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Chapter Text

There is something bittersweet in stepping back into the shoes that you had once so easily filled, knowing full and well that this was definite. That it was little more than a show being put on for a less than captive audience while those backstage worked tirelessly at the mechanics of it. 

Dumbledore, for all Harry and Severus alike could tell, did not care much for who it was that picked the young snake up from the Platform at the end of the year, so long as it was not someone of magical lineage. This was the only excuse that the professor and the two young Slytherins that he had somehow come to foster could come up with when no one had batted an eye at Harry not returning to the Dursleys the summer prior.

It was this explanation that they had hinged things on when the potions Professor had conspired with the lone remaining Potter for him to go and stay with the muggle friends that he had made until he could get all of the paperwork in order, the trio of snakes pulling strings from behind a curtain that no one else could see.

Harry didn’t mind the turn of events, not for the part that he played in it anyways, as he walked through the dirty streets of the city with the Plutos all around him, each composing themselves in a manner that made parents steer their children away from them on the street, and made those that looked almost as rough as them smirk as if weighing their chances in a fight. The ones that did come left the group high on adrenaline, with bloodied knuckles that itched for another fight. 

It was three days of cigarette smoke in the teen’s lungs, cuts on skin put there by too quick fists and blades that were not his own, and the sting of alcohol as it burned its way down all of their throats. 

It was three nights of sleeping next to the first person that had ever looked at him as if they could find a home in one another if they so wished, as touches came easy between the two. Always soft, never bruising, never meant to cause pain.

(As they fell asleep together and woke up in each others arms each morning well before the sun rise, the pair ignored the simple fact that there were other forms of pain that never cause any sort of hand to strike skin)

Harry couldn’t bring himself to give over his mind completely to the way that he was all but living in a memory of something that he knew he wouldn’t be able to return to after these few days, not when he had spent those early hours of dawn before Thomas, Alex, and Jude would seek him out, in the forest with spirits of those long dead at his sides. Neither of them explaining to him why he could see either of them, but instead Merlin having the second teach him through something else entirely.

And Harry let them dictate like this for now, because when he rose out of bed on the third day - a sad look on his face that marred Jude’s as well - the boy knew that the lesson would be one that he would need come nightfall. 

He had plans to complete after all.

-

Number Four, Private Drive looks from the outside exactly like that of any other house on the street, something that it’s occupants have always prided themselves on, even if they knew that at a time it hadn’t exactly been the truth on the inside as well. Sure, their lawn and garden had lost a bit of the prestige that it had held up till a summer or so before, but it was a small price to pay for the peace that the loss of the freak had brought.

As Petunia opens her front door to find a man that she had hoped to never see again, the blond woman knows that this peace has just expired.

The heat of summer was beating down on the dark clad figure - Wizarding robes swaying ever so slightly in the small breeze that he had conjured into the air - but one would never know it from the almost impassive way that the man held himself. He had endured worse than heat after all at the hands of the Dark Lord himself countless times.

“You,” Petunia said, the word coming out as a curse rather than an everyday part of speech. 

“Hello Tuney, is Harry here?” 

Severus didn’t know which name caused the woman to flinch worse, the one that he had called her, or the given name of the boy that she was supposed to be caring for as if he was her own son. Something that she had been failing to do since the day that he’d been given to her.

“The boy isn’t here,” she all but spats, looking past the wizard before her at houses around her own, as if expecting for all of the neighbors to have the blinds open and watching the scene unfold, “now leave.”

“Not until Harry comes,” Severus says firmly, his voice almost a sneer, “now are you going to let me inside, or am I going to stand out here for all the neighborhood to see?”

It was at that thinly veiled threat that the blonde woman drew up to her full height and raised her hand, pointing a finger at the man that she had grown up alongside, as if she thought that she could be intimidating to him at all. All the front did was make the potions master rage a bit more inside, knowing that such a tactic would work on a small child well enough. He’d used it in his own classroom enough to know such a thing to be truth.

 “You listen right here, Severus Snape-” but she never got a chance to finish as a new voice rang through the air, loud and commanding attention, uncaring of who heard:

“Professor!” 

Both adults turned and watched with oddly similar gazes as two figures stalked towards them, the elders of one mind as they only recognized one of them. Severus had an idea as to who the second one was though, the theory supported by the casual arm that the stranger had thrown over the young Slytherin’s shoulder. It was the sort of familiar touch that would have gotten others gutted for even less.

Jude.

It was always Jude Finley in any story that he’d ever gotten the boy to tell. 

Always.

Severus looked just past the two teens for a moment and saw a beat up looking car a few houses down, two older boys leaned against the outside of it, smoke billowing in the air from the cigarettes burning between their fingers, an identical tattoo peeking out from beneath their clothes. 

The Plutos, Harry had called them - almost affectionately - when he’d gone (with permission) at the end of the year to call the eldest among them, a boy named Thomas. Severus guessed that the taller of the two was likely he, making the other Alex. 

Looking at the small group, the Professor had to remind himself that it was for the best to take the boy from them. That this wasn’t the world that Harry belonged to (that was a lie, he belonged to each in equal measure, something that Harry himself knew down to his bones and the damaged soul that was nestled beneath them) that he was a wizard and would have to leave them all behind eventually.

(He had a landline at home, he knew then that it would be getting a fair deal of use)

The decision though to take the boy away became easier when he saw the bruise blooming on the teen’s cheek, one that hadn’t been there only a few days before. Severus was sure that if he were to look, that he’d see scabs just barely forming over bruised knuckles on both of the boys that had stopped before the two adults.

He was right.

Severus really thought that he should have known better than to hope for the boy not to get into any fight in the three days that they were out of each other’s sights, but here he was suppressing a sigh.

The potions master opened his mouth to greet the two teens, but it was his turn to be interrupted before he could even begin to speak.

“So you finally came back,” Petunia sneered in a manner that reminded Harry remarkably of the potions Professor that was standing before her, the tone was enough to make the teen want to shut down, just as he always had when she was in such a fowl mood, “you filthy, wretched boy. You dare to stalk my doorstep after all this time?”

Harry didn’t notice that his body was trembling in a manner so small that it could be easily explained by the summer breeze, but Jude did. The taller teen dug his fingers into a bruise that he knew was on the younger’s shoulder, and Harry let the pain wash over him and bring him back to himself once more.

“Well, we both know that I was the only one that kept it clean, so I have more of a right to stand on it than you do, Aunt Petunia.”

Harry thought that he would remember the way that she went red in the face for the rest of his likely short life.

Jude snickered, the sound low and quiet compared to the heavy, angered breathing of the woman that should have been Harry’s caretaker, but she heard it anyways, her too sharp gaze turning to the other teen but her words still for Harry alone.

“It was bad enough that one of your kind,” Petunia says, throwing a disdainful look towards the man that she had known since she was small, “is here, but now you bring this trash too?”

A soft hiss escaped from the Parselmouth’s lips, causing the serpent in his jacket pocket to stir slightly at the noise, but Nyx stayed where she was, having been warned not to come out when Jude was around. The dark colored serpent did not understand the Royal One’s instance of this rule, as it had never been a problem before then, but could feel the warning that the teen gave off when Harry had felt her move, and settled back down. For the speaker’s sake alone.

“Well, if we’re such a…. disagreeable group to have on your front porch, then you might want to let us in before the neighbors lose interest with those two idiots down there,” the young Slytherin said, pointing at the other two boys that bore the same mark that he and Jude did, still smoking around the car, “and their eyes stray down here. I mean, I’d love to hear of that scandal, but I’m sure you wouldn’t.” 

Harry smiled as he spoke, it was a cruel sort of look, with teeth sharp enough to be seen as a threat all on their own even without the one that he’d just spoken. It was violent and vile, the very sort of look that had most shying away.

Jude loved it, he always had.

If Harry hadn’t known for sure that there wasn’t a single drop of magic within the woman’s blood, he would have thought that the flash of her eyes in the sun was that of the same magic that caused his own to flash a violent green. 

“Fine,” she spat before she turned her cold gaze onto the teen that belonged here even less than Harry himself, “but he is not coming into this house,” Petunia said, pointing at Jude. “I may not be able to do anything but the two of you freaks, but he is not allowed.” And with that the woman turned, blonde hair sweeping over her shoulder as she did so. For a moment Harry was reminded of Lucius Malfoy. It was not a comparison that he particularly liked.

When Harry turned to look at the other teen, there was a soft look on his face, one much gentler than he’d ever seen before on the older boy. Something broke a little bit inside of the snake at seeing it, seeing this version of the other teen that was so often reserved for nights when a scream was beginning to tear at Harry’s throat as he woke from nightmares in the other’s bed, Jude’s hands gentle on his skin. 

It looked as if Jude was mourning someone not yet gone.

(Harry wondered if he was)

“I’ll call you,” he says quickly, possibly too quick, but there was a sense of urgency in the air with his aunt waiting and potions master right there.

“I’m sure you’ll try,” Jude said, that damned smile still there, as if he thought that Harry would forget the other. Harry didn’t think that he ever would even if the mark of their group wasn’t forever on his skin. “But if you do call, I’ll be there.”

There was a double meaning to the other boy’s words that the Slytherin had no trouble picking up on.

“My own personal Batman, now that’d be a sight to see.”

“Whatever you say, Superman,” the other responded, a smirk on their lips. 

Harry only had a moment to wonder why the other Pluto had chosen that particular hero out of all the choices, when the other was suddenly moving closer, the pace slow and given plenty of time for intervention. Lips brushed his cheek, burning like fire on his skin for the moment that they lingered there before Jude pulled away, that same sort of sad look in his eyes that they’d both been sporting all morning.

“Goodbye,” the older teen said in a manner much too soft for the two of them, who spent so much of their time together with cigarette smoke in their lunges and cuts on their lips. 

Jude had already turned and walked too far away before Harry got the chance to say it back.

The young wizard took in a deep breath that he thought that Remus should be proud of him for, as he turned and walked into the house that had done everything but raised him. 

“Why are you here?” Aunt Petunia asks harshly the moment that the door closes, her too tall form much too close to Harry’s own for him to have any sort of comfort.

“Just to permanently take myself off of your hands,” Harry said back, with much more bravado than he thought he could ever hold within this house, his voice much louder than he’d ever been allowed to have it, “isn't that lovely?”

“You disappeared all on your own before,” the woman protested.

“I know,” the teen says, false joy in his voice as he looked upon the woman that had not quite raised him with such dead eyes that she flinched knowing that she’d had a hand in creating that, “it must have seemed like fucking Christmas for you lot here.”

“Who’s at the door, Petunia?” a loud voice bellowed from the direction of the sitting room and Severus noticed instantly the subtle flinch that tore through the teen at his side.

It was at that, that the man stalked past the woman that he had never imagined would grow to be as cruel as himself, and into the room holding the source of the noise, wand held comfortably at his side, twirling it.

(Harry watched him and wondered if the older man knew that Harry did exactly the same thing when he held a blade.)

There was a walrus of a man sitting in a chair that creaked something awful as he stood suddenly at seeing a stranger walk into his sitting room, especially one dressed the way that he was.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” the man thundered, but it didn’t phase Severus when he had stood at the feet of those so much stronger than the muggle before him could ever hope to be.

“Severus Tobias Snape,” the Slytherin Head of House said formally, “your nephew’s potions professor.”

Severus watched as the pathetic excuse of a man before him blubbered at his proclamation, paling in the face.

“I have no nephew,” Vernon said, seething as he lied through his teeth, anger taking over his fear as it so often had.

“Then I suppose I imagined living here.”

Vernon’s head snapped to the side at the new noise, a voice that he’d not heard in a long time now. He saw a ghost standing in his hall, a thin boy standing next to the cupboard under the stairs with cold eyes that looked as if they would strike him dead at any given moment, as scarred hands ran down the wood of the cupboard door. 

Harry James Potter, the bastard of a child. The child of the shame of the family. The freak that they had been forced to take in.

“You,” Vernon snarled, storming forwards, all fear forgotten as rage barrelled into him. “You ungrateful, little piece of shit!”

For someone so large, Vernon Dursley was already at the boy before Severus could move to intercept him, though he only stayed there for a moment as before beginning to back up, Harry following closely with a blade pointed at the older man’s neck, blood trickling onto the muggle’s shirt.

“I’d watch out, Uncle,” the teen said as Severus watched the boy’s head tilt to the side with a cruel glint in his eyes, like a serpent waiting to strike, “one wrong slip,” the blade dug in deeper, “and you wouldn’t even be the first man that I’ve killed.”

“You wouldn’t, boy,” the muggle continued to blubber, but Severus supposed that he saw something in the teen’s eyes, because it looked as if for the first time in nearly thirteen years he conceded. “Alright, freak.”

“Why are you here?” Petunia asked, the cowardly woman finally catching her voice after standing silently by as her husband was threatened by the teen that they had tried their hardest to kill with their questionable care.

“As I said,” Harry started, holding the blade close to his body even as he pulled away, “I’m here to take myself permanently out of your care.”

“How, boy?” Vernon asked, paling as green eyes that seemed to flicker with unnatural light turned on him once more.

“Severus?” the teen asked without looking away from the muggle man.

“Well, I had wanted to do this in the sitting room, but here is as good a place as any,” the potions master said, stepping back into the fray of the conversation after staying back and letting Harry handle this himself. 

The man pulled out a piece of parchment to Vernon and did not lower his hand till he took it, forcing the man to accept this from a ‘freak’ like him.

Harry watched with careful eyes as his uncle read over the parchment, looking for any signs that the boar of a man might tear it as he had done so many of the letters that Harry had been meant to receive when he was eleven. 

He didn’t tear it though, reading it instead.

“An apprenticeship?” Vernon asked, mockingly. “Is the whelp even smart enough to get such a thing?”

“He’s one of the top in his class,” Severus answered and Harry heard the pride there.

Petunia did too.

For the first time she truly looked at the boy, the only thing that she had left of a sister that had left her behind long before the war had taken Lily from her, and let the guilt wrap itself around her heart.

“We’ll do it,” the woman said, stepping forwards and taking the parchment from her husband’s hands, “anything to wash our hands of the freak.”

Harry was well versed in lies and half truths, he knew that this reasoning - for her at the least - was something between the two. He didn’t particularly care though, didn’t think that he could if he were to try.

Harry watched as they signed the papers quickly, wanting to get the both of the wizards out of their home as fast as they could, and knew that this wasn’t true freedom, but only a brief sort of reprieve. After all, the only thing that Severus was offering him was an apprenticeship and a place to stay. It wasn’t adoption and a home. He would take whatever scraps of affection that he could get though, and should they be revoked, then he always had his own personal Gotham Knight waiting for him.

Harry didn’t want to have to call upon Jude to be his savior though.

—

Severus had bought a cottage during the school year.

The man had never thought that he would be doing such a thing, but yet right around the beginning of the previous school year - when it had come to his attention that somehow Theodore Nott would find his way into his care as well - he had. He’d even taken great care with picking its location. 

The fields around the cottage were wide and vast with the tall grass that Harry had seemed to favor during their Patronus training over the past school year, though in the distance one could easily see three other homes peeking up from the grass, the Weasley home - the Burrow as they called it - much too close for his own feelings of safety as the twins had taken a liking to his ward, the Diggory home off to another side, standing much shorter than the Lovegood home that could also be seen. He knew that in moving here, in building a cottage here, he was signing himself up to a house filled with teenagers, but it was a price that he was willing to pay to see the boy’s eyes hold a bit of light within them.

Severus watched as Harry took in the cottage from the outside, looking at the house with the speculative eyes of someone much too used to things attacking him when he dared to get too comfortable. This wasn’t going to be that, Severus would make sure of it.

Harry studied the cottage as he walked closer to it, taking in the deep green exterior and the large windows covered in plants, taking stock of each exit point on each of the two floors. It was beautiful, if simple in its design. He studied Severus as well, watching the way that the man took it in as well. Harry knew then that the other hadn't had this property the summer before, that he’d bought it for him.

For a moment he dared to hope.

“Let’s get you inside,” the potions master said softly, “we can go and retrieve Mr. Nott tomorrow.”

Harry knew that they would not be doing that, but followed all the same.

—

It was late into the summer night when a boy suddenly appeared on the lawn of an old manor, the air shining around him as the teen’s wrist burned with the price of such magic. The wards of the manor stood at his back, protesting his existence, but unable to do a thing to stop the death touched boy as he walked closer and closer to the doors of the manor. The wards had been made of modern magic after all, something that Harry did not bend to the whims of anymore. Not that he ever truly had done so before.

When he knocks on the door, Harry knows that it echoes like thunder throughout the too empty house.

The door opened a few moments later and there was a wand in the boy’s face held by a shaking hand, and a laugh floating through the air that only the teen could hear.

Harry looked at the man before him, someone that was much older than he had thought that any parent of someone his age should be, and saw Theo in his too stern features. The color of his hair was the same shade of brown, the sort that shined gold in most soft lights, and his eyes held the same lifelessness to them, though his seemed to be more from the way that his skin sagged with age than anything. He knew without a doubt that this was the man that had helped to create his brother, the one that had sought to break him into an image of himself.

The boy didn’t have to reach for the magic within him, not as it was already lashing out, stealing the wand from Nott Senior’s hand, the wood creaking as Harry fought the urge to snap it right then and there.

Nott Senior stared with wide eyes at the boy that now had a wand - his wand - floating at his side as if magic were supposed to work in such a manner.

“Who are you?” he asked with a levelness that only being brought up in the proper society of wizarding culture could instill in him. 

“Harry Potter,” the teen answered truthfully, looking upon the elderly man with a gaze that didn’t only seem to glow, but truly did as green light shined around the boy, “are you going to let me in?”

Harry watched and for a moment thought that the answer might be a no, something that he had fully prepared for even though it would be a much bloodier venture should the man wish to take it. But he stepped aside after a moment and Harry smiled with teeth much too sharp, sharp enough to tear out a man’s throat.

The younger Slytherin followed the elder almost obediently to the parlor, looking at the dark wood of the manor around him that felt oppressive rather than inviting as the cottage had earlier that morning. Everything about the place felt like the Dursleys even as the two houses looked nothing alike.

“Tea?” the old man asked as he sat down in a chair with a casualness that the teen did not believe and the older wizard knew that he could not make him do so. There was only one other man that had ever instilled so much fear within him with only a small showing of their power, and standing before him was the boy that had killed him when he was nothing more than a baby.

Though, Nott Senior thought as his arm burned in tune with his mind , he likely wouldn’t be dead for long.

“I’ll light the fire,” Harry said and watched as flames a dazzling emerald green leaped forwards from his palm, running about the room as the older wizard flinched at the sight of them. 

