Training and a Rescue


Remus walked quietly, thinking over the words he had prepared for when
he reached Sirius. He knew his friend had taken Harry's apparent death
hard, and to everyone's surprise, he had seemed to take the news of
Harry's survival even harder.

Remus thought he might understand the basis for Padfoot's current
depression. The letter they had received from Harry had mentioned a
protector. Sirius had hoped, if they could only manage to clear his
name, to be Harry's proper guardian, to protect and shield him from the
expectations of the wizarding world. Remus suspected that his friend
would gladly spend the rest of his life trying to expiate what he saw as
his failure.

A smile crossed his face as a fresher scent crossed his nose. "I guessed
right," he murmured, sniffing deeper and confirming the direction of the
scent trail. "Found you, Paddy."

He caught a confirming glimpse of a figure through the trees, and he
hurried forward. He stepped into full view of Sirius and stopped short,
his jaw dropping. There was a gorgeous red and gold phoenix settling on
to Sirius' shoulder. The werewolf barely had time to process what he was
seeing before fire swirled around them both and they vanished.

"Sirus!" he shouted, though he knew it was far too late.

Confused and disturbed, Remus retraced his steps, returning to the
safety of Grimmauld Place. His mind was alive with questions. Had
Sirius, whose face had been downturned, known that the phoenix was
there? Did the phoenix have something to do with his unusually down
mood? Where had he gone, or been taken?

"Wotcher, Remmy!"

Remus looked up at the cheerful greeting, and smiled wanly at the young
Auror, Tonks. "Did Sirius say anything to you when he left?"

Tonks shook her hair, which was a dark purple at the moment, a color
that matched the bubble of gum that she blew and popped before
answering. "Nope. He was deep in his whole silent routine. Why? What'd
my cousin do this time?"

"He left."

Tonks straightened up, glancing nervously at the curtained portrait of
Sirius' mother as she stepped closer to Remus. She hissed, knowing that
shouting in surprise, as she wanted to do, would wake the old bat up,
deafening them with her hateful shrieks. "What do you mean, he left?
Where'd he go?"

"A phoenix took him somewhere. I don't know where he is."

"Oh, well, why didn't you say so?" Tonks responded, grinning
nonchalantly. "Dumbledore must have needed him for something."

Remus sighed, gesturing for Tonks to follow him as he slipped quietly
past the magical portrait of the late Mrs. Black, and into the drawing
room. He glanced around, looking for Kreacher, the Black's aging
house-elf, a crazy little bugger by his account, always mumbling and
cursing to himself. Assured that he was not being listened in on, he
faced Tonks again.

"It was not Fawkes, Tonks. Fawkes has red feathers on his body, and
golden tail-feathers. This phoenix was mixed red and gold all over."

Tonks shrugged. "Sirius has gone off by himself for several hours almost
daily. Maybe he's been meeting this phoenix and going somewhere with it.
I wouldn't worry unless he's not back tonight."

Remus nodded slowly. "I suppose that is possible. I can't imagine where
the old dog could have found a phoenix to befriend, anyway."

---

Harry ducked a jet of red light, and side-stepped the next, then dived
to the bare wood of the floor to avoid what he thought was an impediment
jinx. He paused to aim and fire a stupefy, but he took too long in
releasing it, and was hit by a full body-bind. A burst of wandless power
threw it off invisibly but did nothing against the stupefy that had
followed behind the binding spell. He fell into darkness, and returned
at Sirius' quiet "Enervate."

"I'm too slow," Harry said, accepting Sirius' outstretched hand. Sirius
pulled him easily to his feet.

"At getting spells off, anyway. You are plenty quick on the dodge and
run. Must be all that Quidditch."

"And avoiding Dudley and his gang," added Harry, grinning. "What about
my spell speed?"

