Author's Note: Yes, it's true, I am finally, finally writing the sequel to Bound With Silver Threads that I promised all of you. I know it's been way too long, but I was working on finishing my in-progress fics so that I could focus on this as my final fanfic before transitioning fully to working on my original stories. That was until I started reading Supernatural fanfiction and my traitorous brain decided that it simply had to provide me with a compelling new Supernatural plot. But for that story I've gone back to my old method of longhand drafting, so that I can work on it when I don't have my computer and I can split times when I do have my computer between this story and an original I'm working on. Except for when I'm ready to type the SPN fic of course, but that's not the hard part. I'm going to try to stay a couple chapters ahead of this story, but the life of a performer is rather nebulous, so bear with me. Thank you so much to all of you who read and reviewed Bound With Silver Threads, and inspired me to write this sequel. If you haven't read it, do read it first! Seriously, you won't know who half the main characters of this story are if you don't. *Waits for newcomers to read BWST* Alright, now read on!
-SQ
Disclaimer: rettoP yrraH nwo ton od I
Chapter One: In Sync
Bump bump bump. Lorcan and Lysander Scamander dragged their trunks up the steps of the Hogwarts Express, deposited them in the first available compartment, and bounded back down the stairs again to give their parents a hug and kiss goodbye. At thirteen years old, the twins found nothing odd or embarrassing in this display of familial affection, and if they noticed the stares and sniggers of a few of their year mates, which was doubtful, they chose to ignore them.
Lorcan and Lysander had returned to their chosen compartment and had just stowed their luggage properly on the racks when two more boys appeared in the doorway, dragging their own trunks behind them.
"Morning," said the taller boy, whose short, black hair was slicked back with gel. "Give me a hand with my trunk, will you, Ly?"
Lysander helped the newcomer lift his trunk onto the luggage rack, while Lorcan assisted his friend, who still looked half asleep. That task accomplished, the four boys sat down together, Lorcan and Lysander on one side of the table and Aaron and Bryan, which happened to be the names of the other two members of the company, on the other.
"I see Cassie," announced the shorter newcomer, seeming to wake up slightly as he stuck his brown, slightly curly head out of the compartment window.
"Where? Let me see!"
"Ow," protested the curly-haired boy. The aforementioned gel sporting young man had accidentally elbowed his best friend in the rib in his eagerness to catch sight of the blonde on the platform. The two younger blondes already inside the compartment prudently decided that when the girl boarded the train in a few minutes would be soon enough to see her. Of course, it wasn't only Cassiopeia Malfoy that the twins' companions were on the lookout for.
"Lily! Lily!"
The blonde girl's companion, a redheaded young woman, past the attendance age for Hogwarts, though only just, looked around for the source of the commotion.
"Aaron, if you lean any farther out of that window, you're going to fall out," she said, laughing and approaching the train. She let go of Cassie's hand to clasp Aaron's and Bryan's.
"You guys only saw us two days ago," said Cassie, shaking her head. "Surely you can't miss us yet!"
"Wanna bet?" said Bryan.
"Aren't you excited to be going back to Hogwarts?" said Lily
"Duh!" said Aaron expressively as the other boy nodded. "Are you sad not to be?"
"Yes and no," said Lily. "I'll miss it, but I'm ready to move on."
"Will you miss us?"
"Occasionally," said Lily teasingly. "Are Lor and Ly with you?"
Bryan's affirmative response was lost to the train's whistle
"Aaron, let go of Lily so she can say goodbye to Cassie," said Bryan, elbowing his friend, perhaps in recompense for the blow he had received minutes prior.
Aaron pouted over-dramatically but acquiesced, and Lily Potter pulled her girlfriend into a tight hug. "I'll miss you," she said, blinking back tears. It was silly, she knew, but she and Cassiopeia hadn't been separated for this long since they had met each other four years ago.
"I'll miss you too," said the blonde with a smile, kissing Lily's cheek. "You'll write me?"
"Only if you write me."
Cassie raised a very Malfoy-esque eyebrow. "But of course."
The whistle blew again.
"Cassie," hollered the twins from inside the compartment. "You're going to miss the train!"
Laughing her signature bell-like laugh, the youngest Malfoy disentangled herself from the youngest Potter and skipped up the steps of the scarlet steam engine, throwing a last wave over her shoulder as she went.
"How was the rest of your summer, Cassie?" asked Lorcan and Lysander, who had not seen the oldest member of the group quite so recently, as the girl entered the compartment and situated her trunk and owl on the luggage rack.
"It was good, thanks" said Cassie, smiling at the third years. "I spent most of it with Lily."
