Warnings:
Dumbledore bashing
Lily and James bashing
Manipulative Dumbledore
Dark!Harry
Independent!Harry
Powerful!Harry
Non-canon characters.
Summary: Kieran is famous, but Harry's beautiful. Kieran is Humour, but Harry's Tragedy, which lasts for ever. Twin masks of Humour and Tragedy, bittersweet. The vampires won't let the beautiful one wither, the humans want the sweet one to prosper. Brother-WL.
Legend:
Elena's thoughts
Thoughts
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
-Shakespeare, As You Like It
Strangely dressed people poured through the streets of London, eyes flashing with joy that threatened to burst and explode like the display of fireworks over Diagon Alley. Old and young, rich and poor, there were no barriers between them as they celebrated the Dark Lord's downfall. Singing the name and praises of Kieran Potter, a group of Obliviators stumbled out into muggle London, tipsy on ecstasy and drugged with exhilaration.
A tall man watched them promptly go on and violate the International Statute of Secrecy with a bemused smile playing on his lips. The ministry would be horrified. He was less amused, however, when one of the Obliviators staggered towards him, crushing him in a hug. The man pretended to be oblivious as the wizard rambled on about the Dark Lord's downfall, but he grasped the man's violet robes.
'What do you mean, Kieran Potter defeated him?' He hissed, his mind whirling. This wasn't supposed to be possible; it was all foreseen by Kelda. And Kelda was never wrong. 'Are you sure it was Kieran Potter, not Harry Potter?' The Obliviator wrinkled his forehead.
'Who's Harry Potter?' the Obliviator asked, confused. 'Is he related to Kieran Potter?' The man wanted to smack his head and mutter a 'no shit, Sherlock,' but he resisted the urge. The Obliviator probably wouldn't know who Sherlock Holmes was either.
'Never mind,' he forced a smile onto his strong Italian features. 'I must have heard wrong.'
The Obliviator squinted at him, his eyes clouding in mistrust. 'Eh, you aren't around from here, are you? What's the likes of you doing here?' The man cursed under his breath. The Obliviator wasn't as drunk as he hoped. He merely smiled a placating smile at the befuddled ministry employee and muttered a quiet 'obliviate' under his breath. Oh, the irony, he thought, amused again. Using obliviate against an Obliviator. He immediately erased all traces of his encounter and pushed him back towards the group huddled in the same robes.
'Glory to Kieran Potter!' he called out, and the group raised their arms as if toasting him, chorusing the phrase back. Grimacing, the man disillusioned himself. He had to get the news back to his clan immediately. Were they really wrong? Or was the wizarding world wrong? Debating the issue, the man absently shifted into the form of a dragon and took the clouds, eager to be rid of London's gloomy skies.
The world of the Court of the Strange was a strange world, but what could you expect from drunkards and madmen, poets and dreamers? Elena smiled to herself, peering at her reflection in a distorted mirror of screaming souls. A face with honey-gold eyes of a royal vampire, with lines criss-crossing across it like a piece of cracked glass peered back at her. She admired the face's flawless nymph-like features, combing her fingers through her titanium-blonde hair to let it curl in demurely; delicate strands of spun gold fluttering gently about her face. The flawless image of a vampire royal blood-child frozen forever in a child's body.
She looked perfect as usual, she decided, but something was missing. Tapping a finger against her chin, she held out a hand, and a mask landed into it immediately. Bone-white as if made of china, hers was a mask carved with a face smiling happily, the broken humour twin of the tragedy opera mask. It felt cool against her face, presenting an impersonality that delighted her. Through the eyes of the mask, she could see a pair of twins, not at all alike. She cooed at them with the pretence of maternal love; but she was only interested in the one with the alluring green eyes and glossy raven hair. She frowned when she noticed a disfiguring scar in the crude shape of a lightning bolt, but she dismissed her fears. It did not mar his beauty; it only enhanced his mysterious allure of the dark power that pulsated around him.
'What a beautiful boy,' she cooed, her voice sounding distorted behind her mask. 'There are so few beauties in the world, and only beauties understand each other. I will understand you when no one else will.' She cast a dismissive glance at the boy's brother. One would call the child frail-looking, perhaps rather handsome, and maybe that would earn him a few pats on the head, but he was not a beauty like his twin was. Thus, Elena dismissed him from her mind entirely, not realizing that he was hailed throughout the wizarding world as their saviour, the Boy-Who-Lived. She had no time for unpleasing things.