"Ah, that just takes practice. Right now, you've just learned an Auror's
training worth of spells, so you are overwhelmed by your options. It is
taking you too long to decide what to cast. The only thing that will
really help with that is lots and lots of dueling practice. You need to
get used to casting them all, and become intimately familiar with their
effects. Right now, you are capable of casting them, but you don't
really know them through and through," Sirius explained, conjuring
several chairs and towels in the otherwise empty room they had cleared
to use as a training room for Harry. "Oh, you'll have to practice
casting them faster, as well, but I think most of it at the moment is
just indecision. You'd know the answer to that better than I, at any
rate."

Sirius grinned. "I'm still in awe of watching you cast a spell perfectly
after watching me cast it once, but knowing how to cast the spell is
only the first step. You also have to know how it affects the target,
how fast it is in getting there, how hard it is to throw off or avoid,
and what spells can be used to block or reflect it. That's what will
clear up that indecision, and give you the experience to make the right
choices, and regular practice will make your choices practically
instantaneous."

"How much of a problem is it going to be for me, always dueling against
you?" Harry asked, walking slowly over to Sirius' side of the room,
where Sirius had cast himself into one of the chairs with a grateful
sigh. The chairs were resting beside the door, the only other notable
feature in the room. The walls were bare, scorched and marred by their
combat over the past several hours, and from the lengthy series of
example spells Sirius had cast while Harry watched and learned.

"Well, it's not great. During Auror training, you duel against a whole
slew of opponents, not to mention multiple opponents at a time. I don't
know that there is much we can do about it know, but a dueling club when
you get back to school might not be amiss." Sirius tossed one of the
towels to Harry.

"I'd have to teach them before they'd be worth fighting," Harry pointed
out, slumping into a chair, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

"Not if you held yourself to their level. They would still give you good
practice in fighting against different styles and opponents. But I still
think that you teaching them would be a good idea, especially if you get
another useless Defense teacher."

"Yeah, I guess Crouch won't be back this year. Wouldn't surprise me
much, though. As much as Fudge doesn't want to admit anything, putting a
teacher in who has had the Kiss would be just like him. Still, how
different can their styles possibly be if they're all trained by me?"

"Simple, you just teach them the spells, and let them create their own
dueling style. They will all have different favorite spells and
combinations. It'll work out, you'll see."

Harry shrugged. "Maybe. I guess we'll see when . . . we . . ."

Harry trailed off and Sirius glanced at him. Harry's eyes were wide and
Sirius could see surprise and concern swirling in their green depths.
Before he had a chance to ask Harry what was wrong, Harry jumped to his
feet, turned into a phoenix and vanished.

Sirius tried to wait patiently, knowing that Harry could take care of
himself, but soon found himself pacing up and down the room, wondering
fretfully and futilely where Harry had gone to, and what he had sensed
that had demanded such immediate action.

They had explored the house together, with Sirius telling stories about
nearly everything, feeding Harry's desperate hunger to learn more of his
family. Sirius' heart ached when he saw that hungry expression on
Harry's face and knew that no-one had taken the time to actually talk to
the boy about his family. It was not as if no-one had known them.
Dumbledore and McGonagall had taught them, had watched and laughed at
most of the Marauder's antics. Hagrid had tried numerous times to keep
them out of the Forbidden Forest, just as he did with the Weasley twins.
Even Snape had known them, even if his perspective might be a bit
biased. Why had no-one told Harry about his parents before?

When they had finished exploring the house, and after Sirius had walked
Harry through all the stories he knew behind the pictures in the photo
albums they found, they had prepared two of the bedrooms to sleep in.
Then Harry had made dinner for them in the kitchen in the Muggle
fashion, while Sirius struggled with his anger as Harry told him where
he had learned the skill. Harry was her sister's son, yet Petunia had
treated him like an unwanted beggar, forcing him to do endless chores,
and to assist her in cooking meals that he got the least and worst
portions of. He was quite certain that Dudley would have had a far
better time of it if their positions had been reversed. Lily would never
have treated anyone in that manner, much less her own nephew.

