Title: Clockwise
Rating: M, eventually
Pairing:The main one will definitely be SLASH between someone and Harry. The rest will most likely be het and not very graphic.
Warning(s):Violence, Adult Situations, Sex, Blood, Homosexuality (most likely graphic eventually), heterosexuality (probably not so graphic), Bad Language...More to come.
Summary:Harry Potter is the only one that can save the world. Too bad abuse at the hands of the Dursley's killed him before he ever got that Hogwarts letter. However, nine years later, in the midst of war and destitution, his body is exhumed and they find him... still breathing. Eventual SLASH
"The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are." ~Antonio Porchia,
"Snape, this is ridiculous. It's barmy...no, disrespectful is what it is."
"I do not exactly remember asking for your input, Mr. Weasley."
"Well, I gave it to you anyway, because this is stupid. Diggin' up some poor boy's gave like-"
"Like it is a necessary act in order to make the potion that could very possibly be the key to weakening the Dark Lord's power and subsequently defeating him?" The man's voice came out in a low hiss, as though the comment wasn't worth very much of the volume in his voice. "Yes, it's exactly like that."
"When you put it like that..."
"Please, Ron, you're the one being ridiculous here. Professor Snape has perfectly scholastic and honorable reasons for doing this—do you think he just digs up 10-year-old boy's graves for fun?"
"The idea had crossed my-"
"Ron!" The young woman swatted the red head over the top of his head with a sharp thwat, to which the boy grimaced and shouted. The cry was a little dramatic for the strength of it considering it came from the petite girl, and her response was simply to roll her eyes and continue walking just behind the tail of the professor's dark robes.
"God, Hermione, what'd you do that for?"
"Because you deserved it for always being so rude, Ron, don't you ever think about what you say?" Hermione sighed, brushing a stray lock of frayed hair from her eyes; for whatever reason that same strand wouldn't stay in her tight ponytail. She'd adopted the style when she joined the Order and started having to duel without notice as the war started to broil ever harder, like the rough stir of ocean water as a storm brewed.
"Yeah, sure, but usually after I've actually said it."
"For the love of...Fine. Be immature. We're here, anyway."
They turned the corner, clay and rubble beneath their shoes being cleaned away automatically with a complicated cleaning enchantment as they approached the once beautiful bank known as Gringotts. Hermione swallowed slightly, her eyes softening at the sight of it as they stepped through the doors and into the dirty barren front room of the building. The floors that once been white and pristine were covered in grime and dirt, the chandeliers that had once been mighty structures of light and crystal lay on the ground nothing but shattered glass. The windows were either broken or scratched or clouded with soot, and a once grand fireplace where people would flu in and out of on a whim was crushed like the foot of a giant had pounded it into nothing. Great paintings were peeled and scalped with cruel spells, the characters in them lost in a sea of other canvases without a home. The youngest two of the group couldn't help but stare at the wreckage, the only thing that seemed to be in tact was the cleaning spell just outside the door, an almost depressing attempt to clean what it could of a place that had been, for years, nothing more than a wasteland.
Hermione finally managed to speak, "I...haven't been here since-"
"Me neither," Ron cut her off, looking back over at Kingsley, the quiet man that he'd almost forgotten was with them on this venture. "We were too young for the Gringotts battle—it was three years ago, we were in our seventh year...but you were here, weren't you, Kingsley?"
The large black man looked around, his eyes decidedly blank as he took in the remains of a fight lost.
"Yes." His voice was a deep rumble, like gravel over silk. "I was here."
Ron bit his tongue then, something he'd learned to do on occasion over the passed year or so because this was a time were everyone was hurting, even the people he'd previously thought incapable of the emotion. His carelessness had cost him a few allies before and in this world trustworthy people were hard to come by. His brown eyes drifted back over to Hermione, who was glaring at the far wall, where a slab of marble was burned crudely with the Dark Mark in charred, angry lines.
Hermione clenched her fists and her eyes burned, "The day that all the Goblins died...were murdered, I knew I had to join the Order. I knew I had to do...something, anything."
