Choices and Consequences

Two days later, Harry woke up in his room a little frustrated with the way that things were going. Although his muscles still protested a little about the extent to which they were being pushed beyond their normal limits, the aches had become less of a problem over the past couple of days. The workouts with Tonks were obviously having some impact, since not only were his muscles less painful than they had been on previous mornings, his stamina also seemed to be getting a little better.

No, what Harry was irritated by was his lack of success in Occlumency. The lesson with John the previous day had followed a similar pattern to the first lesson, and although Harry was able to detect John's presence in his mind with increasing ease and speed, he still couldn't get a handle on how that presence 'felt'.

Perhaps it was a function of not having anything to compare it with, but Harry found it difficult to understand exactly what it was that he was meant to be sensing, so although he knew when that presence was there, he was struggling to rationalise how he knew that it was John's presence specifically.

To add to Harry's frustration, John didn't seem to think that this was an unusual problem, and simply continued working on Harry's focus and control of his mind whilst he was engaged in invading Harry's consciousness. He kept reassuring Harry that eventually he would pick up the nuances that he was looking for, but it just might take a little time.

Again, despite Harry's protestations, John advised that he wouldn't schedule another Occlumency lesson until the following Monday, which added to Harry's unease, since he was keen to get the skills down in short time, to defend his mind from Voldemort if necessary.

Since the vision with Bellatrix Lestrange, Wormtail and the unknown third man, Harry's dreams had been blissfully free of Voldemort's interference. He only hoped that this meant that whatever plans the Dark Lord was fomenting, they were still far enough in the future to enable Harry to get his training in first.

He still felt helpless at the thought of facing such evil yet again, and being the one prophesised to have the power to defeat it, and he would be a lot more comfortable when he could actually fight fire with fire, despite John's suggestion that the prophecy meant that Harry was an agent of Choice, and it might not necessarily end with Harry duelling Voldemort to the death.

Visions of Sirius's death now haunted Harry's dreams much less frequently than had been the case when he first arrived back at Privet Drive. Harry didn't know why that was but he was thankful for it. He supposed that even though he wasn't over his godfather's death, he had begun to accept it somewhat, and become less guilt-ridden about his involvement.

This morning, Tonks wasn't around, being either at work or doing another job for the Order, so Harry had the first part of the day to himself, but as she'd promised, she'd picked up Harry's shopping and the cupboards and refrigerator were at least moderately stocked with foods that Harry could cook with and would enjoy. This morning, to use up some of the more perishable items, Harry decided to treat himself to a fry-up of bacon, sausages, fried eggs, fried bread and tomatoes, and topped it off with a couple of rounds of toast and marmalade.

As he finished his meal and leant back in his chair to let it settle, an impressive looking owl banged up against the kitchen window. Harry leaped up to open the window and allowed the bird into the house, ignoring the protests his stomach made at being treated so violently handled after such a heavy breakfast. It was the first time in quite a while that Harry had felt so well-fed, he thought to himself, as he coaxed the owl to land on the work surface by the sink.

The owl looked disdainfully at Harry as he untied the missive attached to its leg, and haughtily fluffed its feathers as though to say 'well open it then, I haven't got all day to be standing around here, you know'.

The letter was fixed with a rather elaborate and ornate wax seal, proclaiming it to be from the office of the Minister for Magic himself. Harry opened the envelope nervously, wondering what it was that the Minister wanted from him, particularly after the way that he'd been treated for the previous year or so. Inside he found a letter in a tidy yet flowing script, which appeared to have actually been hand-written by the Minister himself, rather than a secretary.

Dear Mr Potter,

Following an brief investigation into the events of Thursday 13^th June, including the sighting of You Know Who in the Ministry of Magic, I am writing to confer upon you the honour of the Order of Merlin, Third Class.

Reports of your bravery in the face of extreme danger, and your relentless pursuit of the truth in alerting the world to the return of He-who-must-not-be-named have led to your nomination for this award by the Ministry Committee for Honours, and it gives me great pleasure to authorise this.

For his dedication and continual fight against Dark forces, Harry James Potter has been awarded the Order of Merlin, Third Class.

Cornelius J. Fudge

Minister for Magic.

