Title : Malignant Objects
Chapter : (un)consciousness
con·scious·ness n
1.the state of being awake and aware of what is going on around you
2.somebody's mind and thoughts
3.the set of opinions, feelings, and beliefs of a group
4.awareness of or sensitivity to issues in a particular field
5.the part of the human mind that is aware of the feelings, thoughts, and surroundings
Author : Charlie Blue
Disclaimer : What J.K Rowling created is hers, what various other pop-culture or historic arts + events may have inspired parts of this story also belong to their creators. Everything else is mine.
Warning : Yes, this story does contain slash. (gasp!) It also contains violence, amoral behaviour, harsh language, drug use and (stage-whispers) sex!
Official Apology: Nothing will make it up to you, so I say this, in the hopes of defending myself.
A writer can only write when she writes. Anything more or less becomes false letters on a page of pretentious words.
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"We know who you are."
Lily was startled, and not a little suspicious, and sensed that James was as well. She looked at Albus, but he was unreadable as always, eyes twinkling as he stood in front of the two men guarding the entrance.
This wasn't the usual entrance. They had tried there, but the guards had taken one look at them, and redirected them around the block to this sleeker, more professional door. The guards must have had some sort of an identity sensor, for the door opened immediately, admitting these suited, elegant men who, for all that they were not nearly so large or threatening as the bouncers at the original entrance, instantly were categorized as a serious threat in Lily's auror-trained mind.
A third guard, just visible inside the darkened hallway behind the still-open door, was murmuring into a cell phone, writing something down in a large book resting on a small shelf in-built in the stone wall.
Faintly, Lily could some of the words.
"…three of th…yes….Potter's…..sure…sensor verified….more…Dumble-…."
Lily wanted to take down that guard. It would be easy, a flicker of deadly power, disable the other two guards with a silent thumb-jab to the neck for the closest one, and a spinning kick for the other one, and sprint through, to wherever that darkness would take her. But she didn't, and restrained the sliver of power that had grown from those thoughts, because the logical part of her knew that if she entered that place through violence, she would never find her way out again. Alive or dead.
James kept an uneasy eye on his wife, on the trembling, taught muscles of her legs, the restrained wildness glimmering in those eyes, felt the killing instinct spark the magic within her. He tensed, ready to throw a power-blanket over her if she broke, and sighed with relief when she fought it down, the change imperceptible to anyone but him, who loved her and was bound to her through magic, power, love and honour.
The guard inside leaned out suddenly, whispering something to the others, his dark eyes flashing up once, before shifting back inside so he melted into the shadows.
One of the men nodded, and looked at Albus.
"Mr Dumbledore-" He began, voice professional, but edged with something else.
Still smiling gently, Albus broke in. "Professor." He corrected.
The other guard flashed a look at him, but the first kept talking smoothly, as if Albus had said nothing.
"You were unexpected here, and we apologise for having kept you waiting. What is it that you would like?"
Levelly, Albus fixed his eyes on the man, all masks of kindness gone.
And the man's own eyes widened as he was confronted with, and finally understood the reason why this man had become so powerful.
Albus spoke a single word.
Inside the door, out of sight, the third guard whispered that name into the phone.
The answer came immediately, without hesitation or thought.
A minute later, Lily and James Potter, famed heroes and fierce leaders of the fight for the free world, and Albus Dumbledore, that most powerful wizard known to live, were admitted into the domain of the Lady.
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The world slowed.
The crowd, the dancers, the wild ones spun and screamed, and threw an offering to him, laughter ringing through the threads of music.
Tobias spun, a feline predator in a human body, eyes half-way mad, glittering with an eerie fire as he looked at the intoxicated boy who had been pushed up to the bar, his white-gold hair shining, eyes shining, sculpted cheeks flushed.
He had no wish for a golden, light one, so he snarled, shoving the boy so he stumbled, fell backwards. The crowd roared like a gladiator stadium.
In a moment, Tobias was on him. Draco's world, spinning and bright, slowed, their bodies almost touching.
