Harry had to admit some curiosity about Barty Crouch Jr. He had obviously interacted with the man a fair amount the previous year but that had all be shrouded by the man's assumed identity as retired auror Alastor Moody. Harry didn't know much about the man himself besides that his father Bartemus Crouch Sr. was a grade A prat, that Barty was thrown in jail by his own father after being outed as a death eater by Igor Karkaroff, and that he supposedly had something to do with the torture of Neville Longbottom's parents.

This latter detail made up the bulk of his wariness towards the man. It was obvious to Harry from the little bit of his childhood that Neville had felt necessary to share with the dorm that Neville's upbringing was only superficially better than Harry's had been. Without loving parents to safeguard him from the mistreatment of relatives Neville had seemingly been subjected to his own brand of emotional abuse. Believed to be a squib Neville had survived multiple attempts on his life by his uncle who had couched the attempted murder as an attempt to spook the magic out of him.

The irony that Neville was abused for his failure to exhibit accidental magic while Harry was abused for his abundance of accidental magic was not lost on him. Neville's primary caregiver was an overbearing grandma who was apparently at least indifferent to Neville's well being, if her failure to prevent Uncle Algie's murder attempts were any indication.

Harry wondered how Neville would have turned out his he could have been raised by his parents. Would he be confident? Would he get good grades. Certainly at the very least he would have his own wands since his father would still need his. None of these ruminations put Harry in a mind to view Barty with favor, but in a show of uncharacteristic maturity Harry decided he would withhold judgment until he had at least met the man. For all Harry knew the man could be completely innocent of any involvement in the torture and incapacitation of the Longbottom's. Sirius was innocent and it hadn't stopped the Ministry from chucking him in Azkaban and throwing away the key.

When Harry entered the library the man was already there waiting for him. He looked about five feet ten inches and had windswept dirty blond hair and dull greyish blue eyes. The man looked neither friendly nor hostile. Rather he looked at Harry with a mix of intrigue and intensity like Harry was something very interesting that he was trying to make out. Harry refused to squirm under the scrutiny. Days of Voldemort's burning glances had somewhat immunized him.

Laid out in front of Barty were four folders. As Harry approached the table he could make out Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Duelling, and History of Magic hand written on each folder respectively.

"Your syllabi." Barty explained succinctly.

"What are we going to work on today?" Harry decided that he would rather jump into the tutoring than dwell on the man's dubious past. He wasn't sure he'd be able to stay civil if the man openly admitted that he had tortured Neville's parents. Barty quirked a brow at this as though he had been expecting a bit more of a fight.

"What no questions about my past? No demands for me to explain my association with the Dark lord and defend my reasons for supporting him? My, I'm almost disappointed. Yaxley told me how aggressively you had assaulted his character for being a healer in the employ of the Dark Lord. I had braced myself for a full inquisition."

"Would you have answered my accusations if I had asked?"

"No, my reasons for joining the Dark Lord are my own, and while Yaxley may feel comfortable sharing his tragic past with complete strangers I have no such compulsion. I don't need to justify my choices to you. I am here because the Dark Lord Has ordered me to be here. He wishes you to be tutored. So you shall be. If you prove worthy of my respect perhaps someday I will share my personal history with you, but that day is not today and frankly is unlikely to be any day soon. No, today we are going to go over my plans for the four subjects I will be teaching you and maybe if there is time after that I may test you on the subjects to take a baseline of what you already know. I understand you have zero experience with Arithmancy or Ancient Runes." He made a tutting noise with his tongue and Harry nodded his head.

"That's unfortunate and will be quite a set back. We will get you on track with your peers, but it will likely take a whole year just to get caught up and we won't have time for any fun side projects. Arithmancy and Ancient Runes are important in spellcrafting and rituals and some mastery on your part will be necessary if you have any hope of achieving my or the Dark Lord's projected goals for you. I hope you are prepared to put your nose to the grindstone. I managed to achieve twelve O.W.L.s and that was without the benefit of extensive private tutoring. You'll find my standards are quite high, and unlike the Moody persona I put on last year I will not tolerate laziness or underachieving. Now let's begin!."

Several hours later Harry stumbled into his bedroom with a mild headache and an awareness that his peaceful lazy existence at Haven House was a thing of the past. He could only hope that Yaxley would be a more indulgent tutor otherwise he couldn't imagine how he was to find time for much except eating, sleeping, and studying. Perhaps that was the intent.

If Harry was expecting to find the same friendly but formal Yaxley that he had spoken to before upon his entrance to the basement potions lab he was quickly disabused of the mistaken notion. Yaxley was barely suppressing his ire and was doing a very poor job of concealing it. Harry immediately detected upon entering the room that Yaxley was very displeased with him, though he couldn't for the life of him imagine why.

Harry had only interacted with the man a few times, when he had first awoken from the third task kidnapping fiasco, when Yaxley had given him the antidote for the draught of living death and when Yaxley had given him the first of his weekly eye correction potions. As their last meeting had ended perfectly amicably, with Harry accepting the eye correction treatment with minimal fuss Harry couldn't understand the man's sudden shift in demeanor.

"Er.. hi." Harry greeted. Yaxley shot him an unimpressed look and replied.

"Take a seat. Today we will start with Potions as I understand that is your worst subject. In front of you is a written test with one hundred questions which I will use to determine the gaps in your understanding. Begin."

Harry was startled at the abruptness of his dismissal, but not wishing to anger the man further he picked up the provide quill and got to work. The questions were ordered by year starting with things that Harry had learned in first year up through things that Harry had learned last year. Many of the questions touched on things that Harry couldn't remember Snape ever having discussed in class like preparation techniques. Harry answered as best he could but he suspected that vague answers like 'cut it with a knife' were unlikely to be the optimal response.