Administrative note: Please sign the attached slip confirming your acceptance of this award and return it with the owl provided.

Harry looked at the note in astonishment. So, the rumours in the Daily Prophet had apparently been correct - Fudge was offering him the Order of Merlin. Harry couldn't help but think back to what Tonks had said about it. Was this simply a ploy by Fudge to aid his re-election campaign, or did he finally believe what Harry had been telling people for the last twelve months, that Voldemort's was back and the world should be taking steps to protect itself and, if possible to fight back?

If it was the former, then Harry had nothing but contempt for the Minister's discernible lack of integrity, being willing to sacrifice honour and truth for political gain. Even if Fudge truly believed that the Dark Lord had returned, and well he should having seen him with his own eyes, Harry still didn't think that he was the sort of person who could actively lead the wizarding world's fight against Voldemort, and there were many other issues that needed airing and answering that had remained hidden for a year because of Fudge's ostrich tendencies.

The Ministry owl that was awaiting Harry's attention squawked at him, as though to suggest he sign the slip and get it sent back to the Ministry as soon as possible, but Harry wasn't prepared to accept this at face value. He had a lot of doubts about the genuine nature of Fudge's authorisation of the Order of Merlin, and he thought it highly suspicious that this would play out during Fudge's re-election campaign.

Harry shooed the owl out of the window. "Go on," he encouraged, "I'll send a letter in my own time."

The owl looked at Harry with an affronted expression. 'Hardly a surprise,' Harry figured. 'Most folks that get awarded the Order of Merlin must send the slip back straightaway'. Eventually the owl took the hint though, and flew off without making too much fuss at Harry's unorthodox approach.

Harry gave the matter some thought, and decided he would compose a letter back to Minister Fudge, to explain his refusal of the Order of Merlin, and to ask one or two searching questions of his own. As he hadn't anything particular planned for that morning anyway, Harry pulled a quill and some parchment together, and composed the first of many drafts.

A couple of hours later, he finally had a letter that he was content reflected his feelings on the matter, and he read through it one more time just to ensure there wasn't anything else he wanted to say.

Dear Minister Fudge,

I was moderately surprised, despite the rumours in the Daily Prophet recently, to receive your owl this morning, informing me that I had been nominated for, and you had authorised award of, the Order of Merlin, Third Class.

I say that I am surprised since it was only very recently that you were characterising me as an attention-seeking, deluded child, whose tales were to be ridiculed and disbelieved, and who should be considered a figure of fun to be made a mockery of in the national press. Might I ask what has changed your attitude towards me? I've certainly heard no explanation or apology that would explain your sudden reversal.

Personally, I don't feel that I deserve the honour that you seem keen to bestow upon me. In all my encounters with "Dark forces", as you put it, I have only done what I felt was necessary to protect myself and my friends from lasting harm at the hands of Lord Voldemort. I do not consider that anything I have done merits special recognition, other than perhaps a public apology from yourself for disbelieving me in the first place and for setting in motion events that have made my life miserable for the majority of the past twelve months.

The timing of this award also concerns me. It seems strange that you are proposing such an honour at this time, though I do note the proximity of elections for your Ministerial post. I do hope that you do not intend your actions to influence voters. I cannot accept your proposed award for my supposed bravery. Instead of awarding honours and titles to those who understand that the battle has yet to commence, the Ministry of Magic should be concerning itself with preparing the wizarding world to defend itself against the likely onslaught that Lord Voldemort no doubt has in store, and with the provision of protection for those most likely to be at risk. Once the battle is over, and the evil defeated then perhaps I will reconsider this offer.

Returning to the events that appear to have precipitated your change of heart, can I assume now that you truly believe that the events that I witnessed at the end of the Tri-wizard tournament were real? If that is the case, then I have a number of questions that need investigation:

Whilst I'm aware that the latter two questions don't relate directly to the return of Lord Voldemort, they do relate to the recent impugning of my character in which you have conspired, and I believe you would do well to rectify those issues prior to contacting me in the future.

Yours most sincerely,

Harry Potter.