Dragons and thestrals made of flames soared and swooped around the teen, the flames licking at his clothes and skin but never burning him as serpents made of flames coiled around his flesh. Nott Senior had never seen fiendfyre act in such a way, never seen it bow so easily to anyone. He knew that he never would again.

“Why are you here?” the man whispered as he watched as a skeletal horse swooped just a bit too closely to his person, close enough that he could feel its heat.

“Theo,” the teen answered simply as he touched a small dragon as if it were made of scales and meat instead of flame, “he is to come with me for the summer.”

“Why?” Nott Senior asked, not out of bravery, but the pure curiosity that ran through the Nott line, almost sorting many of them into the house of blue and bronze.

“I don’t see how any of that is your business when you have no power to stop me,” the teen answered coldly, a stark contrast to the heat that should have accompanied the flames. 

Everything about the teen was as cold as the waters of the Black lake, Nott Senior no longer wondered how it was that the boy savior had found his way into the snake den, not when he had been all but born for it as it seems. The elder wizard watched as even the flames became chilled, turning black before his eyes, like shadows. He knew without even touching them that they would do much more damage than any normal fiendfyre could, or ever should.

“He’s in his room,” the Nott patriarch said, pointing as he did so.

“Pathetic,” the boy hissed, long and low as he stalked as he did so.

Nott senior knew that the teen was right in his assessment, but he’d take it if the other could turn his son into anything even close to himself.

For the first time the man wondered if the Dark Lord was truly the one that he should follow.

—

When Harry found the room, following the feeling of the other’s magic through the long halls, Theo was already waiting for him with his trunk at the foot of the bed and a busted lip to show for his time. He knew right then that consequences be damned, he’d made the right choice in coming early.

“Let’s go home,” Harry said softly, though his voice sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room as Theo smiled at the words despite the action bringing blood to his lips.

A flick of a stolen wand and a raised brow was all it took to have the trunk shrunken down and in Harry’s pocket, Theo at his side as they walked through the halls, and a wand now abandoned on the ground to be found by its owner some other time when the two teens weren’t there to see it.

The boys walked out of the manor, trekking into the yard as the stars shined down upon them, magic thick in the air in the manner that it so often was when Harry was around.

“How are we leaving?” Theo asked as he looked at the other boy, taking in the darkness under his eyes. It had only been a few days since they’d seen one another and yet it felt like there was a whole world that had stood between them. “I don’t see any brooms.”

“We don’t need brooms,” Harry said surely.

“I wasn’t aware that you knew how to apparate.”

“I don’t,” the snake said, confusing the Nott heir even more, “but I know the old magic that it was taken from.

Harry looked past the boy, at the woman that only he could see, her robes fluttering in winds that he could almost feel on his own skin, and watched as she nodded.

“Hold out your hands,” the death favored child instructed, holding out his own, “cross your wrists, and face one palm up and the other down.”

Theo did as asked, trusting the other teen more than he did himself, and wasn’t surprised when Harry took his hands into his own, though he was surprised when the boy started to speak in a language that Theo didn’t know, but knew that it wasn’t the language of snakes. Wasn’t even close. 

Harry repeated the words that Morgan le Fay spoke into the wind, the old Celtic sort of language rolling off of his tongue as if he’d always been meant to speak it. Winds rose up around the three of them, tearing through the air and taking the trio with them and the boys’ wrist began to burn, one’s greater than the other.

Theo had closed his eyes as the wind had picked up, unable to keep them open, and when he opened them once more he was somewhere else entirely, in the front yard of a cottage that he’d never seen before. The teen hissed as his wrist quietly throbbed and looked down upon it only to see a marking that hadn’t been there before, raised on his skin in an angry red.

“It's the runes Raidho and Algiz laid over each other,” Harry explained, showing his own wrist, where the marking stood out in an even darker red on his slightly tanned skin. “Together they make a rune for travel.”

“Sure,” Theo said, as he fell in line with Harry and the two began to walk to the cottage, a spirit trailing behind them and joining the one waiting at the door for the boys, though only one knew that. Theo had stopped questioning the enigma that is Harry Potter many years ago. “How long will it stay there?” he asked, pulling his sleeve down to hide it.

“For you, an hour since you’ve only used it once,” the other boy explained, “it’ll be on me for about a day, maybe a little more since I bore most of the weight of the magic just then.”

“Alright,” Theo accepted easily. 

That night, the two teens slept next to one another in a bed meant for just one of them, as the others had not yet been made, but it was fine because this way they each had proof that their brother was alright.

The lecture and the slight grounding that followed them in the morning when Snape found them together, was a price that they were fine paying.

Chapter Text

There was a knock at the door of the cottage three days after the boys moved in, a knock that none of those in the house had been expecting as they all looked at one another with wide eyes or raised brows upon their faces at the noise. The knock was soft in nature, but there was a pattern to it that gave the youngest of the three within the house an idea as to who it was on the other side of the door as the potions master stood up from the chair that he had been sitting in putting his book down on the table, as the boys stood up from the floor and did the same.

(It was a testament to the worry that the eldest of the snakes was feeling that the man didn't even take that moment to chide the teens once more on the way that they were sitting on the floor when there was a couch right behind them)

The only person not surprised by the Ravenclaw on the other side of the door was Harry and the seer herself, a smile on the dreamy girl's face as the wind tossed her hair about in the summer air.

"Miss. Lovegood," the professor greeted, his voice sounding unsure to all around him, a rarity for someone so skilled in the mind arts. It was almost enough to make each of the teens laugh. "Welcome?" The mans said, knowing that it came out as more of a questions than anything else.

He may have purposefully gotten a cottage on this piece of land because it would put the two teens now living with him near the Weasleys and Lovegoods that they each seemed to cherish, even the Diggorys as well, but that didn't mean that they had gotten around to telling anyone yet that they had moved in. Or that they lived there at all.

The Slytherin Head of House had only one idea as to how the girl before him could have known that they were here - because no owls had come or gone from the property just yet, not with Harry's instance on animals other than his snake all but hating him - and that something that he preferred not to think of because it made in his mind hurt.

A seer and a boy with impossible magic, what a pair they made in giving him gray hairs before forty.

Luna smiles at him then as if she can tell just what her professor was thinking without ever having to look into his mind, magic whispering in the girl's ear for days now of the pair that was close. Her teacher should be glad that she had waited as long as she had before she had come. Three days had seemed just right at the end of it all. It would be seven full days for the youngest snake's world shifted once more.

Numbers were an important thing in the magical, world after all.

"Hello, Professor," the Ravenclaw greeted, her voice as dreamy as ever as she swayed in the breeze, as if hearing a song that no one else but her could.

They all knew that she was.

Snape didn't even question it further than that, simply stepping to the side and holding the door open wide for the teen to step through. He had surged under the Dark Lord for years, withstood torture, but it was children that finally broke him at the end of the day.

Who could have guessed?

Harry smiled then as much as he knew how as the eagle walked into the living room, the summer sun shining in through the curtains on the windows as she walked up to his side and threaded her arm through his, Theo standing on the other side of the boy and nodding to the blonde girl. The three of them there like this, right then, it felt right. It felt as if something settled in the cold chest of the death touched boy as he had them both close once more.

(He dared to hope right then that this summer would be a good one)

It wasn't long before Snape was retreating down to his lab in the basement of the house, as the three teens and the dark serpent walked outside, the snakes and the eagle walking through the tall grass of the fields around their homes as Nyx curled up comfortably around the girl's neck, basking in the warmth of it all. They found their way to the shade of the woods as the sun reached its full height above, bearing down on them all until they escaped. It felt as if, to the younger of the snakes, the woods kissed a their skin with magic, always there and ancient in a way that only land untouched by the mortal world since the time that magic official became seen as fiction could be.

Harry ran his hands over the ridges of the bark as he passed, feeling magics older than the language that they casted in seeped into the soil, as Luna hummed a melody that spoke of it as well. Something a bit like water in her voice. Something a bit like steel.

Theo basked in the silence of it all, in the simplicity of being allowed to exist without a wand being pointed at your kin. Without harsh words being screamed into tense air. To simply walk at the side of the boy that claimed him as a brother and the girl that Harry viewed as sister, as the strange pair spoke of creatures that he didn't know if they existed or not, but thought that they might just find out by the end of it all. To laugh, something soft and broken and honest, as Harry bent down before a common lizard and hissed at it with his too sharp teeth and too bright eyes on display in the shade, both of the younger's shoulders drooping as the reptile apparently had nothing to say back.

It was perfect.

Luna smiled as she led the two boys through the field around her home, pleased to share it with Harry after he had shown her the one that he had conjured within the school. She laughed when the older of the two boys titled his head like that of an owl or a cat at the sight of the floating fruit in front of her home, the sight endearing to see when the other so often only acted childish in any manner with Draco. Though the boy's relationship with the blonde boy was much different in nature than is relationship with the girl named after the moon.

It was nice to see all the same.

The pair watched as Harry froze for a moment by the door of the house, the teen's gaze shifting down to where the window of the basement could just barley be seen, his fingers twitching at his side as if something in him begging to act. Luna thought for a moment it was because of what had occurred down there before she had gone to school, the soul that had been lost to something that not event he magic would whisper to her the name of, but somehow that didn't seem exactly right. Close but not all the way there

Neither had any way of knowing that the other snake could feel the barest lingerings of a dark sort of magic from years before among the ever present wash of wildness, of something that he had felt again and again over the years. Something that resided in his own mind just as it had when Quirrell had been possessed and a diary had come to life before him. He thought then that he might have known just what it was that had caused the experiment of that day to go badly wrong.

Neither had any way of knowing that though, and Harry didn't want to tell the eagle until he was sure.

(It would be cruel to do anything else, and that was one thing that Harry never truly wanted to be to those that were his)

No one says anything as Harry tears his eyes away from the sight, but the younger of the two Slytherins doesn't miss the way that the gazes linger before they starts back up the steps to the door.

The inside of the house was as beautiful and strange as the outside, everything holding a chaos and wildness to it that most of the rest of the world willfully lacked. There was something about it that whispered of mind that had given into a madness that most didn't want to touch. He supposed that it was true in a way, as both that lived within the walls spoke of things that no one else could see.

It wasn't a bad thing.

The boys stayed down in the bottom for look as Luna ran up to her room to grab her books and parchment so that the three of them could go back to Snape's house to work on their summer assignments together. The younger snake had offered to go up with her and carry some of them down, the Ravenclaw having talked about just bringing all of her things today so that they wouldn't have to do this again over the summer, but the blonde girl had only shaken her head with that dreamy sort of smile that spoke of a secret that he wasn't yet allowed to see. Harry was fine with that, he had a lot of those of his own.

The potions master didn't say anything when the children came home with books in their hands and skin flushed from the heat, only smiled in a soft sort of way that he never thought that he ours ever find himself guilty of after fifth year had passed, as the headed up to the younger boy's room with the laughter of those that had finally remembered that they were allowed to be alive.

"We have to take OWLs this year," Harry complains as realization dawns, laid down on his stomach on the floor with a transfigured pen in his hand as the other boy glanced up from his own book to give him a look and Luna only laughed in a way that seemed a bit too much on the side of mocking for the Slytherin's liking. The hiss that Nyx gave as she laid in the sun on the floor at the boy's side somehow felt the same.

He didn't even know how a snake could manage to laugh.

Stupid familiars.

Theo shrugs, not really minding such a thing right then. "It means that we have one less to take when everyone else takes theirs," he reasoned, finding the other's sudden annoyance more amusing than anything.

It wasn't often that his… brother became bothered by anything, even more rare that he would feel comfortable in voicing it to anyone else aloud outside of something like a dual or an incompetent professor that everyone else was complaining about as well. It was a weapon that he refused to put so willingly into another's hands.

But he was acting free right now.

It was nice to see.

A glance at the Ravenclaw at his other side in this circle of theirs said that she felt the same.

Harry nods at the words all the same, though there was still annoyance in his frame as he went back to the parchment before him, pulling himself into a sitting position as he grabbed for his tarot cards and shuffled them in his hands in a way that felt right, thinking about the question that they had been assigned. He could feel Luna watching him with curious eyes as he did, the girl never having to do such a thing as this for magic to whisper its secrets to her in the way that it does (no, the cost of that had been much more at the end of the day than a bout of effort) so it was always interesting for her to watch as the other spreads out the arms around him and picks as many as needed for that task at hand.

It was interesting to hear the way that a symphony of voices that sounded nothing like what she had come to hear magic as whispered around the boy's ears the answers that he needed right then.

Like the sprits of the dead.

Those removed from time in the same manner that magic was, and knew all the secrets that it held because it wasn't a secret to them at all.

That sound wasn't overly kind to her, much too cold and much too haunted, but then again she didn't think that magic would sound very kind to anyone else either.

When Snape comes into the room hours later, wanting to steal Harry away to speak with the boy about something that had been bothering him for a few days now - something that was building slowly and he knew would reach a time by the end of the year that he wouldn't be able to ignore it anymore, even as he had hoped that he would be free of it longer than this - but stops as he sees the three teens asleep on the bed with a book at the center of them, legs hanging over the side of it as they all leaned on one another, Harry in the middle of the other two as each took another's weight. He closes the door back then, and lets them have this for as long as he can.

—-

Harry was flying, dancing through the wind on his broom the next day as Theo sits on the ground with Luna, the pair leaning on each other as Luna made a flower crown from the blue and green enteral flowers that the death favored boy had brought her from the ever changing room a few months before, and Theo looked through a book to see if he could figure out what the conjured flowers were based on at the least, even as he knew that there was a chance that they didn't exist in this world at all given where they had been picked.

The three were fine existing together on their own right then, peace going through them all as they sat in the short grass around the house, the heat in the air a kind sort of thing even as the boy on the broom was still dressed in more layers than anyone should be in this season, cold deep in his bones. The three were fine until the two on the ground heard a soft noise followed by a squeak and a yelled noise that sounded a bit like a curse as an owl flew into the younger's snake's back, the seekers having to dive to catch the creature that had managed to nock itself out right then.

It's only when he had landed on the ground before the other two that Harry recognizes the flat faced owl as the same one that had delivered the Howler to Ron in first year.

"Are the Weasleys close to here?" Harry asked Luna as he handed the owl carefully over to Theo, knowing that the animal wouldn't want to be near him once it woke. The other takes it with a slight scowl but doesn't object, he had seen what had occurred yesterday when an owl had come at dinner with some potions ingredients for their guardian. He'd never heard an animal screech so loud without actually being in pain.

And Harry hadn't even touched the creature then.

Nyx slithers up to her human when she notices that the bird has been passed over to the other human male, butting her head against the Royal One so that he would pick her up and run his hands over her scales, the motion soothing to them both. She could feel the way that the boy's magic settled when he did just that, the distress of her human not worth the taste of the power that he holds. She had never thought that her life would end up like this when she had asked to stay with the King Slayer.

(She was glad that it did)

Luna nods at the question that the death favored one had asked, pointing in a direction just a bit off course from her own home. "They'd just over there," she tells the other two teens, something a bit sad in her voice as she knew that she hadn't been there in some time. She had already been strange before her mother's death, but she had become something else entirely after it. Something that in one life she might have ignored, but in this one embraced with Harry at her side, a brother that just as strange as she was, even if in another font. "They call it the Burrow."

Harry nodded back at the other, letting his mind wander as he felt for the magic in the direction that she had pointed, as he felt the far away signatures of it, fainter from distance but nothing compared to the distance of the castle, not really.

Theo sighed and closed his book, putting a bookmark in the place of where he had been as he knew that they were heading for the house over the hill. He wasn't mad about it though, not even as he knew that most of their summer was now going to be spent around the red headed family instead of just the four of them. Harry cared for those in the house full of Gryffindors, and it was that same care that the other boy held for him that had Theo standing here now, the only pain in his bones from walking through the woods like one of the fey.

The death favored boy looked at the seer at his side, a question in his gaze of whether she wanted to come or not, a promise that it would always be a choice. She nodded once more, neither of them needing words right then as they began to walk, the bird cooing quietly as they did so.

"That thing is so old," Harry commented in a way that could almost be called a laugh as he looked down at the feathered creature and knew that it should have been on its last leg a while ago. Then again, this was the same family that had - what they had thought was - a normal rat that they passed around between the children for twelve years, so maybe they just didn't understand how far was too far to push an animal. The boy ran a soothing hand over Nyx's scales and knew that he would take much better care of her in her old age than this.

Luna nocked softly upon the door of the tall home that looked as if each floor of it had been added separately, spilling over itself. The sound just loud enough to be heard over the hum of music and voices and the feeling of magic in the air. The door wasn't even open and Harry could already tell that it was chaos inside of the home, the faint sounds of running steps reinforcing such a thought, but it was the sort of chaos that made a house a home at the end of the day.

When the door opened there was a familiar face on the other side of it.

"Snake," Ron said, no bite in that old name anymore as he spoke it, only surprise right then as none of them within the Burrow had known that either of the two Slytherins had been close by. "Theo, Luna," he added in turn, looking between the three faces, "what are you guys doing here?" the words would have been rude if it weren't for the smile in the voice of the red haired teen.

"Returning something that decided to use my back as target practice," the youngest of the three boys answered honestly, shifting so that the other could see the bird that Theo was still holding with one hand even as he looked as if he would rather be doing anything else.

"Errol!" the Weasley boy all but yelled in surprise as he reached downwards and grabbed the now sleeping owl, holding it in his hands as he looked down at the creature and ran a soft hand over the feathers as if to make sure that it was still alive. "He's old as Merlin and as blind as a bat, but he's still the family owl," the teen admits with a care that a year before Harry wouldn't have been able to understand, but thought that he did perfectly as Nyx shifted so that she was curled up against his neck, head on his shoulder so that she could see all the he did.

He thought that he understood perfectly.

"Whose at the door?" a voice called from deeper in the house, one that Harry had only ever heard before in the confines of an office where she had been worried that she was going to hear of the death of her daughter, Mrs. Weasley sounded much brighter now.

The youngest of the Weasley sons looked to the three before speaking right then, to Harry as they all did at school, intent to follow his lead. The snake looks at the other Slytherin and the eagle at his side and finds the answers that he needs in their gazes, nodding to the red haired teen.

"Friends," Ron calls back, knowing that the word was truth.

Still, it was the sort of answer that brought more than one set of footsteps towards the door as Ron beckoned them inside.

It was almost entertaining to watch as the twins came down the stairs, so clearly intending on mocking someone or another as the boy had spoken so bluntly of friends, only for them to stop at the base of them with surprise as they saw just who the three were.

"Snakey!" Fred greeted, voice filled with surprise as he and George looked at the two Slytherins and the Ravenclaw before them, so sure before now that only one of them actually lived near here.

"What a surprise," George added, his voice no less bright.

Another walked into the room before the pair could truly start their tag teaming act.