"...Yeah," was all Ron could really offer. They fell into silence, because it felt like they were disgracing this place with every word they spoke, like in a church of some sort. In some ways this was similar to that concept...so many were lost here, it was the graves of over a hundred wizards, good and bad, and the entire population of Goblins.
Severus Snape cleared his throat, dark eyes ghosting over the three of them that were still in a despaired awe at the ruin of Gringotts, in his eyes there was a spark of annoyance that they'd spent such valuable time brooding but he had enough tact not to mention it. " I managed to find the Potter Vault."
"The location spell I created?" Hermione took a step forward, having been too distracted to watch him try it. "It worked?"
"If it had not, I would not know the location, would I, Ms. Granger?" Severus drawled, but didn't linger on his sarcasm for long, instead starting over to the other end of the grand room, leaving the rest of them at his heels.
"Well done, Hermione." Ron told her after a moment, with a grin, and she flushed slightly at the praise, rather proud of herself as well. She'd been afraid when she joined the Order that she would be useless to them, because she wasn't the best at dueling, nor was she a talented fighter in any medium, nor could she fly on a broom by herself, but this...creating spells, using her brain for the cause. This meant something. She couldn't help but be slightly ecstatic even in the face of all this...this memory of death.
Snape didn't compliment her, she knew he wasn't the type, but there was less tension in his walk now, than when they'd been headed down Diagon Alley and she knew he was relieved that the spell had worked. They had a back up plan, but that spell was complicated and would have taken hours, as opposed to the minutes that Hermione's Locusmagnus maior maximus took. Creating spells was not a simple task, naming them was the simplest part, the complicated wand movement, and training the magic to know what was needed and how to form it...Hermione had been working on it for three months ever since Snape had gotten the idea to dig up Harry Potter's grave.
"Where are you going, sir-?" Hermione started, coming up next to him, heart thudding in her chest...Magic was a complex thing; she knew that it would point them in the direction of the location of the Potter vault, she just didn't know what form the 'arrow of the compass' would take.
"Here, Ms. Granger," The potions master said in a low voice, gesturing to the floor, where a red 'X' of magical energy had formed, it was dull but growing brighter by the second. Severus broke eye contact, and therefore the spell, the red evaporating into nothing instantaneously. "Straight down from here is the Potter vault. It should lead us down directly into the center of it, where all of the Potters were buried."
"Should?" Ron asked with a little more emphasis than was necessary. "How are we supposed to get there anyway? All the tunnels collapsed in the battle!"
"Yes, it should," Severus said again with no little bit of irritation in his voice for having to repeat himself. "We'll simply have to use a spell to dig a pathway for us."
"Yeah, because that'll be bloody easy, won't it? If Hermione's spell even worked, I mean, it could be leading us toward nothing -" He cut himself off, hands in the air with his vehemence, looking at Hermione, who was glaring at him due to his assumption that her spell would lead them astray. "M'just being realistic, Hermione. I mean...Damn, I didn't mean to..."
She averted her gaze and Ron deflated, kicking his foot against the soot ridden floor, which caused a cloud of dust to rise. "Whatever, you're the Ravenclaw."
The brunette raised her chin, "Yes, I am. Aren't Gryffindors supposed to be fearless, Ron?"
"Yeah, yeah, still...how are we supposed to get down there ?" The redhead turned to Snape, rubbing at his cheek and taking a deep breath, "Those tunnels were miles deep, that's a... lot of digging."
"Thank you for that astute observation, Mr. Weasley."
"Humus iter itineris."
There was a rumbling sound, and a dark energy emitting from Kingsley's wand, as it had been his baritone that had recited the spell.
The rest of the group turned to watch what it did, the darkness black and brown and swirling to seep into a perfect circle on the ground, about four feet in diameter, and then sinking. Ron stepped nearer to look, but the dark man held his arm up to stop the boy from getting too close to it as though to say 'be careful', his gaze constantly trained on the hole that was forming in the floor as it deepened further and further still.