'I am Smiles. I call to you,' she whispered, her mind searching, searing, filtering. She focused and called, enthralling the few that possessed the most precious, the most magnificent minds of all. She smiled tenderly as three others appeared in her psychotic world.
'Miss Smiles.' The three whispered her name with reverence. 'You have called, and we have come to you.'
The three wore the same porcelain masks as she did. The only difference was the expressions on the mask. Such impersonal beauty, Elena sighed to herself.
'I assume you've all heard of the uproar already?' The three nodded, and Elena turned her attention to the one wearing the mask that was frowning vehemently.
'Mr. Angry,' the man nodded in acknowledgment. 'You're one of those who dance with both the riddle and the doddering old dwarf. What of the riddle's downfall?' Riddle was the code for what the general world called the Dark Lord, Lord Voldemort, and the doddering old dwarf was the ministry, both as short-sighted as the other. Mr. Angry tilted his head, as if summing up the events.
'The riddle was defeated by a boy-child, Kieran Potter,' Elena clapped her hands delightedly.
'The one with the green eyes and dark hair?' she said, excitedly. Oh, to be both beautiful and powerful and famous! A pity that he didn't have the right mind to join the court. Oh well. She would dwell more upon that later. Her face fell behind her mask as Mr. Angry shook his head.
'Kieran Potter has brown hair and hazel eyes, Miss Smiles, but what does the dwarf know? The dwarf dances the tango alone while the world is waltzing.' Elena frowned. How could this be? The beautiful boy's twin had defeated the riddle? She pouted. What a disappointment.
'What is the name of the other one, the boy's twin?' Elena started to twirl strands of her long blonde hair around a slender finger, starting to become less interested now that she discovered that the boy with the chartreuse eyes wasn't part of all the hype about the end of the riddle.
'Harry Potter.'
'Harry Potter,' Elena repeated. 'Take a note of that!' A rabbit dressed smartly in a business suit holding a quill and a long roll of unfurling parchment popped out of her thoughts and into existence, quickly scribbling down the name as if it was the most important two words it had ever heard. Elena smiled. In this dream world of psychosis, she was queen.
'Anyway, Mr. Tear has something to tell us, don't you Mr. Tear?' The child in the smiling mask beamed at the rather tall man donning a mask that looked agonized. A single engraved teardrop accompanied by a scowling face confirmed his identity.
'I might not be able to be called anymore,' Mr. Tear confided, conjuring up a small elephant to sit on. 'See? An elephant! An elephant!' The rest of the four gasped and shook their heads. Elena felt a tear ran down her face. She hated saying goodbye to one of her Court. Her beautiful, terrible, Court of the Strange.
'I can't replace you,' Elena clutched at Mr. Tear in distress. Mr. Tear shook his head sadly, but brightened up.
'My daughter, Luna, is only a few months old, but she has the makings of one of us. Perhaps she will succeed me as Miss Tear?'
Elena nodded thoughtfully, still not at all happy that one of her members was turning, well… normal. Her golden eyes travelled and managed to connect with Mr. Tear's sharp blue ones. 'Will you not be an observer anymore? Will you not be part of the Court of the Strange, malicious pranksters, house of the insane?' Elena turned her face away, as if to grieve about something precious. In a way, her madness was precious, a special part of her, and Mr. Tear losing that precious thing hurt.
'I'll look into her mind, Mr. Tear,' she agreed. She finally turned to look at the remaining member, the one who had said nothing yet. Mr. Sad rested upon a small mound of butter, rearranged in the shape of Kieran Potter's head. Elena noticed that maggots were squirming in the young boy's eyes and burrowing down his cheek in the shape of a teardrop. She nodded approvingly. Artistic, with a dash of macabre.
'What of those you serve, Mr. Sad?' Elena asked gently. She admired Mr. Sad greatly, even if he did insist on wearing socks on his ears and hands. She supposed it could be a fashion statement. 'I will repay them with pain tenfold for the pain they have done to you,' she said as she noted the welts on Mr. Sad's hands. Ironing his own hands, Elena thought disapprovingly. What an unoriginal punishment. They should suffer horribly for that alone.