"She has her own flat now, right?" said Lorcan and Lysander simultaneously, as was their wont, while Aaron made a suggestive gesture, which earned him another elbow in the ribs from Bryan.
Cassie nodded. "Yes, she's a flat in Diagon Alley and starting up an apothecary business geared toward pet care."
"Awesome."
"How about you?" queried Cassie, tucking her feet up under her on the seat beside Bryan. "How was, Brazil, was it?"
"Yep," said the twins. "It was great. Mum and Dad discovered a new breed of acrumantula."
"Eugh," said Bryan, shuddering and making a face. "Remind me never to go to Brazil."
Cassie, Aaron and the twins laughed, though not unkindly.
"It's not funny," protested Bryan. "Have you ever seen an acromantula?"
"Yes," said Lorcan and Lysander. "Have you?"
"Nope," said Bryan. "Thank Merlin. And I don't want to!"
"We have pictures."
"What do you have pictures of, your cocks?"
"Jenny!"
The most recent arrival slid into the seat beside the Scamanders, ducking to avoid their twin slaps. She was a petite third year with a round face, long jet black hair streaked with purple, and an attitude which far surpassed her stature.
"Can I see?" she said teasingly, waggling her thick eyebrows suggestively at the twins. "The pictures or the real things, I'm not picky."
"No, you cannot," said the twins emphatically.
Jenny Edgecombe sighed and shrugged in a 'what can you do' kind of way. "A girl can dream. So what are you boys up to besides sharing dick pics?"
"We were not sharing dick pics," said Lorcan and Lysander. "Seriously, where do you even come up with this stuff? We were discussing our summer vacations."
"Yawn," said Jenny. "Soooo predictable."
"If you find us so boring, then why do you hang out with us?" said Aaron, raising an eyebrow.
"Because you're less boring than the rest of the bozos at this school," said Jenny with another shrug. "Has the trolley come by yet? I'm famished."
*****AMW*****
Several hours (and several pasties) later, the scarlet steam engine chugged to a stop at Hogsmead Station, and her adolescent passengers jostled their way out of the doors and over to the "horseless" carriages in which they would complete their journey back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Lorcan, Lysander, and their friends watched contentedly through the carriage window as the castle grew larger, the light from the Great Hall winking welcomingly at them through the dusky twilight.
The six students vacated the slightly cramped carriage, Jenny, Aaron, and Bryan jostling a bit while the others descended more sedately. Jenny took the opportunity to slap Lorcan on the ass as he passed her
"Hey!" protested Lorcan.
"Hey!" said Lysander.
"Geez," said Aaron, shaking his head. "You really are one person, aren't you?"
The twins were saved the trouble of replying by the group's entrance into the Great Hall.
"Look," said Jenny, pointing. "The first years are already here. Bets on which one will wet their pants."
"Don't be cruel, Jenny," admonished Cassie. "It's scary being up there being judged in front of the whole school.
"Especially for a muggleborn," said Bryan. "Which reminds me, Aaron, we have an obligation to fulfill to Cassie and Lily."
"That you do," Cassiopeia agreed
"Right!" said Aaron, snapping his fingers. "But how do we choose just one? They're all so adorable!"
"What's this conspiracy you two're going on about?" asked Jenny suspiciously, looking from Cassie to Bryan to Aaron with narrowed eyes.
"When we were first years, Lily and Cassie kind of took us under their wings," said Bryan. "Like Hogwarts big sisters."
"Yeah, I know that," said Jenny. "What's your point?"
"My point is that you should respect your elders," said Aaron, earning himself an eye roll from the third year. "No, we promised them we'd do the same for another first year. Kind of continue the legacy."
"Ugh," said Jenny, making a face and shaking her head. "Better you than me. First years are just so…eleven." With this brilliant comment, Jenny followed Lorcan and Lysander to the Ravenclaw table, leaving the three Gryffindors to their observation of the first years. Which wasn't as creepy as it sounded, really.
*****AMW*****
"Oof!" said Lorcan, flopping down on his four-poster later that evening.
Lysander responded as though his brother had asked a question, which, as far as he was concerned, he had. "Nope, no new classes tomorrow." Somehow all of their new subjects had ended up on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
"Seems a bit unbalanced if you ask me," said Lorcan, though Lysander hadn't mentioned the Tuesday/Thursday scheduling out loud.
"You're a bit unbalanced," said Lysander.
Lorcan gave him a look and the twins burst out laughing as, of course, the one twin was unbalanced on his own.