The next day, they had cleared out a room to train in, and then Harry
had demonstrated his newly acquired and quite unbelievable learning
ability. Sirius demonstrated all the charms, hexes, and curses he knew,
and Harry had duplicated each one perfectly on the first try. He had
also managed to duplicate Sirius' tricks with Transfiguration, which was
even more surprising. Harry had always had a knack for Defense Against
the Dark Arts, and had managed a powerful Accio charm the past year, but
he had never excelled in Transfiguration. Now it seemed to come to him
as easily as anything else.

Finally Sirius collapsed in one of the chairs. His memories were not
calming him any. He knew Harry could take care of himself now, but he
could not help worrying.

He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, when he heard Harry's
voice from downstairs. "Sirius," Harry called up, "I need you down
here!"

He had barely reached the door when he heard a haughty but pain-filled
voice. "Why the bloody hell can't I see anything?! What have you done to
me?"

---

Harry stalled as a phantom pain sliced across his back. He latched on to
the pain instantly, following it back to its source, even as it doubled.
It felt like his back was being lashed, and at the other end, he found
his school-time nemesis, Draco Malfoy. It was nothing that Draco was
doing that was causing his pain.

On the contrary, Harry knew, he was feeling Draco's pain, an artifact of
the tenuous link he had forged between them when he reached out to find
the blond Slytherin, when he had been part of Harry's plan. "But the
spell," Harry questioned mentally, as he transformed to a phoenix and
vanished, "what happened to the spell I put on him?" When he appeared in
a stone room, instinctively recognizing his surroundings as Malfoy
Manor, the same place he had found himself at the last time he had
followed Draco's trace, he instantly recognized the cause.

The elder Malfoy was laying into Draco with a whip. The teenager was
hanging from chains on the wall, screaming in pain, his back exposed,
with three bleeding stripes laid across it. Harry swooped down and
grasped the whistling whip in his talons, jerking it out of the
surprised wielder's grasp. It disintegrated under the influence of a
pulse of phoenix magic from Harry.

Lucius was not looking too well himself. His hands, no longer holding
the whip, were shaking in a manner reminiscent of Harry's after he had
been under Voldemort's Cruciatus. His robes were ripped, burnt, and
stained with his own blood from numerous cuts that reached through the
robes to his skin. Harry did not delude himself that this was due to
Draco's defense. No, these were the result of the spell Harry had left
on the younger Malfoy, a spell that turned back the results of any
malicious magic upon the caster. Those spell effects were the results of
spells that Lucius had attempted upon his own son.

Lucius did not react well to Harry's interference. He seemed to have
gotten over his earlier reticence about attacking a phoenix, or perhaps
he had merely needed to look up a spell that could they could not defend
against. Either way, he was quick to bring out his wand and snap a spell
off. Harry dodged it easily, but put a shield up just in case. Sure
enough, the spell light followed his motion, impacting and dispersing
against his shield. Harry did not wait for that impact, however,
immediately casting a disarming hex.

Unprepared for a spell from a phoenix, Lucius lost his grip on his wand,
which was whipped into the air. Harry swooped, snatching the wand. Lucius
cursed aloud and Harry grinned inside, thinking that he looked even more
disheveled than he had after Dobby had given him a blast in defence of
Harry at the end of Harry's second year. "I wish I could get a picture
of that for Sirius. He'd really appreciate it," he said aloud, his voice
coming out as amused trills and warbles. He settled on Draco's shoulders
and vanished in flame with the Malfoy heir, not noticing the pallor that
hit Lucius' face when Harry voiced his opinion.

The cessation of pain had apparently allowed Draco to fall unconscious,
for when they reappeared in the front hall of Harry's house, without the
support of the chains and wall, Draco slumped to the ground. Harry
dropped down with him and tilting his head, let tears fall from his eyes
to land on Draco's torn back. He was surprised the first time he had
cried to heal Draco, at how easy it had been to produce tears on demand,
but now it seemed routine. 