"Whoa," Ron muttered, and Hermione elbowed him so he'd shut his mouth so that Kingsley could concentrate.
Finally, Kingsley looked up at them, taking a breath and nodding, more specifically at the potions master that was peering at the tunnel, impressed. "That should do it, Severus."
"Thank you, Kingsley, that's quite a feat." Severus nodded, regarding the passage with a cool eye. He'd heard that the former Auror specialized in Earth-based spells but he'd never had the chance to see it in action. Moving that amount of earth in general was something in itself, but condensing it into the wall in a such a lucid fashion, so that there was little chance that the walls would crumble in on them on the way down was actually a rather fascinating procedure, and Severus wasn't one to be easily impressed over magic that wasn't in liquid form.
"Why does everyone keep saying should?" Ron groaned.
"Why can't you be quiet, Ron?" Hermione snapped, looking around and picking out a loose plank of wood from an otherwise decimated desk, picking it up, "We should all find something like this, something light but strong enough to hold ups. Then levitate it, hold onto it and let it lower us down to into the vault."
"Are you mad?" Ron looked at her with an expression that befitted his words.
"Unless you intend to jump, Mr. Weasley, that's the best way available to go get down what could be, as you said, miles beneath us." Severus himself levitated a piece of a desk chair over to where they stood near the tunnel, setting it down again. "It's a simple levitation charm, something, if I remember correctly, you learned in your first year at Hogwarts. If you question your abilities, however, you can always stay up here and keep guard."
Ron's face fell, and then scrunched in anger, "Now see here, Snape-"
"Ron, this is not the place to argue about something so petty!" Hermione hushed him, glowering and huffing at his petulance.
"I shall go first," Kingsley went forward, stepping onto a large plank of wood that would support his broad, heavy form and doing a silent Wingardium Leviosa as Snape had before. "I will call up to you when I have reached the ground and I will await all of you. Do not worry, if you fall I will be there to stop it."
The man's Swahili accent was thick, but his words curt and articulate as he assured Ron and started to lower himself down into the hole. The youngest Weasley sputtered something about how he wasn't worried or scared about falling, but no one was listening to him and he eventually ran out of steam and waited for Kingsley's response.
It had been a full minute and Ron was tapping his foot, making the time seem to go slower, "Bloody hell, this isn't...that's a bit of a long time, innit? What if he fell?"
"If he fell we would have heard a cry of some sort, Weasley, do not be foolish," Severus drawled, crossing his arms over his chest in a stern but elegant fashion.
"I'm not being foolish! I'm-
"Come now, Ron. What are you scared of? You already know he'll catch you."
"That's not why! And I'm not scared, I'm just saying, this place is old and grimy, and it's dark down there, and—"
"Oh," Hermione exclaimed, snapping her fingers and laughing, "You're afraid there will be spiders down there, aren't you?"
Ron went red, his ears crimson as he muttered, "No, I'm afraid there will be dead little boys down there, that's what."
Hermione started, "He has a name, Ron, that's so insensitive-"
"I have reached the bottom." Kingsley's voice came out of the tunnel, louder than they had ever heard him speak before in person, giving credit to the idea he had most definitely used the Sonorus charm.
Severus went next, also standing on his plank in the same fashion that Kingsley had. The two of them waited for the signal for the next person to start down in an awkward silence, Hermione gesturing to him when Kingsley called for the next person. Ron blinked and frowned at her, his plank really too tiny for his tall, lanky form.
"I'm not going before you," Ron told her, bowing mockingly, "Ladies first."
"Yes, you are. I want to make sure you actually do go, and don't just stay up here like a baby."
"You're a girl. I shouldn't leave you all alone up here."
"I'm sure I'll manage. It only takes a minute and a half to get down there, after all."Hermione wrung her hand over her wand, peering down at Ron's choice of wood. "Are you seriously going to use that?"
"You don't trust me enough to go down after you?" Ron grumbled, and levitated his plank, sitting on it, though it wobbled he managed to stay up right. "It's fine, Hermione, don't be a know-it-all."
