Harry's mind immediately started running through everything he knew about the scene, inwardly yelling at the top of his lungs to get his brothers attention, but outwardly showing a look of shock. Which, considering the circumstances, was quite okay in his books. It was quite shocking to be looking upon one's brother about to kill himself due to some, hopefully, outside influence.
Harry could deal with evil Dark Lords returning from the grave, but he couldn't deal with his brother trying to commit suicide.
Slowly, Harry's mouth began to move, still unable to make a noise for a few moments, before he breathed out a low "Scott?"
Stiles and Lydia had been unable to hear it, but Scott had, his head snapping up to see Harry, looking his brother dead in the eye. And what Harry saw frightened him. It wasn't the misty eyed look of someone under the Imperious, or the confused look of someone under the Confundus. It was the clear eyed look of someone, under their own influence, willingly standing in a puddle of gasoline.
"I didn't want you to see this Harry" Scott said, a sad smile to his face. His voice was hollow and dead, like someone who had given up. "I didn't want you to see this at all."
"Why?" Harry asked, still slightly breathless. "You have so much going for you. Why do you want to do this?"
"Everyone around me gets hurt" was Scott's reply, voice trembling as he did so. "Ever since I became a werewolf, everyone around me gets hurt, or dies, and there's nothing I can do about it. The best thing for me to do is to just die."
"But- Scott, that's no reason to -"
But Harry was cut off by Scott, who said "You know, I wish I never became a werewolf. At least, not the way I did. I wish I was still just a nobody, just someone who wasn't good at anything, wasn't good at Lacrosse, wasn't popular, wasn't special. It would just be better to be no one at all."
Harry felt tears welling up in his eyes, and a quick glance around him showed that he wasn't the only one.
"But you were someone" Harry said, his voice soft, but loud enough to carry to everyone, werewolf or human. "You still are someone, Scott. Don't you get that? You're my brother, Scott, and no matter what you are, no matter what you have done, or what happens around you, I will still love you. Mum and dad will still love you. Don't you get that?"
"I know that" Scott said, but this time, there was bitterness in his voice. "But the whole time I've been living in your shadow."
Harry was a little shocked at that, and now there were tears running down his cheeks as he spoke. "You've never been in my shadow, Scott. No one has ever preferred me over you."
Scott laughed in reply to that, and the bitterness just made everyone flinch in response. "You're forgetting about someone, Harry? Don't you remember? Our lovely sperm donor, J-"
"Don't you dare speak his name" Harry growled out, his eyes flashing red as he did so. Scott's mouth snapped shut with an audible click in response. "Do not even think of finishing that sentence, Scott McCall. How many times have I had to tell you? Whatever he-" Harry spat the word out almost like it burnt him "-thinks doesn't matter."
And with this, Harry stepped forward, without hesitating, into the puddle of gasoline to stand in front of Scott, his hand outstretched slightly.
"If you think that it is a good decision to kill yourself, because of what you think he thinks about you, than you can take me with you. Okay?"
"Tell me one thing Harry" Scott said resignedly, his voice just above a whisper, so that the humans had to strain to hear.
"Anything, Scott" Harry said, without hesitating a beat. "Ask, and you shall receive."
"That night, when you ran into the forest" Scott said, his voice wavering. "Just before you ran, I saw what happened to you before that. Why did he hit you?"
In response, Harry slowly moved his left hand over to grab Scott's right, bringing it up to rest just over his heart, mimicking Harry's stance from earlier that day.
"I know you can hear my pulse, but this way I can't lie" Harry said, and Scott nodded in reply. "That night, before I became a werewolf, he wanted to kill you. Remove you was what said. He had planned to get rid of you in some way or another, seeing as he couldn't convince me to turn on you. With you out of the equation, he could influence me to his heart's content." Harry took a shuddering breath here, remembering what had happened. "I confronted him about it, and he started yelling at me, saying I shouldn't be meddling in things I don't know anything about. And then he backhanded me for my cheek, for standing up to him. I couldn't stand being around him, so I ran into the forest to get away from him.