'Mr. Sad knows his family to be rather indifferent,' the small masked figure admitted. 'Mr. Sad does know from Nana, the Potter's head house elf, the fate that awaits young Harry Potter.' Elena motioned for Mr. Sad to continue. It was about the beautiful one. It was important to her.
'Mrs. Potter and Mr. Dumbledore are planning to train young Harry Potter to be Kieran Potter's bodyguard,' Elena nodded. 'Nana has told Mr. Sad that Mr. Dumbledore is planning to make Harry Potter worship his brother like a God.'
Elena flared angrily, and images of Albus Dumbledore molded onto the brown spots on a giraffe appeared, before the animal's eyes imploded and it's torso melted, images of Dumbledore's face eaten away by some form of invisible acid. The rest of the members of the Court remained impervious to the gory display of Elena's anger.
'How dare he make someone beautiful worship someone that is not!' her fury manifesting as ripped cardboard that rained down upon the four, scorching and burning itself up in mid-air. 'It should be the other way round!'
'I will protect the beautiful boy's mind,' she vowed to the three. 'Because one day, I will make the whole world bow down to our beauty.' Her exotic golden eyes scanned the rest of the quartet. 'Send people to protect,' she said quietly to Mr. Angry. 'We will use the army of our Court, who act where we cannot,' her eyes flashed angrily. 'I will call, and they willanswer.'
'For those who have beauty,' Elena nodded at the Court, laughing as they bowed to her in return, 'must learn to wield it.'
All things dead and beautiful,
All creatures mad or enthralled,
All things twisted and fanatical,
Elena will call them all.
She let the eyes of the mask show her the twins again, gazing intently at the one with dark hair.
'Twin masks of Humour and Tragedy,' she cooed at them. 'Humour will fall and Tragedy will be mine.'
Precisely thirty-seven seconds later, Harry Potter's head held two minds. It wasn't a miracle by any means, but it was strange and disconcerting for him all the same. Not that Harry Potter knew what strange and disconcerting meant. He was one-year-old after all, even if he could maintain a basic conversation using the words 'apple, banana, chair, magic.' Harry gurgled happily in the arms of Sirius Black as Elena poked through his mind.
You have a lot of untapped potential, Elena told him. She knew he didn't understand, but it was nice to talk all the same. Let's see if I can tap it.
'I don't know where James and Lily have been rushing off to, pup, but I don't like it,' Sirius confided in his godson. 'I haven't seen much of Kieran either…' Running his hands worriedly through his dark tousled hair, Sirius sighed. 'Remus says he's coming soon, so we won't be too lonely, eh?'
In all honesty, Sirius Black wasn't sure what was going to become of the Potter family. With James mouthing off about how Kieran was 'just like him', and Lily's secret talks with Dumbledore- oh he knew all about them, no matter how much Lily tried to keep it a secret, he and Remus had been landed with the unofficial job of taking care of Harry. And somehow, Sirius felt sorrier for his favourite godson than his twin, even if said twin was going to have to save the world or die trying.
Lightning bolt, crescent moon, lightning bolt, crescent moon. Those were all the images Elena could glean from Harry's godfather's mind. So Harry's twin had the crescent moon scar. Elena scowled at the unoriginality of it. The moon had been crescent at the night of the attack. The lightning bolt is much more prettier, she assured the one-year-old. I know you can't think properly right now, so let me do all the thinking for you. I will protect your mind. Without pausing, she reached out beyond the walls of the Potter's little house in Godric's Hollow, her grasp reaching out, out, out, until it closed in around someone's mind and pulled.
Bathilda Bagshot, Elena pursed her lips as she searched through the unwilling mind's memory. What an ugly name. You should be privileged to protect our minds. Without bothering to look any further into the old but still sharp mind, she absorbed its memories and used it to construct the first layer of walls that served as Harry's mind protection.
Elena hummed quietly to herself as the infant's own mind howled in discomfort, mentally and physically. Sirius Black hurried to soothe his godson, his mind perplexed as to why his nephew would bawl like this. Harry was an easy child, gentle and quiet, not the raging terror that had been Kieran, who had wailed through the nights.
'Hush, Harry. You'll shut down my mind if you carry on with that bawling,' Sirius joked, rocking his godson back and forth. Elena stared balefully at Sirius, not appreciating the joke. If he carried on with the jokes, she'd have to absorb his mind.
And all he'd be was a drooling, mindless husk for a few moments.
And then he'd be dead.