Then Draco looked up into his eyes. The flash of recognition in those knife-bright burning eyes sent chills down his spine. A moment of stillness in the maelstrom. Then Tobias slid down him, leaving a line of ice-fire. And to Draco, the world had shrunk to encompass only the two of them, this time, with the bass thumping along with his heart.
He though they had spoken for a moment.
"Lucius wouldn't happen to be your daddy would he?" That voice, crooning and silky sharp.
Him, half-delirious, too far gone to be shocked or even think of caution, breathing a single, damning word.
"Yes."
A malevolent smile.
"Say hi for me."
It was the pain that snapped him back, pain from the thin line of blood down his torso, a line Tobias had left as he slid down, a slender nail slicing through cloth and skin to leave him bare from the hips up.
Breathing fast, panic and alcohol spinning so fast around him he could barely think, he looked up.
He was there, standing, tall and beautiful at his feet, smiling cruelly down at the confused boy before he moved forwards and violently kicked Draco off the bar.
That was the last thing Draco remembered of that night.
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Alannah and Timo looked at each other, eyes blurred with impending soberness and apprehension.
They were in the crowd of high, beautiful, wild, dancing people following a single person, walking alone and predatorily, deeper and deeper down the levels of the public part of the Lady's world.
It was Tobias, of course it was Tobias. Who else could cause such a furore over a fight? Somehow he had aroused the ire of a man three times the size of him, and a minor disagreement had escalated to this. A dirty, chain-box, bare-fists fight.
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They followed the woman who had been sent to escort them.
She was astounding. Her fair hair curled back over a face reminiscent of the high elves, her cheekbones high and sculpted, eyes breathtakingly dark, and her skin golden-bronze, silkily clinging to the magnificent lines of her face.
She walked indolently, like a deadly god placed in a world where nothing and no one could possibly be more powerful or more beautiful than her. She stalked the halls, and beauties and powers that would have been head turning on the streets scattered before her like frightened rabbits.
And well they should. She was one of the twelve wolves of the Lady.
"Take them straight to him." Her orders had been, and they amused her, because she could well imagine what kind of things Tobias could be up to, which meant that Thomas, or perhaps even the Lady, wanted these light wizards to see just what this boy was.
And judging by where exactly she had been told to go, they were going to get an eyeful.
As they walked further and further, and saw more and more of what kind of a place this truly was, she sensed them grow ever more uneasy.
They reached a large, warehouse-like room, with dirt floors, and a raised fighting platform surrounded on three sides by walls that became elevated platforms, platforms that were currently pulsing with shouting, leaping crowds of men and women and all those in between.
The fighting stage was surrounded by walls of loose chains that would give a little when pushed, and occupied by two men.
One was a beast of a man, furious, by the look of him, pacing his corner of the ring while waiting for the next round to start, eyes dark, huge body glistening with sweat, the muscles in his arms bunched like huge fists. His shirt hung half off him, and he turned, rage filling his every movement.
The other was facing away, resting against a corner of chains, bare from the hips up, his arms spread wide open and above him, loosely hanging off the chains. His back rippled with lean muscle, the spine curving smoothly down into his leather pants, which clung to his skin dangerously low on his hips, revealing a small tattoo at the very base of his spine. His head hung.
The woman halted, staring meaningfully at the fight, and so the three people following her stopped warily, eyes following her lead, fixed on the ring.
The bell rang, beginning the round, and the crowd screamed.
The smaller man, turned, revealing a face carved from beauty and cruelty, a cigarette smoking from the corner of his mouth, and flung his sweaty dark hair back, and tossed the cigarette away in a careless, graceful gesture.
The other roared, spinning surprisingly lightly for his girth, and crossed the ring in three swift, powerful strides and drew back a powerful arm, slamming it into the dark man's face, sending him reeling back.
Pressing his advantage, the giant moved forwards, pummelling him into the corner, punishing him mercilessly, his huge fists smashing the smaller man's lean torso.
The smaller man threw a couple of punches, one connecting with the face hard enough to push him away for a moment of let up, and the smaller man danced away, eye bloody, breathing hard.