Mrs. Weasley looked brighter when not weighed down by grief, the space under her eyes much less dark as she walked into the room to see just what the commotion was all about, almost sure that she had heard her sons wrong. Ron had never had friends over in his years at Hogwarts, the product of Dean and Seamus both living in the muggle world and wanting to be around their families while they could, and she didn't know of anyone that her twins would call a snake with such affection. Well, she could think of one, but she had been told by all four of her children currently at Hogwarts that the relatives that he lived with didn't like him much and never would have let him come over even if one of them were to ask.

And yet, before her stood Harry Potter just inside her doorway.

Molly looked at the boy with keen eyes, finding the beginning of a tan on his skin as he looked much healthier than he had the last time that she had seen the boy, as if he was alive now when he had been a walking corpse before. A strange comparison to make when the snake was more washed in death magic than he ever had been before, but she didn't know that. Not right then at the least.

The woman let her gaze wander to the other two children that were now within her home, to a familiar girl with blonde hair that shone a bit like moonlight and all of the wild things in the world as she looked upon her. A girl that she had not seen in some time, not since the funeral for Luna's mother. And a boy with a book on Harry's other side that she had never seen before, but her children didn't seem to mind all the same.

"Hello, dears," she greeted, her voice holding the same sort of surprise to it that her sons' had as they had looked upon the group.

"They found Errol," Ron offered, holding up the old bird when he saw that his mother was torn between hospitality and curiosity. If he had learned anything from the Slytherin that he had grown fond of over the years, its that sometimes information should be offered to move things along.

Molly tutted as she looked down at the old owl, the dear tired and sleeping after his hunt and whatever it was that had cause the three to be forced to bring him to them, and took the creature to his cage, placing him within it with the door open. Merlin knows that he would just try and fly out all the same after he woke even if it was closed, the poor dear.

"I'm pretty sure Errol found us," Theo said, missing the way that Harry's eyes gained a little bit of light as the other Slytherin spoke, the other not having talked like this in a while. Not since first or the beginning of second year. It was nice to hear him being a bit of a little shit right then.

The woman raised a brow at the three of them then, not quite knowing what that meant.

"I was flying on my broom and he flew into my back," Harry explained, the whole thing having come a bit at a shock when it had occurred. "So we walked him over."

More than one person cringed at the explanation of that.

More than one person stopped to think about the context of it.

"Wait," Ginny started, looking at the three as if trying to figure out how this could have been, "are the two of you staying with Luna then?" she asked, not knowing how else the two Slytherins could have been close enough for this to have occurred at walking distance. There weren't many other neighbors that they had, and it wasn't like Diggory was here with the three.

A silent sort of conversation passed between the two snakes, something that all of the children had seen often enough to just let play out right then, knowing that they were deciding what to say before the adult in the room. Harry was always like this with those that he was closest to, silent looks and glances that said more than words ever could. It had taken them years to realize that this was a consequence of being raised in places where sound wasn't aloud, or in Luna's case, where it had become all too rare.

It wasn't the same as what Fred and George shared, how they knew what the other was thinking with a glance because they had been acting as a unit since they were young, it something more broken and hard earned.

It was something that none of them could ever touch.

(something that none of them would ever want to be broken enough to learn how to)

"No," Harry decides at last, knowing that Snape had already filed the paperwork for them both, having gone to the Nott residence the same day that he had found the teen in Harry's room and gotten the man to sign the same documents that said that the boy was now under an apprenticeship with him as well. It was all above board, and not even secret as Dumbledore would figure it out as soon as he looked at the papers that crossed his desk come the start of school. "Severus got a cottage over the hill, we're both living there."

More than one person stopped at that, unsure if they had heard the sentence wrong for several reasons distributed among all of them. The children weren't exactly surprised by the knowledge that Harry - and by extension it seemed, Theo - was living with their potions master again this summer, not after hearing of it the one before. Hearing how the man had taken him in after the younger snake had run away. They were however, surprised by the name used and that the man, the dungeon bat, would buy a cottage for the two teens living with him now.

Molly was surprised by it all, by the fact that there were two boys that had felt the need to leave home in such a way to go and live with their head of house, something that she knew only happened for very specific circumstances, and that the dower man would go so far for them both. That he cared for the son of James Potter so deeply. Though, from she had heard from her children, he didn't exactly resemble his parents very much, even as this whole interaction with Errol was purely Lily. Even as helping the boy at his side, as she was sure that Harry had done from the looks on her childrens' faces, was purely James (even if some of it was something that none of the other Potters had ever had to endure).

"Congratulations, both of you," Fred said, his voice more sincere and serious than any of them had ever heard it before.

Both boys only nodded.

The rest of the day from there was spent with laughter coming from the living room as the children played wizarding card games with one another, it exploding in their faces more than once and making a mess that was worth the kind sounds. It was spent with Theo talking to Mrs. Weasley about the flowers, the boy curious about the conjured objects and wanting to know what they are based on to see if Harry might get him some when school is back in term for potions, as Luna just finished braiding them into a crown all them same. Ginny smiled at the sight of it and placed the green and blue creation on the other girl's head before turning back to the game, something healing between the pair that had broken when they were nine.

"Quidditch World Cup?" Harry asked some time later, looking between the red haired siblings with furrowed brows, not having realized that there was such a thing. Though he supposed that he should have guessed so, given that a lot of muggle sports had something of the like, even if it was just the Olympics and not something more annual as this seemed to be.

The siblings only looked back, all of them unused to the fact that the boy was raised muggle, even as he was dressed exceedingly so right then.

"It's between Ireland and Bulgaria this year," Ron said excitedly, wanting to Viktor Krum flying. The reason for the excitement was clear to all of his siblings all they rolled their eyes when the boy said Bulgaria, making heat flush across his cheeks. "Its the four hundredth and twenty-second one to be held."

The twins made fake kissing noises at their little brother then as Ginny laughed. The two snakes and the eagle looked between one another but chose to ignore all of… that right then, the younger of the two Slytherins not really wanting to know. Ever.

"Are you guys going?" Theo asked all the same, curious, but got his answer as each of the four seemed to deflate at the question.

It was Luna that answered though.

"We all are," the blonde girl said, her voice holding that dreamy sort of tone to it as she did, though there was something a bit under it, as if the magic was being clear on this but not on something else. It was clear that it frustrated her nonetheless.

"Don't know how that's happening," Harry said, never thinking of not believing the other for a moment even as the lions seemed to be right then, "that should be an interesting time."

They didn't say much on the topic after that, not as the game exploded on Ron making the teen shriek and jump away.

That night, after dinner Harry gives Luna a letter to send off with the Lovegood family owl, one with Blaise's name upon it. It was the first letter that the teen had ever sent before. The first time that he had ever had someone to write to in a place where the other could actually respond.

It was nice.

—-

It was the next day when Cedric found himself walking over to the new cottage that had been built over the school year, some fresh cookies in a tin as something of a housewarming gift for whoever the neighbors turned out to be while his father was at work for the day. He didn't expect for the door to be opened by three teens that he knew well, each appearing right after the other in the now open doorway. He was even more surprised when Professor Snape walked into view as well, the man walking into the room for a moment and right back out at the sight of just who is at the door. The potions master only turned back around when Cedric mutely passed the tin over to Harry, and the boy passed it right over to the professor with silent amusement gleaming in too bright eyes in ways that it so rarely had outside of the Quidditch Pitch in the time that the badger had known the younger of the two snakes.

"We were just about to head over to the Burrow for a pick up game," Harry informed the older seeker, the Hufflepuff now eyeing the parchment in the older snake's hands, the muggle markers in the Ravenclaw's, and the broom in the younger Slytherin's. He looked between the three and thought of the game last year that had ended in dementors, and knew that he wouldn't mind overwriting that with something softer.

"I'm down," the eldest of the four decided right then, agreeing to meet them there so that he could go and grab his broom.

In the end they had a three v. three, Harry, Fred, and Ron taking up one end of the makeshift pitch as Cedric, Ginny and George took up the other, the six flying through the air as if they belonged no where else but within it as Theo heckled all six of them without any sort of remorse, diligently keeping score all the same, and Luna cheered for the heliopaths that no one else could see. It wasn't long before Harry's team had won, the other team immediately asking a rematch.

It was a good day, it had been a good three days since Luna had shown up at the home. Maybe that was why as Harry and Theo walked back home for dinner, something soft in the air as the pair took in what a normal summer must have felt like to everyone else without the monsters hanging over their shoulders, the younger didn't think that it would end as it did.

The parted in the hall, the death favored boy going to his room to put away his broom for the night with the care of someone so unused to having anything that was his own. When he got there, it seemed as if he was alone as he placed the broom upon his desk so that he could remember to polish it tomorrow, but he knew from the way that a chill shifted in the room at his back that he wasn't truly so.

He never really was these days. Not since the dementors at the lake. Not since being brought so close to death that those on the other side of it could reach back.

He doesn't say anything though, simply pulling Nyx from his shoulders with an affectionate sort of hiss and placing her down lightly in the last bits of the fading summer sun, and casting a warming charm on the wood beneath her, making the snake let out a pleased sort of hiss in return.

It was when he had turned to leave the room that they spoke once more, Merlin and Morgana, their voices close yet far away as they always were, separated between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

"You will have to make time once more," the ancient woman said, something a bit sad in her tone as she knew that freedom was a rare thing for those like them.

"A duty to return to," Merlin reminded the boy, his voice sounding much the same as the other spirit's as he did so, both of them knowing that the child's time had not been kind before they had found him. That it couldn't have been since he could see them at all.

Harry just turns slightly, looking at them both over his shoulder from the doorway, and whispers in a voice that almost sounded just as far away, "I know."

He leaves then, going down to the other two living wizards of them home and leaving the dead to rest for right then. They let him.

Chapter Text

Harry was awake long after everyone had gone to sleep the night of the Quidditch game at the Weasleys, his magic filling the air as he sat down on the ground of his bedroom floor, the door closed with silencing charms placed around the entirety of the room. Across from him sat a spirit that only he could see, Morgana talking to him in the language so old that time had much forgotten it now. But she was teaching it to him, teaching him the old rituals that required a sacrifice of some sort of or another from the caster, the sort that will and emotion and intention alone could not bring to life. Not perfectly at the least.

Merlin watched the pair as they spoke, as runes floated through the air in flashes of silver and green where his own magic had once been gold when he held it still. When he had walked the earth and had a heartbeat to his chest. He knew that Morgana missed the feeling of magic as well, missed being made of it in the way that they both had been.

In the way that Harry so completely was now.

The magic in the air felt dark as the one favored by death bent it to his will, though he supposed that it would be. Even if the spells themselves didn't call for death, just a sacrifice of some sort, the world often called them dark in nature just for that sacrifice. For that need. The magic that had coated the Dursley's - his mother's magic - had been dark for as long as it had stood within those walls. It had been of the sacrificial sort. The magic that Voldemort left with him was dark as well, a sacrifice in its own right as the spell that had placed it there had stolen the body from that of it's caster.

Harry hated how little comfort the second sort of magic brought, and yet how much he knew that he would miss it like a piece of himself if it were to ever leave him. It had been with him so long that it felt as if it was almost his. Like the scar upon his forehead. A part of him hated the mark, hated what it had stolen from him. (hated that the spell hadn't taken him as well) But at the same time, it had been there all his life.

He almost wondered if he would recognize himself without it. He knew that most strangers on the street would not.

When Morgana stood and wandered over to the window, Merlin took her place on the ground, neither of them making any sort of noise as they moved from one place to another. Harry supposed that they wouldn't, not when they were only half in this world and half in the next one. When the only person that could see them, could hear them, was him. When there was no weight to their touches, or to their touches. They were just spirits, not even ghosts.

When Merlin taught the snake magic, it was something just as old - if not more so - as what Morgana had spoken of, but where hers had held a darkness to it, the spells that the warlock had the wizard preforming spoke only of power, pure and intoxicating and holding no affinity to it at all as if it was the will of magic itself and nothing of human touch to it. It felt like nature, like all of the wild things as Harry's eyes flashed with a brighter sort of green in the way that Merlin's had once flashed with gold in just the same way.

Even in death, the warlock's eyes were still ringed with that gold. Harry wondered if one day his own gaze with hold that permanent mark to it.

(he thought that it might have it already)

"I wish that I was still alive to teach all of this to you in true sort of fashion," Merlin said on the second night of these meetings, the moon high and filtering in through the window as Harry sat in its light. The moon was the reason that Remus hadn't been around yet this summer, the man restless and a bit violent without his potion in the week leading up to the cycle of the moon. He said though, that he would come when it was done. Harry hoped that the other kept his promise in this, he missed the wildness of the other's magic, missed the way that the man spoke to him as if they were made of the same stuff. Missed having someone that understood the other aspects of the world that he had left behind to come to this one, the aspects that weren't filled with the pain that had driven him away. "Instead I'm trying to teach you all of this as a spirit and nothing more."

There was frustration in the ancient man's voice, the sort that had been growing as they had moved on from the history of Camelot and it's Knights of the Round Table to the language of dragons and the magic that only those like them, those so connected to magic that it was as if it made up their very lungs, could wield. At first Harry had wondered if it was a frustration at not being able to use magic even while trying to teach it, since that was only a skill of the living, but as the days had passed and turned to weeks now, he knew that it had to be more than that.

Especially with the stories that he had heard of the other. With one constant in particular.

"But why are you dead?" the teen asked bluntly, uncaring of the way that both of the spirits flinched at the question, though Morgana's was soon tinted with something a bit like humor at the question, as if listening to a memory of something long past. "You were supposed to live to see the rebirth of Arthur and Avalon."

Arthur was marked as the 'Once and Future King' and Merlin was marked as Emrys, a name meaning immortal and divine. There was no reason for the warlock to be dead when he was meant to stand at Arthur's side at his return.

It was at those words that the Slytherin watched as the two spirits looked at one another, that he watched as Merlin's eyes flashed with that ancient and powerful gold of his even as no magic seemed to float through the air. Instead, it almost seemed as if the man was listening to something that the rest of them in the room - or Harry at the least, Morgana was a draw right then - couldn't hear.

"I did wait," the spirit said, but it was as if he wasn't talking to anyone within the room right then, a startling sort of realization to make.

Harry didn't get the chance to ask about it though, not right then, because another spoke first.

"Tomorrow night," Morgana drawing the teen's attention to herself, "we won't be meeting you here," the sorceress continued, making Harry's brows draw together in confusion as the other two had almost always been at his side from the start. "Instead, wear your invisibility coat and meet us just outside of the cottage. You must bring the coat though, its one of the most important parts."

Harry doesn't ask why - why the change? Why the cloak was so needed when it had never been brought up before? Why he couldn't just cover himself in magic and make the light of the night go everywhere but himself? - doesn't get the chance to do so as both of the spirits faded away as the sorceress finished speaking to where ever they went when not with him.

He didn't know if it was the after life, or some sort of limbo that they had caught themselves in, and didn't want to ask either. When death was to finally claim him, he wanted to get all of his answers then. Not before.

(a part of him, one that was still bleeding out on a forest floor and might always be so, thought that if he did know that he would break his promise and try and join early all the same)

—-

The next day was the usual sort of one that they had fallen into over the past five, now six, days that Luna had been coming over to the cottage, days of exploring and working their way through their homework during the hotter hours of it all. Days where the only smoke in their lungs was that of the small flames that the younger snake would sometimes create just to see the Ravenclaw smiles at the shifting colors of it all. Days where the only injuries to their bodies were scrapes on their hands and knees from teaching Theo to climb trees.

It was a sort of calm, a sort of normalcy, that None of them had ever truly had before. Something without the anger and the violence. Without the running from real and the imaginary.

It was strange for them all, each of them damaged in one way or another by the world that had brought them together, but they loved it all the same.

It was that time of the day when the three often found themselves together on the couch in the living room, the potions master either in the lab in the basement or in a chair in the living room with them depending on the day and the projects that the man was perusing, and just how many ingredients and things of the like he had for them. More often than not, he would find one of the three of them asleep before they moved up to the younger of the boy's room to work on the their assigned summer works. Even more often over the past few days, that person has been Harry.

They were all awake when the potions master walked into the living room that day though, Harry's gaze finding his own before he had even had the chance to sit down in the chair farthest from the window.

"Do we have any books on Arthurian Lore?" the boy asked, drawing brows from both of the teens on either side of the boy as he sat in the middle of both of the children that were all equally leaning into one another's sides as the older snake and the eagle read.

It was a random sort of question, something that Snape had no true idea of why the boy was asking, not when Harry hadn't given any indication before of caring for myths and legends beyond those told to him by those like Miss. Lovegood, especially not ones that pertained to magic in a way that was almost fact. Not that anyone could verify that with Merlin these days, the immortal man having hidden himself away for the past fourteen years or so, disappearing sometime around the end of the war for a reason that none of them knew.

That none of them, it seemed as the years passed, would ever get to know.

(he was wrong on that part)

"We don't have any here," the professor admits, never having been one for filling his shelves with stories of old when he could fill it with magic that they could touch and use now, "but there should be some that I can borrow from the school during the next meeting with the Headmaster and the other professors if you would like me to do so," he offers when he sees the way that the child seems to sink into himself at the lack. "Usually its later in the summer, as for most of us our curriculum don't change much from year to year, but we're having it early this summer for some inane reason that Albus refuses to disclose."

The fact that the Headmaster refused to tell any of them, even Minerva from what the witch has told him, what it is that the meeting is going to be about, worried the man. Secretes were one of the few things that Albus collected like trading cards, and nothing good ever came when the man had to do such a thing.

Nothing either when he was forced to disclose any of the cards in his hand.

The offer was an honest one, one that the potions master fully intended to see to if the boy was to say yes, but it was always a rare sort of thing when the younger of the two Slytherins asked for anything at all. So, Severus wasn't the only one within the room surprised with the boy's answer when he gave it.

"Please," the younger of the two snakes said, his voice light with a sort of life to it that had been slowly coming back to it over the past year since it had disappeared altogether in the summer before second year. It was always nice to see.

Theo raises a brow at the other boy in a silent question as to what that was about when the other settles once more on the couch between him and Luna and messes with his strange ring, but Harry only shakes his head in the way that he did when it wasn't time to tell something, Nyx slithering up the younger teen's arm to coil around his neck.

"Royal One," the serpent hissed into the calm air, the title sounding more like a greeting than anything else right then as Nyx laid her head down to rest in the dip of his collar. It was a common sort of sight, and always gave the teen a source of comfort as the weight of the creature settled somewhere on his body.

A familiar, he knew that's what the serpent had undoubtedly become at some point or another.

Harry lets Nyx do as she likes as Luna looks at him as if she knew all the reasons that the boy who never asked for anything at all would ask for something now without ever having to be told. The Slytherin thought that the other likely did, magic whispering in her ear as it always seemed to do.