"Three nights later, I became a werewolf, and the pain was excruciating. I thought he had killed you, thought I was feeling everything you felt as you died, like I could feel everything you felt when you had an asthma attack. And then I was found, and I was so happy that you were still alive, so happy that mum had kicked him out, and that he wouldn't be able to get anywhere near you ever again. Please, Scott, whatever you do, please don't do this. Please, don't make him happy that you killed yourself, for whatever reason. Please, Scott, I'm begging you. Don't do this."
The whole time, his heart beat remained steady, both to Scott's ears, and the palm resting over his chest. Harry had tears running down his face freely now, and knew that he reeked of sorrow, but couldn't bring himself to care.
And then, slowly, ever so slowly, Scott lowered his arm, so that he was no longer prepared to drop the flare, holding it out to Harry, who tentatively took it from him. Once the flare was out of Scott's grasp, Harry immediately turned it around, and stuck the burning end into the side of his leg, burning a hole through the denim of his jeans and burning the skin underneath. He continued to hold it there, falling to his knees as he did so, until the flame went out completely, before throwing the now useless, and safe, flare to the side. He stood up slowly and shakily, his leg wobbly from the pain still shooting through it, before he pulled his brother into thankful and loving hug. He continued to grip onto his brother, who was now sobbing uncontrollably into Harry's shirt, smearing the older boy with gasoline, soaking the front of his shirt with the flammable substance. It wasn't until Harry heard a scream that they separated.
It was Lydia's scream to be exact, and she was pointing towards a lone figure standing on the roof of the motel, holding a ball of flame almost lazily in one hand. Their face was heavily scarred and pale, their eyes sunken and hollow. The figure wore heavy, black robes that seemed torn and ripped, concealing whether the figure was male or female. The figure smiled, a smile that sent a chill down everyone's spine, before it threw the ball of flame towards Harry and Scott, and disappearing with a crack.
Harry reacted before anyone else could think to do so, snapping his wand out to his hand from its holster, spinning around to face Lydia and Stiles and shooting off mild Banishment charms at each of them, before grabbing the front of Scott's shirt, and jumping.
In moments, Harry's and Scott's forms dissipated into a thick, white fog, their forms now insubstantial and harmless. The ball of fire slammed into the ground, passing right through the brothers as it did so, and with a mighty whoosh the gasoline ignited, sending a column of flame into the sky. As it did so, Harry moved the two of them out of the flames, and away from where the puddle of Gasoline had been, before willing their bodies to reform once again.
Stiles and Lydia, slightly miffed at being hit with spells, were delighted that both brothers had survived the attack from… whatever it had been that had attacked them. The flames from the puddle died down, and with a muttered "Lumos" Harry's wand now lit up the parking lot around the four of them.
"I think that everything is okay for now" Harry said, relief filling his voice as he did so. He looked towards Stiles and Lydia. "I want you to go get everyone, as I said earlier. I want to see what made us react as we did, and if it is anything that we can fix, okay?" The two of them nodded, before spinning on their heels to go and gather everyone up. Harry then turned to Scott. "I think it's time we got you cleaned up, don't you think?"
Harry waved his wand and muttered a spell, pointing it towards the ground in front of him, and a wooden stool appeared where he pointed. "Sit down, please."
Scott did as asked, sitting on the stool rather uncomfortably. He jumped slightly when something went flying over his head, and turned to see that Harry had stripped off his shirt, revealing his bare torso underneath. A bare torso covered in varying tattoos of animals and runes.
"Sorry, it was covered in gas" Harry said by way of explanation. "I think you should do the same."
Scott again did as he was told, peeling off the gasoline soaked shirt and throwing it on top of Harry's, before he stripped off his pants as well, before sitting back on the stool. He heard a soft "Scourgify" before a shiver went down his spine, before all of the gasoline disappeared from his skin and hair. Harry then passed Scott a damp towel.
"I'm sorry if this is hot, but it works best, okay" Harry said, coming around to stand in front of Scott, pointing his wand at his chest. "Aqua Eructo."