'Is that the Boy-Who-Lived?' Harry shook his head as the old lady looked at him with disappointment. Disappointment. His stomach felt sick from it. He felt sick from everything. The way his parents seemed to be entirely focused on Kieran, intense on showering him with affection. They didn't entirely neglect or abuse him, but next to Kieran, Harry felt like a… burden.
You are a beauty, people should be graced with your presence, the voice in his head had told him repeatedly. Beauties are not burdens. They are treasures.
Harry never felt any less than a treasure at the moment. He was only two-years-old, and Elena had only barely modified his mind. She was more used to ripping minds apart and consuming them rather than enhancing them, something she regretted. She had already caused severe retardation in some people- what were their names…? Shortbottoms? Littlebottoms? She couldn't remember, but they wouldn't recover. Their minds couldn't even nourish her in their diminished state. She rarely spoke to Harry, reasoning that he probably couldn't understand her superior speech. She'd try, try, and try again.
'Why, aren't you adorable?' Harry looked up at the exclamation and blinked his wide, viridian eyes at the grey-haired witch who beamed down at him. The old witch squealed and clapped her hands together, picking him up and crushing the two-year-old to her chest.
'What's a little thing like you have any business running around unaccompanied?' The witch frowned and carried him off to a little table where a small circle of elderly witches sit. 'No, someone might carry you off, with those cute little dimples of yours.'
She sat him down on the silver table where all of the old ladies called him 'simply a little beam of sunshine' and stuffed him full of sweets, and gave him a few sickles to "buy some for later". A small crowd gathered around the two-year-old, basking in his enchanting allure. Some were saying that he should model for Twilfit and Tatting's child clothing line, some called for him to be put on Christmas cards.
'You're like a little dark angel!'
'You're going to be absolutely striking when you grow up, little boy,' a photographer told him, snapping pictures. A dignified old lady agreed with him. 'Why, it sends my heart all a-flutter just thinking about it!' She chucked Harry under his chin. 'You're going to be a heartbreaker, you are.'
Beauties are treasures, Elena told him slyly, my powerful, beautiful boy.
Across the large room of Kieran's first "press conference", Harry could feel someone's eyes boring into him. He turned his head from all the attention just for a second, and locked onto his twin's hazel eyes with a superior childish smirk.
I'm beautiful, that smirk seemed to say. And you're not. You might get all of Mummy and Daddy's attention, but people love me more.
Elena watched the scene that no one else had noticed from the eyes of the head journalist from the Daily Prophet, and was pleased. None of the crowd was commanded by her; it was all Harry's doing. She left the poor journalist's mind with a few simple suggestions, before travelling to another journalist's mind with even more of her "suggestions". After all, she reflected, little Harry was a beauty. And beauties deserved the world.
James and Lily Potter were horrified the next day when images of their eldest son was splashed across the nation's leading paper, among with hundreds of contracts begging the little boy to model for clothing. Harry was banned from all the press conferences in the future, which made Elena angry, when she heard of it, which in turn, made Harry angry.
Kieran may have to save the world like a common, used soldier, she had said, but you will rule it.
That night, Elena had force-fed him hundreds of minds that she had absorbed from dark purebloods that were every bit as enamoured with their own prettiness and wealth as she was. She resolved to learn more about the actual fine art of cultivating a mind of someone beautiful, but she had run out of patience!
Harry Potter woke up in the middle of the night, gazing into the liquid-gold mosaic eyes of Elena, listening to the mind of a vampire frozen in a twelve-year-old's body talk about his little brother, and truly, truly understood what she said for the first time.
'Only beauties understand each other,' she had told him earnestly, kneeling on his bed. 'I understand you, and you understand me. But no one else will,' she said sadly. 'To be misunderstood time and time again is very distressing for me. That's why I can't stay in my own body anymore.' Two-year-old Harry who, before this night, had never grasped what "distressing" and "misunderstood" meant, in a quiet display of childish innocence, vowed to protect her forever.
Elena had merely smiled at him and shook her head. She cradled his small face in her tiny hands and shattered his innocence, letting him see the world through his clear emerald eyes.
'Isn't the world so ugly,' she had breathed, her eyes sad and disapproving as she looked out of the window through Harry's emerald orbs. 'Your brother is very ugly,' she had informed him, and he agreed. Kieran would never be beautiful like him. And for that, Harry pitied him.