(it was a gift given to her by the water, carried by the wind, after all)

—-

Harry,

I never actually thought that I was going to get a letter from you, not in this life time at the least, not in summers spent in the muggle world. I guess that you living with Professor Snape during the holidays now has its advantages at the least, even if it means that you're not with those muggles of yours that were in that photograph that I saw in second year.

I'm not asking about them, I know that if you had wanted me to know about them then you would have told me about them, but I also know you and I know that they are the ones that you're leaving behind to live in the magical world this summer. That you're doing it in part for Theo's sake, even if he doesn't know that just yet.

I know you.

Tell me about the cottage, about whatever it is that you, Theo, and Luna are getting into while likely getting close to driving Snape insane? Italy is the beautiful sort of place that I would love to show you one day, but when you've lived in it all your life there is only so much to see. And besides, the stars here are never really quite like the ones that you've always conjured.

-yours, Blaise

(p.s. I did, as you likely already guessed intended with that strange mind of yours, told all of the rest of them that you're taking letters this summer and are with Theo and Luna)

—-

Blaise,

The grass here is tall, taller than any that I've run through before, stretching up past even Severus' head in certain spaces when we start to get close to the Weasleys' home. The Burrow they call it. I hadn't even known when Severus had brought me to the cottage that he had purposefully chosen a place so close to the Weasleys, Lovegoods and Diggorys. Though I guess I can't really be all that surprised, not when he was acting like he was bringing us to the gallows instead of back to Spinners End where I had stayed with him last summer.

There trees here feel of magic, the homes too, though the woods is more wild in nature than that of the cottages and the Burrow that have been built by Wizards. We found Thestrals the other day, the creatures flying in the morning mist. Luna lead the three of us on a hunt for other other creatures later in that day, but the Thestrals were the only find. Though, I do now have photos of Theo trying to climb a tree. He's lucky that I haven't yet gotten around to spelling the camera to take moving photos, because he fell moments after the photo was made.

We had a mock Quidditch match over at the Burrow the other day, I'm pretty sure Luna smuggled some gnomes away after it was done, so we'll see what comes of that I guess.

…It's nice living in a place where everyone around you that holds magic within them can use it. I always feel a bit like I'm starving in the muggle world. All that magic in the air, in the people, but no one other than wizards being able to use it. Nyx definitely seems to enjoy getting to roam as she pleases after having to spend time living in my coat pocket. We've had no problems with mice while here.

There's a warmth here, with Theo and Luna and Severus. None of them shying away when my eyes shine just a bit too bright, or I smile and my teeth are just a bit too sharp. Its nice, to get to live as normally as I ever truly can with just how broken my magic is at the end of the day, to not have to worry about seeming too strange. To not have to play the balancing game that those within the castle always demand because I have power that I shouldn't.

Still… I miss having you at my side.

The stares would be worth it to have you at my side right now.

-yours, Harry

(p.s. We called ourselves the Plutos)

—-

When Blaise opened the letter a few days later, stars poured out from within it, embracing him just for a moment.

—-

Darlings, Pansy wrote that, not us - Daphne and Tracey

Daphne, Tracey and I are together right now at my home before heading out to go shopping for dress robes. Our parents that work in the Ministry have all told us that we will be needing them this year for school, and who are we to fight that? - Pansy

Sensible people that don't want to leave indoors on one of the hottest days of the summer, that's who - Tracey.

…Anyways, we were happy to hear that you will be taking letters this year, Harry, and that you Theo might hold that same lightness to you that Harry dear had on the train before the damned dementors came and took it away. We know that this will be good for the two of you. For all three of you, as the three of us are sure that Luna is right there with the both of you now.

Take care of each other this summer, yeah?

See you on the train,

-Pansy, Daphne, and Tracey

(p.s. the other letter folded within this one is for Luna - Pansy)

—-

Harry handed over the folded parchment without having to be told not to read it for himself, watching as Luna smiles down at the paper as the Ravenclaw reads it, heat in the girl's cheeks. It made him happy to see the girl smiling like that, free in a way that she never really got to be during the times of the school days when she wasn't at one of their sides. The rest of the school was cruel, even if they didn't say or do anything to her now. Loneliness was still a form of cruelty at the end of the day.

—-

Pansy, Daphne, and Tracey,

It good to be able to write this summer, the both of us. Lue says that we're going to the Quidditch World Cup (won't tell us how, seers - Theo) but we hope to see you there if you are going as well, if not maybe we could all get our books at the same time?

-Harry and Theo

—-

Tosspots,

I feel that I should be offended that it was Blaise that you two chose to write to first, though I am guessing that was mostly Harry's choice at the end of the day, but I will ignore it just this once. In the sake of celebration for the both of you.

Do actually write this summer, you tossers,

-Draco

—-

Your Royal Highness,

We're writing, we're writing. No need to get your too gelled hair in a knot.

-Harry and Theo

-Harry and Theo

(p.s. I take no responsibility for the hair comment - Theo)

(p.s.s He takes some responsibility, I was going to write worse - Harry)

—-

Harry runs his fingers over the magical cloak that had once been his father's, seeing the way that it shimmered and shined in the moonlight of the night. Harry hadn't used it the year before, hadn't had need to do so when he wasn't sneaking around the castle after hours or being accused of crimes that he had not committed. Holding it now felt different than before, as if he was different. He knew that he was, that he could feel something in the magic of the cloak now that he had not been able to do so before. Something that he thought that those that had the cloak for the generations before him may have forgotten in the years since it was made.

The cloak felt of magic that was touched by death.

It felt of the dead.

The Slytherin knew right then that there was a reason that the spirits of an ancient time had wanted him to wear it that night other than just for something as simple as stealth.

He still threw it over his shoulders and raised the makeshift hood all the same.

Years of silence caused the teen to make no noise as he walked through the cottage that night, as he made his way to the front door and slipped past it, sending out a pulse of magic to the charms in place to set off an alarm for when someone did just that so that it was ignored as if he had never left at all. It was a neat sort of trick, one that Severus hadn't figured out yet that the teen was doing.

One that he, hopefully, never would.

Merlin and Morgana were waiting for him in grass before the cottage, their expressions the most unreadable that they had ever been before. The snake knew right then that whatever it was that they were about to do that night would mean something, that it would cause another shift in his bones - in his soul - like all the ones before. Like the ones that had brought him to be able to see them at all.

They don't say anything as they walk, as the spirits lead him into the woods before the home, the magic washing over the three of them like it was reaching out to an old friend. It hadn't felt quite like this in the days before that he had been wandering among the branches and sunlight, as if it too had been waiting for this night to greet him properly.

Its not until they reach a small clearing at what felt like the heart of the woods, the moonlight streaming down from the spaces where the leaves didn't reach and shining down upon the living teen alone, a rock - a boulder, truly - resting before him as if it had been there since the time of Camelot. Maybe it had.

"Pull your hood down," Merlin said, his words shifting into a language that only the last dragon lord could truly speak these days, but Harry could understand mimic when needed. Basilisk and dragons weren't all that different from one another in most myths, the two almost cousins of one another. "Let the woods great you."

The death favored one listened, the hood of the cloak falling to his shoulders as the magic of the woods kissed at his skin, as mist rose around him and grazed lightly in the way that it might by a lake, though he knew that they weren't near one right then. He couldn't hear it, not right then, but he thought that the wild magic around him felt pleased.

As if it was greeting an old friend.

As if it didn't mind the way that a cloak of death was draped across his skin.

(as if it knew that death was always meant to follow him)

"Cut your arm," Morgana instructed next, her words spoken in the language of old. "Let your blood meet the earth once more."

The spirits watched as the boy pulled out the blade that he had been given by his guardian, one made of pure silver, onyx, and yew, and holding within it a moonstone.

A reflection of truth. A stone as dark as night to ward off evil. Wood that whispered of death and rebirth. A stone of the moon that guided psychics.

It was the combination of it all that ran across the skin of the boy touched by death, that cut into too pale skin and spilled the blood of magic across the forest floor, the red shining almost like gold in the light of the moon. Meeting the earth the shade of the night.

It was when the third drop fell that a third spirit appeared.

Harry looked upon the translucent man, the spirit that looked to be from the same time as the other two that stood behind him now, dressed in chain mail and the clothes of knights, as the warlock dressed like a commoner, and the once healer like a sorceress. He knew the name of the person before him right then, knew him from the stories that Merlin had told him over the past few weeks.

"Mordred," Harry whispered, the name carrying through the woods like a gunshot in an empty field as he looked upon the knight of the round table, the one that had wielded magic. The one that some, through out time, had written to be a necromancer as legends had shifted with age.

The one that had killed the then king of Camelot.

The look that the knight sent him then was searching in nature as the spirit looked to the other two of his age. As he looked upon them as if he was asking something that he wasn't sure that he wanted the answer to.

Mordred wants to ask Merlin and Morgana if they were sure that this was the boy, that this was the one that they had been waiting for all this time. He knew as well as they did that the timing was right for the boy favored by Death to be the one that they were looking for, he knew it and yet the magic that the boy held within him felt far too much like that of a mix of the three of them than what they had long been suspecting to feel should the one that they searched for be touched by magic at all in this life.

He doesn't get the chance to ask though, not as the heavens seem to answer for him.

Both the living and the dead watched together right then as the stars seemed to weep, as lights formed before them up in the air, golden like fireflies but shining like small suns as they floated down towards the earth as if there was nowhere that they would rather be. As the lights made of magic took on the form of a dragon that none of them had seen since Camelot had last stood and the round table had worn it as their crest.

The beast made of hundreds of sparks of light was beautiful as it stopped just an arm's length away from the one favored by death, its wings flapping as the wind stirred around them all just as it had when dragons had once flown free. Every movement spoke of magic far older than them all, a wash of it so grand that Harry had never felt before, wild and pure and untouched by man.

The creature made of magic and light dipped its head, a wordless sign that the wizard knew to comply with.

The spirits watched as the boy reached out to the light, as he placed his hand upon where a snout would have been had this been a creature made of flesh, as the creature leaned into it as if it was real.

As the lights flashed bright through the magic filled night, traveling down the teen's raised arm, from one to the other as it settled mostly on the back of the boy, the light seeping into his skin as if it had always meant to be there even as it faded back to moonlight and nothing more.

When Harry looked back at the spirits they were kneeling.

"Welcome back," Mordred said, speaking in the ancient language that the soul of the cherished by death knew even if his mind was having to learn it still, "my king."

The Once and Future King.

Chapter Text

Snape didn't say anything to the other professors that he passed as he arrived early to the meeting between the teachers of the school and the headmaster, simply slipping through the halls as he made his way towards that of the school library. The walk between the shelves was a longer one than he would have liked, never having needed to find this particular section as he did right then, but he did it all the same for the teen that he had left back at the cottage with the two that the boy had claimed as siblings and the wolf that had come to watch them while he was away. The potions master knew that more than one of the three - possibly four if the youngest Weasley son was to have made his way over to the house for the day as he sometimes had in the week since learning of how close they all lived to one another now - would scoff at the idea of needing watching, but the Slytherin Head of House knew something that would say otherwise.

Besides, he knew that Harry had missed the former professor. The boy had been outraged when he had heard that the wolf had resigned when his secret had gotten out. Something that he was glad that he had nothing to do with when he spotted the cold fury in curse green eyes.

He found the books all the same.

Even as it was their history, there weren't many books on the tales of Camelot and its Knights of the Round Table, or of Arthur that had led them, or of Merlin that had stood at his king's side. Snape thought that such a thing might have been by design on the warlock's part, a quiet sort of morning for a time that was just his. He supposed that they might never know though, not now at least.

A wave of his wand had all four of the texts in a magically extended bag that the potions professor slipped into his cloak as he made his way to the door once more, and to the staff room where they were meant to be having this talk between all of the professors and the headmaster.

Most of the other professors were there when the potions master arrived, the man walking through the small crowd to stand with the other three heads of house. Filius and Pomona only nodded at the man as he came to stand among them, but Minerva met his eyes with something like concern in her own, as if she too could feel the whispers of something dangerous on the rise with the unorthodox manner of the timing of the meeting. He would have called them paranoid, war damaged perhaps, if it wasn't for the way that Miss Lovegood had at him before he had left to come to Hogwarts.

As if the world was speaking to her of things to come.

As if they were inevitable.

So few good things ever were.

Four years ago, he would have thought it preposterous to listen so closely to the warnings of a third year, one as strange as the Lovegoods as that. But, he had learned since meeting Harry Potter that the world did not bend to rules that he had thought that it did. It ran on impossibilities and magic so twisted and profound that you thought it might be false.

Snape knew that it wasn't.

So, when his ward spoke to him of a girl that he was sure was a true seer, acting as if anything else would be preposterous, the Slytherin Head of House believed him.

After all, it often took one impossible being to find another.

It was when Dumbledore walked into the room, closing the door behind him, that the man knew without a doubt that he was right.

Well, fuck.

"Thank you all for coming in early today," the headmaster started as he walked to the front of the room, something in his voice a bit grave as everyone took their seats with him. "I am sure that you are all curious as to why we are having this meeting earlier in the summer than usually might, and that is because next year is going to be a bit different."

The four heads of houses looked at one another then as the man said that. The last time that Dumbledore had brought any of them in early for a 'different sort of year' had been when they were hosting the sorcerer's stone within Hogwarts and all of them had a week to come up with proper ideas on obstacles to protect it with, only for one of the professors among them to be the one to attempt to steal the stone in the end, and for a student to murder that professor.

Snape wasn't sure how many of them knew about that last part, but all of the rest of it was enough to make any of them nervous. And that wasn't even adding in last year when all of the professors had been brought in early to be told of the dementors that they were hosting.

"And what would that be?" the transfiguration professor asked, something cold in her voice as she looked at the other, as if she was wondering what foolishness he could be bringing upon them now after the last time.

She wasn't the only one.

There was only so many times that one could require a meeting for - assumed, at the moment - dangers, before those around them started to get tired of it. This number became exceptionally smaller when it had to do with a school.

The headmaster seemed to realize this as well as the man looked upon them all with the pinched sort of expression of a man that knew that those around him were loosing faith within them. It wasn't an unfounded sort of assumption for him to make, not right then.

"This coming year Hogwarts will be playing host to two other foreign schools," the man reported, something in Snape's mind sticking on that particular number being brought in one place.

Something that was far before his time, and he hoped was nothing but a crazed worry of a paranoid man. It wasn't.

"You don't mean…?" Filius started, his voice trailing off as the Ravenclaw Head of House came to the same sort of conclusion as that of the Slytherin.

Dumbledore only nodded. "The Triwizard Tournament," the eldest wizard among them reported, something in his tone shifting to a forced sort of happiness as he saw the push back going on around him. He had known when he had endorsed its reinstatement that there would be many that wouldn't like it, but the looks of disbelief that he was receiving now were far more intense than he had anticipated, "this legendary event is being brought back once more."

The potions master wanted to sigh right then, recognizing now that the other man hadn't felt grave at the decision, but at the reactions of those around him. The cries of indignation were reason enough for that. Cries that the Slytherin Head of House found himself joining in as he thought of the child under his roof that was sure to somehow end up brought into it all.

He hated even the idea of such a tournament being brought anywhere near this school and his snakes.

Near Harry.

"You can't be serious!" Pomona exclaimed, standing as she did so, the anger of a badger coming to her eyes. "It was discontinued over two hundred years ago for a reason, Albus," she reminded them all, looking at the headmaster as if she wanted him to tell them all that it was a joke, something that they all knew that the man did about as much of as Snape.

"It won't be as dangerous as it once was," Dumbledore assured, the grandfatherly tint to his voice there in full force, even as the twinkle within it wasn't as much. "There is an age restriction that will be in play. An age line that I will be drawing myself at that."

"If something is so dangerous that an age line is needed, then why is it being held at a school at all?" the potions master asked levelly, making more than one professor nod around him.

Making Dumbledore stop. Making him freeze.

It was rare for Severus to go against him in matters that had nothing to do with Harry, but so much more common since the boy had come along.

"It doesn't matter whether you all like it or not," the headmaster said at last, his voice a bit like that of a commander's once more. "The British ministry and that of the French and Bulgarians have already agreed to it, as have I and the other heads of the schools. It's done," the man reported.

It didn't put anyone at ease. Not in the slightest.

It wasn't meant to.

The meeting carries on from there with an air of tension to it, as the professors all talk about any changes that they were planning on making to the coming year's curriculum, and talk through the number of books that they have that have been donated by past students that they could give out to students that might need them. Used was better than a family going broke trying to afford too much. The professors all sorted through the list and divided among themselves who would be making the trips to the muggle homes for the incoming muggleborns. Something that Snape usually only had done at a minimum in the past given the contents of his house, but knew that he might have to start doing more in earnest in the years to come with the arrival of Mr. Blackwood last year.

A change that he was privately glad to see.

The potions master wasn't surprised when he was asked to stay after the meeting, nor by the first words out of the man's mouth after the room had cleared of all but the few portraits on the walls of the staffroom.

"I wanted to ask you about your mark, my boy," the elder of the two men said, something tired taking over his face as he did. Snape couldn't help but wonder if it was a sort of facade, a way to hide too calculating eyes.

He would know after all.

Snape doesn't answer the other, simply pulling back the sleeve of his robes so that his left arm was clear for all to see, the angry red of stark against pale skin, as if he had been burned. The faint black that was running through it now as well was also very clear to see.

"I had thought as much," Dumbledore said, looking away from the other as the potions master hid the marking once more. As he hid his shame. "There are dark things on the rise, my boy."

That was something that the younger of the pair didn't need told him, not when he lived with a boy that very well might be the harbinger of one of them.

He didn't tell the other this.

"Do you think that he will take advantage of the tournament to get to the boy?" Snape asked instead, knowing that such a thing was far more likely than he could ever hope to be comfortable with.

It seemed as if the older wizard was thinking this as well.

"He just might," Dumbledore admits, turning towards the window within the room, looking out upon the vast lands that Hogwarts resided in the heart of. It had escaped the last two wars rather unharmed, he didn't like the idea of the war coming so close this time, but he thought that it might just be unavoidable with those that would be fighting in it walking these halls in the years to come and in those that have already long passed. "Though," he continues, looking out at the lake as it glittered in the summer sun, "I don't know how he wold do it, but the timing does seem just a bit too convenient for it to be much else."

"It is," Snape agrees, looking out the window as well. No small part of him wished that it was the sight of the fields and the woods that the children loved to run through as if they were apart of them.

"At least young Harry will be safe for the summer with his relatives," the near ancient seeming wizard says at last, turning back to face the other.