A large column of water shot out of the tip of Harry's wand, hitting Scott squarely in the chest, almost making him fall off the stool. The water was scalding hot, and smelled of soap. Scott didn't know how it smelled like soap, but it seemed very much like Harry was washing him of as much of the scent of gasoline as he could. Scott then started running the towel over his body, trying to wash off the scent of gasoline that covered him, while his brother provided the water to do so.
Within minutes, Scott smelled very much like himself, and felt better now that whatever had happened to him had passed. After a few drying charms were cast on him, he graciously took the spare clothes that Harry held out to him, glad to finally be covered up again. Harry still stood there bare chested, not looking like he was going to do anything about it.
Scott was shocked however when he saw that Harry was crying, and yet trying his best to hide it from him. Scott moved over to stand in front of Harry, before he was pulled into a bone crushing hug by his brother. He could hear the others coming up to them, but didn't care that they would see him like this. It wasn't until he felt movement against his shoulder that he realized that Harry was talking.
"Please, don't ever do anything like that again, okay" Harry said, grief filling his voice. "I don't know what I would do without you, Scott. Please, don't do that again."
"I won't, Harry" Scott said earnestly, nodding his head as he did so. "I promise, I won't do anything like this again."
"Okay" Harry said, pulling back, wiping his eyes as he did so. "Just, whatever you do, don't tell me about this. It would destroy her if she found out about this, okay?"
Scott just nodded, understanding that what Harry had said was true.
As Harry pulled back from Scott, he ran his wand through the air in front of him, muttering a diagnostic charm as he did so. A roll of parchment shot out of the end of his wand once he was finished, and grabbed it with his free hand. He then mimicked the motions on himself, waving the wand in front of his torso, the tattoos glowing slightly as he did so. A second roll of parchment shot out of his wand, and he grabbed that too, before placing his wand in his pocket. He then unrolled both parchments, scanning over their contents.
"Oh look at that" Harry said in mock surprise as he read over Scott's parchment. "You're a werewolf, Scott, didn't you know?" He then unrolled the parchment that had appeared for him, and his eyes widened even further in mock surprise. "Holy shit, I didn't know I was a werewolf!"
That elicited a small laugh from Scott at his brothers antics, knowing full well it was an attempt to lighten up the mood from earlier. And Scott knew full well that it was a very successful attempt at that.
Harry then turned back to Scott's parchment, actually reading it over seriously now. "So it says here that you used to suffer from asthma, which is expected. You would no longer suffer from it due to your healing. It says you have had a few broken bones in the past, which is understandable, you were rather accident prone when we were younger, though some of them are rather recent. It doesn't say whether you were slashed up or not, and I don't think I want to know how often that has happened-" He stopped rambling mid-sentence. "Wait, that's odd. It says here that you have mild Wolfsbane poisoning. Huh." He then looked back at his parchment, and his eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Look at that, I have it too."
He then turned to the gathered crowd, all of whom were rather curious to know what had happened. He singled out the humans specifically, and asked them to search the bus for any signs of Wolfsbane. He then ordered the werewolves to stand in a line, and cast diagnostic charms on each of them, confirming that indeed, all of the werewolves were suffering from a mild form of Wolfsbane poisoning, and surprising Isaac, Boyd and Aiden about the existence of magic, all three of which had surprisingly not paid any attention to Harrys conversation on the bus.
Allison, Stiles and Lydia rejoined them then, and Allison stepped forward to give her report. "No sign of Wolfsbane in the bus at all, Harry. Whoever it was that did this must have poisoned you some other way."
Harry nodded, accepting it for what it was, before casting a bubble head charm on himself, and walking onto the bus, ordering everyone to stay outside. Inside the bus he stood at the front, before he cast a detection charm. The tip of his wand glowed an angry red, notifying him of the presence of a poison of some sort that was present in the bus. He then cast a very powerful "Scourgify", before recasting the detection charm, the tip of his wand now glowing a bright green. He then dispelled the bubble head charm, before motioning for the others to get onto the bus.