Harry nodded to himself. He'd covered all the points he needed to raise, and hoped it would light a fire under the Minister's backside one way or another. Knowing Fudge, it would probably only serve to make him dig his heels in even further, but Harry was determined to get this off his chest, and if the Minister was going to use him as a focal point for wizarding Britain to flock to in an attempt to steamroll the public into re-electing him, Harry would be sure to get his own agenda established as well.

He'd been perfectly polite and logical, but he was sure that Fudge would be apoplectic at his response. He only hoped the end result would be positive in some form or another, whether or not it got Sirius's name posthumously cleared.

Harry made a second copy of the letter as a reminder to discuss the issue with Professor Dumbledore the next time he visited, but for the moment didn't send he letter off to the Ministry of Magic. Now that he'd got the fury of writing down his thoughts about the Order of Merlin award onto paper, he wanted someone else to bounce his response off before he sent it. Since Dumbledore wasn't around, he decided to discuss it with John instead, though the one thing he was sure of was that he wasn't going to be talked out of sending it.

Harry spent the remainder of the morning tidying up bits and pieces and making sure the house was in a reasonable state, since he hadn't done much cleaning since Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had left. He also spend some time reading through his potions primer to keep reminding himself of the properties of potion ingredients and what they were used in, so that when it came to returning to Snape's classes at Hogwarts he would have the information at his fingertips.

Two o'clock soon came around, and Harry used the Floo to get to John's flat in Hogsmeade once again. They had arranged for him to continue duelling practice this afternoon, though Harry also wanted John's opinion on his letter to Fudge.

He arrived in John's living room, to find it empty, but could hear voices in the near-bare room that they had used to practice duelling the last time he'd been there. When he pushed open the door, John and Moody were sat at a rather basic-looking table with a teapot and two cups in front of them.

Harry was pleased to see that Mad-eye Moody was there as well, and approached him about the Order of Merlin award as well, feeling that Moody was likely to agree with Harry's own sentiments on the issue.

Having read the letter, John was a little flabbergasted. "I can't believe you're turning down an Order of Merlin award, Harry," he said. "Think of all the possibilities, the respect, and notoriety that comes with it!"

Harry gave John a flat stare. This was something that he hadn't even considered. He'd reacted to the award on its merits, more or less, and hadn't even given a thought to the potential ramifications in terms of the acclaim that he would receive as a result.

"Don't you think I've got enough fame in the wizarding world already?" Harry asked him, a little bluntly.

"Moody snorted at this, but John's eyes just widened. "I hadn't thought of that, I suppose," he admitted. "I see you've called Fudge on him using you to glamourise his re-election campaign, too. Maybe you're not quite as callow as I'd thought."

"Sometimes, just sometimes, I get some good advice. Even if it's not necessarily intended for me to act on." Harry was sure that Tonks had really only been kidding him about the article in the Prophet that had speculated upon Harry's receipt of the Order of Merlin, but he knew she'd get a kick out of his refusal. It seemed that the young Auror held the Minister for Magic in as little regard as Harry did.

"Are you sure about this, Harry?" John questioned. "An offer of the Order of Merlin doesn't come along every day, you know."

"As sure as I have been about anything. This isn't just about Fudge's re-election campaign, you know, there are more important things at stake."

"I'm not sure that getting Sirius's name cleared is all that important now," John told Harry sadly. "It's not going to make any difference to him."

"It's not him I want it for," Harry asserted. "It's his friends. It's for Professor Lupin and for myself. It's for Ron, Hermione and Ginny, people who already know that he was innocent. It's ... what is it that those American psychiatrists use when they talk about relationships and deaths and stuff ... closure?"

John nodded. "I understand, but you don't have to take such a heavy stand on it right now, surely? I mean, this is the Order of Merlin we're talking about here!"

Harry got the feeling that this is the way that Ron would react as well, once he found out - that Harry was turning down something that most people would dedicate their whole lives to attaining, or would gladly part with a limb to gain such recognition.

"Even if it were about the fame and the respect, how long do you think that would last? As soon as I'm no longer flavour of the month it would be used against me." Harry wasn't quite used to being quite this analytical and he found that it made his head hurt. "I'll be tied to Fudge's campaign, and if I'm ever the subject of bad press, it'll be used as a way to discredit me: 'Harry Potter, who was awarded the Order of Merlin prior to the Minister's re-election'. I can't win whether I accept the honour or not, so I might as well make a point out of not accepting it.

