Disclaimer: More Occlumency headcanons, as well as a minor one about Severus Snape.
Well. It wasn't that bad.
Getting turned into toddlers was probably not as bad as other possibilities. There certainly were worse curses in the world.
Skull looked at the rest of the newly dubbed "Arcobaleno". They seemed to be in various states of shock.
Uh, Colonello had taken Lal's place. How gallant of him. Pity she had suffered the effects of the Curse anyway. Though he was pretty sure the horror on her face had nothing to do with the state of her body or Flames.
Viper's gaze was still locked on her hands. It had been more than a quarter of an hour already. He might have to do something about that if she didn't snap out of it on her own.
Luce was still serenely contrite. Her expression was really a study on emotions. Apologetic, slightly guilty... Not a hint of remorse though. But that made sense considering her gift.
Skull averted his eyes before Luce could attempt to make eye contact. Working together for so many months meant that they knew each other fairly well, and some things they would have preferred kept secret had ended up being known to the group at large. That included Luce's foresight.
There was no need for words, anyway. Her expression quite clearly spelled out that she had known. Asking for her reasons didn't even enter his mind.
(With an effort, he wrenched his mind away from thoughts of Trelawney and Dumbledore. There was ALWAYS a reason. That didn't mean he wanted to know what it was)
A frustrated, half-choked cry broke the silence of the clearing. Uh, he hadn't thought Reborn would be the first to succumb to rage. Skull eyed his rapid-fire shooting dispassionately. It wasn't like there was anything he could say to him. Letting him get it out of his system was probably for the best.
Smoke from somewhere to his right signalled Fon losing his calm as well, though he was being quieter about it. Skull idly wished he'd be able to reign his Flames back in before he destroyed the hill.
Verde was also channeling his rage, though in a productive way. With any luck he wouldn't burn out from the feverish-like intensity of the examination of his pacifier.
(Skull silently wished none of them became obsessed. He might not have been the most dedicated student at Hogwarts, but he could recognize something powerful)
He was probably the one in the best position, all in all. He had suffered much worse and was used to weird shite happening to him for little to no reason. This was just business as usual.
He was fine.
Skull was the first to leave the clearing, but stopped when he reached his bike. Of course, he couldn't drive anymore. His tiny arms couldn't even reach the seat, never mind the handles.
Skull choked back a scream.
He was fine.
He was used to this kind of thing.
His friends weren't impressed with the Curse or his definition of "fine". He would have protested, but after finally blowing up from one too many lectures on "confronting his feelings" he did feel better, so he gave them a slightly sheepish apology and asked for help.
The support he received was kind of staggering.
Before he knew it he was surrounded by Weasleys, either trying to cheer him up, joking with him or offering theories.
(Meeting with Ginny again was much less awkward than he had expected. She just smiled, shook her head and teasingly told him that next time he should bring a girl she could embarrass him in front of, not more previously-thought-of-as-impossible feats of magic)
Hermione, meanwhile, spent hours upon hours buried among books, which would have made him feel incredibly guilty if she hadn't been so enthusiastic about finding out everything she could about a curse that permanently transfigured their bodies while at the same time harvesting their Flames. She was buzzing so much with the possibilities of the Curse using their Flames as a source of energy (and what that energy was being spent on, because it definetely wasn't on mantaining their toddler bodies, though how Hermione reached that conclusion was very much above him) that he almost feared she'd bring him with her to the Department of Mysteries for experimentation if she got any more carried away.
Andromeda, for her part, stared at him in that guilt-inducing way of mothers everywhere until he caved and went to fetch Viper.
(Harry would insist for decades to come that she had been coaching Teddy to help her before confronting him, because his demand for "Auntie Lulu" had come with truly suspicious timing)
And it was a good thing she did, too. Viper was still numb with shock two weeks after the Curse. She didn't say anything to him and let herself be dragged to Wizarding Britain via portkey. He was just wondering what to say to snap her out of it when she saw Teddy. She then proceeded to cuddle the toddler for a good three hours before tentatively asking if he had found anything about the Curse on the family library.
Harry and Andromeda had then given perfectly simultaneous face-palms. If there was one place that might have any information on what felt like a very ancient, very powerful curse, it was the Black library.