Finally able to get a proper look at the formerly haughty heir of the
Malfoy name, he was somewhat surprised to see that Draco was actually
wearing robes. They had been shredded in the back, exposing his pale
skin to the flick of the lash, which had scored fiery red welts across
it, healing now under the influence of the tears, but they were clearly
robes. Harry fluttered his wings to express his bemusement, unable to
shake his head while carefully dripping silvery healing tears. He should
have realized, but somehow, he had expected more normal clothing in the
absence of the formality demanded at school.

With Draco's skin finally healed, leaving a pale but unmarred back still
exposed by the torn robes, Harry swept his wings down, aiding in a hop
that left him a few feet away, and he settled in to watch and wait,
knowing that Malfoy should wake fairly soon.

Draco stirred finally, and sat up, then looked around blankly, and
shivered. His back was now free of injury, but he seemed lost, confused,
and frightened. Harry realized with a start that though he had been able
to bring Draco here, he could see nothing because he was not permitted
by the Fidelius charm. Harry was about to adjust the spell, when he
decided that it was not necessary. He had the secret-keeper ready to
hand. He just had to get Sirius to tell Draco where they were.

He transformed back, calling quietly up the stairs to get his godfather
to come down.

---

Draco looked around fearfully, his eyes passing over Harry as if the
other boy was invisible. "Why the bloody hell can't I see anything?!
What have you done to me?"

Draco spun around, his hand reaching around to feel his back. "Father?
Where am I? Am I dead?"

He heard the creak of a stair and turned quickly. His eyes popped open
as he stared at the frightening visage of a wanted criminal walking down
nothing, standing in a blank whiteness and staring at him with a mixture
of curiosity and loathing.

"You're a Malfoy," Black stated, and Draco nodded nervously, his bluster
failing him in front of Sirius Black, a man who had reportedly killed
twelve Muggles and one wizard with a single spell, and laughed when the
Aurors came, then escaped Azkaban, and remained free in spite of a
country-wide search.

He shivered as Black's eyes fixed on something about three feet away
from Draco himself. Was the man as insane as they said? It seemed
confirmed when he spoke to nothing. Draco peered in the direction the
escaped murderer was looking, but there was nothing there to be seen but
more blankness.

"What do you need, Ignis?"

Draco wanted to retort that his name was not Ignis, but Black spoke
again a moment later, his attention focused on Draco now, even as he
drifted downward, coming closer to Draco's level, unnerving him.

"Your father beat you? With a whip?" His attention drifted back to
Draco's left again, but returned sharply, before Draco had a chance to
feel relief at being out from under the killer's sharp gaze. Black's
dark eyes glittered. "If you are certain," he said softly. Draco
trembled as the murderer strode forward, on a level with him now, to
loom over him.

"Do you know where you are, Malfoy . . ." Black looked away a moment,
and when he looked back, he looked almost chastised. Draco was certain
now that the man was mad. "Sorry. Draco. Do you know where you are?"

Draco shook his head, but managed to speak, his voice hoarse, his mouth
dry. "Am . . . am I dead?"

"No," said Black firmly, his face hardening. Draco resisted the urge to
cringe at his dark look. "You are safe here. You are in my failure."

With those words, the whiteness vanished, and Draco found himself in
what looked like an ordinary middle-class wizarding home. He glanced to
the left, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. Harry Potter, it
could only be him, with that messy black hair and green eyes, but he was
tall and strong, and the thick-rimmed glasses were gone, leaving those
blazing emeralds free to burn their way into his soul. Draco tore his
eyes away, his heart thumping as he felt like his nemesis had just seen
his darkest secrets. In spite of the anger he felt, both at the seeming
invasion of his privacy, and at Potter's presence alone, he could not
seem to scrape up any defiance in the face of the infamous Sirius Black.