"Look at what happened to Dumbledore last year. Having the Order of Merlin didn't stop him getting ousted as Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, or whatever it was. I really don't need the problems that it would bring at this stage. I just want to get my act together and do something to stop Voldemort, then live happily ever after, given half a chance."

This was a long rant for Harry, even given his abominable temper and frustration the previous year. For once though it was most soundly reasoned, and John couldn't really come up with any arguments for Harry accepting the Order of Merlin that Harry hadn't already made light of. He shrugged his shoulders and acquiesced to Harry's judgement.

"It looks like you've already thought this through pretty well," he noted with a grin.

"For what it's worth," Moody chipped in, "I think you're doing the right thing, Potter. Even if they never clear Black's name, there's a whole closet full of skeletons that the Ministry needs to open up and deal with, and your letter is just the starting point."

Harry smiled towards Moody for his support.

"You might want to talk to Dumbledore about getting this a little more exposure in the press at a later date though," he added with an ugly grin. "Especially if they vote Fudge back in and he keeps sitting on his arse over the whole deal."

"I'm not getting involved in politics," Harry stated firmly.

"Best of luck to you. You're too much of a focal figure to the wizarding population to stay out of it for long, though. All the candidates will want your public support, if only because they think it will help them get elected. If you were old enough, you'd be a lock for the job yourself," Moody noted, unconsciously echoing Tonks's words of a few days prior.

"So you think I should accept it too?" Harry asked Moody, slightly surprised that the ex-Auror would be advocating him agreeing to be a pawn in Fudge's game of political one-upmanship, given his earlier comment.

"No, not at all," he responded. "Like I said, I think you're doing the right thing. I just don't think it will make much difference to the way you get treated by the public and the media - at least until the election is over. As it is, most folk will just assume that whatever Fudge or the other candidates do is just a publicity stunt, which is no doubt why the current Minister is so eager to get you to agree to this so rapidly. If I remember correctly, the deadline for nominations to the Wizengamot is Monday, and then they will determine the appropriate candidates some time next week. I expect Fudge wanted this in the books before his candidature was officially announced."

Rather than get into a protracted discussion on wizarding politics with John and Moody, Harry decided that he'd ask Hermione about the elections, especially since he would have to tell her, Ron and Ginny about rejecting the Order of Merlin. That wasn't really the sort of thing that would stay out of the papers for very long.

With the business of Harry's letter dealt with, the three of them turned to Harry's duelling practice for the afternoon. He started off working with John while Moody watched carefully and gave him pointers about tactics and spells to use in between bouts, but this didn't enhance Harry's repertoire particularly, it was more the case of using spells that he already knew, but in a battle context rather than in everyday life.

After a while, Moody and John swapped, and Moody took over as Harry's opponent, while John provided a critique. Again they swapped over, and John instructed Harry to start using more offensive curses, the strongest he could come up with where possible, and he would do the same. Whilst they watchfully circled each other, Moody left the room briefly to collect John's medical supplies, in case one of them was injured.

For a short time, the two combatants fired off some standard but nasty curses, starting with Stunning spells, and continuing with bone-breaking curses and other nasty hexes. Harry had to call upon his shield spell quite regularly, and spent quite a lot of time dodging and avoiding John's curses while trying to get into a position where he could return fire.

A reductor curse, followed swiftly by a Stunner managed to back John off for a short while and Harry took stock of his situation. He didn't seem to know very many offensive spells that he could use, and John seemed to slip by or shake off most of his everyday curses with relative ease, blocking those few that he either didn't recognise or couldn't avoid in time.

"Imperio," came the unexpected command from John, and as he had done several times before, Harry felt the odd compulsion to listen to John's voice in his head telling him to lay down his wand in surrender. As in his lessons with the fake Moody and in the graveyard with Voldemort though, Harry fought the unwelcome sensation of being controlled, despite the odd feeling that, if only he did exactly as John was telling him, everything would be absolutely fine.

Harry shook his head. No, he wasn't going to lay his wand down; he was in the middle of practising his duelling, damnit. He thought back to some of his mind-clearing techniques and focused on pushing the feeling away, shaking off the compulsion to follow John's commands.

