Hey all. Here I am again. I thank all those who took the time to review. I appreciate it a lot. Even those who just say they want more. :)

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A Different Path

Chapter 9

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In a location unknown to anyone but those who already knew the about it, the man, if he could still be called such, who once was called Tom Marvolo Riddle, had called a meeting with his followers. Almost all of them were present in his company once more, after a highly successful raid on the prison of Azkaban a month ago, where he had easily freed most of his Inner Circle. He had only lost two in the breakout; such was the price to pay for victory.

But now he felt curiously…restless. An ominous feeling had taken hold of him the past few days, and although he had it almost completely suppressed, there were moments that it was strong enough to chill him to the core. He did not know what the feeling was as he had to rely on external sources of information. It was, after all, beneath a Dark Lord to do his own spying.

Privately of course, he admitted that he had become just a tad too inconspicuous. But that certainly didn't mean he would allude to his ignorance in this matter to his followers. He had an image to protect, after all.

"My friends," he began, although they were nothing of the sort, "we grow in power every day. Each day that passes we drive fear into the hearts of those who would consort with filthy mudbloods and disgusting blood traitors. Soon, we will gain control of England, and after that, we will set to conquer the entire world!"

Approving murmuring ran through the assembled crowd, nobody foolish enough to actually cheer out loud. They all knew that the temper of their lord was sometimes volatile.

"But first let us concentrate on England. McNair, what news have you for me regarding the werewolves?" The called Death Eater bent on one knee and bowed his head.

"My Lord, several packs of werewolves have agreed to join you. Others are still undecided, but are leaning towards joining our cause. Only a few small packs have refused to join."

The news caused Voldemort to nod slowly, pleased that his army grew stronger with each addition. Those few would did not join him would eventually learn that nobody crossed him, and lived to tell about it. "Very well. Keep working on the doubters. But if they do not join with us they shall soon be crushed. Malfoy, what news of the school?"

Lucius Malfoy, father to the equally blond and arrogant Draco Malfoy, dropped to his knee and bowed his head, noticeably deeper than McNair had. Voldemort frowned. This meant the blonde had news he would not like to hear.

"My Lord, I fear I must be the bearer of bad news. I had not believed it myself at first, but it has been confirmed by several others who have children in the school loyal to our cause." Malfoy began.

Voldemort's red eyes gleamed with irritation. "Lucius, do not test my patience. Bring your news and do not delay any longer!" Lucius visibly flinched at the tone, but steadied his nerve.

"Forgive me, my Lord. It appears the reports of Potters death were inaccurate." At this, Voldemort sat straighter on his throne. "My son has reported to me that the Potter boy has returned."

Lucius had been right; he did not like the news he had been brought. Not letting the surprise at this proclamation show, Voldemort crafted a knowing look.

"So, it appears I was correct when I sensed the link between us return to life. What other news did your son have to report?" Of course, he had not felt a peep from said link since it had been severed. This would have to consider the possibility that the boy had successfully learned some Occlumency, and was managing to shield his presence from him. Well, he would simply have to tear down whatever weak defences the boy had managed to erect and wrench the information about Potter's whereabouts these past months directly from his mind.

"It seems that the Potter boy has lost his faith in Dumbledore. According to my son, he actively refused to accompany the muggle-lover to a private location to speak about where he had been. It also seems that Potter has decided that he will no longer continue his education at Hogwarts, a decision which has caused Dumbledore to become worried. Soon after, my son says that he and the rest of the school were placed under a sleeping spell and that when they woke up, Potter and his friends were gone."

Voldemort absorbed this information. A breakup between the old man Dumbledore and his Golden Boy? This was certainly unexpected, but perhaps he could turn this to his advantage. See if he could tempt the boy to join his side, supposedly as his equal. In actuality, it would be far easier to kill him if he did.

"This is worthy news indeed. Very well Malfoy, tell your boy to continue his spying and have him report daily to you. It appears that at least your son has some brains."

To his credit, Lucius didn't show his anger at being compared unfavourably to his own son. The meeting lasted some time after that, but Voldemort paid only the least bit of attention, his mind going over the information he had received about Potter.

