Chapter Four
"This is… all your fault? What is all your fault?" Levi leaned forwards in his seat, seemingly far more interested in the conversation than he had been to start with.
"I'm not sure exactly how to explain this but, first of all. Do you remember how exactly you got here?" Dumbledore asked, almost sounding like he was trying to avoid the inevitable. Eren felt nervous and on edge, and couldn't help the resurgence of anger at what he knew Dumbledore was about to say.
"Of course I remember. But how could you have anything to do with that?"
"That's the thing, Levi, the monster that attempted to devour you was sent to your world by me." Dumbledore looked as though he were about to follow through with an explanation, but of course Levi didn't give him a chance, not after what he'd just heard.
"Why the hell did you send the damn thing to us?" He seethed.
"I assure you, I, and the other staff involve in the operation, had absolutely no idea that people still resided within the area you're from. If we had known, we definitely wouldn't have sent the number of beasts we did over to where you're from. I am truly sorry for any problems we may have caused but they were threatening our school and magic didn't seem to affect them in any way—"
"So that makes it all okay, doesn't it?! A little sorry makes up for the destruction and tragedy they've caused! That you've caused!" Eren had never seen Levi lose it like this. But it was entirely understandable; Eren could also feel the anger threatening to boil over. If it wasn't for this man's careless mistake, his mother may still be alive, the walls needn't have been build, and human kind could live in peace.
"Please, calm down, I'm sure if we collaborate we may be able to find a solution." Dumbledore argued, his voice wasn't raised and he sounded rather casual, it was clear he had no idea how much damage to titans had caused. "Surely they can't have caused that much damage, they're unintelligent beings and, besides, the world is a large place and less than thirty have been sent over in the past twenty years."
And with that, Levi lost control.
Within the blink of an eye, he'd bolted up from his seat and slammed both of his hands down onto Dumbledore's desk. The loud bang that followed filled the room with a thick tension.
"Do you even know what those bastards are capable of?! Those sadistic shits kill for the fun of it! Countless soldiers, countless comrades, countless friends and family members are all dead because some stupid mistake you made in your half-assed attempt to get rid of the titans!" Levi snarled, his eyes cold and hard and gleaming in hatred. Dumbledore seemed to pale as fair as his beard. He didn't seem to know what they were capable of after all. "Didn't it ever occur to you to check to see if people were living in the damn area you were dumping your problems on?" Fuming, Levi's breaths because haggard as he threw himself back down into the chair and looked at the professor with utmost disgust. Regardless of whether or not Levi regretted losing his temper like that, it sure had let Dumbledore in on the horrifying severity of the situation.
"I… I was not aware it was… quite that bad." He put his head down into his hands as he thought. It was Eren's turn to jump in now and he didn't care how guilty he made Dumbledore feel.
"Professor, humanity is on the brink of extinction! You haven't seen what they can do! And while less than thirty may seem like a small number to you, just one titan could kill more than fifty people in a day! They don't have to eat or drink to survive, they just keep living!" Eren stressed.
"I will gather as much information on the titans as I can. I will try anything in my power to help you and your world out. Please, I can't express just how sorry I am for the catastrophic events that have taken place, I can only imagine the horrors you both must have faced…"
Levi rose to his feet, "if that's all, we'll be going now." He stated sharply. "Eren, let's go."
"Yes sir." Eren respectfully followed the order, struggling to relax his voice or face.
"Wait a second!" Dumbledore held up a roll of parchment, "take this, you'll need it to find your way around. Harry is in this classroom," he unrolled the parchment and pointed to a large room seemingly in the lower levels of the school, "if you wish to attend a lesson."
"What class is it?" Eren asked shortly.
"Potions. With Professor Severus Snape. Potions contains little magical influence in comparison to most other subjects, other than ingredients, so you should both be find should you choose to attend."
"We'll go. It's not like we have anything better to do." Levi took the map from Eren's hands and gave it a look-over himself. He glared at Dumbledore a final time before making his way towards the exit.
"Oh, and be warned, the stairs move!"