The huge man came at him again, and he danced away, light on his toes, eyes wild. This went on for a while, the huge man becoming more and more enraged, until he finally shoved the younger man up against a chained wall, and attacked him so ruthlessly that parts of the crowd, even caught up in bloodlust as it was, winced.
The woman felt the three become unsettled, horrified by the pure bestiality of the attack.
The bell rang, ending the round, and the smaller man fell to the ground, completely still, hands braced weakly against the ground beside his shoulders.
Silence permeated the crowd, the bass from the main dance arena boomed through the walls, and the man spat blood, arms trembling as he pushed himself back up.
The crowd leapt into movement again, yelling for more.
The large man thought it was over, the woman could tell as she narrowed her eyes at the fight stage, he was grinning wildly, sure he would take out Tobias in one punch in the next round.
But she saw Tobias as he rose; saw the quiet rage in his eyes that had not been awakened until now, the fierce pride threatened.
The bell rang.
The man charged him, his huge arm shot forwards, the crowd screamed.
It happened so fast she could see confusion in the crowd.
One moment a colossally powerful punch had been shooting straight at Tobias' face, the next the giant beast of a man was toppling, falling, and hit the ground with a thud that echoed throughout the silent arena.
He didn't get up, didn't move, his massive torso didn't even move with breath.
The beautiful young man jumped, crossing his arms in front of him, eyes feral as he spat.
She had seen, but only because she knew what to look for, had seen that deadly fighter surface before.
The punch had gone wide as Tobias leant back and flung his arm forwards, across the man's face with deadly accuracy and incredible strength, darting, like a snake.
In the less time than it took to blink an eye, he had knocked out the massive man with punch that, she knew, could kill.
Smiling, she turned, spreading her arms wide before the scene, her eyes shining.
"You wanted Tobias?" She murmured against the noise.
It wasn't a question, and the looks of pure shock, horror, defiance and apprehension were quickly hidden.
She would take them now to a private room to await him, and then go and fetch Tobias himself, instructing him to go looking exactly as he was.
Her smile became a dazzling, diamond-edged grin.
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The room was soft and dark, lit by lamps and a flickering fire, decorated with dark woods and rich carpet.
Sumptuous leather couches formed a semi-circle around the fire, and violent, fiery paintings hung on the walls.
Lily and James sat next to each other, silently watching Albus as he paced the room. The beautiful lady – she had never offered her name – had told them to make themselves comfortable, then left them.
The door opened, and Albus spun, as Tobias sauntered in, his black eye untended, a graze slicing across one cheek, bruises and fierce cuts decorating his still-bare torso.
Lily looked at him, eyes drinking up the sight.
He was glorious; the most beautiful boy she had ever seen, that lingering feral gleam in the eyes that were even more brilliant than her own, the careless, feline grace he moved with, even as he trembled almost imperceptibly with fatigue and pain.
Her eyes flickered to James; he was captivated just as she was.
Then Albus spoke, and the spell was broken.
"Ah, you would be Tobias Harold Grey?" He inquired, voice holding just enough power and magic to let Tobias know he was not just an old man.
Warily, Tobias nodded, unsure if this was an assignation, or something different. Elaine had told him nothing, only to go as he was. Unleashing the strangle-hold he held on his sexuality, he let soft tendrils escape, magic that wound through the air and made the fiery-dark red haired witch's eyes go soft, and the man's body tense, and the old man swing around to examine him intensely.
He knew who they were, he recognised them from all the newspapers and news reports, they were powerful, and fighters, he knew, and he respected and admired them not a little for their fierce dedication and honour in the face of the encroaching danger.
He had no idea what they were doing in a place like this, so he fell back into what was familiar.
He glided forwards, offering an unobstructed view of his body as he moved, and crooned silkily,
"What do you want?" The soft, rich inflections took the bluntness away from the question and made it one of velvety suggestion rather than crudity.
He had received countless answers to that question, or the like, all so different, and from that simple answer alone, he would know how to play to his patrons' darkest desires. It was a hard won skill, and a useful one.