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Harry reappeared in his room at Hogwarts, a few minutes before lunch would begin. He hadn't come straight from the twin's shop though. He'd done some thinking before returning to the castle. Something Remus had said had made him remember bits of his time when he first lost his arm, and had gotten his replacement. Realisation had unwillingly come to him, and he now knew he had to talk to the old man. He didn't like it much, but he knew it would clear the air somewhat, and perhaps even keep his friends free from any meddling by way of the headmaster. Resigned to the fact that it would have to wait just a bit longer, he set towards the Great Hall to have lunch with his friends.

Entering the Great Hall, he was somewhat surprised that Dumbledore wasn't even at the teacher's table. Shrugging, as it didn't really matter much, he joined his friends and ate lunch with them, talking about anything and everything that came up. He noticed that Hermione seemed to glance at him every time she thought he wasn't looking. Subtly, he checked himself over to see if something was wrong with his clothes or something like that. He saw nothing, but decided not to make an issue of it.

Too soon for the likes of Hermione, lunch was over and they had to return to classes. Or they would have, had Harry not quietly whispered for them to join him in his room and then walked away. Where she would have been torn between going to class and following him only months before, Hermione for one didn't need any more urging. Having admitted to herself that she would like a chance to see if something more could grow between Harry and her, she needed little reason to be close to him. Ron was only too happy to have extra free time, while Luna hoped she would learn something more about her newly discovered gift. Neville was somewhat nervous about skipping class, but went with them anyway, and Ginny was wondering if he'd show the rest of them about his magical mail system.

Upon entering his room, Harry was already waiting in his comfy chair.

"Ok kiddies, today we're learning the flash step." Harry announced once they were all inside, rubbing in his hands with a far too gleeful look on his face.

Hermione's brow furrowed. Harry hadn't used that term before, so she did what was natural for her. She asked.

"Harry, what's this flash step? I don't recall you talking about that before."

"That's because I've never talked about it before." Was suddenly whispered directly in her ear by Harry's voice. And lo and behold, Harry was no longer sitting in front of them, like he had been moments before. No, right now he was directly behind Hermione, with his hands lightly placed on her waist. Hermione gasped, whether from the voice in her ear or the hands on her waist Harry didn't know. She wasn't the only one gasping though. She quickly turned around to look at Harry, but halfway before she could complete that turn, the hands on her waist and the presence behind her vanished. Completing the turn, Harry was gone. Looking around the room, she found him lying on top of his drawer, head resting on his hand, smiling down at them.

"The flash step is the ability to move faster than the untrained eye can see." Harry explained. Then he suddenly vanished again, and a moment later reappeared sitting in his comfy seat. "It's a rather short range ability, but from what I was taught, someone who masters the move can travel over five hundred meters in a single 'step'."

His friends were suitably impressed. Ron looked particularly giddy, probably thinking about the twins who'd be green with envy when he used that trick to get away from them. Ron, of course, didn't know Harry fully intended to teach the twins the same technique. Hermione, ever the knowledgeable, frowned.

"I can't remember ever reading about anything like it. As far as I know, the only ways of long distance travel are floo, portkey and apparation. I've never come across anything called flash step before."

"Heh, I'd be very surprised if you had, seeing as it's a muggle technique to begin with." Now that got their attention.

"What! B-bu-bu... but muggles don't have magic! They can't have made that move!" Ron near yelled.

"Ron, not everything in this world is magic. True, muggles don't have magic, but some muggles, usually martial artists, have learned to use their own life energy. They can use it to enhance their body and what they can do. On my travels I've seen a martial arts master literally punch through stone walls with no damage to their hands whatsoever. Don't be like any other pure blood wizard, Ron. Don't underestimate muggles." Harry said to his friend, frowning as he did so. Even though Ron was his friend, he tended to disregard non-magical folk as unimportant and stupid, even when he knew next to nothing about them.

"Ron, quick question, but did you even know that muggles put a man on the moon a couple decades ago? When was the last time a wizard stood on the moon?"

"That's impossible. Everyone knows there's no air in space, so you can't go to the moon." Ron said with such conviction that it hurt Harry to see his fellow wizard so ignorant. He sighed and shook his head.