He knew that Severus didn't agree with this choice, but it was for the best that the boy remained there. Between the blood wards that protected the teen, the ability to watch him that it gave Albus, and the fact that the boy couldn't do too many horrid things when not within the world of magic and having access to an excess of the books of it, it was for the best.

Snape couldn't stop himself from scoffing all the same, uncaring of keeping a cold sort of demeanor right then when the truth was bound to get out regardless as soon as the old man read the announcement of the apprenticeship that Snape had already approved for the boy and couldn't be overturned by the headmaster even if he were to try to do so.

Dumbledore misinterprets the sound for what it was, only a bit though.

"My boy," he starts once more, making the younger wizard bite back something close to a scoff at the term of endearment, at the disappointment that it was spoken with, "I know that you have your doubts about the Dursleys, but I can assure you that Harry is safest with his family. That they would do nothing but care for him, and protect him from the things to come."

It was bullshit, plain and simple. And what was worse, was that Snape actually thought that the other believed it.

The sentimental fool that he was.

"Their care," Severus started, his voice as harsh as if he was speaking to an idiot Gryffindor and not his employer, not the man that had commanded him at the end of the last war, "led the boy to run away to other muggles altogether the summer after second year, rather take all but living on the streets then being in Tuney's care any longer.

"He hasn't lived with them fore nearly a summer and a half now."

Snape knew that every line hit like something of a physical blow. Like a curse.

He didn't care and spoke them all the same.

(he never had really cared all that much in his life)

The Slytherin Head of House watched as the older man went pale, almost something that Snape would have classified as ghostly if he didn't see Harry each day and know that there was paler still even as the child spent most of his days in the sun. It looked as if the other was all but going into shock.

Dumbledore thought that he just might be as static rang through his mind, possibilities and scenarios running like muggle programs as he thought of where something must have gone wrong. Calculations running faster than the man had time to even comprehend right then, his mind too filled with the thoughts of consequences to come of this.

"That can't be," he manages to say in the end, "the protections are still on the boy."

It felt like a weak sort of excuse right then in the face of what he had just been told.

Snape made a tsking sort of noise at that as he fought the urge to roll his eyes, an action that a bit too much like the teenagers that occupied his home most days. "If there were protections on the house," he starts, the disbelief clear for all to hear, "then they must have decided that they didn't have what they needed within it, and adapted to connect to Harry himself early on, because the boy hasn't lived there since the summer before second year."

The Slytherin Head of House didn't stick around to see what the other's reaction to all of that might have been, he simply turned and made his way to the floo once more. After all, he had a conversation of his own to have with the boy himself, and books to deliver.

—-

When Snape stepped out of the floo and looked around the living room of the cottage that the had bought just for one unruly teenager and the other teen that said boy had brought along, he knew that the consequences were worth it for the warmth that lingered in his chest at the sight that greeted him.

The three siblings in all but blood were sat down on the floor in the middle of the living room when he stepped out of the fire place, the wolf sitting down there with them as a muggle game of sorts that the potions master didn't know the name of was in play between them all. Something that seemed a bit like exploding snap but less messy in nature. The man almost wanted to smirk at the sight of the wolf struggling to keep up with the three as he had somehow gotten dragged into this.

He didn't though, not as the four looked up when they noticed his entrance, not when something in his expression seemed to give him away.

"What is it?" Harry asked, the teen knowing that something was wrong in the same sort of way that Theo did as both of the snakes looked upon their guardian. As Remus and Luna both tilted their heads, one smelling something that made him frown as the other seemed to be hearing something that none of them else could.

The spirits in the room, three of them - as there always seemed to be these days - all paid attention to this as well. They weren't even ghost, their powers were far more limited than they had ever been in life, there wasn't much that they could do as they were. But, the boy - Harry - was the rebirth of a man that they had once loved, before it had all gone wrong, and it was their job to guide him through the things to come. To stand by him as danced upon the line of life and death and brought Avalon back to world that it had lost. To stand by him in the war to come as he did just that.

That meant that they listened now.

Snape looked between the children and one of the men that he had once gone to school with, and knew that secrets were better left to Albus.

No one said anything as the man reached for his sleeve for the second time that day, as he revealed the mark upon it and let the four see just what he had shown the headmaster.

Snape hadn't been sure what he had expected to see when he had done this, worry or concern or shock. Disbelief, had been somewhere on the list he had assumed. He didn't really get any of that though, not right then.

Theo's eyes landed upon the mark, recognition flashing within them, like a puzzle piece slotting into place. He had always known that his father was marked, the man hadn't hide it, being one of the first followers of the Dark Lord. He had always assumed that their Head of House bore one as well, the way that his father had spoken of the man making it seem like he had turned traitor at the end. Turned spy. Something that the snake had learned to be true after coming to Harry's side. The recognition was there, but it was there because he could see the stark lines of black weaving itself within the raised red.

In the few days that he had spent at his father's home, Theo had watched as the older wizard had held his arm from time to time as if it had burned. He hadn't cared then, there were parts of his own body that had hurt from the other. He'd had no sympathy to give for his father's pain. Though, he understood now what had caused it all the same.

There was something a bit resigned as Remus looked upon the mark of the older man, both of them knowing the part that Albus would ask them to play. Severus the spy and Remus the werewolf. The once Gryffindor may have sworn to himself the year before that he wouldn't go back if Albus told him to, had made a promise to be there for Harry now that he was in the boy's life once more, but he didn't know if the other would be able to do the same so long as he still bore the proof on his skin.

A brand that could not be anymore easily erased than the scars on his own.

Luna looked at the man right then and heard the whispers of something far away, of a future rooted deeply in a past that she could not touch, magic only whispering to her of the things to come. She knew right then that there was pain on the rise, all sorts of kinds. The sort fo pain where Harry wouldn't be the only one to inflict it.

The sort of pain that would seek to break the other strange being once more.

Harry only nodded though, completely unsurprised.

That was what caught the attention of them all.

"Harry?" Remus asked then, giving the other adult a moment to compose himself as the potions master pulled his sleeve back down once more as if restoring armor to his person once more. "What do you know?"

Too much, the boy wanted to say, always too much.

He didn't say that though, instead thinking of the slight amount of sleep that he had gotten the night before after lessons spent in the woods where his magic could run wild once more as Mordred spoke to him of things so dark that not even Morgana could do, the sorceress not having been born with the affinity for it. As Merlin trained him in magics with no affinity at all, magics as wild as Avalon itself.

It was the sort of dream that, when he had woken, Morgana had told him was only truth. The sort of dream that he wasn't meant to be having, not being a seer but only a psychic. Only able to commune with the dead, not see the things to come.

It didn't stop them from being true all the same.

"I had a dream last night," the death favored one started, looking at none of them as he spoke, as the spirits drew close once more. When the teen spoke, it was the sort of tone to it that they had grown used to hearing from the seer in the room, as if speaking of a undoubted truth. "There was this house, one that felt like it had known death even from within a dream. And within it was a creature that looked something like a baby, but its form was wrong. The skin was too pale and a reddish tint to it, and when it spoke it was with a serpent like voice even when english fell from its lips."

No one noticed when Harry looked to the three spirits as they stood before him, as he waited to see what they would do. Morgana and Mordred nodded, and that was all that the teen needed to know what to say next:

"I saw it all through the eyes of snake," the teen continued, a hand rising to that of the necklace that Jude had given him the summer before, to the serpent biting its own tail, the warmth of the metal a comfort as he spoke, "one that he called Nagini."

No one asked who he was.

"That sounds like a homunculus," Theo said as soon as the thought registered within his mind, causing both of the adults within the room to raise a brow at him, something that he steadfastly ignored in the same manner that he had seen the other boy in the roof often do.

"It does," the potions master agreed, knowing that it - while dark in nature - wouldn't have been hard to make, the golem like thing.

The youngest snake nods in agreement as well, Mordred already having guessed as much early this morning when the three spirits and their mortal king had spoken of it all. The Ravenclaw follows suit, each of them knowing things that they never should have to because of the broken sort of magic that they held.

"He'll be back before this time next year," Luna said, her voice holding that note to it that Harry's had mimicked before, the words spoken with a clam suety as if they weren't horrifying in nature. As they didn't make every living being in the room other than the one that it would affect the most freeze. As if it didn't make fear grip at their hearts. "And he must come back."

The last part was spoken to Harry, curse green meeting the silvery gaze of the reflection of the moon on water at night as the seer spoke as if she was giving a prophecy of old.

"I know," the one favored by death said, something in the core of his being sure that the words were true, that balance could only be found once more if things were to play out as they should.

And this, this horrible affront to death itself, was how it should.

The other three in the room don't say anything to that, not when they had all known that dark wizard was bound to come back sooner or latter. That the happenings of the snakes' first and second year meant that peace wasn't theirs to have just yet.

That a war wasn't finished until there was a body to bury.

Harry wasn't thinking of that right then, not as he glanced at the man that had taken him in. He had guessed for a while now that something like this would occur, all he could wonder now was how long they had before this dream of a home crumbled down around them and the potions master had to play at being a spy once more.

Because he knew that he wouldn't be able to stay once the other did.

But, Theo would be able to, and Harry had long decided that would have to be enough.

None of them wanted to speak of the things to come, things that they couldn't fight according to the word of a true seer at that, so the once Gryffindor turned his attention to what they could manage right then.

"Do you know why you had this dream, cub?" Remus asked, feeling pleased when the boy smiled just the smallest - but earnest - of smiles at the term of endearment.

He knew that the boy sometimes knew things that he shouldn't, that he could do things that he shouldn't be able to and feel magic in a way that hadn't been seen for so long that it felt like little more than legend. There were things that Remus knew from his own condition that he wouldn't otherwise, and he wondered then if this might be the same right now for the scarred teen.

"It's probably from the piece of magic that Tom left in this," Harry said in a manner that wasn't a guess at all as he tapped the lighting bolt that marred his head. A scar that looked like the rune for transformation, life, death and protection: the Eiwaz.

It was a lot of things to mean all at once, but he supposed that it would if it was born from the clashing of one magic meant to protect and another meant to end.

"What do you mean by that?" Snape asked with something sharp and worried in his voice that was mirrored in that of the gaze of one of the spirits in the room.

The once necromancer stepping closer, Mordred's gaze as heavy as the night that they had met as Harry had worn a cloak seeped in death.

He looked as if he wanted to ask the same thing.

"I first recognized it when he was possessing Quirrell," the teen started, not quite getting the problem right then, and also reminding most of the others in the room other than Remus that he had once killed a professor, "then again with the diary back in second year, the one that had held Tom's memory. The magic felt like some twisted version of my own, both the same and not," the teen said causally, as if the very idea of the boy's magic being close to that of Voldemort's wasn't terrifying for far too many reasons. "The memory said as much, that 'pieces can be replaced.' Then he tried to kill me, so memory him wasn't too happy about the predicament either when I didn't want to join him in being a murderous bigot. I'll stay to just being a normal murderer right now."

There were so many things to pick apart in what the snake had just said, so many that none of them wanted to get into it all right then or else they would be there all night. Things that Harry knew that he would be speaking with the spirits about that night once the others had fallen asleep and the world of the living was silent once more.

Theo was the first one to speak, him and Luna far more used to the other teen acting like this. It was a sight that the adults in the room didn't get to see much, or haven't been around for long enough to get far too used to.

"Are there anymore pieces of magic that you hold that aren't your own?" the teen asked, figuring that they should at least get that out of the way, if nothing else right then before the adults snapped.

His brother only nodded as if the idea was normal, feats of magic always seeming so to him before someone told them that it wasn't supposed to work like that.

"There's my own," Harry answers, raising a hand and counting it off on his fingers as he does so, "which is almost all of it. The basilisk that I stole the magic from in second year, which really didn't do much other than smooth out some of the broken edges of Tom's magic, since before that I wasn't supposed to be a parselmouth, making the ability truly mine now. Then my mother's, which has been there as long as Tom's."

The three teens had the decency to ignore to punched out noises that both of the adults made at the mention of the woman that they had each once been friends with and lost to war.

"Lily's?" the potions professor asked as if he was struggling to even say the name.

They all knew that he was.

"Mom's," Harry confirms, his voice a bit softer as he looked between the two of the only adults left that cared for him, less blunt than it had been moments before as he looked at raw heartache that he held in his chest but couldn't quite touch in the same way as they seemed to. He just didn't have any of the memories to back it up. "Her protection usually lays dormant - like Tom's piece does - a bit like a blanket until old Voldy is involved. Then it comes to life and people are turning to dust."

Everyone in the room was silent for a long moment at that, long enough for the boys to glance at one another as if wondering if their guardian was having an aneurysm. Luna only shrugging when they turned to her.

"Is that all that you are hiding, Harry?" Snape asks after what feels like hours but they all knew wasn't that long at all, just heavy in its silence.

"I wasn't hiding it," the youngest snake replies, the half truth falling from his lips with ease even as he thought that he caught Remus's eye twitching at it, "you just didn't ask. We could have played the questions game anytime for any of this."

They both knew that was true, even if at the same time the head of house could not have known to ask if he didn't know that there was information like this to be had.

"Is there more?" Remus asked as if the former professor was scared of the answer.

Harry doesn't bother stopping himself from glancing at the spirits that only he could see when he answered. "Yeah."

"Go to the Weasleys, all of you," the former Slytherin said, his voice tired as the children scrambled to stand, Luna and Theo helping the younger snake to do so a bit as his bad leg had gone stiff from sitting on the floor.

The spirits watch them go, something grave passing between them all as they do.

—-

"A horcrux?" Harry asked that night, the name feeling a bit like acid on his tongue as Mordred nodded.

"Something that conceals a piece of one's soul within it," the spirit explained, "with it separated, the magic user cannot die."

"And I'm his?" the teen asked, hating even the idea of being anyone's possession in such a way. Hating the way that it made his skin crawl. That it made him feel unclean.

"Yes," the sorcerer said all the same.

Harry laughed then, the sound hollow and more than a bit haunting. Like the grinding of bones, or the wail of a ghost. "I suppose the king is always meant to die for his people," he said, uncaring of how the spirit flinched at those words. At the reminder that they had been here before, even if it wasn't quite the same.

A balance always had to be reached.

Nyx curls up at his side after the spirit leave for the night, the souls of the deceased deciding that one conversation was enough for the night. Luna finds them like that the next day, and lays down next to him as they stare up at conjured stars from ages past.

Chapter Text

There was a man in a rundown cottage one night, a man of an ill temper that hated most other people and the noise that they brought down upon him. A man that worked on the grounds of a home whose inhabitants were long gone, the once impressive house reduced to something of a shadow of what it had once been as the new owner didn't even live in it at all.

Harry had no way of knowing the cause of this, not right then, not just yet, but watched all the same with a sight that was not his own as the elderly man walked through the house in Little Hangleton with a limp, as he cursed beneath his breath about the neighborhood boys that sometimes liked to come and ride their bikes through the area, liked to throw rocks through the windows of the home.

Watched as he walked up the steps of the house, as the old man followed the sound strange voices speaking of strange things that only partially made sense to Harry as the boy followed the grounds keeper through the eyes of a serpent once more.

Listened as one of the voices called another of them his 'Lord.' As the man that answered did so in a voice that felt just slightly off from one that Harry had heard only a few years before, changed by age and by magics that made the death favored one frown.

Magics that were an abomination to the line that he had been born into.

To the memories that he no longer held as well.

Harry listened as Voldemort asked after the snake, Nagini, that the teen was currently passively possessing in a manner. The horcrux that he was passively possessing at that. Listened as the man commanded Wormtail to milk the poor fellow abomination. Harry thought that his host liked the idea of being touched by the once rat about as much as the animagus wanted to touch the other, from the way in which she seemed to resits letting out a small hiss.

The Slytherin wondered right then how much convincing it would take to get the other dark artifact to eat Pettigrew if he were to ever meet her in person.

He figured that the answer was hardly any convincing at all, just away from the torn soul that had created them.

Harry figured that he likely would have frowned if he was in a body capable of doing so, of obey his commands, as Voldemort spoke of the Quidditch World Cup as if it was an inconvenience to them, too much security being raised for the international event for the other wizard to act. The teen knew that it was smart to wait, that the other dark wizard would be caught in moments if he tried anything before the time arrived, but he almost wished that the other would be foolish enough to act early. To get caught.

To give Harry time to tear the other's magic from his body without death.

(he had promises to keep after all)

The last useful thing that Harry learned before the body of the grounds keeper hit the floor in a wash of green light was that whatever ritual it was that Voldemort was planning to use to bring himself back fully once more, he needed Harry for it and was willing to wait months more to get him.

The one favored by the death figured that it was testament to what he had become since the scar was placed upon him, that he wasn't surprised by it at all as he woke. That the most that bothered him right then was the way in which his cursed scar burned in a way that it hadn't since first year.

The only people that he told this to right then were the dead.

The three didn't say much as they listened to him speak, to him talk of possessing another living horcrux once more, their expressions grim. There was nothing that they knew to do just yet when the Slytherin and the serpent were the only living dark artifacts that they had ever encountered before.

The first time that they had spoken about the dreams, Merlin had talked of an art to protect his mind from others invading it through another magic of their own. Mordred had turned the idea down, knowing that it would be neat futile an effort right then when the connection was down to the soul.

It was the reason that Harry had been sure not to bring the dreams back up with Severus, knowing that the other would likely attempt to do exactly what Merlin had wanted them to.

He knew that it would never fully work.

Harry didn't sleep anymore that night.

—-

When Blaise walked into the cottage that his head of house had brought him to, he wasn't expecting to find the sheer amount of people within it for so early in the morning.

Theo was sitting on the couch as Luna sat on the floor near his feet, the Ravenclaw speaking with the Slytherin about creature as the Nott heir ran a hand down Nyx's scales from where the serpent was perched on the seer's shoulder. Blaise didn't think that he had ever seen his friend so calm and content as he was right then, the other boy even responding to the things that the eagle said, a small debate between them that had no heat in it.

(It looked as if space had been made for two more on the couch, a purposeful gap left, waiting to be filled)

The youngest of the Weasley brothers was curled up in one of the chairs, small as his lanky limbs would allow him to be right then. The twins were near him as well, whispering to one another in a low voice as they scribbled on parchment. The Zabini thought that he could just hear the pair talking about the Quidditch World Cup that they were all about to see.

The Slytherin all but sniggered as he watched as Cedric Diggory chased after a golden snitch on foot through the room, the glint of light avoiding his attempts to grab at it as if it was mocking him.

"Harry, I hate your stupid snitch!" the Hufflepuff yelled out to a boy that wasn't even in the room, causing Mr. Lupin to laugh as he walked into it.

So yeah, a lot of people.

"Not mine!" Harry called back from another part of the house, Blaise instinctively turning as if he could suddenly see him through a wall.

