Chapter 4

Slightly annoyed by the several onlookers that had assembled on the street, Kingsley Shacklebolt roughly pushed his way through the crowd, which was rather easy thanks to his size and rather intimidating expression. It was still very early in the morning and the sun had barely begun to rise on the horizon, although it was barely visible through the smoke that hung around this part of Knockturn Alley.

As they got closer to their target the smell of burnt wood became more and more prevalent as did the amount of smoke that obscured their vision.

It was not all that uncommon for a small fire to break out in this part of Wizarding London. Drunk thugs with wands and a rather hostile environment were a rather unsafe combination. Usually, the Aurors on patrol or a non-intoxicated civilian would make short work of such fires, however in this particular case no one had been able to do so, which was rather concerning as several passerby had reportedly tried to douse the flames.

When Kingsley had gotten the call from the Junior Auror on site he had initially wanted to brush it off for a rookie mistake. That was until he had gotten the exact location of the fire.

The large warehouse in Knockturn Alley had been raided several times by his department in the past for allegedly storing highly illegal potion ingredients, however none had ever resulted in success. Instead, the owner of the building, a highly ranked ministry official named Caspar Avery had made them look rather foolish in front of the entire Wizengamot and managed to prevent a much needed budget increase for the entire Auror department.

Therefore, he had immediately rushed to the site to confirm his young colleagues' statement.

Finally, the warehouse was in sight - or at least the scorched remains of it, as the entire building was burned down to the last pillar. Leaving only the slightly molten concrete foundation, the size of half a football field, behind.

Kingsley's eyebrows rose above his non-existing hairline. No normal fire would have been able to burn a building that large down in such a short time. Miraculously the other rather close by houses had been seemingly not affected in the slightest.

That was no normal fire…

Shaking his head, he started to search for the Junior Auror on the premises and quickly found her nervously pacing in front of three men that were chained to a nearby lamppost.

"Auror Tonks!" he yelled when he saw the banged-up condition of the prisoners and quickly marched over to her. The men had several bruises on them, as well as a couple cuts along their front and their cloaks were in tatters.

Oh Merlin, please tell me she had nothing to do with that…

Stepping up rather close to his subordinate he growled through clenched teeth "What in Merlin's name happened to those men and why are they chained up?"

The young Auror's eyes widened when she saw her angry superior's face and raised her hands in defense.

"Woah, woah! Wasn't me Shack! I found those guys like that when I got here." she explained quickly "Already tried to free them, but those blasted chains won't budge."

Kingsley exhaled in relief. He hadn't particularly looked forward to reporting her and potentially getting a usually excellent Auror fired.

Her statement did however make this whole mess look even more strange than it already was.

"Have you already questioned them? How did they end up like that?" he finally asked her.

Tonks nodded "Yeah, gave them a calming draught beforehand - they were scared out of their minds when I found them. The poor sods are… well, were the security detail for that warehouse. Apparently, in the middle of the night they got attacked by an unidentified individual and were then chained to that lamppost. Then the same wizard has apparently burned down the entire building."

"And you said that no one was able to put out the flames?" he further questioned his young colleague.

"Yep. When I got here the thing was almost burned down. A couple folks over there were trying Aquamenti on it, but that seemed to only make it worse and I tried every extinguishing charm I know but nothing worked. Never seen anything like that."

He slowly got a really bad feeling about this. What she described sounded very much like some sort of cursed flames, which were notoriously difficult to control and more often than not killed their creator. And yet not a single building in the vicinity had been so much as scorched.

"And the chains?" he said and pointed at the men nearby.

Tonks shrugged "Feel free to try. I couldn't get them off. Whoever cast them sure as hell knew what he was doing."

With a rather bad feeling Kingsley approached the men and cast several analyzation spells at the chains. None of them yielded a result, which made him frown but confirmed Tonks' assessment - not a single counter that he knew would get rid of the magical shackles. He didn't even know what kind of spell that was.

Who in Merlin's name did that?

Turning back to his young colleague he said "Get me a team of Curse Breakers here and someone from the Forensics department."

Several hours later he watched as the medi-wizards escorted the finally freed security guards to the hospital for treatment. The team of Course Breakers that had initially arrived on site had tried their best for over two hours to get rid of the chains, but without any success. They had to call in an Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries who had finally been able to dissolve the spell by using a complicated array of norse runes he had never seen before.

Kingsley shook his head at the situation.

The three men hadn't been able to provide them with much useful information. He was relatively certain that someone must have meddled with their memories as they had mostly just rambled about a creature with the face of a raven that had attacked them.

Hopefully the healers would sort them out, but he had his doubts. Whoever had done this had clearly been a professional, therefore it was very unlikely that they would have made some mistake.

One thing was certain though, there was a ton of paperwork waiting in his near future.

One day later…

With wide eyes Harry watched as the angry red light narrowly passed by his face and hit the wall behind him and immediately recast his shield charm to block the next incoming spell from Moody.