"Actually Ron…" Hermione began, instantly going into the lecture mode that Harry knew Ron would automatically tune out. He decided to intervene before things got too out of hand.

"Never mind, guys. Let's just get to the flash step technique."

He waved his hand in a precise movement and soon five shiny, little red crystals, no bigger than a thumbnail, were hovering over his hand.

"Hermione, there are no books about the flash step, but I think you'll like the alternative." He smiled at his bookish friend, who mildly glared at him for the rib at her. With another wave of his hand he attached the crystals to his friends' forehead.

"This might feel a bit strange, but bare with it." And with that, he activated the crystals.

Simultaneously the eyes of all his friends slammed shut and they became rigid in their seats. No more than ten seconds passed before all of them slumped back in their seats, gasping for breath. Subtly, Harry removed the now dull crystals. Having discharged the knowledge they contained, the shine was lost on the little things and they could be used again later.

"Now, the knowledge is in your heads. Take it easy for a bit, say fifteen to twenty minutes to let your brain process the knowledge and integrate it. After that, we'll start the practical bit." Following Harry's lead, the friends kept themselves occupied by watching the T.V Harry had installed in his room. Using his ability to manipulate magic directly, he had created an area in his room where there was little magic, allowing him to use electronic equipment. Using a satellite dish he could watch T.V. The purebloods among his friends were still amazed at the seemingly magical wonder. They lost track of time because of the program, so it was half an hour later before Harry announced they'd start practicing.

"Now, from my own experiences with this, the best way to learn is by playing tag. Just think of the move, and the information will come to you. You'll understand how it's done, but to actually do it is something else. The only way to get it is practise. So try to use the flash step while playing tag. Oh, and don't be surprised if your magic's gotten a boost by the time you're proficient in this."

Looking at his friends, they seemed eager, if uncertain. So he simply tagged Hermione, and flashed a little way away. Hermione reacted fast, tagged Ginny and ran away. Soon the friends were running after one another. Luna was the first who managed to flash. She was running after Ginny to tag her, when all of the sudden she was running in front of Ginny, startling the both of them. But Luna got her bearings pretty quickly, turned around and tagged Ginny before running off again. The next one to get it, surprisingly, was Ron. Although he flashed himself headfirst into a wall, knocking himself out cold. Luckily for him he wasn't anywhere near proficient with flashing, otherwise the speed that the move could call on would have splattered his head all over the wall. One by one, each of his friends managed to flash a short distance, no more than a few metres, but they did it.

By the time Harry called the game to a stop, his friends were exhausted, not used to this kind of usage of their magic. Their cores were near depletion, and they didn't have the considerable reserves Harry did. Shimmering them all back to his room, he presented them with a potion that partially filled their cores with neutral magical energy. It would mix with their unique personal magic and in a couple hours, it would become the same as their own magical energy. Personally, Harry was quite content with the progress they made. They'd be flashing fluently in no time. Then it would just be a matter of practise to master the flash step.

"Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" He rhetorically asked. Checking the time, he noticed that it had somehow become evening already, and noticing the hour, his stomach growled, letting him know it wanted food. As if on cue, Ron's stomach also growled, though considerably louder than Harry's. Ron laughed sheepishly at the noise coming from his belly.

"I'm hungry." He said quite unnecessarily. Harry shook his head, and shimmered to the kitchens to request some dinner for them. He made sure they got only what the Great Hall was being served, as a justification in case Hermione should protest at adding to the poor creature's slavery.

During the meal, he informed all of them about the m-mail system, and made each of them their own account and gave them a manual for it, just as he had given one to Ginny earlier that day. They all relaxed in the comfy chairs after the food - Ron, Neville and Ginny watching T.V, Hermione reading the manual of the m-mail, and Harry took the time to talk to Luna about their Tao gifts. He taught her some simple exercises to 'flex that magic muscle' as he called it. He also took the time to properly go over her magical core and evaluate where she stood, magic wise. He frowned when he discovered some strange flaws in her core, as well as her eyesight. For some reason these combined in her being able to see and yet not see the flows of magic.