"It's too small, Ron."
He kept his want geared toward it, and started lowering himself down into the whole with a smug expression. "What did I tell you? It's perfectly fine."
With a sigh, she watched him disappear from sight and muttered, "Whatever you say, Ronald."
Soon, Hermione was following suit, seating herself on the wood carefully, and lowering herself with attentiveness to her magic and the angle of her wand until she was in the vault. It was large, almost the size of a small house, with twenty foot ceilings and hundreds of deposit boxes lined with locks on one wall, and on the opposite side there were huge bookcases filled with books upon books, some of them preserved perfectly and others tearing with worn pages, a testimony to the age of the tomes.
The third wall was just a large entrance way that was now useless, as on the other side there was just caved in dirt and a rail rode buggy that was now unusable. Magic could fix a lot, but only Goblins could control that equipment, even if they did build it all up again. The last wall of the room was lined with beautiful, extravagant rectangular prisms, gold and crimson draped over them in intricate custom designs, made even more luminescent by the many candles that lit up the room. They were lined up, from a thousand years ago and every Potter in between, her gaze drifting to the newest casket that Snape was already working on unlocking.
"It's...so sad and gorgeous." Hermione sighed, taking Kingsley's hand as he helped her off of where she sat, letting the spell go and allowing the plank of wood to fall to the floor near the other ones. Ron looked at her again with his mouth open.
"The hell? It's effing creepy is what it is, Hermione. It's a big room with a bunch of dusty books and dead people, one of which we're about to dig up so that we can get his DNA..." Ron gestured with his hands exaggeratedly, "Shouldn't he be just a pile of bones by now?"
"Ron, that's horrible." Hermione ripped her gaze away from the books for a moment to look at him in shock and disgust.
"No it isn't, I'm just telling the truth. It's been nine years since he died, yeah?"
"Since he was brutally murdered by his own family! It was horrific. I can't believe you're making light of it."
"I'm not saying it's not sad, Hermione, I'm just saying that he should have rotted away by now that's all, and the thought's a little gross."
"I can't believe-"
"The fact is," Snape interrupted their bickering, emphasizing each of his words to cut the girl off, "However sad, or horrific it was, it is even more unfortunate that Harry Potter died at all, not even to mention the fact that it was at the hands of muggles."
Hermione looked at the professor for a moment, something like disbelief in her eyes. "Are you saying that...a ten-year-old boy shouldn't have let-"
"No," Severus spoke quickly, pulling something small out of his pocket, tapping it with is wand and casting a silent spell to make it return to it's normal size. It was a potion-ingredient gathering kit, and he snapped it open, taking out a vile, a scalpel and an eyedropper, organizing it idly as he spoke, "I am not saying that he was too weak as a savior to protect himself from a muggle. I'm saying that the very fact that he was placed in the care of mere muggles, supposedly for his protection, by a man that was trusted by so many is ...unfortunate."
Hermione bit down on her bottom lip, brushing that same stray hair out of her eye, because Snape said 'unfortunate' like a curse word. "Yes...yes, I suppose that's right."
A beat, and then Snape spoke again on a different subject.
"Obviously you have little idea about the process of Pureblood embalming, Mr. Weasley," Severus spoke from across the room in as he pulled on the top of the tomb, pulling it open with his hands and then brushing his hands against his robes, cutting his dark eyes to the red head.
Ron started toward him, irritated, "I'm a Pureblood!"
"Yes, Mr. Weasley, however, you and I both know that your finances haven't been able to support most Pureblood traditions for quite some time," Severus knew that the comment would offend the young man, though he spoke in a merely smoothly factual tone. As he thought, that freckled face went pink with a bitter sort of shame. "The spell preserves a body rather well, not perfectly, but it's similar to mummification. The curse slows down the decay of the body to an alarmingly slow rate...The fact is, you will probably be a pile of bones long before Harry Potter will."