Sidestep, shield, backstep. Sidestep, shield, backstep.

He repeated the mantra his trainer had taught him continuously in his head as dodged yet another stunner. It wouldn't be long now for him to reach the stone pillar nearby, which was today's assignment - getting to cover without being hit. And it was quite the assignment. Initially he had barely managed to make a single step towards the pillar before he had been hit. Apparently, Moody had been going easy on him during his runs in the woods. Now his spells were dead accurate and were dished out at an incredibly high pace.

The first thing he had learned after the first knockouts was to keep his movement simple. No wild jumps, no big moves - just small, precise steps and being light on your feet.

After a while he had slowly gotten the hang of it, but he had yet to make it to his cover.

Sidestep, shield, backstep. Sidestep, shield, backstep.

The assignment itself had been a pretty big surprise for Harry. For weeks he had been only doing physical exercises, but yesterday Moody had come back from a meeting with Dumbledore and had immediately sat him down. For the first time ever, he had then shown him some actual magic in the form of the shield charm Protego, which he has been tirelessly trying to master since then. He had to admit it was a pretty neat spell as he no longer had to solely rely on dodging. However, Moody had been also very quick to show him that it came with some issues.

One was magical power. People like Voldemort and Dumbledore had allegedly been able to pierce through just about any shield they wanted to. Therefore, putting all your safety behind something that could get blown apart in an instant, was to be taken with a grain of salt.

The other big issue was that certain spells were able to pass through shields regardless of their power. Most notably the infamous Killing-Curse.

Moody explained to him that a good duelist relied on a combination of movement and a variety of shield charms for defense.

Speaking of which, his own defense had just failed seconds before he was able to get behind cover, when the aged Auror got a spell just right into his sidestep. Unceremoniously Harry was flung through the air and landed on the cushioned floor.

Damn it! So close!

Resigned, Harry picked himself up and looked at his teacher who just stared back at him.

"Not bad Potter." he finally said to him and put his wand back into his holster "We'll get back to this tomorrow. I think it's time for some more theory."

Then he beckoned to follow him out of the training room.

Moody was seated on the opposite side of the table and was looking at him intently. Finally, he asked "So what were you able to take away from that lesson?"

Harry opened his mouth to answer and then immediately closed it again.

What did he learn there? Sure, he had improved his shield charm and his footwork quite a bit but he was quite certain that was not what his trainer meant.

So, what else?

Harry had essentially gotten his ass kicked by Moody over and over again. Even worse was that it had been quite evident that the Auror had held back. The man was simply in an entirely different league in terms of raw power.

"Honestly? I'm not sure. You could have ended each session after the first spell that I didn't dodge, right? Your spells are much more powerful than mine" he answered solemnly.

Moody nodded "Quite right. Your magic has not matured yet. Therefore, I and a lot of other adult wizards have a significant edge over you in a fair fight. That gap will get closer and closer as you age, but what does that mean for you right now?"

"I don't know? Keep dodging everything?"

The Auror rolled his eyes "No, for Merlin's sake Potter, use your head! If you can't beat them in a fair fight, what can you do?"

"..."

"You don't fight fair, you fight dirty!" Moody exclaimed and smashed his fist into the palm of his hand "You see a way out? Take it! They are distracted? Course them into their back! They get overconfident? Surprise them and capitalize on it! Don't fall under the delusion that with this little training you'll get here, that you could take on a fully fledged Death Eater head on."

Deep in his mind Harry already knew that. How could he hope to win against someone that had decades of experience on him? Sure, he had a chance, after all everyone sometimes makes a mistake. That chance was not very high though.

However what Moody suggested went slightly against his inner Gryffindor - bravery and honor, were their core characteristics after all.

When he voiced his opinion, the older man just snorted at him "Honor, ha! Listen well lad because it could be the most important thing I ever tell you: Honor in a war is a fool's endeavor. It will get you killed faster than anything else."

Obviously noticing Harry's discomfort he sighed "Look. I'm not telling you to run around, killing people with their backs turned. But what you have to realize is that war is a dirty business and make no mistake, war will come when Voldemort regains his strength. When that time comes it will be either you or them."

Then Moody briefly hesitated before something entered his eyes that Harry had never seen before - sorrow.

"Do you wanna know how many people I have killed during the last war? Too few. Because for each of those bastards that I didn't finish off when I had the chance, good people died to them later on. Take the Longbottom's for example: At one point very early in the war I found myself facing that nutcase Bellatrix Lestrange. I won the fight and could have put her down like the rabid dog that she is. But I thought better and decided to take her as a prisoner. Didn't take her master more than a couple days to break her out of the ministry. A year later she became his right hand and at the end of the war tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom to insanity." he said with a broken voice.

Harry gulped at Moody's admission.

The guilt, as misplaced as it was, must weigh very heavily on the old man.

He understood those feelings all too well. Every single time he had allowed one of his friends to place themselves in danger, to potentially risk their lives for him, he felt incredibly guilty. And that was probably not even a fraction of the pain that he would feel if someone actually got killed for him.