Suddenly his mind broke clear of the curse. "Stupefy!" he shouted, before realising that John was already lying down on the floor, with Moody stood over him, his own wand pointed at John's throat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Christopher?" Moody snarled, his magic eye whirling in its socket. "Give me a damn good reason why I shouldn't just turn you over to the Ministry right now! You're despicable! Using an Unforgivable on a student who's here for you to teach him, who trusts your judgement!"

"Damn it, Moody, we're duelling for Merlin's sake! Do you think the Dark Lord's going to hold off using all the resources that are available to him? He's got to know what it's like!"

"He already does," spat the enraged ex-Auror. "And he can resist it too, as you've just found out."

"Yeah? Well who the hell else had been using Unforgivables on him to teach him then?"

Harry interrupted at this point. "I'm still here, you know."

"Then you know that with what you may have to face, knowing when you're under the Imperius Curse is going to be important," John argued

"Like Moody said: I already know."

"How?"

"Firstly, when Barty Crouch Junior was impersonating Moody and teaching us Defence against the Dark Arts, he put the curse on everyone in the class, several time in my case. But secondly, Voldemort tried to use the Imperius curse to make me bow to him when we duelled last year."

When Harry had described the highlights of his adventures in the first five years at Hogwarts, he hadn't had the time to do more than hit the very high spots. Details of his duel with Voldemort hadn't exactly been at the forefront of his explanation when he'd told John about it, especially considering how much had happened that particular evening.

"He also used the Cruciatus curse on me. I know what they feel like. As you're no doubt aware, I'm probably the only person who might also be able to tell you what the Killing curse feels like as well, but fortunately I don't have much of a memory of that."

John blanched at the reminder of how Harry had come by his scar, but it appeared that Moody still wasn't done with him since he still had his wand pointed directly at John, if not quite as closely as before.

"So if you're not a Death Eater, trying to place the Imperius curse on Potter, what the hell are you doing?"

"It's okay, Moody," Harry defended his tutor. "He's right - I do need practice defending myself against the Imperius curse. It would be the easiest way for Voldemort to kill me off, wouldn't it? Get Malfoy or one of his cronies to put me under Imperius and then tell me to throw myself off the top of the Astronomy Tower, or something.

"Besides which, if John really wanted me under his control, or dead, he's had plenty of opportunity to mess with my mind when we've been working on my Occlumency, and so far I'm doing a hell of a lot better than I was when Snape was teaching me." Harry spat Snape's name.

"Wasn't Crouch using your lesson plans anyway?" Harry asked Moody.

"Well, yes, I was supposed to teach you about the Unforgivables, but there was no way I'd've used them on a student," he admitted. "Even using it on spiders is a stage further than I'd have preferred to go, but you needed a demonstration of how they worked."

Moody stopped training his wand on John and helped him to his feet, allowing him to retrieve his wand from across the room, where it had flown when Moody had Stunned him.

"Next time give me some warning about what you're planning, Christopher. I don't like surprises."

John nodded and dusted himself down.

"Let's get back to your duelling, shall we?" he suggested to Harry.

"Actually, what I'd like," Harry explained, "is to get to know more attacking spells and curses. I seem to be a bit limited in my options at the moment, and a lot of the weaker curses don't seem to make a lot of impact."

John considered this for a moment, then suggested they try a simple but effective spell. First of all he waved his wand and a target, about two feet in diameter, appeared on one of the walls of the room.

"Okay. I don't want you to practice this one when we're duelling because it can get a little bit out of hand. I've seen wizards cause their own deaths by using this in practice duels.

"What I want you to do is use the target on the wall to practice on. It takes quite a bit of control to get the direction right, but this is basically a flame-thrower spell."

"Cool!"

"Now you see why it's best to practice against a target? I wouldn't want you to set fire to the curtains or furniture.

"The incantation is 'incendio', and this is the wand movement." John moved his wand in a quick V-shape, then pointed it at the target. "The more vigorous the initial wand movement and utterance of the incantation, the more power goes into the spell, so I want you to do this very gently to start with."

He nodded at Harry to begin, and backed away to what he considered to be a safe distance.