It really said something about their state of mind that not even Hermione had thought about that.
Almost all of the possible solutions on the Black library involved Dark magic, dangerous rituals or the death of the cursed people.
(Because, apparentely, if you cursed a Black they weren't above sacrificing said person to get you back tenfold)
It was a start, though, and Hermione and Bill seemed confident that they could use some of the underlying principles of the rituals to find a solution that was a little less extreme.
It was also clear that it would be a slow process. They were basically trying to create a new ritual almost from scratch in order to break a Curse they didn't completely understand, after all.
Harry sighed and shook his head when he heard Hermione's suggestion that he go back to being Skull in order to see what the Mafia knew about this particular Curse.
Sure, it was a very valid strategy, but they both knew that she was mostly saying it so he would get his mind off things, since he had had fun exploring that new world, as much as he would sometimes insist otherwise.
(He had the sneaking suspicion that it was also so he could reconnect with his old "teammates", which was a matter he was not prepared to address yet, so he was keeping firmly off his thoughts)
The day he decided to ask Viper if she wanted to go with him he found her soldiering through Teddy's first attempt at a strawberry milkshake (which was basically a bunch of strawberries smushed together inside a tall glass), so he had had to fake a coughing fit so as to not hurt his godson's feelings. Viper's expression told him quite clearly what would happen if that particular scene was ever referenced or alluded to, which had the happy side effect of wiping the amusement from his face.
To his surprise, his cousin agreed to help him try to find information, and her exasperated reaction at his cautious reminder that it would probably take years before they found anything relevant reassured him that she was mostly recovered from the shock of getting caught in a trap she had known was coming.
She insisted on going back their own ways so she could see if her old contacts knew anything while he abused his "useless civilian" reputation to see if someone underestimated him and let something slip.
He gave her worried looks (and may or may not have enlisted the formidable Weasley matriarch on his campaign of fussing) until she threw her arms into the air in exasperation and consented to getting matching Magic Mirrors so they could keep in contact.
The next few years passed in kind of a blur. He went from one Famiglia to the next, always playing the incompetent civilian (and feeling amazed and surprisingly disappointed when nobody was able to see past the act) and purposefully botching the missions he found disagreeable. Amazingly, nobody ever seemed to connect the dots as to who consistently tipped the Vindice off. Skull had to remind himself at times that the Arcobaleno were the Best for a reason, and the rest of the mafiosos had more in common with general wizards than the DA.
(He refused to aknowledge he missed them)
And then Verde made him a custom bike he could actually ride despite his new size. "Just a prototype", he'd said, "You're my testing dummy".
And suddenly Skull couldn't pretend anymore that Colonello really hunted him down from time to time to be a bully and not out of worry, or that Reborn insisted on getting him contracts with scumbag Famiglias to tie him down and not so he could be protected from forced recruitment while he gathered the evidence to get them all in Vendicare.
Or that he visited Fon just for the tea, or that Lal sent them updates about her job on the CEDEF to complain about her coworkers and not to let them know of her progress (or lack thereof) at finding information about the Curse.
Skull sighed and cursed his saving-people-thing, as well as his irritating tendency to care. He comforted himself with the knowledge that they were the Best at what they did, so of course the berks would find a way to worm their way into his heart without him actually realizing.
He called Viper on the Magic Mirror and his cousin sensibly pointed out that blowing the Statute of Secrecy out of the water would get them a date with the Dementors. She was utterly unsympathetic and unamused, and while when they first met he'd have attributed that to her not caring, he knew her well enough at that point to know that she had realized much earlier than him, was on the same boat and had come to terms already with the fact that they couldn't tell the others that they might have a solution in a few years.
Skull understood, of course. But it still hurt.
It hurt to see the tiny changes on Reborn that resulted from the hitman sealing away the memories from his pre-cursed life.
It hurt to see Verde all but welded to his lab, running experiments nonstop on the Curse even while he insisted that it was just "because it was a fascinating study".
It hurt to not hear from Fon for months on end as he disappeared in the Triads, only resurfacing from China a handful of times.
It hurt to see Colonello trying to woo Lal, this time for real.
"Go out with me, kora!" We can still make it work, please don't leave me!
"Never! Humph. Idiot student." Work? How? So you can stare at me and feel guilty about my Flame being broken? I'm not doing that to either of us.