"Let me take a look at it sir," Eren gestured towards the map Levi was currently trying to decipher. With a tut of disapproval, Levi looked up from the thin parchment roll and at the deserted hallway again, muttering inaudible things under his breath as he went. Neither of them knew how much time had passed before they eventually found the classroom they were looking for.
"It looks like this is it." Levi stated bluntly. The door before them was old and damp, maybe even mouldy. There was a rather peculiar smell wafting from inside the room and Eren could faintly hear a voice droning on. Knocking once, Levi pushed the door open.
As they walked inside, as usual, all eyes turned to watch them. The classroom was dark and illuminated by candles—it was quickly becoming eerie with the current silence. The lack of windows reminded Eren of his prison cell. The professor, Snape, began walking towards them. His black robes billowed out behind him and maintained distrustful eye contact with them both.
"Can I help you?" Snape asked coldly, his voice echoing slightly in the cave-like room. Levi crossed his arms tightly and watched him closely.
"We were send by Professor Dumbledore… Sir." Eren added the last word as an afterthought. He had to remember he was under the guise of a student here.
"You two must be the… mysterious strangers that showed up on the first night." Snape stated. It was essentially common knowledge by this point. "Very well. Please, take a seat." Snape said almost rudely. It didn't appear that Snape was all that impressed with them.
The only seats available in the classroom were at the very front, near a group of students wearing uniform consisting of black and dark green. Amongst them was the stuck-up Malfoy. Eren began making his way over to the seats, catching sight of the strange text books the students were taking notes from. They were overly thick and contained knowledge on different types of potions and ingredients. It looked confusing.
"You'll be needing these." The professor flicked what must have been his wand and two of the text books floated down the middle of the aisle, where the tables parted, and landed with a soft pat on their wooden desks. Sitting down, Eren marvelled at what he'd just witnessed, looking the book over from different angles to see if he could find something that would make it move like that. The other students took absolutely no notice, as though flying books were a regular thing.
"What a load of crap," Levi muttered disdainfully, flicking through the battered and slightly burned pages of the textbook. Eren had to admit that despite the small interest the book held, when was he ever going to need to know how many Mandrake roots to put in a Pepperup Potion?
"Excuse me, Professor, but would you care to repeat?" Snape glared at Levi from his place in front of their desks. Eren had never even noticed him standing there. Eren supposed Snape fancied himself to be unnerving. He wasn't.
"I said that this is an utter load of crap." Levi glared back, snapping the textbook shut. Snape leaned his hands onto the desk as the two of them engaged in a sort of staring match. Some students faintly giggled at the standoff.
Snape narrowed his eyes, "I would appreciate it if you didn't use such language in my classroom."
"We're both professors here," Levi countered, "I don't need to take orders from you." Snape glowered at him, and, after a few tense moments, Snape moved away to continue teaching his lesson.
"Bloody hell," Ron gawked in respect, "that professor Ackerman has some nerves! He scares me more than Snape does!" Harry rolled his eyes at Ron's commentary.
"Ron, I'd get back to work if I were you!" Hermione urged from her seat adjacent to Harry and Ron's.
"Why?" Hermoine was about to reply when she quickly looked back to her own notes, a sinking feeling in Ron's stomach gave everything away.
"Yes… Why should you get back to work, Weasly?" A rough hand shoved his head down to look at his textbook and Ron almost yelped. "Five points from Gryffindor." Snape droned before walking away. Scowling at the professor's back, Ron rubbed the back of his head. He picked up his quill and was about to resume writing when Snape's unfriendly voice suddenly sneered out.
"Why exactly aren't you doing any work?" He'd stopped behind Eren's table. Ron peered around the other students until he got a good view of what was happening.
Elbowing Harry in the ribs, Ron whispered, "Harry look! Snape's moved on to Eren now. D'you think he's like Professor Ackerman?"
"I dunno. What was Eren doing?" Harry replied, clueless, also straining to see what was going on. Anything would be more entertaining than making notes from a textbook. Ron shrugged. From what he could see, Eren was sitting with the side of his right hand pressed against his lips, his elbow resting on the table, looking to be thinking about something. Snape snapped him out of it, and Eren opened his mouth to say something in his defence when Snape cut him off by attempting to shove his head down to the textbook, the same as he did with Harry and Ron. Ron was confused, Snape didn't generally do that to others, why was he doing it to Eren?