"...Oh." Ron came a little closer, peeking into the coffin, but there was a red cover over the body so he didn't get to see the preserved form of the boy. Snape continued to set up his equipment, always an exact and methodical man, almost to a fault at times, while Kingsley stood silently and watched them all and Hermione wandered over to the bookcases.
"God, did you see all these books? We could...donate them to the library, at Hogwarts. It's not like anyone's using them here," Hermione trailed her fingers over the spines of them in wonder, her honey brown eyes wide.
"Hermione Granger, stealing?" Ron said in mock awe, "Whatever would Looney think?"
"Luna, Ron, not Looney. Don't go insulting my friends." She snapped at him over her shoulder and stood up a little straighter, "I think she'd think the same thing as I do, anyway. Hogwarts could use more books, and our cause might be able to use whatever is in these."
"Might think the same thing?" Ron snorted loudly, leaning against one of the tombs where near Severus was lifting a scalpel. "As long as there's not an evil revenge seeking thief faery..."
"Oh please, she's not that bad. She's just...eccentric, that's all," the young woman mumbled, though it was a halfhearted because she knew it was a lie, focusing on the books.
"You're acting like Hogwarts is still a school, Hermione," Ron rolled his eyes and shook his head, "No one's going to read those. Hogwarts is nothing more than the base of the order now...you're the only one that cares about that crap."
She grit her teeth and squared her shoulders, "What if there's a spell in here that could help the order? A potion that could heal things more quickly for battle? Something like that? Are you saying that these books wouldn't be useful then?"
"No..." the red head grumbled, "Just, y'know, don't get your hopes up or anything, alright?"
Hermione was still annoyed with the boy, but when she heard Ron yelp, realizing that he had been leaning on a coffin for the last minute or so, she couldn't help but giggle to herself.
"This place is creepy as all hell." Ron muttered, the glint of the scalpel finally lowering toward the body of the boy in it. Snape pulled the tarp just slightly so that an ankle was exposed and that startled Ron enough to make him look away. "Just hurry the hell up, Snape. I want to get out of here, not that this wasn't an awesome adventure, but you'd be off your rocker to want to stay down here longer than necessary. S'all I'm saying."
He gave a pointed look at Hermione's back, because the girl could be weird as hell, she really could, genius or not.
"...He's bleeding."
Ron crossed his arms, looking around the vault even more, antsy, then looking back to the man that had spoken. Snape had a look of suspicion and shock on his features and Ron couldn't help but be amused by it. Severus Snape usually had two modes: irritated and facetious. The young man had never seen him with such a remotely human expression and he couldn't fight the urge to jeer.
"Yeah, well, you did cut him, didn't you?"
"You imbecile," Severus snarled, pulling the cover off of the body in a rather violent snatching motions that caught Ron's attention rather suddenly, his eyes widening almost comically at the same moment as the professor's narrowed.
"The dead do not bleed."
A/N: First of all, I very loosely based the concept of this story on Avatar: The Last Airbender. I seriously got this idea a few hours ago and jotted down all I could so that I could see if any of you lovely people are as excited about it as I am. Hopefully if you are, you'll tell me in a nice review and if you're not you'll tell me in a not-so-nice review. Either way, I hope to hook you in the chapters to come. :)
I know this will be Slash, but I'm not entirely sure between who. I'm rather fond of Severus and Harry, and Draco and Harry, though I'm not opposed to suggestions. In fact I'd like you all to be open with this..it's been a long time since I've written fan fiction. Either way, it will be a long time coming for the development of the plot and Harry's character if I want to make any sort of relationship plausible.
I've developed other characters how I think they would have turned out if Harry hadn't been around. Hence why Hermione's in Ravenclaw and such...I also tried to portray that she and Ron have only been friends for a couple years as opposed to nearly a decade. Not sure if I'll keep their relationship as it is in canon or not yet. Everything about future romance is still up in the air.
Also, I really hated writing an entire chapter without Harry. It was necessary however, for obvious reasons. Once he wakes up the story will be from his third person point of view.
Thank y'all so much for reading! Extra virtual cookies for reviewers. XD
Evenue