They were still laughing when their year-mate, Nicholas Belby, entered the dormitory. Nicholas gave them a weird look and preceded to unpack his trunk. Unfazed by his attitude, Lorcan and Lysander sat up on their beds and greeted him in a friendly, if a little unsettling due to their renewed synchronization, manner.
"Hi Nicholas, nice summer?"
"Uh-huh," said Nicholas non-committally.
"What'd you do? Anything cool?"
"Not really. Normal summer stuff. You know it's weird when you talk like that, right? All at the same time and stuff."
"We know."
"Okay."
The dormitory lapsed into silence again. The silence didn't last very long, however, as seven more boys soon filled the dormitory, entering in groups of two or three at a time. Lorcan and Lysander's year was a big one. Lorcan and Lysander were neither the most nor the least popular in it, and that suited them just fine. Most people thought they were a little odd, but quite nice once you got to know them, and they had enough older friends to back them up if they ever got into trouble. Not that they needed them; the twins had a more playful vein to their whimsy than their mother had, and a more proactive one. If you ran afoul of the Scamander twins you were liable to find your charms notebook mysteriously full of Shakespearen quotations or a box of wildflowers blooming in your windowsill. These pranks were so good natured that the recipients couldn't even really complain about them, and were left baffled both as to the reasoning behind such an act and the logistics of accomplishing it. This amused the twins (and their friends) immensely, and in their opinion more than made up for whatever the other student had done to merit their attention in the first place. Because honestly, it took a pretty special human being to hold the twins' attention for long. They were just as likely, if not more, to be found conversing intently with an animal or a plant or carrying on an animated one-sided dialogue with a book as taking to an actual person. As for each other, they hardly needed words to know what the other was thinking or feeling, so talking became fairly superfluous, at least in any form that would have been intelligible to anyone else.
One by one, the ten third-year Ravenclaw boys changed into their pajamas and settled into their beds, some falling asleep right away while others read books or wrote in journals or whispered quietly to their neighbors. The noise level in the dormitory gradually fell from a dull roar to a quiet murmur and then silence, broken only by slow, even breathing and the occasional snore as one by one the room's occupants drifted off into dreamland. Lorcan and Lysander were two of the last to fall asleep, and when they did it was with their hands clasped between their pushed-together four-posters, as they had fallen asleep nearly every night for the past thirteen-and-a-half years.
*****AMW*****
The twins' internal clock woke them promptly at six-thirty a.m. the next morning. The September sunlight was just beginning to make its way through the cracks in the window blinds and outside the birds were already singing a cheerful good morning chorus to greet the new day. The twins loved mornings. The whole day lay before them, full of infinite possibilities. And today those possibilities included their first day of classes as third year students. No one else in the dormitory was awake yet. Lorcan and Lysander changed quickly from their matching pajamas into their matching school robes and left the dormitory, not in the conventional manner by using the door, but rather through the window, scrambling over the sill and onto the castle roof. Later in the year the twins would be able to watch the sunrise from here, though then they would also need coats.
"Mmhm," nodded Lysander, in response to his twin's unspoken opinion that there was no sunrise quite like a Hogwarts sunrise. It wasn't better than any other sunrise exactly, but it was special. All the more so because the majority of the people in a position to appreciate it were asleep when it happened. Though not all of them, Lorcan noted, directing his brother's wandering attention to the large figure of Hagrid lumbering through his garden on the far side of the Hogwarts grounds, accompanied by his wolfhound Claw, a descendent of the dog of the same breed who had been his companion during the twins' mother's schooldays.
We should visit Hagrid, the twins agreed. And as there were still two hours until their first class was due to start, they rose to their feet, climbed back through the dormitory window, threw their navy blue corduroy bookbags over their shoulders, and made the first of what was sure to be many trips from Ravenclaw Tower down and across to the wooden hut which housed the Hogwarts gamekeeper/Care of Magical Creatures professor and his dog.
"Lorcan! Lysander! It's good ter see yeh," said Hagrid, looking up from his pumpkins and catching sight of the toe-headed twins striding across the grass toward him. Claw gave a gleeful bark and closed the distance between him and the boys in a single bound, greeting his young friends with muddy paws on their shoulders and slobbery doggy kisses across their cheeks.
Laughing, the Scamander twins hugged the wolfhound and kissed his ears, and by the time the dog had lowered himself back onto all fours and managed to contain his excitement within the bounds of a frantically wagging tail, Hagrid stood in front of them.
"It's good to see you too, Hagrid," said the twins, wiping dog drool off their faces with the sleeves of their robes. "How have you been? Any interesting new creatures to share with us?" They added eagerly. One of the things Hagrid and the twins had instantly bonded over was their mutual love for interesting and unusual creatures.