'I don't know why they spend so much time with him,' he said, sighing, the stars in the night sky distracting him momentarily. 'If there's a chance he's going to die, shouldn't they spend more time with me instead of him? They're wasting their love on someone who might leave them forever.'
One year later
'Mommy?' Lip wobbling, eyes wide in distress, tears beginning to gather- Lily Potter melted and handed over a pouch full of galleons, linked directly to the Potter Vault. Harry joined Elena in the mental victory dance, celebrating the small victory.
After years of poking in your mind, after feeding you so many delicious minds that I wanted for myself… Elena mock-sniffed, as if she was about to cry tears of happiness. Her eyes shone with a malicious gleam.
Harry rolled his eyes, flinging the money pouch up and catching it, swinging it merrily by its two little ropes. Another victory to Harry Potter.
Don't remind me, Elena. I don't mind you absorbing minds, but don't remind me about it.
But now you can claim you're the smartest three-year-old in the whole world! The vampire mind smiled happily, knowing that she had won the argument.
Harry wrinkled his nose as he rounded a corner. Right. My parents will just claim Kieran is. Didn't he kill off the Dark Lord after all? He smiled happily as he stoppd in front of a dusty, old shop and read the name of it to himself. Obscurus books. Sounds like a good place to start. Elena frowned inside his head.
The one time your overprotective parents let you come to Diagon Alley and you go to a bookstore? She snapped.
Harry ignored her, stepping gracefully into the dusty book haven, emerald eyes with strange specks of gold flicking lazily from one tower of books from another, a mask of boredom set onto his face. An old, bearded man looked up at him suspiciously with weary eyes, but softened as he looked upon the three-year-old with wide almond-shaped green eyes. Harry noticed the look/ He couldn't help the fact that he enjoyed reading, could he? The minds that Elena had cracked open for him gave him knowledge, but opened even more questions: Why did wizards have magic, and not muggles? Why did wizards have to use wands? Why would channeling magic through a piece of wood even help? And a few hundred other questions.
Well, since we're here… Wandless magic, magical theory. Elena peered through Harry's eyes, the gold flecks becoming even more pronounced. She was disappointed with what she saw. Just piles upon piles of dusty old tomes, not even organised in any way. Harry felt her dismay and frowned too. How in the name of Merlin was he supposed to find books on either subject like that?
A little help here? He called to Elena. After absorbing thousands of minds, you've got to be able to at least do something.
Don't test me, mortal, the vampire snapped. There was silence for a few moments, before she sheepishly amended, Let me take over. I can still access the magical reserves of my poor, slumbering body.
I'm not a sharing person, Harry warned. If you do something strange… For some reason, Elena burst out laughing, a screeching, ear-wincing laugh that made him grit his teeth. Ah, strange, she snickered. Strange strange strange. Court of the Strange.
You have issues, he told her, but relinquished control on his body anyway. It felt more than disturbing watching his body do things that he knew he couldn't do, but he endured it. He trusted Elena- after all, he wasn't dead from her doing yet. You are too beautiful to die, she told him swiftly, as he felt her spread her mind over the bookstore, tendrils of it tapping through the books, looking for the ones they needed. He rolled his eyes. She always went on about his beauty with the zeal of a religious fanatic, worshipping it, cradling it. Accio Lord Hans' Theorem, Obsolete wands: Guide to wandless magic, Magic and your body, Prankster's guide: Hexes, jinxes and potions.
I never realised I needed that last one, Harry said dryly, half-amused. And we need it because…?
We can test them out on your brother, Elena offered, catching the books neatly before they could slam into her- his arms. Plus you could do with a few light-hearted spells.
Says the person who feeds me minds full of nothing but dark spells, he retorted, pushing himself back to gain control of his body. He sighed quietly as he twitched a finger. Things only felt right when he could actually move his limbs. He had no idea how Elena could stand being a disembodied mind.
We are not testing them out on Kieran, Harry eyed the small black book dubiously, wondering if Elena would squeeze his mind painfully again if he refused to buy it. Don't even think about it, she warned. He sighed. He was buying it after all. He felt a little unease as he realised he was being manipulated by a mind, but pushed it out of his head. Walking up to the counter, he beamed at the old man, hoping that the dimpled smile would distract him from the strange choice of books.
'Hello Mistah,' his eyes friendly and, most importantly, wide and trusting. 'I'm getting books for Mummy's birthday!' The man's grizzled features melted into a fond smile as he tousled the little boy's hair.