That thought certainly hardened his resolve. None of his friends would die for him. If he had to kill some Death Eaters for it, then he would gladly put it on his consciousness. Because he was not sure if he could bear the alternative.

"So, what does this mean now?" Harry finally said.

"It means that additionally to our dueling training, I will show you every dirty little trick I have picked up over the years."

It turned out that Moody knew a lot of dirty and borderline illegal tricks. From holsters that released one's wand directly into the open hand, to hidden knives - there were a sheer endless number of ways of gaining an advantage on your opponent and Harry was learning every single one of them.

The majority of the last few weeks they had spent either on dueling, learning some neat spells, physical workouts, going through the profiles of the most notorious Death Eaters and of course the art of ungentlemanly warfare. It was hard but also very rewarding work.

Learning about the previous war had been interesting to say the least. The fact that both of his parents had been part of a secret, paramilitary organization that had opposed Voldemort had made him incredibly proud. Although he did share Moody's sentiment that the group could have been much more effective, had they resorted to more than just stunning their opponents. As his mentor said, the only good Death Eater was a dead Death Eater.

Speaking of which, he was quite certain that a lot of stuff that Moody taught him was not exactly what Dumbledore had planned for him, because of their sometimes lethal nature.

The ex-Auror had drilled several practices in his head. One was that he was to always have his invisibility cloak with him.

"Dead useful that thing is." he had said when they found out that it even hid him from Moody's artificial eye.

He also now always wore a wand holster on his arm that had a couple of charms embedded that made it invisible and also released its content with a small flick of his hand, which allowed him to draw in less than a second.

Harry had come a long way since his first dueling practices with Moody. Although the old Auror could still beat him with relatively little effort, it took quite a bit more time now. Harry was confident that he could now give the sixth-year students at Hogwarts a run for their money.

Even Moody had complimented him at his progress in his own grouchy way.

He had even allowed him to send out Hedwig with letters to his friends, who had been overjoyed to finally hear from him. Though they were also rather concerned about his whereabouts after he had let it slip that he was no longer taking up residence at his relative's place. They had calmed down a bit after he had told them that Dumbledore knew about his current arrangement and had approved. However, he had not been allowed to share any details.

For his birthday he had gotten letters from way more people than he had expected. Ron and Hermione had of course written to him. But also his dorm mate Neville Longbottom and his godfather Sirius Black. Fred and George Weasley hand sent him a funny prank letter, their younger sister Ginny had also wished him a happy birthday, which was surprising as she had been barely able to speak a couple words when he had been nearby without blushing. The Weasley matron Molly had sent him an entire cake that two owls had to carry and wrote that she was looking forward to having him over soon and the Hogwarts gamekeeper Hagrid had sent him a small batch of his infamous rock cookies. Even Dumbledore had written his best wishes and had regretfully informed him that he hadn't been able to visit, because of an international conference in Geneva.

Harry had been admittedly a bit sad that he hadn't been able to spend that day with his friends but knew that it had been for the best.

On a bright note, Ron had invited him to spend the last week of the summer at the Burrow and to go to the Quidditch World Finals on the 25th of August together with his entire family and Hermione. Least to say he was very excited about that.

And finally the day had come. It was the start of the last week of August and today Moody would apparete him over to the Weasleys. Harry had already packed all of his belongings and had sent Hedwig on her way a couple hours ago. Now he was waiting just outside of the hut that had been his place to stay for the majority of the summer.

Was he sad to leave? It might be the masochist in him speaking but he would admittedly miss the regular training sessions a bit. However, Moody had already informed him that he would be their teacher in DADA this year and that they would every now and then continue with his training.

The thought of that madman teaching at Hogwarts still made him grin. His classmates were in for a rude awakening.

"What are you grinning for, Potter? Excited to get rid of me?" Moody barked as he exited the hut and slammed the door closed.

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir!" Harry said with a cheeky smirk.

The old man snorted "I see I was a bit too soft on you lad. We'll rectify that soon enough, don't worry."

Harry's grin turned into a scowl.

"Now, you all packed up?" asked the Auror and roughly grabbed his arm.

"Yeah I think soo-aaahhh." he yelled the last part when he was apparated away without a warning and right after that unceremoniously dropped to the ground.

"Uhhh." Harry groaned, feeling slightly sick.

Very slowly he sat up and briefly stared at the sky, silently cursing the old Auror.

"Constant vigilance, Potter!" Moody said while grinning down at him "Already forgot about that?"

Harry bit back a sarcastic reply and instead just glared at him.

Damn that old bastard.

AN: In cannon the world cup final is on the 18th of August 1994, for the sake of the story line it is moved to the 25th of August, so the last week before school starts.

On another note I want to use this opportunity to thank all of the people who have read this story so far. Especially those many that have marked this fic as favorite, followed or reviewed. That really keeps me going, so thanks a lot. You can expect the next chapter in another couple of weeks. Until then!