"I think, for tonight, we should just stay here and sleep" Harry said, yawning as he did so. "It's been a long night, me thinks."
As everyone clambered onto the bus, he felt someone's gaze on his back, and turning around he found Lydia and Stiles staring at the tapestry of tattoos that littered his torso. He quirked an eyebrow at the two, before continuing on to the bus, flopping down on a seat near to the back.
"So what do those tattoos mean, Harry?" Stiles asked bluntly, and Harry let out a small bark of laughter at the question.
"Who's to say they mean anything at all, Stiles?" was Harry's reply, a smile on his lips. He subtly heard everyone shifting to hear the conversation, and chuckled slightly at their reactions.
"He has a point, Harry" Scott said quietly, and Harry perked up at this. "You always liked having something with a meaning, so what do they mean?"
This seemed to shock the others, who would have suspected that Scott would know what the meaning of the tattoos were. Though, considering the fact that Harry had gotten many of the tattoos while he had been missing, Scott hadn't even known of their existence.
From where he was lying on the seat of the bus, he contemplated the pros and cons of telling them what they meant. He then, without sitting up, shot his left hand into the air, showing off the snake tattoo on his forearm.
"As I told you, and for those of you who don't know, Hogwarts had four houses, in which we were sorted in our first year" Harry explained. "When I was sorted, I had a choice pf being sorted into either Slytherin or Gryffindor. I chose Gryffindor, because it would have been easier for me to hide my furry little secret, as Uncle Remus calls it." Harry and Scott chuckled at the family joke, while the others looked on questioningly. "This is a way of honoring the House of the Snakes for me. I was almost sorted into Slytherin, and I could have been the Lion in the Snake pit, rather than the Snake in the Lion's den. Either way, I would have still been a wolf in sheep's clothing." A lot of snickering went around the bus at that comment.
He lowered his left arm, before raising his right, showing off the tattoo of the feather. "This is a feather of a Phoenix. Or, a tattoo of a Phoenix Feather. Well, actually, it's an actual Phoenix Feather that has been imbedded into my skin, through some obscure ritual that is meant to help make one more proficient at wandless magic. It really does help, to be honest. That helped me a lot during the war." He flicked his fingers, and a tiny blue flame appeared above his thumb. He lowered his hand down so that the flame was mere centimeters from the tip of his nose. "You won't believe how much this has helped." He shook his head, clearing his thoughts, flicking his fingers again as he did so, making the flame disappear. He then sat up, showing the tattoo that was similar, yet different to Scotts on his bicep.
"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided" Harry intoned tracing a pattern in the air in front of him as he did so. Where his finger went, a thin line of flame followed, in the same eerie blue as the one he had shown Allison and Lydia at the rest stop. Once he had finished, floating in the air was a symbol, one of a circle enclosed within a larger circle, bisected through the middle by a horizontal line. What was interesting was that the line bisecting the circles was long enough to have two circle on its length. "When I was fourteen, I watched, defenseless, as someone was murdered in front of me." He waved away the gasps of shock from everyone around, but looked curiously at Ethan, who looked interested, but not shocked. "Any way, after wards, since the murder was done at an international event with two other schools in attendance, Dumbledore made a speech, explaining exactly what happened to the assembled schools. He ended by saying those words. We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."
As he repeated the words, he repeated the two circles on the added length of the line, the two outer loops meeting together. "The symbol of my pack" Harry said after a moment, batting his hand through the flames, dispelling them as he did so. "Me as the Alpha, Scott as the First Beta." As he said that, he motioned to the tattoo on his right bicep, before motioning to the one on Scott's left.
"Okay, that's the ones that were visible before you took off the shirt" Lydia said after a moment of contemplation. "What about the rest? You even have scars, I didn't think that was possible for werewolves."
"The scars are because of dark magic" Harry explained, standing as he did so. He motioned to a large burn that covered the left side of his torso, wrapping around his side, coming from just below the last rib, ending below the rim of his pants. "This was caused by very powerful fire."