Still, he could not quite parse the scene. It did not look as though
Black was holding Potter here. In fact, given where Potter was standing,
it was Potter Black had looked at, when he had seemed momentarily
apologetic.

"I don't know why Ignis decided to save you," Black said, his eyes
flicking to Potter. Draco followed the glance, and was surprised to see
a gleam in Potter's eye at the words, and a small nod. What in Merlin's
name was going on here? "But he did, and you are here now. So long as
you remain here, you will forget any rivalry that lay between you. As I
said before, you are safe here. You are behind a Fidelius charm."

So were Potter's parents, Draco thought, but said nothing, only nodding.
Nonetheless, Potter's green eyes caught his doubt, and Potter spoke, his
voice soft but deeper than it had been. To his surprise, there was no
hate, not even any dislike detectable in his rival's soft speech.
"Sirius holds the secret. That is why he had to tell you where you are."

Draco was shaken. He might not be quite as studious as Potter's Mudblood
friend Granger, but he had read about the Fidelius. It was a hideously
complicated charm. Black was even more powerful than he had thought, if
he had cast such a spell and centered it within himself. It had to have
been him. Potter certainly was not capable of such a thing. With the
Secret-Keeper within the concealed secret, something that also demanded
great power, there was basically no chance that anyone outside the house
would be able to find and rescue him.

"But he will have to explain to you . . . and to me, why he used the
words he did." Potter's voice had turned hard, though still quiet, and
somehow held a measure of command.

To Draco's surprise, though it seemed to confirm his earlier
observation, Black actually looked sheepish at that. He spoke,
hesitantly. "This . . . that is how I think of it, Harry. This is where
I failed them, and you."

"It was not your failure," Potter stated firmly. Draco glanced at him,
then back at Black to catch his reaction, feeling like he was missing
some sort of critical detail to actually be able to understand what they
were saying. Were they speaking in code?

"I convinced them," Black answered, his voice breaking, and Draco was
startled at the weight of sorrow it held.

Potter shook his shaggy mane, his green eyes holding fixed on Black's
dark pair. "You could not know. If you insist on holding that blame,
then you condemn me, your godson, for Cedric's death." Draco's eyes
widened. He wondered what Potter had convinced Cedric of that could have
led to his death. That was the only explanation he could come up with
that fit their words.

"That wasn't your fault!" Sirius shouted, his face flushing. Draco was
beyond startled when he noticed tears standing in the man's flashing
eyes.

Harry smiled softly. "I know that, now. No more than this place is your
failure."

Black just sighed deeply. "Enough, Harry. What are we going to do with
mini-Lucius here?"

"Don't call me that," Draco shouted, suprised to feel tears pricking the
corners of his own eyes. He held them back with an act of will,
unwilling to show more weakness in front of Potter, and hardly believing
that he had just shouted at a convicted multiple-murderer. He wished the
floor would simply open up and swallow him.

Potter glared at Black, and Black actually cringed. "Sorry, Draco," he
said. "That was uncalled for. You do look remarkably like him, you know."

Potter turned back to Draco, ignoring Black, and offered his hand.
"Welcome to my home, Draco."

Draco took his hand, feeling an odd sense of deja vu. With his welcome
seemingly assured, he could not help but ask, "How did I get here?"

The dark-haired boy grinned at that, throwing a mischievous glance at
Black. "Ignis brought you."

"Ignis?"

"Yeah, big bird, about so big, full of itself?" Black gestured
helpfully, earning a dark glance from Potter.

"The phoenix?! That phoenix brought me here? Did he cast that spell on
me?"

A calculating glance from Black, aimed at Potter, who flushed, lifted
Draco's curiosity to new heights. "Spell? What spell would that be?"
Draco stared at the tall, gaunt man. Had that really been a note of
teasing in his voice? Why the devil would he be teasing . . . no, wait,
Potter's flush confirmed that it was not Draco that Black was teasing,
but what did that mean?