Ron then watched in surprise as Levi's face showed a sudden flash of emotion, his eyes widening as he pulled Eren's hand away from his mouth before he could accidentally bite it.
"Why'd he do that?" Harry asked as he settled back in his seat.
"Maybe he just didn't want him to hurt himself?" Ron's response was more question than answer.
"I mean, I dunno but he looked scared for a moment." Ron knew what Harry meant. Looking at Levi now, he was back to his emotionless cover, though something seemed off. Even Eren looked relieved when Levi said something rude to Snape to make him leave. Ron leaned back in his chair. Maybe he and Harry were just overthinking it all. They had a tendency to do that.
"Be more careful of where you put your hands, brat." Levi snapped in a whispered voice so that attention wouldn't be drawn to them.
"I'm sorry, sir, I wasn't thinking." He muttered. Levi sighed, that could've been disastrous. Even though the chances of Eren transforming were very slim it was a risk he wasn't willing to take. Eren needed a clear goal in mind to transform, but when he was thinking that deeply he could do for all Levi knew. Either way, Levi made a mental note to ensure that Eren's skills, powers, whatever they'd be called over here remained a secret. It would only overcomplicate things if that information got out.
All of this pretending was starting to give Levi a headache. Thinking of all the things he was going to have to hide from people. He presumed that only Dumbledore and whoever else was involved in this stupid operation would know the truth. But even then they wouldn't know the entire truth, and it was kind of pointless to explain it anyways. There was no benefit to either party.
Looking around, Levi noticed that a couple of the students were beginning to pack their quills and parchment away now. Granted they'd arrived halfway through the lesson, but it had dragged on for a much longer time than he'd of liked. Levi pushed his unused equipment away, aware that he wasn't doing a very good job of a professor observing students, and stood to leave. He checked that the map of the school was still tucked into one of the straps of his uniform. It was. The map was concealed by Levi's jacket so that no-one could question him about it—not that they would anyways.
Gazing out of the common room window, Eren watched as some birds flew past and then out into the distance. From the window, he could see part of the Hogwarts grounds and, even though the weather was a little drizzly and cold, everything outside appeared beautiful to him. An unfamiliar sensation of freedom washed over him and he wanted to mention it to Levi but thought better than to disturb him from where he was reading a hefty book he'd found in the library about magical creatures.
Eren couldn't work out whether Levi was reading it to gather information about titans or to give them a little background on the subject the both of them had supposedly specialised in in their previous school. Either way, it looked a lot more interesting than that potions rubbish. It was safe to say that neither of them learned anything in that lesson.
After that disastrous potions lesson, the two of them had decided to find their way to the Gryffindor common room to check to see if their Gear was there and, after many wrong turns and reluctantly asked directions, they'd found their way. A little after that, Eren had headed to the library to look through some material whilst Levi decided to have a walk around the school and get a feel for where everything was. The last thing either of them wanted was to wind up getting lost… again. Meeting up only to get their dinner and tea, Eren and Levi had each made their way back to the common room separately. Levi had then picked out a book from the pile of six that Eren had gathered. Four of the books were linked to Magical Creatures, one was about Hogwarts itself, and the sixth was an interesting something about 'Transfigurations'.
Having been completely immersed in his thoughts, Eren almost fell from his window seat when the raucous noise of students bustled through the door. It seemed the Gryffindors had finished their lessons for the day. Many of the students went directly upstairs to the dorms but quite a few stayed downstairs. Neither Eren nor Levi made a move to get out of the way. Harry, Ron, and Hermione made a beeline towards them, it looked like they'd made some friends.
Hermione sat on a stool near Eren and placed her heavy-looking bag down on the floor with a tired sigh, Ron flopped down boneless into one of the large armchairs on the other side of Eren. Harry was about to drag a chair over from the other side of the room, since everywhere else was taken, when Eren considerately swung his legs off the seat he was stretched out on and shuffled up to make room. Harry mumbled his thanks and sat down. They sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments before Eren looked around and scratched his head thoughtfully.
"I never knew it'd get this packed."