"How did you get it?" Lydia asked, looking at the large burn curiously.
Before Harry could answer, Scott perked up, saying "I know how he got it, I was there." When everyone looked at Scott, he continued. "As Harry said, he fought in the Triwizard Tournament. A series of tasks designed to test the champion's knowledge and skill at magic. The first task was to fight a dragon, or at least get past one. Harry got that nasty burn while he was going up against it."
Everyone's head turned to Harry, mouth agape, before Stiles blurted out "You fought a dragon? How fucking cool is that?"
Harry scratched the back of his head sheepishly, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips, while his cheeks tinted red from embarrassment. "It wasn't as fun as you might think. Imagine, fourteen years old, not knowing what you're going up against, and being fucking terrified once you find out you had to fight a dragon. I thought I was going to die then."
"But you didn't, and you passed with flying colours" Scott said, smiling as he did so.
"Yeah, okay, I'll give you that" Harry said, a sheepish smile on his face.
"So that's the scars, or at least one of them" Lydia said, smiling at the banter from the brothers. "What about the tattoos, what do the rest of them mean?"
"I'll let you pick one for tonight, I think Lydia" Harry said, spreading his arms to the side and spinning around in a slow circle. "I think one should sate your curiosity for now, and then we can get some sleep." He yawned here, and others followed suit as he did so. "I'm wiped."
"Okay" Lydia simply said, her eyes raking over Harry's naked torso curiously. Her eyes landed on one that would be significantly difficult to research on her own. "What is the meaning of this one?" She asked, pointing to one just above Harry's right hip bone.
In response, Harry's eyebrows shot into his hairline, before he barked out a laugh that shocked everyone. He continued to laugh for a minute or two, before regaining his composure.
"Okay, if that is what you wish" Harry said as he ran his fingers over the tattoo in question. It was that of a stylized WP imposed on a background of a standard diamond gem, with flames dancing within the gem in question. These flames, however, were of a brilliant emerald green, and actually moved as if there truly were a fire dancing around on Harry's skin. "That one is actually how I found where you were." Harry said simply in answer.
"And how did you do that?" Allison asked curiously. "And what does WP stand for?"
"Stiles do you still have that coin of Scott's?" Harry said rather than answering Allison's questions.
Stiles fumbled in his pocket before producing the gold coin and throwing it at Harry, who caught it as quickly as he had any snitch.
"I'm sure Scott knows where I'm going with this" Harry said, and continued on once he noticed his brother nodding in reply. "When I was in my fifth year, we used these as a way of communicating for Defense lessons. Considering the fact that our lessons were actually illegal for a while made secret meetings a must. We called the group The Wolf Pack, or WP for short. However, to everyone else, it was known as Dumbledore's Army. That's a long story, so I won't go into it. However, these coins were developed with a safety procedure in place.
"The serial number on the coin can only be changed by the Master coin, which I have at home. It would show the date and time of the next meeting of our group. However, if one were to run their finger over the numbers, like so-" here he ran his finger of the numbers, moving around the bus to show everyone "- the numbers reset to zero across the whole number. And, if you look at the tattoo…"
Everyone did so, and were shocked to see that the WP had moved into the background, with the diamond taking the foreground now. The flames had parted to reveal the side of the bus outside, and the parking lot in front of the Motel they were staying at.
"If the user of the coin was inside a building, this tattoo would also help pinpoint where in the building they are. And that is how I managed to find you. So that is the meaning of that particular tattoo."
Before any more questions could be asked, he rifled through his bag to pull out another shirt, pulling it on and concealing any more of the tattoos on his torso.
"Come on, everyone" He said rather tiredly. "Time for bed."
Everyone seemed in agreeance on not sleeping in the motel, and so picked a chair in which to sleep in. Scott, unsurprisingly to those who had witnessed his near suicide, chose to sleep next to his brother, who immediately wrapped him up in a hug, and wouldn't let go. As his breathing shallowed, and his eyes began to droop, Harry idly wondered how his parents were going to the news he had for them.