"There was a spell on me. Lucius came back several times and tried
different curses, after the phoenix first showed up. Everything he
tried, from the Cruciatus to blood-letting curses and burning charms
turned back on him. It was great to watch, though I paid for it in the
end." Draco shivered, remembering the lines of fire as they had seared
his back, splitting him open.

Potter stepped forward, unnervingly close, and caught Draco's silver
eyes. "He won't hurt you again, Draco. He can't get to you here, I swear
it."

"What do you know about it?" Draco asked harshly, pulling back, confused
by Potter's behavior, and by the use of his first name from someone that
had always called him Malfoy.

His rival shook his head, looking down. "This is not the house I grew up
in, Draco. I'm here because my Uncle put a bullet through my brain."

Black shook his head. "You didn't have to tell him that, Harry!"

Draco shook all over, and tears once more prickled at the corners of his
eyes. He refused to allow them to fall, and he forced his voice to sound
normal. "So I am dead, then."

"No, Draco. You are not dead, nor am I. Nor even this overgrown mutt
here, though perhaps we all three should be. I survived my uncle's
attempt at murder, never mind how. Anyway, you are here now. This is the
house I lived in when I was a baby, the house my parents died in, and
Black here is my godfather. He is training me to duel. The Ministry
cannot detect magic done here. You are welcome to join the training."

"How can you say that so calmly, Potter?" Draco asked, unable to believe
Potter's complaisance about the loss of his parents, with the betrayal
of his own father fresh and hurting.

"The only time I remember them at all, is when Dementors get near me.
Then I hear their dying screams. Here I am surrounded by evidence of
their love, something I never had. It doesn't hurt so much, here.
Especially now that I have my godfather."

"Uhm . . ." Draco began, but fell silent, unable to bring up Black's
betrayal of Potter's parents in front of Black's face. He did not know
how Black had managed to conceal his crime from Potter, but he did not
want to see what the man might do to keep it under wraps. He gulped
nervously.

"So, uh, what happens to me now?"

Harry frowned thoughtfully. "My parents had four bedrooms and a sitting
room. We converted the sitting room to a bedroom, and the bigger of the
spare bedrooms to a training room, because I just can't bear to change
the nursery or my parent's room. So . . . we'll just have to add a
bedroom for you!"

Draco trailed along behind a grinning, bemused Sirius Black as they
followed the enthused black-haired wizard as he raced up the stairs and
down the hall. He felt a shiver run down his spine as a rush of magic
swirled up around the emerald-eyed teen. Harry's eyes seemed to glow,
and his robes lifted and snapped as in a phantom wind.

Harry laughed aloud and Draco felt his emotions forcibly uplifted,
carried on the rising wave of Harry's delight. Draco nervously asked
Sirius, "What about the Ministry?"

"He's found some way around it, but he's not using his wand right now
anyway. Besides, we're in a Fidelius."

They watched together, in joint amazement, as Harry was lifted from the
ground by the force of the magic swirling around him. His face was
almost euphoric as the end of the hallway simply slid back away from him
as he floated forward. He gestured at the wall to his left and a doorway
appeared. The door was of black wood, the frame was carved into red and
black snakes.

The door swung slowly open before them, and the nervous pair stepped up
behind Harry to see into the room. They could feel their hair lifting
and separating as though they were in a powerful thunderstorm standing
at ground zero just before a lightning strike. The room swelled out from
them with remarkable speed, the walls roughening until they could see
that they had become stone. Draco summoned his voice and spoke, barely
aduible through the sound of the changes. "Actually, Harry, I prefer
wood."

Instantly a wave of darkness spread out along the walls as they became
the same dark wood that made up the door. Draco felt like his eyes were
about to fall out of his head when his very own bed, that he would
recognize anywhere, appeared in the room, quickly followed by the rest
of his belongings. Another door appeared further in the room, and Draco
had little doubt that if he opened it he would find a closet with all of
his robes.