(he couldn't)

"Snakey is right," one of the twins -Fred, Blaise thought. He was typically the one to speak first - started, not even looking up from the papers that the two lions were putting around them like some sort of moat.

"Its ours," George said, something of a pout in his voice even as he didn't look up from his page.

"Harry dear has been evil-"

"-and corrupted the poor thing," George finished, sounding in a way that was almost genuinely frustrated by the occurrence.

Blaise didn't feel bad for either of them though, they should better than to let Harry around enchanted objects too much. Magic didn't act the same for him that it did the rest of them, bending and shaping in ways that hasn't been seen in over a thousand years..

It acted almost as if it loved him.

(the Slytherin understood the feeling)

Blaise followed the faint sound of Harry's voice to the kitchen, finding the other sitting on the counter as he talked to another in the muggle machine. There was a smile playing on his lips as Harry spoke.

(he hated that he hadn't been the one to put it there)

Blaise didn't miss the heat on the other's cheeks as he said goodbye to the person on the other end of the muggle device. The telephone, as the other had once called it.

He didn't miss the way that it deepened all the same when they looked at one another.

The way that heat came to his own as well as he met eyes that were truly bright for the first time in years.

Blaise didn't ask about the person on the other end of the phone call, not right then. What did it matter to him what the other boy was speaking of with a muggle? Harry was made of magic in a way that he had never seen anyone else be before. Blaise knew that the other snake would never truly be happy in the muggle world.

He wondered how long it would be before the other knew it too.

"Quite the number of people in there," Blaise said as he leaned against the counter, the two of them close enough to press their sides together right then.

Harry laughed and the sound with music that the world had forgotten.

"It could have been worse," Harry tells the other, his voice a bit rough as it always was after nights spent speaking in a tongue close to that of a serpents, but just not quite there. "Everyone could have been meeting here. There's still Mr. Diggory, Mr. Weasley, Ginny, Percy, and apparently the oldest two Weasley siblings, Bill and Charlie, are here as well. But we're meeting all of them in the woods with the portkey."

Blaise didn't even want to count how many people that was.

"Now you see why were in two large groups instead of trying for one from the get go," Harry said, that laugh still in his voice even as there was something beneath it that seemed to hurt.

Something that Harry wouldn't tell him even if he were to ask. So, he didn't.

Not today.

The two of them basked in the silence of the quite room for a moment before Harry pushed himself from the counter and to his feet, one leg hitting before the other so as to save the teen some pain.

Harry wondered if the pain even mattered all the much anymore given how much more was to come.

Given how it would all end.

A king dying for his people.

Harry wondered if it was a blessing or a curse to know so far in advance. He supposed that it didn't either way, the damage has long since been done.

Still, for a moment Harry allowed himself to lean against the other, their shoulders pressed together as they stood in the kitchen with no words needed between them. With no past behind them that hurt and no damning future to come. Just the present.

He only allowed himself the one moment though before pulling the other back to the living room, the two of them sitting down upon the couch as Luna leaned against his legs, and Harry curled into his brother's side.

"So," Theo started as he saw out of the corner of his eyes as Harry closed his own, "how did you manage to get the tickets?"

Blaise shrugged at the other end of the couch. "You know mother," the Slytherin started, "I told her that I wanted to go and she used some of her small favors to get the tickets for the four of us."

And Theo nodded, because he did know Mrs. Zabini and something like that would have been as easy as breathing for her.

The four of them were quite for a long while after that, no one really moving from where they were - Cedric had given up at some point on catching the practice snitch without diving over furniture - until an alarm went off in the room, telling the teens that it was time to leave.

No one said anything when all of the Slytherins jumped at the noise.

(they were far too used to it by now)

"Okay," Cedric started, pushing himself to his feet with all of the cheer of someone far too used to being awake at such a time as this, and claps, "time to get going, you lot."

"That is too much energy for the sun not even being completely up," Harry gripes, his good mood at having everyone close giving way to the tiredness in his bones.

"I'm sure that's how your muggle friends felt when you called them even earlier than this," Snape said, him and Remus joining the children once more after hearing the alarm.

Harry knew that he could answer that Jude and the other Plutos had actually been on their way to go to sleep right then instead of being woken up, but figured that he shouldn't as both of the professors before him already thought that the three were bad enough as is.

The three Slytherins and the Ravenclaw lingered for a moment - as was intended - as the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuff walked out of the house, giving the four a moment with their guardians at the moment.

"Be careful," the werewolf starts as he looks between the four, his gaze lingering upon Harry for a moment longer than the rest, "all of you."

The teens nod, something warm in each of their chests as an adult took their care into heart. It was something that had been far too rare for most of them for a variety of reasons throughout the years.

"Everyone has their wands?" Snape asked next, receiving more nods in reply from the four, before turning his attention to his two wards. "Harry, you have your knives?"

"Never go anywhere without them," the teen answers, something that truly should have been concerning in another life, but was reassuring in this one all the same.

Snape nodded all the same before looking to each of the four once more. "Keep close to one another," he instructs, "you are all each other's responsibility."

The potions master knew that he didn't need to say that right then, not when they had already been doing such for years. Not when Harry considered them his. But, it felt better to do so all the same.

"Don't worry, sir," Theo starts, a rare smile on his lips right then that made the teen feel light and free, "we have a true seer and someone that doesn't seem to think that the rules of magic applies to him," both of the mentioned teens rolled their eyed as that, the motion affectionate all the same, "we'll be fine."

"What?" Blaise starts, his voice that usual monotone that it held. "You and I are just chopped liver?"

They all knew that the Slytherin was playing right then, all of the snakes feeling light in a way that they couldn't be at school with all the eyes around them.

"Yes," Theo answers bluntly all the same.

"Fair enough."

Harry smiled that small smile of his as he watched the two, Luna pressing into his side as he did so. The teen thought that the Slytherin Head of House might have said something more after that, but then Cedric pocked his head through the doorway and told them that it was time to go.

As the four left the cottage after that, stepping into the chill of the morning air, Harry knew better than to turn around, to see if either of the adults that they were leaving behind were watching them go. He didn't know if he wanted the answer.

Luna hums as the eight students walked, skipping through the tall grass around them as the boy just as strange as her ran his hands across it at her side, the other two snakes walking behind them as the other four walked in front of them. It was nice, the handful or two of them together right then, until it wasn't.

They had just passed into the woods, the trees singing to her even as it was Harry that their magics reached for, when suddenly the magic around his started to scream. The usual whispers replaced with something harsh that she had only heard once before back on Halloween of her first year when they had walked away from the castle. It was the loud proclamations of danger and commands to return that only increased in volume as they got closer and closer to the portkey still.

For the first time in a while, she whispered back.

She asked how it would end if they did go, if it would be fine in the end.

The magic whispered back a reluctant sort of yes.

She knew then that it still wanted to save them, at least the two strange ones, from the hurt all the same. The Ravenclaw knew that wasn't for the magic to decide.

"Do you feel that?" the death touched one asked, running his fingers against the bark as if he expected for it to grab onto him and claim the tress as his home. He knew that such a thing wouldn't have been such a crazed thing to do, the last two times that he had almost joined the magic of the world beyond had been surrounded by trees, magic and not.

The words were enough to make the other six wizards look at the pair. Good things so rarely came when magic was acting strange around them and they weren't the direct cause.

The seer nodded, making all of the others tense.

"The magic wants us to return," she starts, her voice loosing a bit of its otherness in her certainty, "but that it would still be fine even if we did go."

"Something bad is going to happen, isn't it?" Ron asked, knowing that it had to be the truth.

"Yes," the Ravenclaw answers, just as certain. Just as sure.

And those around her listened as if she was an ancient spirit of a lake speaking of the things to come.

"But it will end fine?" Cedric asks next, realizing in real time that the strange girl was a seer.

What a thing to learn.

"Yes."

In the end it was Harry that they looked to, just like so many times before.

He knew what the answer had to be.

"No one else outside of us is going to believe what Lu has to say," he reminds them, knowing that it was the truth as he spoke. Adults so rarely ever listened when they needed to do so. "So, we should still go and keep them close."

It was almost painful how logical a thing that was.

No one said anything for the rest of the walk to the portkey.

When they got to the destination, there were three people that the youngest snake didn't quite recognize, but still knew their names all the same. One was Cedric's father and the other two were the only of the Weasley siblings that he had yet to meet; Bill and Charlie.

Bill smiled at them as they approached, the look earnest and kind, but beneath it Harry could see the twin's mischief in his gaze. It wasn't something that he tried to hide. The man was tall, red hair grown down to his shoulders in a way that made the teen stare just a bit too long and almost miss the piercing on one of his ears. He looked like he had stepped right out of one of the rock magazines that Harry and Jude used to smuggle with the sandwiches that they actually paid for.

He looked cool, holding a wild sort of beauty that was comparable to the refined sort of it that the diary horcrux had held.

(Harry almost wondered how he ever could have expected the man to be an older version of Percy when he looked like this)

Charlie was a lot like Harry had expected the dragon tamer to be, his shoulder wide and arms dusted with freckles from all the times spent working with the wyverns (they were not dragons, that Merlin had made clear when Ron had spoken of his older brothers coming down for the World Cup, rather heatedly so. Much to Morgana and Mordred's amusement) a burn shining upon one of his arms.

Harry belatedly wondered for a moment what the Weasleys had been feeding those two for each of them to turn out as attractive as they did.

"Cedric, you all get here all right, my boy?" Asked the last of the people that Harry hadn't met before, Mr. Diggory.

Harry looked at the man, his gaze going to the boot that the ruddy face man was holding. The Slytherin knew that the thing was most likely the portkey and almost wondered if it would be better to just make his way to the camp on his own through the means that he's used before. He knew that he could do it too, but also that he shouldn't.

"No problems at all, Dad," the Hufflepuff lied easily, making more than one of the teen fight to raise a brow at that.

"Of course not," the man says, something in his voice holding a note to it that Harry didn't like right then. "Why would there be with you there?"

No one quite knew what to say to that, but it didn't take a mind reader to see the discomfort and embarrassment that was playing across the Hufflepuff's face right then.

"Right," Mr. Weasley started once more, a bit uneasily at that. "Everyone know how this works?" He asked, pointing at the boot that had been set of the ground in the past few seconds. All of them nodded, but Arthur's gaze stuck on the youngest of the snakes for a moment, the only person among them that was muggle raised. "Harry, are you sure?"

Harry almost wants to hiss at that, but restrains himself from doing so. He knew that Mr. Weasley likely didn't mean it to be condescending, even if it felt so just a bit right then for the assumption of it.

Still, before the teen can answer, another speaks first.

"Harry? Harry Potter?" Mr. Diggory asked, looking to the Slytherin, his voice mixed with wonder and a bit of fear as well as he spoke. As his eyes roamed the teen's face and found the legendary scar among the fringe that almost covered it.

Everyone in the wizarding world knew of Harry Potter, of the Boy Who Lived. The only one to survive the killing curse.

Of a boy rumored to be so dark that He - Who - Must - Not - Be - Named sought his death before he could live to become a threat. A baby that killed the Dark Lord of their time all the same. Many have begun to wonder over the years if their savior would one day become their undoing.

Amos glanced around at the Weasley family, light and loyal to Dumbledore, at the Lovegood daughter, a girl who had her own share of rumors to her family and the symbol that her father wore, at the two boys that he didn't quite know the names of, something that worried him.

At his son, his pride and joy. His heart. His boy. Who has been speaking a bit here and there of a younger boy named Harry since his fifth year when the younger boy had been wrongfully accused of doing something dark by the rest of the school…

Harry recognized the suspicion, the fear, in the other's eyes as it came in and sighed.

The wizarding world is full of gossips it seems.

Still, that shock gave the teen the needed moment to respond.

"Severus explained it to me," Harry answered Mr. Weasley, all but ignoring that they had been interrupted at all. "I just wanted to ask if it was safe for pets?"

More than one person stopped at that, looking at the boy as if searching for the animals in question.

"It is," Bill confirms, amusement in his voice as he does. His siblings had told him that the Slytherin often did unexpected things, but he hadn't expected for it to start as early as now. "Do you have one on you now?"

Harry didn't answer that, just reaching down to his arm and pulling up the sleeve of his jacket. Those that hadn't known about the serpent before watched with wide eyes as it slithered down the boy's arm and all but perched itself on the boy's arm, hissing softly at the teen. To a mixture of amazement and fear, the teen hissed fondly back.

"Her name is Nyx," Harry introduced, holding her up for the others to see as he ran a finger down her onyx scales, "after the Greek primordial goddess of the night."

"You're a parselmouth," Charlie said with wonder just before his older brother could do the same, each of them feeling a bit envious of the skill and the use that it could have in curse breaking and dragon taming alike.

The apprehension in Mr. Diggory's eyes only grew, something that his son didn't miss.

"Dad," the seventh year whispered lowly, but no less stern, "stop it. Without that gift of his Ginny would be dead."

Amos looked at his son in concern but complied all the same.

"Like Bill said," Mr. Weasley started, thinking much the same as Cedric right then as he looked upon the speaker and his familiar, something warm in his chest at the proof of the gift that had allowed the boy to save his only daughter, "Nyx will be fine. Just, maybe put her in a pocket or something else closable."

Harry nodded to the man and hissed softly to the serpent as he did just that. Nyx hissed back with annoyance, the snake strongly disliking the growing amount of time that she has been spending in pockets these days when the Royal One had perfectly good shoulders for her to stretch out upon. She didn't tell the other this, but knew that the King Killer understood it all the same from the soft laugh that he gave.

Nyx supposed that she could tolerate the pocket another time or two if it meant that her speaker kept tasting of happiness like this.

No sooner had Harry gotten his familiar put away did Mr. Weasley call out for them to gather around the boot, quickly at that, and grab a hold of it as he began to count down.

What happened next was quick, faster than nearly any other magic that Harry had ever felt. Grey aligned magic washing over him as the world lurched forwards and it felt as if they were pulled from the ground, spinning faster and faster still.

And then it stopped.

Harry all but slammed to the ground with a hiss that any human could have made and it had meant the exact same as it did right then; a mention of pain, a curse slipping from his lips.

Harry took a moment to catch his breath right then, glancing around at the others and finding all but the two adults and Cedric as thrown as he was. He thought that he might just hate all three of them a bit right then for that.

"I Like you're way better," Theo said as they pulled themselves to their feet with an aching sort of groan, more than a few of them wondering if there would be bruises to be had the next day. The words earned them both a look from Blaise, but Harry sent one of his own that promised answers the next time that they were alone.

"I like my way better too," the youngest Slytherin agreed all the same, the truth spilling from his lips as he pulled Nyx from his pocket and was relived when she hissed that she was okay before slithering back up his sleeve.

A quarter mile walk, the Diggorys heading off in their own direction half way through it, and an awkward conversation with the muggle man working the camp site rental desk over muggle money - in which Harry just ended up asking how much was owned and taking the bills from Mr. Weasley to just count them out himself with a promise to teach the other later - and the group was finally walking among the tents that had been set up for the event.

An event where everyone was staying on muggle grounds and was supposed to be acting in accordance with such, not adding chimneys or making them three stories as some were doing.

And certainty not what, apparently, the Malfoys were doing.

"Can Mr. Malfoy live anywhere without those damn peacocks?" Theo asked as they spotted a tent so extravagant that it almost seemed like a palace instead of a tent at all, dark silk gleaming in the mid morning sun as the mentioned animals roamed before the structure.

It was such a stupid thing to see that Harry almost couldn't help but wonder how the owner hadn't been forced to change it.

"That's theirs, really?" the teen asked all the same, learning more and more about the man - against his will at that - that had set a horcrux loose in the school that his son went to just two years ago.

"Yeah," Blaise sighed. "They've never been much for subtlety, its why the Malfoys were able to marry into the Blacks so easily."

Harry thought of what little he knew of his godfather and compared it with what he did know about one of his friends. Sadly, the image made perfect sense. The teen didn't say it out loud though, but he didn't need from the way that the other two boys laughed as they walked.

Things went a little south when Mr. Weasley asked the youngest of the snakes on how to set up the tents, something that the teen had no idea how to do when the closest thing that he had ever done to camping was hiding out in the woods during the early and late parts of the day last summer.

They figured it out in the end… even if it took a bit a magic when Mr. Weasley wasn't looking.

It wasn't long before they were leaving the magically expanded tents to explore the rest of the grounds, the twins splitting off to one side as the three snakes, the Ravenclaw, and the youngest of the Weasley brothers went off together to another.

The five walked together through the grounds, watching the witches and wizards from all over the world as some of them spoke to one another in languages that most of them didn't know. Luna giggled and Ron rolled his eyes when a toddler got chastised for riding a broom that had been made for a young child through the site, though why the parents would bring such a thing at all none of them knew.

They took a brief stroll through where most of the Irish had set up, brief being the main word there as Ron seemed personally offended by them rooting for the Irish team, and the other four just wanted to leave because they were learning that there were in fact times when green was just a bit too much.

The Bulgarians weren't all that much better, though from the way that the Gryffindor spoke of their seeker, one would almost think that he was in love.

The twins were already back as well when they got to the tents once more.

It wasn't long after they had gotten the fire burning that a con man walked up to them.

Though built like someone that had once been an athlete of some sort, there was something in his eyes now that spoke of a certain squirrellness that most of the others working the streets couldn't quite seem to hide right out of the bat. Though Harry doubted that Ludo Bagman was so new to whatever scheme it was the he was seeking to use.

Unfortunately, the main schemes that Fred and George's were used to were pranks, and not the lies of a man taking bets.

Bets that would likely never see their winners make any sort of money on.

Harry didn't bother to stop Mr. Weasley from placing his small bet, but when both of the twins opened their mouth simultaneously to speak, he glanced at Blaise - a quick here and there look - and they both dived forwards to cover the mouths of the sixth years. The younger sent a slight stinging jinx through Fred when he tried to push Harry off.

The two snakes pulled the lions away into the tent, steadfastly ignoring the gazes of Bagman and the rest of the gathered witches and wizards as they did so.

"What in Merlin was that?" George asked when the twins were finally released. Harry ignored the way that the spirit in question was laughing as if this was all some great show, Morgana doing nothing to help as she laughed as well and Mordred just watched.

Traitors.

"That," Harry started, sounding just as annoyed as the other, "was me saving the both of you from losing all of your money to a con man." the teen wasn't even surprised when Fred gave him a disbelieving look. "Oh, please, I know a con man when I see one."

"You're sure that he was one?" Fred asked anyways, looking at the teen that they have trusted and stood beside, had supported, in the past. They knew that he wasn't one to act unless he was.