In the end, it was pretty clear that Viper felt the same (and had been working on a way to give them what little they knew without risking a squad of Obliviators knocking on their door), because he was just as surprised as the rest of his fellow Arcobaleno when she sent them a letter with a date and meeting place.
"I've reunited all of you here so I can tell you what I have discovered about the Curse. However, as it's something I discovered thanks to my Family Library, I am not at liberty to speak of it. Technically, I am telling you all behind my Head of House's back"
Skull's hastily choked back bark of laughter didn't go unnoticed, not that he had expected it to in the first place.
Lal was pinching the bridge of her nose even as she seemed to struggle to keep a smirk off her face. "Skull is the Head of your Famiglia, isn't he?"
The smugness oozing off of Viper spoke volumes even as she gave a faux-casual shrug. "He's the only one who was never kicked out. Headship would have gone to him by default even if he wasn't the previous Head's Heir."
"I thought he was from a distant branch."
Skull scowled at Reborn. The Sun was just asking to satisfy his own curiosity, and while he could understand that his blunt manner was still annoying.
"The previous Head was my godfather." Skull huffed at Reborn's nod. That was the closest the hitman ever came to an apology and they both knew it.
"So what have you discovered, Viper?" Fon seemed as calm as ever, but the slight tensing of his shoulders clearly told them that he would appreciate less conversational detours.
"As I've told you all, our family was primarly Mists. Our rules also very clearly establish that we may never reveal our knowledge to outsiders, so I can't be as detailed as I'd like, but I'll tell you all what I can."
The atmosphere instantly lost any levity, and Skull caught Verde's slightly pleading look, to which he shook his head. "Those are very, very old rules put in place by much more powerful people than me. There's no way for me to get around them and Viper could be in serious trouble as it is. Sorry."
Viper nodded in confirmation that it really had no possible work-arounds and continued. "From some of our texts and a couple of... independent sources who wish to remain anonymous, Skull and I have discovered that this Curse's primary objective isn't to turn us into toddlers. That is a side effect of the pacifiers' primary function, which is harvesting our Flames."
The concerned looks of the other Arcobaleno were too expertedly masked to give more than mild discomfort away, and Skull was somewhat surprised to note that he was able to read them well enough that he could tell that they were actually very shaken from this information.
"And do we know what the Curse is using our Flames for?" Colonello's voice was maybe a bit softer than usual, but apart from that nothing really gave away how unsettled the implications had made him.
"No, unfortunately. The good news is that our independent sources are reasonably confident that they have a realiable lead on a way to remove the Curse. They have hit a snag on a way to contain our Flames that could withstand them being constantly multiplied, but they have already worked out how to do the multiplying and how to transfer our pacifiers to said container so the Curse latches onto them instead of us."
"Could it be possible for me to work with them? I am the foremost expert on Flame-resistant materials and with my help, surely..."
Viper was shaking her head even before Verde stopped talking. "Can't. Sorry. You'd find out Family secrets."
"Oh. They are old Family allies, then?"
Skull came to Viper's rescue then, because it just wasn't fair to leave her to field their questions alone. "They are old allies of mine, who knew some of the secrets we are referring to already and risked their lives on my aid. And yet granting them permission to take some of the books in the Family Library was treading on thin ice. Sorry Verde, we weren't kidding when we said our family had very stringent ideas about who to associate with."
The following years were a vast improvement for all of them. There were still secrets between the lot of them, of course, but that was a matter of course for the Mafia.
The mere fact that they had been able and willing to skirt around their Family's rules to give them some much needed hope made the rest of their comrades grateful and more relaxed around them, and little by little the group started to come together more often and gain back some of the cohesion they had achieved when on their jobs as the Strongest Seven.
(They might not know exactly what kind of Family Skull and Viper were from, or even if they were strictly Mafia, but they all were well-acquaintaced with the possible repercussions of revealing sensitive information from one's own Famiglia, especially if it had powerful Mists)
So they expressed their gratitude with subtle protection, passing along relevant information or, in Verde's case, with reports about the most Flame-resistant materials he had available.