"Not that." Dumbledore's reply came out sharper than he intended, and he saw the flicker of irritation that flew through the boy's eyes before, abruptly, the tantalizing, seductive compulsion unhooked its delicate claws from the room. Dumbledore doubted anyone less perceptive of the intricacies of magic would have been able to understand what the boy had done to them; he doubted even Lily or James understood.
Which would have accounted for the faintly sick look he saw mirrored between Lily and James' faces as the tendrils dissipated.
There was a leather coat lying across a low cabinet on the far side of the room. Tobias spun, and walked over to it, and smoothly pulled it on and crouched in one motion, opening the glass doors of the cabinet and pulling out several crystal glasses.
He flung a look over his shoulder. "Drink?"
James shook his head with a murmured, "No thanks." Lily didn't move.
Albus looked at the two briefly, and made a collective reply. "We're perfectly fine, thank you Tobias."
Tobias shrugged elegantly, and pulled out a decanter, and splashed a generous amount of the rich liquid into one of the glasses, grasping it as he turned once more, and moved to the couches, brushing past Dumbledore as he did so. The man looked down his half-moon glasses, eyebrows raised at the dark head of hair as he moved past.
Tobias fell into an arm chair, casually draping one leg over an arm, the leather coat flaring out over the edges of the chair around his naked torso, glass cradled in his lap with one hand curled around it.
Looking at that hand, James frowned slightly, hazel eyes narrowing. It was strong and elegant, but the fingernails were long, and darkly tinted. He looked up and flushed faintly as he met the boy's eyes, which were looking at him, darkly amused at where James had been staring.
"Tobias."
His eyes snapped up to Dumbledore at the sound of his name, sensing, from the tone, that these people were finally going to get to the point.
"Did you ever wonder why they gave you the middle name Harold?"
"No." The blunt answer seemed to unsettle the old man, and Tobias smirked inwardly before continuing.
"I chose it."
He almost snarled. That seemed to make all three of them subtly happy for some reason.
James leant back and folded his arms, barely containing the tremble that seemed to take hold of his body as he waited for Albus to say the words that would change that indolent, arrogant look on Tobias' to … something else. Let it be joy, he wished desperately; let it be something, anything, other than hatred.
Albus' blue eyes were grave as they locked onto Tobias'.
"Your real name is Harold."
"My name is whatever you want it to be." His voice was wicked. Lily blanched.
"Harold James Potter."
His eyes flickered as a thousand thoughts flew through his mind. Silence was gravid as the three waited, as Tobias did not move, did nothing, for a full minute.
Finally, he looked up, not at Dumbledore, but at the other two, the wealthy, powerful darlings of the wizarding society, world and ministry. The mother and father of the Boy-Who-Lived. The boy who was the same age as him.
One word. That was all it would need to break a dam and let his life flood forth from their lips. His life in truth.
"Why?"
Lily shivered. That voice was nothing, not betrayed, not angry, not even curious. It was cold. Pure cold; completely inflectionless, inducing unalloyed truth and fear.
So they told him. Haltingly at first, unsure, unsettled by his lack of reaction, then faster, spilling over each other, their voices rising, explaining, telling the story that ended with one abandoned son and one loved.
How that night, that terrible Halloween night, they had returned home from an urgent meeting to find James' grandmother dead, and the two children, twins, they told him, in the nursery. Daniel, The Boy Who Lived, curled up on his side, eyes wide, letting off magical aftershocks, a smoking golden ring set with a single ruby lying on the floor in front of him.
Harry, the other twin, had been sobbing and covered with cuts and grazes from the collapsing house, tainted by something that had turned out to be the result of absorbing some of the magic left in the environment by the incredible destruction of the killing curse. Daniel, having been the cause of the destruction, had been protected from the taint, and from the collapsing house, by his own power, still fizzing and sparking within him from the event.
The ring they had been unable to move, to even touch or affect in any way. It could not even be destroyed. It simply lay there, untouched, seemingly harmless, stripped of any power by it's master's death.
How in the days that followed the taint in Harry had not faded, had begun to grow. How, at first, it had begun to affect his behaviour, he wouldn't eat, wouldn't react to anything, then would laugh or burst into violent tears at inappropriate times, how something seemed.. off … wrong about the baby.