'Okay then, that will be five galleons for the lot,' he put the three books into a brown paper bag. Three galleons, Elena told him. Harry immediately looked chagrined as he peered into the little money bag, his lips puckering in dismay.
'I only have three galleons,' Harry pulled out three golden coins from the large pile and showed them to the storekeeper. Tears began to gather at the edge of his eyes. 'Oh no, I can't get a good birthday present for Mummy…'
As Harry looked up at the man with sparkling emerald eyes, tears threatening to burst forth, the man melted into a puddle and took the three galleons and pushed the bag to Harry.
'Eh, don't tell anyone about this,' the storekeeper said, wiping his own eyes. 'Be kind to yer Mum while ye can. Merlin knows, I didn't,' Harry nodded solemnly, smiling happily at the man. 'I promise I will. Thanks so much, Mistah!'
As he skipped merrily out of the store, he snickered to himself. He fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
I've created a monster, Elena said proudly, golden eyes light and happy. Harry merely laughed at her, not ashamed of being called a monster. Monstrous Harry, he thought to himself. It has a nice ring to it.
The three-year-old with the minds of people more than ten times his age walked down the streets of Diagon Alley with an almost eerie grace, the dark mind of a vampire instructing his movement. And all around him, the people crooned: What a beautiful, beautiful child.
'It is daring of you to see an audience with me, Kelda,' Elena said coolly, her bone-white mask upon her face again. When she wore the mask, she wasn't a vampire, a blood-child, or Harry's whimsical Elena. She was the leader of her Court of the Strange. Masks upon masks, she smiled to herself, her mask smiling with her. And this is the most beautiful mask of all.
'Perhaps it is, vampire, but we must know,' the one called Kelda was strong, not bowing her head or submitting to the claws of insanity that gripped at her mind. 'Why are you protecting our Archon? Why are you corrupting him?' Elena frowned behind her mask. She wasn't corrupting her angelic mortal, she was merely… instructing.
'Your Archon is beautiful, dragonista. And who are you to keep beautiful children away from me?' The dragonista bared her teeth at the vampire blood-child, the uncontrollable rage seeking to crush, to overwhelm. How dare this lowly vampire challenge her claim? How dare she steal their Archon away!
'You are as bad as the elves with beauty, immortal,' she said quietly, seeking to placate. The dragonista wasn't going get the vampire to unhand their Archon with anger. Vampires were proud creatures, proud of their intense beauty and immortality, and the last thing Kelda wanted to do was to offend the vampire before her.
'Take off your mask, immortal,' Kelda beseeched. 'I wish to see your beauty.' Elena raised an eyebrow. Yes, she decided, she wouldn't deny the lowly dragonista before her with her beauty. Afterall, people who didn't have true beauty should at least be allowed to gaze upon it. Grasping the bottom of her grinning mask, she pulled it off.
'A royal vampire is after our Archon? And a seer as well,' she noted, looking at the golden eyes which appeared to have small lines of cracks running over them. Kelda could not deny that the flawless creature before her was indeed beautiful. There was a reason vampires were called 'veelas of the night', with their dark sensuality and wicked allure. And the vampire that corrupted their Archon was a seer, and Kelda remembered belatedly that royal vampires who were seers where automatically denied the throne and cast out. A seer- a symbol of destruction and insanity. And she had pointed it out.
'My sire was seer,' Elena said quietly. 'Skarab of the clans Tremere and Releres, cast out for having broken-glass eyes. Disowned by brother Kraven, his beauty despised by all,' she smiled, not a trace of bitterness in her voice, but stated it as if it was a mere fact.
'And as seer, I must share my words with all who do not see,' her golden eyes flicked to Kelda coyly, looking at her from under her long lashes. 'Do you seek them?' Kelda nodded, her voice caught in her throat. She knew who she was dealing with now, and regretted ever answering the call. The vampire Elena was known by the magical creatures. She was the dementor of the mind, absorbing mind and knowledge, utterly insane. Kelda laughed bitterly to herself. And she had willing travelled to a mind dementor's domain.
'The Archon sits quietly in despair,
Three sides calling him to be their heir,
Don't call too loud or he will tear,
And the Court of the Strange will not stay unaware.'
