interesting to read about, as it covered such a wide swath of magic, Harry decided that it would not be terribly beneficial to him as he had displayed no talents he was aware of.

Though all the categories of magic were interesting to Harry, he found that it truly was best to start with the channeled magics, as they were the easiest to learn. 'The most visually rewarding too,' he thought as light emanated from his wand tip.


"I hope that you and Croaker have results, Amelia." The head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement bit back her natural response to her infuriating superior.

"Yes, Minister. Croaker here believes he -"

"Excuse me, Amelia, but I believe nothing. I have," a frail looking man with a near palpable aura of superiority cut in.

Amelia cursed the sexism rampant within the ministry of magic and the impossible egos of the men who ran most departments. She had advanced to be the head of the DMLE through her skill and efficiency and it peeved her when others did not show her the deference that they expected.

"Very well," she began with only a slight hesitation. "Mr. Croaker and his team have disclosed a way in which to layer ward breaking runes into fabric, such as clothing. He assures me that if we can get Sirius Black inside the property ward boundaries, he will be able to bring them down."

"Wonderful!" Fudge exclaimed. "Might I have your assurances in this, Croaker?"

"Absolutely, Minister," the frail man began. "You of course know that wards are not omni-directional defenses and are weak when attacked from within? This, of course, being a property of wards being layered from the back, so to speak."

Fudge nodded his head, though Amelia noted by his expression that it was not likely he had known so.

"What we have invented is a way in which an inert runic construct can be inscribed onto a specialized cloth, fashioned into clothing. Wards, by and large, do not exclude cloth from being brought onto a property due to the fact that all clothing would be rejected. However, there is not normally much risk in this as cloth is too weak to power runes of any significant power.

"We in the Department of Mysteries have developed a specialized spellcloth that is able to power runic constructs of the same quality as a base cubic crystalline structure." Fudge looked confused at this, but Croaker did not seem to notice and continued to lecture the two. "This of course is not the most efficient of runic structures, but it should be able to power runes powerful enough to bring down wards of any strength from inside the property boundaries."

"What I propose is that if Sirius Black has access to the Potter Property in question, that we dress him in the specialized clothing and have him walk onto the property. He will then activate the runic construct woven into the robes and the wards will come down. We will then re-apprehend Black and with any luck, be able to meet with Harry Potter."

"Well done Croaker. I knew that you'd be able to provide a solution. But how will we get Black to walk onto the property and activate the runic construct?" Fudge asked.

"Why Minister, a simple compulsion charm should be enough."

Amelia immediately warned, "Minister, I should remind you that using a compulsion charm to force Sirius Black, convict though he is, may be a disastrous legal move should it come to light."

"Bushwah, Amelia. Black has no power left now as a Lord since becoming a resident of Azkaban. And with no visitors in fourteen years, who will he complain to?"

"I do understand, Minister. I just want to be clear that this path of Croaker's is legally questionable at best, outright illegal at worst."

"Amelia," Croaker stated, "The plan is foolproof. Minister, we are ready to proceed at any point."


It was cold. It was always cold. The chill ran soul deep, something anyone who had never encountered a dementor could not imagine. The closest another could come would be to imagine that they were a clinically depressed inhabitant of Siberia. Sirius Black almost laughed. Almost.

It was not just the physical that the chill here sapped. It sucked away happiness and left only pain and sorrow. Inhabitants of the prison of Azkaban went insane. There was no stopping it. If you were there long enough, madness would consume your mind. Each inhabitant of Azkaban relived their worst memories in perpetuity.

Sirius Black had endured Azkaban for fourteen years, and had an unfair share of bad memories.

He grew up in the House of Black. Toujours Pur. Sirius disappointed his family at every turn. The eldest son, he would one day control the family estates and interests. Despite his parents' best efforts at indoctrination, Sirius found true friendship at Hogwarts with a blood traitor, a half-blood, and worst of all, a werewolf.

Now, one lie dead, one a traitor, and the last in seclusion. Sirius, too, was alone. Imprisoned for the crimes of the traitor. Imprisoned for fourteen long years, forced to relive his failures in perpetuity.

In his eagerness for vengeance, he had neglected his promises. Sirius had left his best mate's child in the care of another. Sirius had sworn to James Potter and to himself that he would love and raise Harry as his own should anything befall James. That promise lay shattered. Sirius did not know what had become of the child, now a teenager. It was his broken promise that caused the Lord Black to feel in some way that he deserved every moment of his punishment.

The clanking of prison doors brought him out of his reverie.

'Meal time already?' he thought absently. Timekeeping was difficult within a cell.

Knowing what was coming next, Sirius laid himself flat on the ground just as a red jet of light shot from a wand hole in the door and took his consciousness away from him.


Sirius came to with a suddenness that only ennervate could bring. Immediately he noticed that he was no longer in his cell at Azkaban. Ahead of him sat two male individuals. Sirius did not recognize either.

"Black." The heftier of the two men spoke confidently, inclining his head in greeting.

"You seem to have me at a disadvantage, Mister -" Sirius let the statement fade off, prompting for the individuals name.

"The name is not important. I am surprised to find you relatively sane, Mr. Black." The man grated on Sirius' nerves.

"It's Viscount Black to those from the Ministry," he shot back, wanting to cut out a bit of the man's bravado. The thinner of the two laughed, and Sirius bit back a snarl.