"I was going ter save 'em for a surprise during class," said Hagrid, an excited gleam coming into his eye. "But I might as well show 'em to yer now, seeing as yer here." He motioned for them to follow him with one garbage-can-lid-sized hand and the three magical creature enthusiasts picked their way through the pumpkin patch and around to the other side of Hagrid's hut.
The creatures standing inside the recently-erected enclosure lifted their feathered heads and blinked their yellow eyes balefully at the Scamander twins. The beast closest to them, a tawny creature with a white chest and tail, stamped a feathered hoof on the ground either in greeting or in warning, it wasn't clear which.
"Hippogriffs!" cried the twins excitedly, their pale eyes lighting up as though Christmas had come early.
"Hippogriffs," said Hagrid in cheery affirmation. "They're finally letting me teach 'em again. With the proper precautions, o' course."
Lorcan and Lysander didn't seem to be too concerned with the 'proper precautions.' They were already approaching the enclosure, eyes locked on their Hippogriffs of choice.
"Now boys," said Hagrid, "you should really wait 'til class … Well all righ', but don' go around telling the other students I've given you preferential treatment, now."
The Scamanders nodded, not taking their eyes from the majestic beasts in front of them as they unlatched the gate and advanced, slowly…slowly…into the enclosure. Lorcan had locked eyes with the tawny hippogriff at the front, which was gazing back at him with an almost lazy expression on its face. Lysander's gaze was directed slightly farther back, at a small, black hippogriff which was standing a ways away from the others and regarding the newcomers with cautious curiosity. As one, the boys bowed, bending low at the waist without blinking or taking their eyes from the animals in front of them. They waited. One beat. Two. The tawny hippogriff ruffled its wings and then slowly, lazily, sunk to its scaly knees. Lorcan grinned and reached out a hand to stroke the snowy feathers on the beast's chest.
Lysander was still maintaining eye contact with the small, black hippogriff. He knew he should back away, but maybe if he waited just one second longer…
"Midnight's young, Lysander," said Hagrid. "No more'n a baby, really. Don' be surprised if she doesn' bow, even ter yeh. She's still getting' used ter bein' aroun' people; I'm not planning on using her in tomorrow's lesson."
Lysander sighed and was about to give the filly up as a lost cause, when the hoof that had been pawing the ground stilled and first one scaly knee and then the other bent and lowered Midnight's front quarters briefly, awkwardly to the ground.
Hagrid whistled. "Yeh've got yer grandfather's knack with creatures, that's for sure," said Hagrid. "Yeh can pet 'er now, but be gentle. She's still skittish."
Lysander reached out a long-fingered hand and touched the feathers on the young hippogriff's head. She butted her head against his hand like a cat. Lysander's grin was even bigger than his brother's. "She likes me."
"So she does. Maybe I'll use her in the lesson after all, have you help me with the demonstration."
"What about me?" demanded Lorcan.
"Well, yeh can help too, o' course," said Hagrid. "Can't have one o' yeh without the other, can we? Wouldn' be natural. Seems like you get along well with Tiger, there. He's a good one. Good stock. 'is dam was Buckbeak's half sister." Buckbeak the Hippogriff had passed away several years before the twins were born, but his name was legendary among the decedents of the former members of Dumbledore's Army.
Suddenly Lorcan started.
"We've got to get to Transfiguration," translated Lysander.
"Of course," said Hagrid, shooing them back toward the castle. "Don't let me make you late on your first day."
"We'll see you in class," said the twins, waving over their shoulders at Hagrid as they took off at a brisk jog across the grounds.
Lorcan and Lysander joined the rest of the Ravenclaw third years right outside of the Transfiguration classroom.
"There you two are," said Jenny, looking them up and down with a critical eye. "Where have you been?"
"Hagrid's," they said, accepting the buttered toast she held out to them. "Thanks, you're a life saver."
"I know. So, what does Hagrid have planned for us tomorrow? Anything exciting?"
"What makes you think we know?"
"Oh come on, Hagrid loves you, he probably gave you a private lesson already."
"Even if he did, we would have promised not to tell," said the twins.
"I brought you toast!" protested Jenny, loudly enough to earn her a couple odd looks from the Gryffindors sitting closest to them. "Come on," she said in a quieter voice, "spill."
"Shhh," said Lorcan and Lysander, holding their forefingers up to their lips. "Class is starting."
AN: And there's the first chapter. Please let me know what you thought about my versions of these characters' return to the computer screen (or smartphone screen, I read a lot of fanfiction on my phone) And if you're a fan of Supernatural, keep an eye out for that fic showing up soon as well;)
-SQ