'The Court of the Strange? What's that?' Elena merely looked at her with the bemused smile of someone who knew something she didn't. Kelda could've smacked herself. No one questioned Seers. And she just did.
'Leave, foolish dragonista, and don't call for Elena ever again,' the mind dementor replaced her mask, the impersonal smooth beauty covering her elegant features. 'Because if you do, it will be on much unhappier terms.'
Kelda left and Elena was all alone in her mind once more, listening to the sound of Harry's heartbeat and gentle, sleeping mind. Quietly, she hummed to herself, letting her mind sink into a state of rest.
'The Archon sits quietly in despair, three sides calling him to be their heir. Don't call too loud or he will tear, and the Court of the Strange will not stay unaware.' Elena touched the face of her mask, an elegant finger tracing the curve of it's too- wide smile. She let herself drift out of Harry's mind and looked at him from a distance, her eyes half-lidded in a fond smile.
'Let tears from your eyes change into a voice of a scythe, let your scythe glow a tarnished silver. Half-circle of punishment will be your weapon, the unassuming sickle of death,' Elena crooned, letting her eyes shut. And the mind dementor, lover of beauty, sister of insanity, caressed the mind of Kieran Potter, promising him that one day, his blood would run down the walls.
Smiling to herself, Elena fled the undeveloped mind of a normal three-year old into the mind of ten-year-old Nymphadora Tonks.
2 years later
'Headmaster Dumbledore is going to come over today,' Harry said aloud. He felt more comfortable talking to Elena like out loud, not just mentally communicating with what he affectionately called her: The voice in my head. Elena didn't respond. So Mr. Sad had been right all those years ago. She smirked. A five-year-old bodyguard. A brilliant plan, but like all of what she had found out about the rest of Dumbledore's plans, it looked and sounded better on parchment. The vampire seer floated out of his head and sat cross legged at the end of his bed.
Don't worry, exquisite boy,Elena cooed at him. Elena will protect you from evil, ugly old headmasters.
'Is he a threat?' Elena shrugged. Could be, could not be. She didn't want to search the old man's mind for answers. She welcomed spontaneity with open arms, and told that to Harry.
'Don't tell him about me,' she ordered, and her powerful boy rolled his eyes, as if to say are you joking?
'I'll probably end up in St. Mungos if I told anyone about the voice in my head,' he joked, but Elena's face remained serious. 'Fine, and I never thought I'd say this, but I'll act more like Kieran.' Elena beamed at him and patted him on the head.
'When you wake up my body, I'll turn you straight away,' she promised. Harry grimaced. He did not want to have a fierce debate about his mortality at the moment. Besides, Elena always won. She never gave up. Elena was always trying to give him things; mind, knowledge, power. Plus, she could always out-cute him.
'Anyway, Dumbledore,' her face went back to seriousness, and he resisted the urge to sigh. Lecture-Elena was always hard and demanding, making him recite long, prepared conversations until she thought he sounded convincing. She had managed to unlock his ability for photographic memory, expanding upon his gift for quick memory, so the problem wasn't with memorizing. 'You fail at acting,' she had told him. 'We will work on that.' And work they did.
'Dumbledore is a manipulative old man. He scares me,' Elena said softly. 'I'm not infallible. If he finds about me, it will be very bad,' her cracked golden eyes looked piercingly into his, and he nodded. Harry couldn't help but feel a little scared. He had always thought of Elena as omnipotent, annoying, but always there. The few times she left him always left him feeling an inexplicable sense of loss.
'I have stolen minds that he has tinkered with. He is so skilled with manipulation that none of his victims know that they were manipulated for their whole life. That is what he plans to do with your brother,' Elena scrunched up her face and Harry laughed humourlessly. He didn't understand what grudge Elena held against his brother, but he shared it. Boy-Who-Lived, Saviour of the Wizarding World, defeater of Lord Voldemort… The reason why his father never really paid much attention to him. "Kieran looks so much like me!" "Lets go, Ki, your brother's reading again."
Bitter, bitter, beautiful boy. Elena smiled a secret smile.
'And that is what he plans to do with you.' Harry's head snapped up in surprise. Him? What would the Headmaster of Hogwarts want to do with him? He wasn't the one who was going to kill Voldemort or die trying. And he was glad.
He didn't like to be tied to things that didn't concern him.