Then, as the taint grew, they saw it begin to affect Daniel. How Dumbledore, frantically searching ancient texts for answers to the paradoxes created by that night, had come across something similar. The taint itself fed off the magical signatures of those around it – if Harry had been a muggle, and so surrounded by muggles, it would have faded away by now.
They had all known the answer then, but none had wanted to confront it. Then an incident had occurred. Little Harry had gotten angry, riled up for some reason while they had all been gathered one night, toasting the dissipation of the Dark Lord's widespread army and power, and had pointed at Daniel, green eyes hot with baby-ish frustration and yelled out two words, garbled by his baby's mouth, but unmistakable.
Avada Kedavra. Daniel had been knocked backwards, a trickle of blood forming from his nose.
Then they had known, known that Harry had to be sent away, at least for a while, until that taint had faded.
How Harry had gone to an orphanage, a good one, with kind nuns and respectable surroundings. How they had gone back three years later, and Harry had vanished. Not just gone, taken from the orphanage, but actually vanished.
And now they had found him.
"Don't you understand, Harry, now we've found you, you can come back, back to the world you belong to, come to Hogwarts, learn magic, learn to be a family!" James said, silent tears tracking down his cheeks. They were both crying, Lily and James; retelling that harrowing time had been hard.
And now, finally, Tobias stirred; slowly, deliberately, he lifted the glass to his mouth, and flung his head back, swallowing the whole thing in one go before slamming it down onto the low table in front of him so hard it cracked in his hand.
He didn't seem to notice, rising instead, pacing viciously as if he could not remain stationary. At last he spun violently, and the cool façade broke for the first time, revealing the brink of a deep ravine.
"My name," he snarled so malevolently Dumbledore's hand fell to his side, ready to whip up his wand if needed.
"Is Tobias to you!" He continued, and hurled himself forwards until his arms were braced on the back of the couch above his parents, and his furious face only inches from theirs.
"And my world," he whispered, his breath sweet despite his anger, his malice, "is this."
He shoved himself back, and spread his arms wide, displaying his beautiful, battered body in front of the cracking fire, and spun, eyes wild, in desperate pain.
"How many years?" He asked, his voice a cracked yell, "why now, why did you find me now! You! Who have so much power, you are the darlings of the world, the heroes!" His face twisted.
"And you knew about me? Everything, all along, you could have found me but didn't. Why? Because I was tainted!" His voice coiled on the word, "because I was a threat to your precious Boy Who Lived!"
James felt Lily rise to it, felt her dangerous ire awake as she exploded out of the seat, and, crying unashamedly, she screamed back. "There was nothing we could have done!" Her fists balled, in anguish and anger, "There was a taint! But we loved and we love you because you're our son! And we lost you!"
Tobias' face went still, and he turned to the fire, lowering his arms. Lily, confused by the sudden surrender, fell back from that deadly anger, dashing the tears from her face in a fluid movement.
The coat slid from his shoulders. Firelight danced on lovely flesh. And he turned, and the look on his face was sick with comprehension, with anguish, with betrayal of some kind.
And those tendrils, those delicate, silk-velvet, rapier-cutting tendrils slid through the room, hooking their claws gently, irresistibly, into them.
"But I am a whore, mother," he said, voice that deadly, silky croon, "Could you love a whore?"
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Severus took one look at Albus and knew.
"That bad?" He asked softly, deftly pouring out a cup of tea for him.
"Yes." A single word, whispered. Blue eyes brimming with sadness and a thousand regrets.
"What will you do?"
Albus rose, and walked to the window.
"He refused to come, refused to listen to us, refused to understand why he needs to come back to our world."
There was silence for a long time. The Albus turned, and the grief had been sheathed with something else.
Determination.
"So we will kidnap him. We have to kidnap Harry Potter."
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End of Chapter.
Please review! I'm in a delicate state, and need to know what you thought of this, of how the characters are developing, of whether you like where I'm taking the story.
Even just one or two words of encouragement help me so much. Please.
Thankyou.