Harry waved his wand gently, and stridently vocalised the incantation. "Incendio!"

To his embarrassment, a huge jet of flame shot out of the end of Harry's wand in the direction of the target, but missed it by about two feet. "Whoops!" he muttered, as he noticed the huge black scorch mark that now scored the wall.

"Um, okay Harry, a little more gently than that, perhaps?" suggested John, whilst Moody was rolling on the floor in laughter, a strange sight given his advanced age and serious demeanour.

"What's up with you?" John asked him.

"Oh dear, your face!" Moody guffawed as he tried to compose himself. "I don't think we need to worry about Harry's raw power here. You don't want to catch him unawares now he knows that particular spell."

"No, perhaps not," responded John, seeing the funny side at last, but also with a calculating look in his eye.

"Harry, try it again, but don't say the incantation out loud, just think it," he instructed.

Harry looked oddly at his tutor. He hadn't heard of spells being cast without a vocalised incantation, but he supposed it must work. He recalled the curse that Antonin Dolohov had thrown at Hermione in the Department of Mysteries, and how it had nearly killed her despite the fact that the Death Eater had been silenced.

He shrugged, and prepared to give it a go. 'Incendio', the thought furiously, as he made a vicious slashing V-shape with his wand. Once again, a bolt of flame issued from Harry's wand nearly as explosively as the first one though, once again, he missed the target that John had provided, this time by about a foot on the other side to his first strike.

John and Moody shared a look of speculative interest as Harry turned to them to see how well he'd done, their eyes wide open at the power of Harry's spell, even without an audible incantation.

John looked towards Harry speculatively. "Do you think you can do that with other spells too?" he asked.

Harry shrugged again. "I don't see why not. It doesn't seem to be any more difficult than doing it normally."

He looked around the room and saw a cup resting on a table close to where Moody stood, perhaps left there earlier when he'd been drinking a cup of tea. Remembering Professor Flitwick's instructions to swish-and-flick, he waved his wand in the general direction with the words "wingardium leviosa" at the forefront of his mind, and visualised the cup rising gently from the table.

"Erk!" Harry grunted, and lost his concentration as the cup hit the ceiling, shattering into many pieces.

"Sorry! That wasn't meant to happen!" he apologised. "It didn't do that when I learned it in first year!"

Moody laughed at him, a gruff, guttural sound that reminded Harry of a dog growling. "I suspect you've matured a lot in power since your first year, Potter," he noted. "Have you used it since then?"

Harry thought back, but couldn't remember using the spell since. He felt a little less guilty about breaking John's tableware when his tutor used a simple repairing charm to fix the cup.

"You've hit puberty, which normally brings a magical boost, but you've also had five years more experience, during which you've used more and more powerful spells," John explained. "You've learned an awful lot more about magic too, and understand your own magic a lot better than when you first went to Hogwarts, I'd imagine. All that adds up to a lot more power that when you were a first year, Harry."

"What was the spell you used? Leviosa?"

"Wingardium leviosa."

John's eyes widened. "You realise that wingardium means feather?"

"Oh!" Harry blushed. "I didn't realise that," he admitted, shamefacedly. He thought for a moment with a frown on his face.

"Ron used it once to get a troll's club to lift up," he explained, slightly confused, and told John and Moody about his and Ron's rescue of Hermione at Hallowe'en in their first year.

"Desperation does a lot for your spellpower, Potter," Moody noted. "His intention was to stop the club where it was, and he put so much effort into it that the intention overrode the actual incantation."

"The magic knew what he meant?" Harry asked with a puzzled frown.

"Not exactly. More like his intention powered his spell, rather than the incantation. Very similarly to your display with the cup."

"In addition to your notable power," John took up the explanation; "you could have a seriously significant tactical advantage in a duel if you can cast silently, Harry. Your opponent wouldn't know what was coming, whether they should block it, dodge it, or let it hit them and deal with the consequences later." He looked across at Moody. "We're going to have to discuss this, and build it into your training I think, but not today - today you concentrate on getting your spell more accurate. You haven't hit the target yet!" he added with a smirk.

"Just one more thing, Harry," Moody interrupted, "before you go back to practising that spell. Have you tried casting spells without a wand at all?"