"Actually, I believe it's now Earl Black," the frail man managed between chuckles. Sirius immediately understood this to mean that his Great-Uncle Marius had passed away childless and that he was now the acting head of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, Magical Earl of Huntingdon. The man continued on, giving Sirius nary a moment to consider his new station. "And all I need from you, Sirius Black, is the answer to one question. Are you keyed into the wards established at Potter Manor by the goblins?"

Sirius, sensing that the man wanted the answer to be affirmative, decided in a fit of pique to not give him the satisfaction. Sneering, he spoke.

"Yes."

Shock flooded Sirius' face and he barely had time to realize they must have dosed him with a truth potion before he was once again hit by a red blast of magic and knew nothing more.


Harry was getting frustrated with magic. For a child to whom everything made sense in school, it was maddening to try to figure out why magic worked the way it did. It made no sense why one spell required a flick and another a swish. In fact, the movements of the wand themselves seemed randomly applied. Even the incantations were absurd. There must be some sort of sense to it all! He refused to believe that spells were merely about memorizing wand movements and silly Latin-based phrases.

With a sigh, Harry put down the spellbook. While interesting, it was not teaching Harry what he wanted to know. With a deep breath he decided that something needed to change. He needed a tutor. However, given his background, he was not a person who could merely put a posting out for the position. Perhaps there was someone he could trust, but Harry knew not where to start. Anyone he contacted was a liability to his isolation.

He had, however, read about truth potions. Perhaps a dose of one and a very tightly worded vow could fulfill both his desire for a tutor and privacy. Harry made a mental note to send Tilly out to a potions supplier to procure a few doses. One never knew when a healthy dose of truth might be necessary...


No one outside the wards of the Potter manor in Devonshire was officially there and some creative time accounting by their respective secretaries assured they could prove it. Even Sirius Black, currently unconscious, was accounted for in his cell in Azkaban. It would be several hours before meal check would find he was missing, plenty of time to procure access to the Potter manor.

"Croaker. Amelia." Fudge called for his two department heads. "Are we ready to proceed?"

Amelia Bones had doubts about this operation, but let none of them show as she deferred to Croaker.

"Yes, Minister," Croaker answered authoritatively. "Black has succumbed to the effects of the compulsion charm quite nicely. He will follow orders and activate the runic construct as soon as we order him to do so."

"Excellent!" Fudge was clearly in a jovial mood, Amelia noted. Obviously he was happy to be putting this whole affair behind him. If she were honest with herself, she was too.

"Let's proceed."


Sirius Black awoke slowly, which was a highly unusual experience for the convict. He had developed a familiarity for awakening with the suddenness of an enervate. He had been knocked out many times in the past fourteen years, but it had been since his school days that Sirius had been knocked unconscious in the good old-fashion way, a blow to the head.

His vision still spun, and gods did his head hurt. Ahead of him stood a man – at least, he thought it was a man, and he was pretty sure that man was standing. It was hard to tell when it was dark, there were three of him, and all copies swayed back and forth the way they did. There also seemed to be a House Elf… holding a frying pan? Trying to shake the stars out of his eyes, he managed to speak.

"Where am I?"

The response was immediate and curt. "I'm the one asking the questions here. My elf informs me that you are Sirius Black. Tell me why I should not kill you for betraying my parents."

Sirius gawked and as his vision slowly improved he managed, "Harry?" Tears flowed from his eyes like twin rivers and the frail prisoner was wracked by a sob the younger man thought too powerful to come from that frame. "Oh Merlin, Harry!"

Harry found it hard to be unaffected by the site of the grown man bawling on the ground before him but let nothing of his inner conflict show on his face – or in his voice. "Your answer?"

This only caused the man to suffer more wracking sobs before Sirius managed to choke out, "I swear. I swear on my life. I did not do it!"

The declaration was expected, and Harry felt some of his apprehension fall away at the more typical response. "We shall see. Will you take this willingly or must I force-feed you?"

Harry wagged a potion vial in the air ahead of the convict. Sirius Black looked at the vial and nodded his head. "I'd have taken it fourteen years ago if given the chance."

Tilting his head back and parting his lips, he swallowed as soon as Harry poured the contents of the vial into his mouth.

"I have a story for you, my godson."


Panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. That is what Cornelius Fudge felt soon after Black crossed the ward line and disappeared from view. When Croaker had been unable to determine what went wrong and dejectedly announced Black was no longer under the control of his compulsion charm, Fudge had lost the contents of his stomach. How was he going to explain this disaster?

Thankfully, the few aurors that had accompanied the minster voluntarily submitted to obliviate, reducing the number of people who actually knew what happened to three. Three and a half if you counted Black, who knew only the smallest pieces of what they would be using him for. Somewhere around the time Fudge was threatening to have Croaker thrown in Azkaban himself the Unspeakable tossed out the possibility that Black had been killed by the wards, with his demise ending the effect of his compulsion.

Grasping onto that lifeline, the three came up with their story. Yes, Sirius Black was visited recently in the spirit of using every possible avenue to find Harry Potter. No, he was not lucid enough to help. How he escaped his prison cell in Azkaban was anyone's guess, but that as no magic was detected being performed on the island, it was a certainty the convict had drowned in the cold waters of the North Sea.

While the two men spun the story with such vigor they convinced themselves, Amelia only played along. She was sure she had just delivered the last Potter into the hands of the family's betrayer.