'But you won't let him, Harry, because you're beautiful.' Elena smirked and flipped her golden hair behind her shoulders. 'And you will become more than dangerous,' Harry smiled. Dangerous. It sounded… appealing. And toxic.
'I will become dangerous,' he said softly. 'No one will pity me again, or even think that they can use me.'
'Dumbledore thinks he can have you,' Elena purred, eyes half-lidded in mockery. She leaned in close to him, wrapping an arm around his neck. Harry felt nothing. No warmth from the half-embrace, only a light tingle of the limited magic Elena could do in her form. 'But no one will have you,' Harry smiled back at her, a lazy, languishing smile, out of place on his 'innocent' five-year-old face. 'Our beauty is not to be possessed.'
'Our beauty is not to be possessed,' he echoed, the phrase ringing in his mind. Beauty was his, and his alone. No one in his world was beautiful, not Kieran, not his mother, not his father. No one except Elena. And he remembered what she had crooned to him, so long ago.
'Only beauties understand each other.'
He smirked.
'Where shall we go?'
'No where yet, Harry-beauty,' he half-smiled at what she had taken to calling him at times. 'First, we meet Dumbledore,' she told him, golden eyes flashing. 'And when we find out what he wants from us, we leave.'
'Why are we leaving so soon?' Elena shook her head, rapping the side of his head. Harry frowned. She was telling him to think. He gritted his teeth. Dumbledore, from what little information Elena had pushed into his mind, was powerful. And ugly.
'An ugly person who has power is a danger to us,' he recited one of the phrases that Elena had drummed into his mind. The vampire nodded, smiling again and she managed to levitate something from Harry's table. He was a little confused when he took the object and flipped it over in his hands. It was a pure white mask, one of those white opera masks.
'One of the brother masks to the Masks of Tragedy and Comedy,' Elena explained as he examined it. It had furrowed curves for eyebrows, and a mischievous-looking smile. Elena levitated it onto his face, and the five-year-old touched it as it sank into his skin, feeling the tingle of magic across his face.
'That will be the mask you wear with everyone but me,' Elena explained. 'You are beautiful,' he had long grown unabashed when she insisted on telling him that over and over again, 'and you can't afford for people to see our true selves, our inner beauty, for it would blind them and drive them to madness,' Elena looked sad again, and Harry assumed she was thinking of her corporeal body. He knew that she missed it, more than she would let on. Perhaps it was because she didn't have a mask to cover her beauty with.
'Harry!' It was his mother. Both Elena and he remained perfectly still at the shout. Beautiful people did not become startled or wear their emotions on their sleeves or on their flawless faces. 'Time for breakfast! Professor Dumbledore's coming soon, so hurry!' Harry slid off his bed gracefully, raising an eyebrow as Elena made no movement.
'I'll join you when our dearest Dumbledore comes,' she smiled sweetly at him as he shook his head and left, her eyes following his retreating back. 'Go, Mister Mischievous,' she whispered, her eyes dancing with amusement. 'Act while we observe.'
Harry Potter would be molded into her image, Elena decided. And what a beautiful and terrible image that would be. Elena's smile faded as she let her thoughts wander back to the old Headmaster.
'What a wonderful game of chess we shall play, Albus Dumbledore,' she said aloud, knowing that the only person who could hear her was Harry. 'But I play to win.'
Elena, Dumbledore's arrived. Kieran's like a hyperactive puppy with the attention. Perhaps we should distract the attention before my dear little brother becomes drunk with it.
The vampire child laughed quietly, closing her eyes and allowing herself to fade from the bedroom. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking through Harry's eyes, focused on his breakfast of pancakes.
I'm here, Harry-beauty, she assured the five-year-old. Privately, she smiled. The stakes were high, but she was confident she would win. Let the games begin, Dumbledore, she thought.
Let the games begin.
Rewrite of Sacrifice. That one sucked, big time. This one is just kind of, well, weird. I just want to make this clear, though:
Elena is not going to end up with Harry. Not a big fan of Harry/OC. :o She's like a poltergeist, except mind-wise. Malicious little bugger.
Lily and James don't abuse Harry. He just resents the fact that they lavish more attention upon Kieran. Harry hates the fact that Kieran gets so much adoration because he's the Boy-Who-Lived. Kieran hates the fact that Harry gets so much adoration because he's cute.
Love goes both ways.
On the other hand: Harry is just a little twisted. Not exactly evil, but a little bit mean or cruel at times.