When Harry finished he slid the test forward and waited for further instruction. He watched with trepidation as Yaxley read through his results. He really wanted this tutoring to work out. Seeing the effects of the nutrition potions and now the eye correction potion had given him an appreciation for healing and potions that his animosity toward Snape had previously prevented him from feeling. Harry had been so hopeful that Yaxley would be a better teacher than Snape. His earlier interactions with the man had made him optimistic. Now he was wondering if he was just doomed to have surly potions tutoring. Was it a requirement?

"I see my concerns were well placed. I have had the misfortune at times in the past of having to share a lab space with Severus Snape. The man is extremely condescending and rude and I'm not in the least surprised to learn that he is a terrible teacher. Unless you are completely incompetent, which I hope for your sake is not the case, than I would wager from reading your answers that Snape spent little if any class time teaching students the proper preparation of ingredients, how to correctly slice, chop, dice, mince, and pulverize etc. Such things can be learned from supplemental readings, but it is wrong for him to assume that all of his students will go out of their way to find such supplemental readings and being that correct ingredient preparation is only third in importance after having correct ingredients and following correct brewing instructions he really ought to have dedicated class time to its instruction. But his failings as a teacher are neither here nor there. You are my student now, for the moment at least, and together we shall strive to overcome the past deficiency of your education."

Yaxley spent the next hour going through the basic cutting techniques, explaining why different knives would be used with different ingredients, and explaining how different cuts of the same ingredient can affect the magical potency or effect of a potion. Harry thought it was the best potion lesson he had ever had, though he was still cognizant of Yaxley's coolness toward himself. Was Yaxley annoyed that he was being ordered to waste his time teaching a fifteen year old? Wanting to clear the air before they met again Harry decided to ask.

"Thank you for today. You really… you made it all make sense in a way that it never had before. I'm sorry you have to waste your time on me. I'm sure you have better things to do than act as a tutor."

"I enjoy teaching."

"Oh, I just assumed that you were put out by it. You've seemed…" Harry struggled for a polite way to say not friendly and finally settled on, "out of sorts today."

"Tell me Harry, what is something that people do that really bothers you."

Harry was a bit thrown by this seeming non-sequitur but nevertheless answered. "Um… well I hate bullies. My cousin and his friends used to torment me when I was younger, I've had to deal with my share of hazing at Hogwarts too."

"Okay, pretend for a moment that you meet someone new. You are nice and friendly to that person. You treat them respectfully. You even go out of your way to make them comfortable by talking about yourself and your past, including your aversion to bullies. Then you find out the very next day that person went out and terrorized a bunch of underclassmen. How would you treat that person the next time you met him? Would you regard him with the same respect? Would you maintain the same level of friendliness?"

Harry was really getting confused at where this conversation was going, but in for a penny in for a pound. He replied, "No, I probably wouldn't want to associate with that person anymore. I would feel angry that I had misjudged them and that I had trusted them with knowledge of my past only to learn that they were the same as the people who hurt me."

"Can you not imagine then why I might be feeling cross with you at present, Mr. Potter. Before you answer think really really hard."

Harry blinked in shock as he processed that what had seemed like a bizarre conversational tangent was apparently intended as an analogy. In this analogy he was apparently the bully. Harry couldn't imagine what he had done to piss Yaxley off, after all, he'd been trapped inside of Haven House with no company besides Voldemort and Barty. Sure Yaxley had explained his support of Voldemort to Harry, but he had never seemed put out that Harry didn't share those beliefs. Hell he hadn't even joined Voldemort until his wife killed herself… Harry felt like an arse.

Of course Voldemort would have told the resident healer about Harry's suicide attempt. And given the man's tragic history it was hardly surprising that suicide my be a touchy topic for him. Adding on top of all of that the man had been working tirelessly for the last three months to restore Harry to full health. Tragic history with his wife notwithstanding it wouldn't be amiss for him to have been annoyed to have his hard labors so obviously unappreciated. Harry was at a loss for words. How does one apologies for a failed suicide attempt?

He coughed to clear his throat. "I'm guessing Voldemort has been to speak to you about what happened in the woods." Yaxley raised an eyebrow at this highly euphemistic description but did not otherwise interrupt. "I know it must seem incredibly ungrateful, especially after you've expended so much effort to make me well again. And I know that you must feel annoyed with me both for my actions and for my insensitivity. I do regret it. I… it wasn't planned. I learned something...upsetting, which for your sake I won't share with you. Merlin knows how Voldemort would react to anyone else learning the truth. He killed Wormtail just for witnessing his epiphany, no you'll just have to trust me when I say that it was an earth shattering revelation and that it made me react irrationally. I don't plan to do that again. I don't actually want to die and Voldemort has expounded on to me how futile my death would be even in the unlikely event that I was ever successful in such a pursuit. Which is neigh on impossible now that he has his snake paintings watching me every second of the day. I know that none of this changes what I did and that my loss of your respect is probably irretrievable, but I just wanted you to know that I do appreciate the effort you put into making me healthy and the time you're putting into teaching me and I will not disrespect those gifts again."

Yaxley sent him a long hard appraising look and replied.

"Let us hope not. I'll see you in two days."

Harry's shoulders sagged at the obvious dismissal. Of the three people at Haven House Yaxley had been the one whom he had most respected and whom he had felt had the best chance of maybe becoming an ally. He really hoped that he hadn't burned bridges with the only decent person he was going to be allowed interaction with for the foreseeable future. Only time would tell.