Draco had resisted his father because the very evidence of his father's
allegiance to the Dark Lord that confirmed Potter's words had also been
evidence that Potter's accusation that Voldemort was a half-blood was
also true. There was no way he would bow to a half-blood that had fallen
to Potter so often. Now, he was seeing that he had chosen correctly,
that as a Malfoy should, he had somehow landed on the winning side. He
would have to cultivate Potter properly, and would doubtless have to
repress some of his own prejudices about the rabble the other boy
associated with, but watching Potter in an ecstasy of magical creation,
there was no doubt in his mind that Potter would win this war.

Here he was, reaching out across who knew how great a distance, through
the multi-layered wards of Malfoy Manor, and the protections of a
Fidelius charm, and somehow summoning all of these belongings without
ever having seen them before.

Finally finished, Harry settled back to the ground, looking around
proudly. The magic around him slowly diminished, as he turned to grin
happily at Draco and Sirius. "There. You can stay here, Draco. I think I
got all your stuff."

"Did you create all of this, Harry?" Sirius asked, staring around at the
various furnishings and belongings. There was a chair that had a
discarded robe still lying across it, and several books were lying out
on the desk as though someone had been reading there.

"No, I brought it from Draco's room."

"In Malfoy Manor," Sirius stated flatly.

"Yeah . . . ," Harry agreed, looking at Sirius uncertainly, and Draco
felt like laughing. It was obvious from the poor sap's face that he had
no idea just how impossible what he had done was.

"And the wards?" Sirius folded his hands, looking at his godson sternly,
but Draco caught a glint in his eye, and realized that Black was teasing
him. How did that fit in with what he knew of their relationship? He
frowned. It didn't. Harry . . . er, Potter, had been the one chastising
Black earlier. How could they possibly both be the authority in the
relationship? He had no idea that his puzzled frown was only making
Harry more nervous.

"I didn't damage them, I promise," Harry swore fervently, looking at
Draco with wide green eyes.

"So how did you get through them, then?" Sirius asked, suppressing his
grin at Harry's earnestness and innocence.

"I . . . I just told them I was a Malfoy," Harry said. He winced
involuntarily as he realized what he had just admitted. Draco barked out
a laugh.

"Right, Har . . . er, Potter, as if they would ever believe you to be a
Malfoy!"

Harry seemed to puff up at that aspersion, and Sirius moved his hand in
front of his mouth, furrowing his brow as if pondering punishment, while
he concealed the grin that would not leave his lips, as Harry
straightened up, his spine stiffening, his green eyes hardening until
they looked like cold gemstones. His face lifted slightly, and a
supercilious smirk played across his lip.

"I'm quite certain I don't know what you could possibly be referring to,
Malfoy," Harry stated arrogantly, looking at Draco as if he were a dog
leaving that Harry was carefully avoiding touching. An aura of power and
command seemed to surround him, and Draco gaped at him, disbelieving.

"Malfoys do not hold a monopoly on power, arrogance, and riches,
Draco," Harry stated, as he swept past, leaving the room with his robes
swirling as impressively as Snape's ever had, his bearing haughty and
supremely confident.

Draco glanced at Sirius, his eyes full of disbelief and awe, just in
time to see Black collapse to the ground laughing uncontrollably. Draco
stared at him aghast. "And you duel with that!?"

Black merely laughed harder. Indignation bringing back a modicum of
Malfoy pride, and Black's behavior removing some of the dark man's
mystique, Draco whipped out his wand and cast a Mobilicorpus on the
helplessly laughing man. He carted him out of his new room, and left him
laughing in the hallway. He re-entered his room and closed the door.

He was of course not depending on the Fidelius charm to conceal his
magic use. The Ministry monitors had been removed from his wand by his
father long ago. 

He walked slowly around the room. There was a crackling feel to the air,
a residue of the immense amount of magic that had gone into creating the
room and filling it with his possessions. It only took a moment of
flipping through the parchments on his desk to confirm that Harry had
indeed brought his things from his room. They were covered with notes in
his own handwriting.