"He was shifty," the younger snake explains, "taking bets even though he works for the Ministry. Why would a former athlete and a well known Ministry employee be taking bets and pushing for people to bet more unless he needed the money for something?" the teen asked, something that made all of the others in the tent consider it. "Besides," Harry continued, "his magic feels tainted in a way, as if someone is holding something over it. I wouldn't be surprised if he owes money to someone and they've marked him to make sure that he can't just run to Merlin knows where."

Both of the twins sighed then, disappointed in themselves and at something else altogether as they gave into the reasoning.

"Why did you want the extra money anyways?" Blaise asked, knowing that the Weasleys weren't exactly well off, but that the twins had never been so wanting before.

The lions looked at one another for a long moment, a conversation that neither of the snakes could follow passing between them before George spoke once more.

"We've been making joke products for years," the older teen started, something that both of the Slytherins knew from their times at Hogwarts.

"We've got some really good ones going too," Fred added, sounding proud, even if a bit touched by frustration. "Not that Mum would agree."

They all chose to ignore the last part, Blaise because it wasn't his businesses unless it becomes Harry's - like this was now - and Harry and George because they had both heard the woman's rants during the summer at the Burrow. Harry, Theo, and Luna had once been let in by Ron during the middle of one of them, Mrs. Weasley demanding that the twins destroy all of their inventions and focus on doing something good with their life like Percy was at the Ministry.

It hadn't been a pleasant experience.

"We want to start a joke shop when we graduate," George continued, something bright and happy in his voice at just the thought of it alone.

"But we need more money to do so."

"So, betting seemed like a good idea."

"We've been studying and thinking about the outcome for days."

"We're sure that we're right too."

Harry nodded then because he could see it, them getting the bet right and using the money that they earned to open a shop, but to do so…

"You were planning on betting everything that you have, weren't you?" He asked, knowing from the guilty looks in their eyes that the idiots were. "One of the first rules of betting is to never bet more than you can stand to lose."

"Do a lot of betting, do you?" Blaise asked, his eyes gleaming as he took in the new bit of information.

He wasn't the only one.

"Allegedly," Harry allowed, making both of the twins smirk.

"So what should we do then?" Fred asked, knowing that they wouldn't have enough money until they were sixty at this rate.

Harry thought about the event that Severus had told them was coming to the school this year, the one that the man hated more than just about all of the other stunts that have been held at the school and knew the answer well enough.

"Well," he starts, "there should be plenty of opportunists for betting this school year, so long as the two of you are the ones taking the bets and not making them. And then, if all else fails, you could always start up an interhouse wizard chess match and have people bet on that."

"We suck at chess though," George reminds him, something that needed no reminder at all if Harry was being honest.

"But Ron doesn't."

The grins that he got in return was enough to tell him that the pair understood.

The four left the tent not long after that, walking out to find Percy grovelling with someone that Harry guessed was his boss, Mr. Crouch as his siblings fought not to laugh at the former Gryffindor for it. Something about Weatherby being spoken between the eldest two sons with Ginny.

Neither of the snakes missed the way that the Weasley nodded thankfully to them when they moved back to Theo, Luna and Ron's sides.

They all stayed by the tent for a while after that, till dusk came, and then started walking to the grounds in which the stadium had been temporarily placed for the event, salesmen apparating around every few feet for so as they did.

Ron ended up buying a little figure of Viktor Krum that walked across his palm, but Theo and Blaise talked him out of wanting the omnioculars, saying that it was better to watch the game then to miss stuff obsessing over rewinding it in the glasses. He agreed, but still glanced longingly all the same.

The walk after that was long still, as they climbed to the top of the stadium that had been built over the past year, advertisements flashing through the filed beneath them as they did so. It was worth it though as they got to the top, the view beautiful and glittering and filled with more people of magic than Harry had ever felt before. He couldn't help but feel light right then as he sat within it all.

It was so much, hundreds of thousands if Mr. Weasley was to be believed, that he almost didn't notice the person beneath the invisibility cloak sitting next to the elf.

Harry didn't say anything to the creature, or to the man that was hidden beneath the shimmering sort of magic, but he made a point to remember the signature of it.

The peculiar and stained sort of darkness that it was.

The twins talked with Ron and Blaise about the game to come, the two trying to convince the younger teens of their predictions as Luna, Harry, Theo and Ginny watched with amusement, the Gryffindor girl joining in with her brother and Blaise as she talked about how unlikely such an occurrence would be, Bill and Charlie butting in from time to time as Percy pretended to be above it all. Harry could tell that he was listening all the same.

Nothing much happened other than that and Mr. Weasley speaking with Ministry officials for a little while until a familiar head of blonde hair made its way into the box.

"Draco," Harry called out, over the increasingly heated discussion, drawing the other boy's gaze to the group of them.

They all knew that it was a bold sort of move when the other Slytherin walked over to them with a smile and sat down, leaving his father sputtering behind a cold mask. However, it was well known among those with children in Hogwarts that they were all friends and it would be strange for the teen to do anything but.

"So, what's the bets on the outcome?" Draco asked, slipping into the group as if he had been there from this morning, an action that made both Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy look at the other as if they were at fault for this.

Harry couldn't help but think that feuding adults were such a strange thing as the twins tried to convince Draco of their ideas, and the teen surprisingly agreed.

"That's not crazy," the blonde snake says, making Ron roll his eyes and Theo squint his eyes.

"You're just saying that to disagree with me," Theo accuses, knowing that the other very much would do such a thing.

The smile that the younger Malfoy all but confirmed it for them all, causing Blaise to roll his eyes. Harry bumped his shoulder with his own, and stayed leaned into the other when Blaise did the same right back.

Later Harry and Blaise found themselves helping Draco, Theo, Luna and Ginny in pulling the other members of their box back from being lulled in by the veela as they danced Mr. Weasley laughing good naturedly at the sight of six teenagers trying to keep three grown men and two older teens from jumping down to the grass below. Harry thanked whatever deity that was listening that the man hadn't had the wizarding equivalent of a camera on hand right then.

It was a shock when gold rained down from the sky as the Leprechauns appeared for Ireland as their mascot, but when Harry held a piece within his hands, he could feel the way that the magic was already beginning to wane even as Ron fought to get more. The Slytherin took a moment and tried pulling at the enchantment, feeling it giving way as it turned to nothing in his palm. He hummed as Nyx slithered from his sleeve and flicked her tongue out into the space that it used to be in.

They all cheered as the match started, a game that has once been known to go on for three months before the snitch was finally caught. Harry was pretty sure that this was also the game that a lot of the possible fouls originated from, just from the sheer amount of time that it took to play.

Harry watched most of the match with the appreciative gaze of someone that played the sport, his mouth hanging open at the speed of it, the freedom as they zipped through the air as if they had all been born to be a part of it, a feeling that the teen knew down to his bones from the first moment that he had taken to the sky.

However, the best moment was when Krum and Lynch, each of the seekers, were diving towards the ground, faster and faster still as gravity helped them along the way. As Lynch crashed with a thud that could be heard all the way in the top of the stands, but not Krum.

At the very last moment Krum pulled up on his broom, the bristles of it grazing the ground as he flew right on. It was a move that Harry had done a time or two before in practice and a game or so, but had never seen at such speed before.

Now he had a name for it: Wronski Defensive Feint

Right then he really wanted to be on a broom as well.

Ireland fought furiously after that, their players angered by the tactics of the Bulgarian seeker. But in the end it didn't matter as the seekers both saw the snitch and once more ended up diving exactly as almost before, Lynch crashing into the ground once more as Krum caught up and caught the snitch from behind the other, holding it high in the air as he soared.

BULGARIA: 160

IRELAND: 170

Just as the twins had predicted.

"But why would he do that?" Ron asked from down the line of seats, a question that was obvious to the snakes around him.

"They were never going to catch up," Harry tells him, knowing that it was the truth. They only had tens points before the snitch after all, the Irish had earned their hundred and seventy and their win. "This was him ending the game his way."

It was something that most snakes understood. When in a situation where you can't win, at least make sure that it looks close to even at the end. At least steal that total victory away and keep your pride when you can, as much as you can.

Always.

—-

Harry had almost forgotten about the magics warning, they all had, by the time that they had gotten back to the tents and finally laid down for the night, Harry and Blaise curled into one another on their cot as he gave Nyx her own for the night that was heated by magic. It was peaceful right then, laying in the other's arms. A peace that he hadn't had since the Plutos and since the first night at the cottage, sleeping alone.

It was a peace that he didn't get have right then either as he came violently awake and pressed a blade to the neck of the person that had been shaking him awake.

It took longer than he would have liked for him to realize that it was Mr. Weasley.

That there was something wrong.

"Grab your jackets and get outside, quickly!" the man yelled as he moved around the teens, not even caring right then of the violent display from his childrens' friend. He just knew that they needed to leave, everything else could wait.

He was all but running to the front of the teens' tent when he heard a voice calling out to him.

"Do we need to leave the whole camp right now? Is there an attack that we need to run from?" Harry asked quickly, magic already gathering at his finger tips as he looked at the others around him.

"Yes! Which is why-"

"Bring everyone in here," the Slytherin said, his voice firm and full of magic that no where to go as he spoke to the older wizard, his eyes glowing in the dark. "Now."

Arthur would never know why, but he did.

Harry was the first to speak as Nyx curled upon his shoulder once more, quick and urgent as the smell of smoke and flames filled his lungs in a way that he hated right then as he never had before:

"Everyone grab hands, one facing up the other facing down," he instructed, speaking quickly as Theo moved to his side and did just that, knowing what the other intended to do. Blaise went to Harry's other side and followed along as well, the others giving in and a circle being made.

No sooner did the last person join did Harry start chanting in the ancient language that the spirits had taught him, his eyes glowing brightly in the night as he did so, casting a green light in the dark as magic older than anything that nearly any of them had felt before filled the room.

The one chosen by fate, by Avalon, spoke in the language of magic and it complied.

It was only a moment before they were somewhere else altogether.

The land in which the portkey had first dropped them off, a good quarter mile from camp. Close enough to go back if needed, but far enough away to be safe.

A slight burn came to each of their wrists as two runes were laid over one another, the cost of the spell. A cost that would fade from almost all of them.

"Don't worry about the runes," Harry said as he clutched his own marking, the brand permanent now as he carried most of the burden of the magic, "it will only be there for about an hour. Likely less."

"What was that?" Arthur asked as he looked at the boy, this strange child that his children had befriended. a child that should not have been able to do what he just had.

Harry doesn't answer, not as Ron did for him:

"Don't worry about it, Dad," the lion said, knowing that the man likely still would, but that now wasn't the time to do so.

Bill knew that it wasn't either, even if he wanted to ask after the magic himself, never having seen something like it before even though he had read of something similar in his work. He laid a hand upon his father's shoulder though and shook his head when the man looked at him. Because, Ron was right, now wasn't the time.

Moments later light exploded in the sky and Harry saw the Dark Mark for the first time.

It wouldn't be the last.

Chapter Text

The cottage was something of an orderly war zone the morning of their going to the Hogwarts Express, as everyone flitted about the home taking turns eating and packing and bringing down trunks. 

There were always things that couldn't be packed until the day of, but were set apart the night before. One would think that it was only those that they were worrying over. One would be wrong, as the two teen inhabitants found themselves remembering things that they had forgotten before, as Luna ran over two times before just staying on the third with her things to grab objects that had gotten left in one room or another, and the potions master simply drank tea as he watched.

The chaos was the sight that Remus walked into when he came to the cottage to take the children to the train.

"Lively lot," he said as he made himself his own cup of tea and sat down next to the other man at the table to watch.

"They've been like this for an hour," Severus answers, hints of amusement filling his tone.

It was something that the former Gryffindor never thought that he would have heard from the once snake without someone bleeding at the end of his curse.

"I bet they have," the wolf answered in turn, the both of them knowing that this was the first time that two of them had truly been given permission to stretch out, and the Ravenclaw had been able to truly stay at a friends. It was nice to see. "The plan is the same?" 

The potions master nodded, pointing a finger at the pile of luggage that the children were gathering around for one last check. Severus was going to take all of the childrens' belongings with him - shrinking it - when he flooded to the school, and Remus was going to take the teens to the train since all students, even wards of professors, still had to ride it.

Easy. Done.

The only obstacle was getting them there, which was why Remus was at the home at nine right then even as the train didn't leave till eleven.

"Did you hear what happened with Moody?" Remus asked next, his voice dropping quieter then it had been before as the two fully look at one another.

That was enough to answer it for the wolf.

"We always knew that the talks of constant vigilance would eventually catch up with him," the once snake says, but there's something sharp in the dark haired man's eyes. Something that was mirrored in Remus's own.

They both knew that the timing was too strange to not be on purpose. There was no way that the older wizard would have that sort of break down right before the start of school. Right before his first - and only, if they were all being honest - year of teaching.

"Suppose so," the former lion said all the same as he turned to look at the three students that would be taking the man's class. As he turned to look at Harry, the teen that he was staying - mostly so, at the least - out of the coming war for. Between this, the dreams, and the dark mark, they all knew that the coming year didn't bode well. 

"I already told him to be wary of the auror," Severus says, knowing that it would put the other at ease if he did so. 

He wondered when he started caring about such things.

"Good."

No one said anything when Harry came into the kitchen as well, when he went to the landline and dialed a number that he knew by heart, a smile on his lips as he talked quietly with the person on the other end of the line. They all knew the three that he was speaking with, and that he wouldn't be able to do so for a while after this, not until Hogsmead weekends started up once more. 

Remus said nothing as he thought of letters exchanged between his and the muggle world in seventh year.

Letters that he was still sending to this day, even if the history with the sender was a bit more dense than he would have liked. Still, Grant loved hearing about Harry at the least, even if there were some letters where they didn't talk about much else. Especially not the elephant in the room that was the last twelve years before his life came to all but co parenting with Severus Snape.

What a time, he supposed.

—-

King's Cross was bustling as always when the four of them - and Nyx, of course - made it to the apparation point, walking from the secluded spot in the parking lot that had charms placed upon it so that muggles didn't think to look or park there, up to the front of the station. Even an hour early there were still enough people to make Harry's skin crawl a bit more than he liked as the four of them weaved through the cars and the people piling out of them, through the other families that came there the same way that they did, or took the very close by Floo.

He hated it, but it was worth it when they finally made it to the other side of the platform. When he knew that it wouldn't be long before he would be with the rest of those that he considered to be his.

"Severus told me that you and Theodore brew with him on most weekends," Remus said that they stopped before the train, Luna and Theo nodding to him as they left the pair alone to go and find a car to fit into with the others. 

"We do," the teen confirms, not quite sure where this was going. Not quite sure if the small gleam of hope in his chest was founded by the mention.

After all, just because Remus had promised to be present. To stay. He was an adult and they could hardly be trusted to keep their word.

"He invited me to come as well," the former Gryffindor continues, a nervous tilt to his voice and to his magic as they spoke. The magic was much more telling in nature to the Slytherin. "If you would be okay with that."

And Harry looked at the other for a moment at that, the question rolling around in his mind as he thought it over. 

As he thought of what to say.

The logical thing would be to tell him no, the snake knew that. Knew that even if Remus had promised to stay now, that one day the wolf would get bored and leave again. He figured the same of Severus, even if the other wasn't until he was done with school. After all, there was a reason that Harry was an apprentice and not adopted or anything on the like. 

It was temporary. 

The knowledge that it was didn't make it hurt any less.

Still… he could enjoy it while it lasted.

(The fates knew that he'd never get anything like this again after both of the adults in his life finally did leave. When his time ran out)

"That would be fine," Harry answers, his tone seemingly cold. Uninterested. 

Remus knew better though as he looked at the conflict and longing within the other's eyes. It was a look that he recognized from the mirror. From Sirius (though he didn't dare to say that aloud, not with the two of them not having spoken since the winter holidays of Harry's third year)

From the boy that Harry resembled without ever having meeting him as well. The Black brother that had been lost to the war in a manner more permanent than Sirius had been.

Remus smiled as he looked at the other all the same. He knew that he would Have to work to prove the boy's worries as unfounded, but for now he was content with nodding to the boy as he turned and was soon joined by more than one of the Weasley children as they walked towards the train, the ones that he could only assume were Bill and Charlie looking at Harry with the gaze of someone that knew of the magic that the teen held and were still amazed by it even if they weren't seeing it now. Remus knew that the curse breaker and the dragon tamer probably were, having heard the cliffs note version of what had occurred at the World Cup from Harry and Theo when they got home. 

Remus didn't leave the station until the train pulled out of it, waving like any parent might have. He wished, foolishly so, as he watched it run that the trouble of this year wouldn't find Harry.

He knew that it was an impossible hope.

It had already been long before they knew about the tournament to come, from the moment that the teen had the first vision.

(from the moment that he had gotten his scar, if they were truly being honest)

"Dad wanted me to go to Durmstrang," Draco was saying when Harry and the Weasleys walked into the carriage, his voice holding less pride to it at the fact than he might have in another life when doing. "Mother said no though, she didn't want me so far away from home."

"They study a lot darker magic than we do, don't they?" Harry asked as he sat down next to Luna on the floor, Pansy on her other side as Harry pressed his back into Theo and Blaise. Nyx slithered down from her perch on his neck to go and move about the small space with a loud sort of hiss, making everyone aware that she was doing so.

The look of surprise on the other's face was enough to let him know that he was right in thinking such a thing.

"How did you know?" the blonde boy asked as he looked at the other. 

Harry shrugged. "Your father tried to kill half of the school the first time that I met him," the Slytherin responded, a bit distracted and unthinking as he does so as he looked down at the book that he pulled from his bag. The one on the old legends that Severus had taken from the library for him. One that, as he read it, it made him feel as if there were memories that were just out of reach. "I figured that it wouldn't be too far off a thought."

He missed the way that Ginny flinched at the mention, that Ron and the twins glared at the blonde, that Draco drew into himself with something akin to guilt. He didn't think to look for it after all, why he need to when the other Slytherin held no fault?

Tracey was a god send as she walked into the room with Daphne. 

"Sometimes I wish our school wasn't so focused on colors," the girl was saying as she walked into the room with the other at her side. "I saw a very nice burgundy dress when looking for the ball, but couldn't get it without matching both Gryffindor and Durmstrang."

"Yeah," the other girl agreed as they sat down on the other side of the carriage. "It does make it hard, especially when the secondary house colors are brought into account."

"Don't even mention the dress robes that we all mysteriously need," Ron whined as he thought of his own, his siblings snicker in a much lighter mood than before as they did the same. "Mine are ghastly."

"They have character?" Harry offered, having seen them for himself a few days before now.

Theo and Luna kept their mouths shut at that, both knowing that not even Harry could lie that well.

"My dress is a nice silvery blue," the Ravenclaw offered, her voice holding that hint to it that it always did when she knew too much, "like moonlight on a lake."