(The reports he received back were obviously carefully edited, but that didn't matter to them as they could see the clear progress those mysterious independent sources were making, and that ignited a kind of painful hope on them all)
When one September Skull and Viper got a slightly melancholic look on their faces and started to act subtly clingy -slightly longer messages, carefully-casual requests for meetings to "catch up"...- they didn't even have to think about it to give them the support they seemed to need.
(It wouldn't be until many years later that they would discover that the pair of them had been depressed over sending Teddy to Hogwarts, and they would mourn the lost opportunity for teasing)
Life would have probably continued on like that if they hadn't received a letter from Luce thirteen years after the Curse.
(And it came like a punch to the gut, the realization that no matter how close they all were, they weren't and had never been Elements under the same Sky. No true Elements would have ever simply up and forgotten about their Sky like that, no matter their feelings on the matter)
Luce had been the one topic they all had unconsciously avoided, even more than Checkerface. Privately, all of them had thought that they had time. That they could have a talk with her at some point in the future, that they could work through the feelings of confusion, betrayal, suspicion at their leisure.
Only, it seemed that Luce didn't have any time left.
They couldn't even resent her for keeping yet another thing from them, because they had all pointedly avoided communicating with her after the Curse. While they all bitterly resented finding out that Luce had information on the Curse she had kept to herself, not one of them held onto that feeling when going to talk to her.
After all, a dying woman wanted to talk to them for the last time.
Skull gave his surroundings a curious look. Luce's house was big, but much more homely and inviting than any of the Black properties had ever been.
It didn't surprise him that, even on her death bed, she hadn't offered platitudes or apologies. She had just smiled at them, thanked them for coming and asked if any of them wanted a private chat.
(There was a reason Skull and his fellow Arcobaleno had thought once that they could form a Bond with Luce. That was what had made the deception all the more painful)
When his turn came, Skull only had one question.
"If you had told us, would anything have changed?"
"Yes"
Skull nodded and got up from the seat at the foot of Luce's bed. He was grateful that she didn't try to justify her actions. He could guess that things would have changed for the worse. Luce had been affected too after all, so the consequences of the Curse going without Flames were probably severe.
He was tired of shouldering burderns for "the good of everyone", though. So he preferred not to know.
Skull stopped at the threshold of Luce's room just before opening the door. "I forgive you"
Skull exited without looking back, pretending he couldn't hear Luce's relieved sob.
Seeing Aria -and Merlin, she was younger than Teddy, barely fourteen- waiting outside effectively robbed him of his composure, though.
Those were Sky Flames. And Luce had written that her pacifier would be inherited by someone else after her passing.
For a single second, Skull felt himself go weak with denial and horror.
It couldn't be.
She was so young.
For a single second, Skull wanted to hate her. He couldn't bond with her and watch her die, the idea that someone so young had her days numbered was just so wrong.
It would be easy to do too. He just had to concentrate on all his resentment for Luce, all the bitterness from her deception, and direct it to Aria. So what if he would need to mantain those memories always on the forefront of his mind? He didn't want to suffer through her death. Luce's already hurt, how much worse would it be when it was the turn of an innocent?
So what if he would need to keep those memories so fresh in his memory that even the most cursory Legilimency scan would pick them up, regardless of his shields?
The memory of his father bullying his old potions professor rose unbidden and startled a snort out of him.
Who knew he would ever have something in common with Snape?
At least that explained the man's irrational hatred. Snape had known Harry's possibilities of survival were slim from the beginning, after all.
AN: It has come to my attention that Skull and Viper being second cousins once removed could be confusing, since Viper is only three years older than Skull.
The reason is simple: my personal headcanon for Marius Black (the only confirmed canon squib on the Black line) is that he's from Walburga, Orion and Alphard's generation. It's an idea that came to me when wondering how someone raised as a 'proper Black' like Alphard could be a fan of Muggle culture to the point he converted Sirius to it as well. The idea would be that when Marius was cast out, Alphard couldn't bear to abandon his favorite brother/cousin/whatever their relation is and helped him get used to Muggle life.
So Alphard was converted to the Muggle ways, while Marius built himself a life and adapted to a completely different society. As a result of his rough adaptational period, Marius married late and had Viper even later, while Harry's parents were on their twenties when he was born. Thus, second cousins once removed (that is, with a generation of difference) only three years apart in age.