A thought occurred to him and he sat heavily on the bed as he realized
that to his knowledge, Harry had been raised by Muggles, and Black had
been on the run. The likelihood of either of them having a house-elf was
slim at best, which meant that he would have to learn to do without
their services. The only problem with that idea was that he had never,
in all of his life, been without the services of house-elves.

Muffled thuds, cracks, and booms caught his attention, and he realized
that Harry and Black must be . . . wait a moment, had he just thought of
Potter as Harry? How long had he been doing that? After several moments
of thought, Draco abandoned his self-recriminations. He had decided to
try and work with Harry, thinking of him as Potter would merely get in
the way of forging a new working relationship between them.

Mind made up, Draco left his room and followed the sounds to another
door in the same hall. He carefully opened the door, and ducked as the
red light of a stunner flew past his head. He slipped inside and closed
the door, casting a quick shield around himself as he moved along the
wall, watching the dueling pair.

To his surprise, while Harry was unquestionably better than he had been
when they had dueled during their third year, at Lockhart's ill-fated
Dueling Club, when Harry had been outed as a Parselmouth, he was
obviously slower to pick a spell and cast it than Black.

The older man seemed little the worse for wear given his twelve years in
Azkaban prison. He cast spells in rapid succession, even as he moved
fluidly around the room. Harry was moving well himself, a result of his
Quidditch training, Draco assumed, but he was slow to react to Black's
spells, while Black seemed to cast the counter to Harry's spells as
Harry himself was casting them, half the time. The other half, he still
reacted much more quickly than Harry.

"He's reading Harry's spells," Draco murmured, realizing the source of
Black's apparent prescience. Harry was somehow telegraphing what he was
going to do several instants before he actually managed to cast, giving
Black, who could obviously read Harry like a book, ample opportunity to
respond at the same time that Harry cast.

"Join in Draco," Harry urged, twisting to the side to avoid a flash of
orange light. "Attack me."

Draco smirked as he pulled out his wand and rolled away from the wall
towards Black. He did not want to accidentally get in front of the older
wizard. He cast a quick body bind at Harry, then dove behind Black and
cast again from the other side.

He only lasted a few minutes before Harry caught him with a minor hex,
but he removed it quickly. Just a few shots later, one of his curses
destroyed Harry's hasty shield just in time to prevent it from stopping
a stronger curse from Black, and Harry was thrown back, losing his wand.

Though they clearly could have continued, particularly since Draco was
well aware that Harry no longer needed a wand to cast powerful magic,
Black called a halt at that point, taking the spell off of his godson
before Harry had a chance to break it.

Black proceeded to go over the fight, explaining where Harry had
actually erred. He reminded them both that the sort of quick reflexes in
picking and casting appropriate spells that Black himself showed in a
fight would only come with regular practice. "We're not going to work on
stamina, just yet," he said, "but later on, we'll have some endurance
trials. I'll prepare some energy-boosting potions for myself and Draco,
to ensure that we can out-last you, and give your powers a good
stretching."

Harry nodded happily. "I'll go make an early dinner," he said. "since we
missed lunch. It'll probably be ready in about an hour." He left the
room grinning.

Draco looked at Black nervously. "Is he a good cook?"

Black nodded, flashing a smile filled with white teeth. "Harry's a great
cook. No worries, Draco. Why don't you go read for a while. You did
pretty well there, by the way." He did not see the need to mention that
this was the second duel of the day for both Harry and himself.

Draco nodded. He did not need to be told how he fared. He could judge
his own performance well enough. He knew all too keenly that he had not
measured up to either of the other duelers, and that he had made a good
showing against Harry only because he was fighting with a man that could
give most Aurors a flight for their gold.

He took the proffered retreat, however, returning to his room to try and
assimilate all the things that had happened to him over the past day. He
felt dizzy just thinking about it.