"But that's impossible..."

"Not impossible," Moody countered, "just extremely rare. A few witches and wizards don't need a wand at all, and there are more who can do some magic without one, usually something they are highly specialised in. Try it."

He held out his hand for Harry's wand, and Harry passed it across to him with little protest, which earned him a reprimand for allowing himself to be disarmed so easily.

"It could have been a trick, Potter," Moody warned, his good eye rolling upwards at his charge's naivety.

"It won't matter if he can cast without it though, will it?" John countered, but Moody ignored the jibe and directed Harry back to his position in front of the target on the wall.

Suitably chastised, he tried casting the spell again, this time using his hand to mimic the motion of his wand.

'Incendio!' he projected mentally.

Moody yelped and ran out of the room as fast as his wooden leg and his age allowed him, his robes ablaze. Now it was John's turn to laugh uproariously at Moody's situation, and Harry looked very curiously at him, while he calmed himself down.

"What happened? I mean, I didn't get any flames to appear at all. How did Moody's clothes get set alight?" Harry wondered out loud.

Between laughs, John just about managed to get a full sentence out. "He ... put your wand ... in his pocket."

Harry was still confused. At the expression on his face, John laughed even harder.

Eventually he calmed himself enough to explain properly. "It seems that, although you aren't exactly able to cast spells wandlessly, like Alastor was hoping, you can still cast them through your wand even if you aren't holding onto it," he chuckled. Basically you just channelled the flame-throwing spell through your wand whilst he had it in his pocket."

"That's not bloody funny," Moody chuntered loudly from what appeared to be a bathroom, given the sound of large quantities of water gushing from a tap that wended its way to Harry's ears. "Someone could have been seriously injured. It's a damn good job I wear fire-retardant underwear," he groused.

"Well you're the one always complaining about proper wand care, and how you should never keep your wand in your pocket. 'Don't keep your wand there, you'll blow a buttock off!'" Harry laughed at John's impersonation of Moody, and recalled Moody's use of that admonition when the Order had rescued him from Privet Drive the previous summer.

"Shut it, Christopher"

John sniggered at Moody's misfortune, before turning back to the topic at hand. "So, did you know you could do that?" he asked.

Harry started to shake his head, but then remembered what had happened the previous summer when the dementors had attacked him and Dudley, and he had been able to get his wand to light up when he tried to find it. He explained this to John, who nodded sagely. "Well that's even rarer than wandless magic, I think, but I think we should ask Alastor about that..."

Moody walked through the door at those words, looking somewhat dishevelled and with his robes in tatters. "Ask me what? Are you still taking the..."

"No, no," John assured him. "I was talking about Harry's ability to do magic through his wand remotely."

Moody shook his head. "Never heard of it before. Something else that might be to your advantage, young lad," he nodded at Harry. "I think I'd better let you have this back," he added, handing Harry his wand.

Having returned Harry's wand, Moody headed off again, this time through the trapdoor in the floor, muttering about getting some clothes and sending John the bill for his ruined robes, though he seemed to be physically okay other than a few minor scorch marks that matched those on the wall where Harry had missed his aim.

Rather than make any further investigation into Harry's previously unknown skills at this time, probably because Moody would have wanted to be there as well, John had Harry return to practising his flame-throwing spell using the target in an attempt to get the power level and accuracy right. They spent half an hour or so on that, and Harry made good progress in getting the level of flame that he wanted, though less on his accuracy, then they discussed the schedule for the next day.

As Harry was going to visit Hermione in the afternoon, and Dumbledore had arranged for a member of the Order to accompany him, John agreed that their potions lesson could be held in the morning, and then the following week, they would go back to work on Harry's Occlumency.

Harry asked about the weekend, but John said that since he didn't know what time Harry would be back on Saturday, it wasn't worth starting something, and that on Sunday, he had to be somewhere else, but that Harry ought to use Sunday to continue reading up on his potions books, particularly the primer.

Back at Privet Drive, Harry resolved to get his response to Minister Fudge off before anything happened to make him forget. He re-read the letter one final time, then attached it to Hedwig's leg and sent her off to the Ministry. He then sat back and waited for the time bomb to explode.