"Tell me about it!" Hermione agreed, "with this many people it can be so hard to get anything done!" She fumbled with the edge of her skirt and Eren smiled a little, Hermione seemed to be a worrier.
"Hey, any of you know what time it is?" Eren yawned.
Harry glanced down at his watch, "oh, um, it's about seven." He supplied. "Where're you sleeping? Has Dumbledore told you?"
Eren hummed, "yeah, me and Professor Ackerman are sleeping here for a couple days while they sort a room out for us or something."
"Hang on, the Professors sleeping here?"
"Yeah," Eren nodded, "why? Is that a problem?"
Ron pulled a face, "it's just… A teacher in the room is weird." Ron glanced over at Levi, who was paying very little attention.
"I was wondering, how old are you? You don't seem much older than us." Hermione asked. Eren turned to face her as he replied.
"Sixteen, why how old are you?"
"Fifteen." Hermione sounded almost proud of her age. The four of them continued their small talk for longer than Eren had intended, as he'd sat talking with them he'd begun to feel relaxed and at ease. It was nice to be able to sit and not worry about being called out to fight, worrying about whether you and your friends would still be alive at the same time tomorrow. Eren felt a pang of guilt, unable to brush aside thoughts of what could be happening back home. Here he was, living in luxury and back home his friends could be fighting for their lives.
Eventually, it was time to retire for the night and Eren couldn't have been happier. He stood up and stretched his aching back, wincing as his bones popped. He walked over to where Levi was still lying on the sofa and stood almost to attention. Eren found that he was forcing himself not to salute. Habits really did die hard.
"Cap—Professor Le—Ackerman, sir, we have to go and find our room now. Harry and Ron told me we'll probably be in the same one as them." Eren mentally berated himself for slipping up twice, Levi glowered at him.
"Whatever." He swing his legs off the sofa and dog-eared the page of the book, tucking it under his arm and following Eren, Harry, and Ron up to the dorm. Hermione had already said her goodnights and left for the girls' dorms. The stairs leading to the higher floors were narrow and awkward to walk up in their group, reminding Eren of the Survey Corps base even more.
"Well this is it…" Ron trailed off as he opened the old wooden door. It creaked loudly, as though in need of oiling, and the floorboard groaned under their weight. Eren noticed Harry's immediate change in disposition when they walked inside. He seemed more on-edge and alert.
There were seven beds inside the room, which looked strange and slightly distorted. "Huh. Dumbledore must've made the room bigger or something." Ron said to himself.
"Yeah I think you and the professor are sleeping here," Harry confirmed.
"Okay then, where are the professor and I going to—"
"Oi!" Levi cut Eren off with a sharp yell. Eren was confused for a moment but then the familiar clinking of metal immediately brought his attention to the further part of the room. Which is where three boys sat crowded around the furthest bed, four large metal boxes lying between them.
"Hey!" Eren exclaimed, marching past Harry and Ron and towards the boys messing with their 3DMG. Unfortunately for them, Levi was quicker.
"Get your filthy hands off that! Give them here you little bastards!" He growled. The effect was instant, all three boys jumping away like frightened animals. Luckily they hadn't drawn the swords; they must have only just discovered the Gear.
"W-we're s-sorry Professor!" A brunette boy squeaked, running back to his bed. Both Eren and Levi took their Gear back into possession before checking it over. Levi took the furthest bed and Eren took the one next to him.
"Are you sure you're a professor?" One of the students asked Levi bravely, he had a different accent to the others, Eren noted.
"What's your name?" Levi ordered.
"Seamus Finnigan, Sir." Seamus replied.
"Well, Seamus," Levi began darkly, his hand twitching around the handle to one of his swords, "if I wasn't a professor, don't you think I'd already have one of these blades pointed at your throat for touching them?" Although his voice remained steady, Seamus had been shocked into silence. Levi slowly drew one of the swords, just for emphasis, pretending to check it over before sheathing it again.
Eren wished Levi hadn't done that, it would only arouse more questions. It wasn't like him to be so impulsive. But for the time being, at least the other students were leaving them alone. Levi harshly drew the curtains around his bed, he couldn't be happy at having to share a room with a bunch of kids. Eren hoped they'd be out of this whole mess soon.