No one questioned why she thought to bring one when only fourth years and above were instructed to do so. It was Luna after all, they all just sort of figured that the magic had whispered to her.

(they were right)

—-

Harry held up his wand as they walked up to the castle, a cover as no magic was pouring from it right then. The invisible sort of shield that was over himself and his friends - and those close enough and smart enough to notice that they were staying dry and to squeeze in - a magic of his own that he didn't know how to make a wand create just yet and didn't care to try as the storm was trying to drown them all. 

It was because of that shield that they missed the water balloons that Peeves tried to drop on them all.

None of them said much when they each parted ways to go to their own house tables, something that they only really did for feasts as it was. The Slytherins sitting down at the middle of the table as they usually did, something that was uncontested by the rest of the house. It made Harry wonder about the dueling to come. About what shape it might take with the event to come later in year.

The snakes remained quiet for the most part as they sat at the table, hunger and tiredness consuming them all as they waited for the Sorting Ceremony to start. Harry nodded to Snape when he caught the potions master glancing at him, something that the Head of House did back even as McGonagall said something to him that made him scowl and Dumbledore looked at Harry as if someone had just signed his death warrant.

Harry figured that he'd have plenty of time to figure out how the last one felt with half of the things that he did that should have long gotten him arrested.

Vince and Greg weren't the only ones biting back a laugh when they saw the lake drenched first year that was drowning once more in Hagrid's coat. Harry hadn't even known before then that one could fall into the lake during the trip over. It was something that was joked about, but no one had actually done till right then.

The song that the Hat this year was a bit different from its usual, a bit more biting as it described the house of snakes, something that made the first years waiting to be sorted shift and all of the Slytherins else scowl. Harry wondered then if he really should have carved up the thing when he had the chance to do so.

The Sorting was boring from there, Slytherin gaining a few more members to its ranks, but so did all of the others as well. Food was severed not long after that, the warmth of it fighting against the chill that had settled in most of them because of the weather. It wasn't until the Inter - House Quidditch Cup was mentioned that things became interesting once more.

And that was because they were being told that there would be no quidditch cup at all.

"What the fuck?" Harry curses, knowing that he isn't the only one as all four houses all seem to agree on something for the first time in history. 

Dumbledore kept speaking though, describing the tournament that was coming to their school without yet naming it. Building suspension. 

Dramatics.

Honestly, it was working. Even as most of the Slytherins - their families all working for the ministry - knew what was coming, there was a fair few of them that were still leaning forwards to hear what was said. 

Though, there was an interruption before their Headmaster could name the tournament itself.

The doors to the Great Hall slammed open with enough force to make the noise rattle throughout the room as everyone turned to look at the figure that had done such a thing. 

The man was tall, his shoulders wide as they all looked upon hi, even as most of it was hidden by the eccentric sort of coat that the man was wearing. Lightening flashed angrily through the enchantment of the conjured sky above at the figure walked further into the Great Hall, hinting with a rage as the electricity within them was only false and could do no real harm to the stranger as he finally reached Dumbledore and the Headmaster introduced him as Alastor Moody.

Their defense Professor had arrived.

And the magics of the castle hated him more than anyone else within it. 

"I thought that he was supposed to be one of the ones that hunted dark wizards," Harry whispered, speaking low enough so that only the snakes around him could hear. 

"He is," Theo said, his voice sure as he sat to Harry's left, Blaise on the younger's right. 

"He definitely is," Pansy added, thinking of the times that the man had come after her family when she had been young, and the war had still be fresh in all their minds.

In back ground, the Headmaster continued to talk of the tournament, saying something that elicited shock from most of the student body, but none of them were listening.

"The castle sure doesn't think so," Harry says, feeling the way that the light and the slivers of dark magic alike tried to force the man to leave simply from pressure alone. "The last person that I felt it fight this hard against was me."

None of them knew what to say to that, not when they all knew that the reason that the castle had fought so hard was because of the well of dark magic within the boy's veins, enough that it was almost like he was made of it. 

Harry thought that Severus had been right to warn him of this man, even if the reasons were a bit different than what he was sure his head of house had been thinking at the time.

—-

The dungeons were a wash of energy when the Slytherins got down to them, the promise of the duels to come settling in their bones. 

These were always good nights to be a snake.

Though, Harry couldn't help but think that this year might be just a bit different than the ones before. That it would have to be with the tournament to come.

"Yes, Potter?" The fifth year Slytherin prefect asked as she looked at the teen in question, knowing that the other had the authority to over ride anything that she said, but that if he was raising his hand as he was now then it was a question. A suggestion. And those could be ignored.

Though, historically, she had to admit that the other teen typically didn't lead the, wrong. She could still remember her first year at school, the darkness that had clung to their house. The fear.

That hadn't been there since he stepped through the castle doors and brought an older student down to his knees with a knife alone, calling one of their best rulers from the year before weak without even a spark of magic hitting the air.

And when the magic was released in the years following…

They all drowned in it.

"I was wondering if this year we could keep last years ranking and push the personal duels back to next weekend," Harry started, earning more than one raised brow from these in the crowd that had gathered in the common room after their Head of House had given his speech. "And instead, tonight, we have those that plan to enter the tournament duel one another." 

"Why?" The fifth year male prefect asked, looking at the boy with the same look that the rest of the room held. Respect, but not understanding the reasons behind it all.

"If we want a chance of getting a Slytherin champion, then our house needs to start preparing now," the Slytherin Prince - the Slytherin Heir, if they were to be truly honest with themselves on the skills of the boy within the snake nest - explained, the words making an almost foolish amount of sense as he did so, the rest of his year nodding around him as the last of the Potter line did so. "A big piece of that would be finding the weakness early and patching them up. Starting with dueling."

No one can really argue that. 

They don't try to either. 

Slytherins were only truly foolish when came to matters of blood, and even then they could brute force some sense into them when it came to it. From the right person. 

The fifth years stayed to watch as the duels were held, most people in their house did for once. It was the first year that no one could be challenged at random, and the first year that those that were fighting one another were the seventh years instead of sixth year and below. 

"Who do you think has the best odds?" Pansy asked around the idle of the first duel, the shield shining nicely as spells flew quick as lightning within it. 

"It's likely Warrington," Daphne answers before anyone else can as they all shifted a bit to focus solely on the seventh year Slytherin. "He's the most combative of the duelers and older than the rest of them since he had to repeat a year," she explains. 

Harry thinks about that for a moment, taking the information that he already knew into account, and shakes his head. 

"Why not?" Blaise asks, not seeing the flaw that the other so clearly did right then.

Harry leans into the other's side as he answers. "Yes, out of the Slytherins he would likely be one of the best guesses on dueling alone," the youngest snake allows, knowing that it was the truth. "But, Warrington is a bit too dense for the challenges that will come to the tournament that need brains like at least one of the tasks likely will. In some way or another. If I'm being honest, I think that someone from another house will likely be chosen. Someone a bit more well rounded than who we have here."

Slytherin was a house of cunning. Of magics that they would never be allowed to use in the circumstance like this, bot with so many watching. It put a lot of the seventh years in a bind, too used to the darkness in their veins.

"Are you thinking of Diggory?" Draco asked as he looked at the other, seeing the way that the other teen was thinking very seriously about the seven years that were likely to try and compete.

The question makes Blaise scowl even as Harry hums in thought.

"If the twins were older then I would likely chose one of them," Harry answers in a round about sort of way, knowing that it was the truth. That either one of them would have been brilliant in the time to come. "But since they're not, then I guess Cedric would work best."

He was a Hufflepuff, a hard worker. Someone that knew how to change from what Harry had seen on the quidditch pitch. 

Tracey hums in agreement as they watch the duels continue. She figured that the other was right in thinking that it wouldn't be one of their house that went onto become a champion. It would be great if it was though.

—-

Blaise stands back in the dorm room and watches as Harry walks over to their beds, an idea that they had talked about in letters over the summer coming to fruition as the younger levitated the two beds together and transformed them into one with little more than a flick of his wrist and a thought, the sight enough to make the older a bit breathless at the easy display of magic even after all these years. They were a bit too old to be sharing one of the school sized beds these days. 

No one else says anything about it, even as they all glanced at the motions - Theo raising a brow to his brother that made the other flip him off - they were all far too used to them both and the way that they were with one another to say anything about it anymore. 

Not that they ever had before. 

(It was one of many things in Slytherin house that remained unspoken)

Neither said anything as they got into the larger bed, but sat in the dead middle of it together all the same. Blaise just watched with a bit too much wonder in his eyes as the other lifted his hand once more and made a twisting sort of motion with it as Harry looked at the space above the bed and stars sprung to life before them, a whole galaxy that was just theirs. Stars gleaming in the night. 

It was a bit different than what it had been in years previous, something a bit older, the conjured sky more full in ways that man kind hadn't seen in so long that it was all but forgotten. 

It was beautiful, 

(It felt like a memory to the one favored by death)

They laid curled into one another that night, touch coming easier to them both then it had in a long time as Blaise held the other's wrists until his eyes closed and didn't open again until morning, the steady pressure of Harry's pulse lulling him to sleep. It was strange for them both to be able to rest so easy after the start of the last three years, pain and sickness and things out of their control. 

It was a change that both of them thought that they could get used to.

Chapter Text

When Severus went down to breakfast the next morning, he was expecting more of the usual that had stood for much longer than his tenure at the school for magic. The morning after the start of the year duels were always drowning in the shifts of the balance that had been found the year before. In the heaviness in the air. In weary glances and hidden flinches, whether from injury of fear didn't matter because the sign of weakness was there all the same.

That was how it had always been.

That wasn't how it was now.

All of the seats were the same from the night before, at least the general areas of them. Some of the first years had moved around, making alliances among their own, but other than that placements hadn't really changed much at all.

Usually that was something that was only seen among the seventh years.

This time though, it was those very seventh years that were sporting the wounds, though they lacked none of the malice behind them that was usually there.

The potions master felt a bit as if he was in bizzaro land right then.

"A strange lack of change," the Gryffindor head of house observed right then, her vague statement coming as close to asking as she likely would have at that moment.

It was a very Slytherin sort of move for the head of the lion house.

The potions master supposed that he could act with a very Gryffindor sort of response.

"I honestly have no idea," the man admits as he looks at the members of his house as they trickled in, the words mostly true.

He had a vague sort of idea that it might have to do with the tournament that had been announced the night before, the one that only those of seventeen or older could enter.

He wondered whose idea the change to the duels had been.

Once more, he thought that he might already know.

Most things always did seem to come back around to a Potter.

"Snakey, dear," Fred started, him, George and Luna sitting at the table of snakes, something that everyone had come to ignore by now, "you've been living with a potions master for the past two summers now."

"Summer and a half," the teen in question corrected as he fed Nyx some of the small frogs that the elf's down in the kitchen had ordered in for him with the regular food, something that he had set up around the Christmas before when he had found the serpent so that Nyx wouldn't have to try and hunt during the cold months.

Honestly, Harry didn't like to have the snake too far away from him to hunt at all, not with the way that the wizarding world feared his ability and the beings associated with it. So, he gave the elves some coins to use to add the food bought for the school that couldn't be grown at Hogwarts, and they used it to get frogs and other beings that serpents eat, and kept them stored in the kitchens and sent up when they sense them both at the table.

The bonus was that this also meant that Harry didn't have to worry about her accidentally killing a student's pet while hunting.

"Right," George agreed, brushing the detail off even though it was an important distinction to the younger teen. "That means you've likely read a lot of Snape's potion books, right?"

Harry and Theo glanced at one another as Luna raised a brow at the twins, the three siblings knowing exactly where this was going.

"Right," Harry answered all the same, because he had done so and that mistake was on him right now because it had somewhat led to this. "What do you want?" The teen asked even as he thought that he might already know.

(Like guardian, like ward)

"Do you know of any aging potions powerful enough to trick whatever judge it is that the Headmaster might conjure?" Fred asked, looking at the three with hopeful eyes.

Harry knew better than to answer that question truthfully, because he did know of more than a fare few of aging potions that might work. Cruel things that would never be undone. Ones that would exhilarate the aging until the drinker turned to dust before their eyes.

None of it was the sort of things that either of them were truly looking for.

"Why do you two want to get into the glorified death tournament so bad?" The snake asked, leaning forwards at the table to look at the two lions, something that more than one of the other fourth year Slytherins were doing as well. After all, none of them had ever know the twins to be so stupid as it want to participate in something with a death toll like this. Something that had to be banned originally because too many were dying, and could be brought back with the stipulation that only adults would be allowed to participate.

"We still need a bit more money for the shop," Fred admitted, the dark magic in his curling up just a bit as the light maligned magic within the other lion did the same. "The reward would be more than enough."

"And the possible death toll is the way to go?" Harry asked in turn, his own magic flaring with annoyance at their stupidity.

(He didn't like it when those other than him took such risks. Not when he knew that they had a much slimmer chance of surviving it)

"What else do you think we do then?" George asked, his own annoyance flaring.

Harry had many answers to that question, far too many of them being things that he should not say out loud.

He didn't say any of those though.

"You have products that are already made," the teen reminded the older two, watching as they nodded, "start selling some of them now and set the extra money that you don't need for making new ones aside. By the end of next school year, you should have enough if you budget right."

"When did you start playing finical advisor?" Blaise asked the other, both of them ignoring now the way that the twins were whispering with one another once again.

"It was a strategy that some friends back in the muggle world have been using for the past few years," Harry explained, picking at his food as he did so. He didn't like speaking of one life while living within the walls of the other like he was right then. He liked keeping the two separate when he could. "The older two have been setting money aside till they have enough to get going with what they want to do as well."

Blaise watched as the other's hand raised to his side right then, ghosting over the ribs there as if thinking of something out of reach. It wasn't an uncommon thing for the other to do, even if Blaise didn't think that the other snake noticed that he was doing it half of the time that he was.

Theo's eyes met his from the other side of Harry and for the first time the Zabini heir found himself wondering if the other knew what it was that made Harry do such a thing. If he had an idea of it.

There are a lot of things that Blaise wants to ask right then, most of them something that shouldn't be talked of with everyone in the castle around them, but before he could say anything at all the bell rung to signal that it was time for class.

The three spirits watched the conversations between them all play out, watched as their friend that was reincarnated into another acted as he had in the past. As he acted like a member of the Knights of the Round Table as he guided them through the things to come. Through the quests and the bandits.

As he made the choices and suggestions of a leader with his people.

Of a king.

It was sorrowful to see after so many years, but a bit sweet all the same.

—-

Herbology was fine, if a bit gross in nature, as they worked through it. Professor Sprout had them - the Ravenclaws and the Slytherins - collecting the puss from the bubotubers that were potted before them. It was something that was needed for the ingredients in the medical wing, though Harry didn't think that he had ever seen the gas smelling ingredient used before. He knew that it was used in some manner of treating the more persistent forms of acne, though he was quite sure how puss helped with that, even as just one of many ingredients.

Class ended early though as a scream filled the air. The Slytherins had noticed that Hermione and Terry had been caught up in some whispered sort of conversation the whole time, the Ravenclaw girl seeming particularly aggravated about something or other during the class,e even as she still remained careful with her work. Every now and then one of the snakes would catch one of the pair glancing their way - Harry's way - with these offended sort of gazes about them, though none of them actually thought that it was the Slytherins themselves that the pair were speaking of. If it was, then they wouldn't bother being so quite about it.

It was during one of those glances though that Nyx decided to poke her head out from under the collar of his robes.

"Why are you doing this, Royal One?" Nyx hissed quietly, something that the serpent had done a few times before last year in this class and a few others where the purpose wasn't very plain to see.

Harry thought that it was cute.

"It's used to heal some of the blemishes on human skin," the speaker explained, feeling the serpent nod against his skin.

"Why would that matter?" Nyx asked, not understanding why humans would want to cover up their scales.

"To look pretty?" Harry guessed, unsure himself. It all faded with time anyways, he didn't see why some would go to such extreme lengths to get rid of it as someone else in their year that had tried to curse theirs off.

Neither the serpent nor the speaker had realized that Terry had flinched violently at the first hiss, not until that scream came and everyone was turning to look at the Ravenclaw boy was his skin started to change on his arm where the puss had touched it, turning colors that skin wasn't meant to be as Terry jerked at the sight and tried to wipe it off.

And Harry had thought that Draco was dramatic.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer person," Daphne said as they all walked away from the greenhouse, her voice dripping with enough sarcasm to season food.

Ancient Runes was more stressful for the siblings than it had ever really been before, OWls looming over them all, but it was nothing compared to the stories that they heard at lunch of Hagrid's latest creatures that he had brought for Care of Magical Creatures. Skrewts, they were called. Blast ended skrewts. Harry was ninety - nine percent sure that Hagrid bred them himself, something that he was a hundred percent sure was illegal.

Divination was next, Ron coming to their table to grab Harry at the end of lunch so that they could head to it together.

"How many death predictions do you think you will get this year?" Ron asked as they walked, neither of them taking the whole thing seriously anymore.

(Even if Harry knew that there was an absolute truth to it, that he was destined to die once more. It was something that he was ignoring right then until he could do more about it.

It was something that the spirits were letting him ignore right then because at that moment none of them could do anything about it)

"Too many, she does love her predictions when it comes to me," the Slytherin guessed, knowing that he would likely be right.

And he was.

"My inner eye sees past the mask that you wear, dear," the professor said as she looked upon the Slytherin teen, "sees to the darkness and light warring inside. I see difficult times ahead for you, more so than you fear that they will be, and coming just as soon as you know that it will..."

Her voice had dropped to a whisper towards the end, the whole thing seeming theatrical as Ron wanted to roll his eyes as what he thought might have been a performance.

He didn't though, not as he saw the look within Harry's eyes at the words.

Not when he saw that he believed her right then in a way that he so rarely ever seemed to believe the crazed woman.

The lion knew right then that the other knew something that he wasn't telling anyone else, or maybe he was and it just wasn't the Gryffindors that knew just yet.

He wanted to ask, but he didn't get the chance to do so as the professor moved on to talking about the stars.

"You were clearly born under the baleful influence of Saturn, my dear," Trelawney said as she looked upon Harry once more. "Your dark hair… your mean stature… tragic losses so young in life… I think that I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in midwinter?"

The guess was wrong right then, he knew that it was. But Harry also knew exactly where the mistake had come from. That it was only partially one. That the seer wasn't reading him at all, but the piece of him that belonged to another. He wondered how tied the two of them were that it was Tom Riddle - Voldemort - his teacher had read first before him.

How closely tied they were that other than the planet itself and time of the year, she wasn't wrong at all.

"Not exactly," Harry answered, though the words half felt like a lie right then as he did so.

Ron's concerned gaze didn't leave the other for a while.