"Luna, how long have you been able to see things others can't?"

Luna looked at Harry, surprised at the sudden question. Had it been anyone else, she would have assumed they were making fun of her, and her insistence about the existence of creatures nobody had heard of before. She trusted Harry however, and knew he would not have asked that question out of malice, but because he honestly was interested in knowing the answer.

"It started shortly after mother died. She had been working on a spell when I came into her lab and broke her concentration. She lost control of the spell and it caused a chain reaction in the magical energies that resulted in a powerful but localised explosion. I was caught by the violent air displacements and was thrown into a wall. I started seeing things shortly after I was released from St. Mungo's." All this was said in a quiet voice. She had made her peace with what happened some years ago, but she still felt the emotional weight whenever the subject came up.

Throughout the explanation, Harry had been nodding slowly, still checking his findings. He finished a few minutes later.

"Well, as far as I can discern, that magical explosion had an effect on both your magical growth and your physical growth. Though the physical part is localised around your eyes, the magical part is obstructing your magic. It's like a crude web's been wrapped around your magic flows. They still flow, but slower and with more difficulty than they should. I'm willing to bet that you had a lot of problems with learning spells in your first year." Luna nodded at that. She had had problems learning, but once she started getting the hang of it, those problems had seemed to disappear.

"If you trust me enough, I'll see about removing that web, and correcting your eyes, should you want them corrected. I'm not 100 percent sure what the physical changes, if any, will be, but it should make it as if you had grown up without the interference of that explosion. As for your magic, I think it's best to remove the web, but do it in steps, so you can get used to your magic at a moderate pace, instead of having to deal with the change all at once."

Luna thought about it, and decided that it most likely couldn't hurt to try. "All right, Harry, I trust you."

"Close your eyes." Harry put his hand on top of her closed eyes and reached for his magic. As gently as he could, he reached out to Luna with it, and slowly set about mending the damage done so many years ago. He repaired the physical injuries first, then set about correcting the magic channels in her eyes, as they were not as they should have been. Once he was done with that, he set a block around the newly repaired channels, to let them strengthen before letting magic flow through them. The block was designed to start letting a trickle of magic through after 48 hours. Once that trickle began the flow of magic, it would begin to dissolve and allow greater amounts of magic to flow, until eventually, the block would be totally gone. That would take about five days.

With the web-like obstruction, Harry prodded a bit and found he could manipulate the web. Studying how it connected to itself, Harry took a bit of his magic, and cut a tiny thread. The effect was a visible, at least to Harry, slackening in the tightness of the web. He set about finding other such threads and snipped a few more of them. The web was still in place and would not likely unravel on its own, but it was noticeably less tightly wrapped around Luna's magic. He figured it would allow her easier casting and control of her power. He would keep an eye on it, to make sure Luna didn't suffer any bad effects from it, but he didn't think she would. The web didn't appear harmful, only constrictive.

"How do you feel?" He asked as he removed his hand from her eyes. Luna opened them, and Harry was immediately struck by her chanced appearance. No longer were her eyes seemingly too big for her face, protruding from their sockets, but they sat as they should, nicely in her face. The difference was startling, especially when not expecting it.

"What's wrong?" Luna asked frightened by Harry's reaction. But Harry smiled at her. "Nothing bad Luna. In fact, you look very pretty." And he conjured a mirror for her to see what he was talking about. Luna looked at herself in the mirror, and drew in a deep breath, even as tears began to form in her eyes. She blinked a few times, to try and stop tears from falling and then turned to Harry.

"Thank you." She whispered, but she didn't succeed in stopping those tears from escaping.

"You're welcome my friend." He replied and sat with her for some time after, simply being close to her without the need to break the comfortable silence. Neither noticed the looks Hermione sent the pair once she saw how they were sitting. Longing, anger and uncertainty ran through her.

A clock on the wall suddenly chimed, and let them all know that it was already midnight. Stating that they all had classes tomorrow, aside from Harry, they all said their goodnights and went to their dorms to get some sleep.

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Done for this chapter. Hope you liked it and if you did, please leave a review.